Brian Hanley

speaker

657 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 12 Jun

Brian Hanley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

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Irish History Podcast · The Rise of the Provisional IRA: Conspiracy vs Reality · 16 Sep 2026 podcast

public attention really, while still being relatively small, Sinn Fein at this stage has no members in in Leinster House in Dahl Aaron.

And and there's a debate within the movement about whether it should take seats if elected, but but the fact is they don't have any at that point.

So when Belfast explodes inter intercommunal violence, there's

small number of of IRA members and with access to a very small number of weapons and they're active in defense, particularly in West Belfast, particularly around the falls.

So, you know, some loyalists are shot and wounded, one of them is killed in that area.

The police are also attacked, but they're they're very heavily outgunned by the state forces and by loyalists as it happens.

So for many nationalists, the fact that the IRA had tried

tried to defend the areas wouldn't have been that evident, particularly outside West Belfast and other parts of Ireland.

And and the general picture is the nationalists are about to be overwhelmed.

So after the violence subsides, questions are asked, where were the IRA, what were the IRA doing?

There's an assumption that the IRA should have been doing something, although uh cynical Republicans would have said that a lot of people asking them that had no interest in them prior to these events.

But nevertheless, you do have firstly a big influx of young people, particularly in Belfast, into the Republican movement.

But they all feel that the IRA should be prepared again in case there are further loyalist attacks and there.

They are also then asking why more hadn't been done.

And this kind of idea that the IRA had let the people down is current, you know, not not from everybody, but certainly

You know, there are people asking, Why did this happen?

Why why was the IRA so badly armed in Belfast?

And

One of the answers is that they were spending an awful lot of time talking about politics and their leadership in Dublin wasn't interested in defending Catholics anymore.

And that starts to gain traction as the winter goes on, as debates begin to take place within the movement about what they should have been doing.

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