Chapter 1: Who is Lord Haw-Haw and why is he significant?
here.
All right, everybody, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
And folks, on a normal week, basically every other week of the year, I read a story about a terrible person that I have researched and written and spent a lot of time on to one of our guests, who is generally a comedian or an academic or somebody who we thought would be fun to horrify for roughly two to three hours. This week, we're doing a little bit of a different thing.
For one thing, my producer Sophie is not here, as she is currently engaged in moving, and that's a whole nightmarish hell. And the other thing that's different, the biggest thing that's different, is that this is going to be a reverse Behind the Bastards, where a guest is going to read me a story that they have written based on research they've done from a piece of shit. in history.
And I'd like to welcome a guest, well, the guest host to this episode, someone that you will have seen on It Could Happen Here if you're a regular listener of that podcast, Padraig O'Rourke. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on and for doing the hard work of making an episode for me this week. No problem. Thanks for having me.
And Jesus, yeah, it took like just finding the time to write these things. Like I think we discussed this idea first in like February, March, but I only just got it finished. Yeah, we were connected through our mutual friend, Jake Hanrahan, and you came on the show to talk about the Irish far right on It Could Happen Here, which was a great episode.
And yeah, you pitched around that same time this. And it's obviously like it's my whole job. So I find the time to do it every week. I have to. When it's like a side thing you're doing, it takes a long time to write 10,000 words about a shitty person. I still have to turn up to work for my government paymasters. But yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, who are we learning about this week? Well, Robert, as you know, the original plan for this episode was to cover Andrew Windsor, or as he's now known, the alleged rapist formerly known as Prince. Yes. But seeing as how women who annoyed the British monarchy occasionally die in suspicious traffic accidents, we would have been putting Sophie's life in danger.
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Chapter 2: What was William Joyce's early life like?
Yes, to protect her from the British royal family. And as we all know, there's nothing the British royal family and its armed forces love doing more than murdering Irishmen. So my neck was on the line, too. And I thought... I thought it would be safer if we covered a dead bastard instead of Andrew Saxe-Coburg. And we're no longer the prince. You'll get around to Prince Andrew someday.
Anyway, Robert. Yeah, he is on the list, especially with all this juicy new Epstein stuff that's leaked. Oh, I totally believe him. He's innocent of everything. So, Robert, I know you've heard of this guy because you mentioned him before on a previous podcast. But I was wondering how much do you know or can you recall about William Joyce? Yeah, you're talking about Lord Ha Ha, right?
That's his... The name he's probably better... Certainly better known to Americans by. I read about him for the first time in one of the first World War II history books I read when I was in May. I couldn't have been much further than fifth or sixth grade. And it was... There was a chapter that talked about him and it talked about...
there was kind of a woman in Japan who was sort of the Japanese equivalent of these like radio, like pro-fascist radio stars who would tell allied soldiers, basically, you're all going to get killed over here, you know, disobey your orders or whatnot, like it's hopeless to try to fight us, that sort of thing. So that's kind of my, it's a very surface level knowledge of the guy.
I'm aware that he was like the British equivalent of, and I'm spacing on the name of the, I think it's of the woman based in Tokyo who was doing the same thing over in the Pacific Theater. But yeah, that's what I know about him. That's the guy. Well, this guy has a fascinating backstory, a terrible personal life, and I think he's grade A bastard material.
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Chapter 3: How did Joyce's upbringing influence his political views?
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So look, we'll jump into it. William Joyce was born... Well, fuck Robert, we're off to a bad start here because no one knows for certain when or where this asshole was born. I love those ones. Yeah. We do know who his parents were, though. William Joyce was the eldest son of Michael Joyce from Mayo in the west of Ireland.
And an English woman named Gertrude Brooke, but who was better known as Queenie. Michael Joyce, unlike most Irish immigrants to the USA in the late 1800s, was not a starving peasant.
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Chapter 4: What role did Joyce play during the Irish War of Independence?
He came from a wealthy farming family and he had gone to America to seek his fortune rather than evade starvation. In the 1880s, he established a successful construction company in Brooklyn and he had enough money to make frequent trips back home to Ireland. Oh, wow. That is a very rare situation for somebody who moves from Ireland to the US in the 1800s. He's doing well.
So on one such trip to Galway, he meets and falls in love with Gertrude or Queenie. So true love blossomed, but there were two small problems, racism and religious bigotry. because back then the Irish were still considered primeval savages by the English establishment. James Flood, professor of history at Oxford, declared that the Irish were, quote, more like squalid apes than human beings.
That's a good British. I lived there for a while. I could kind of do the upper class one and the working class, but nothing in between. Anyway, another English academic, John Bedot, held that the racial inferiority of the Irish made us genetically inclined to criminality, which was evident by studying the skulls and phrenology of Irish men. Oh, that sounds scientific. Sure. Who had...
who had, quote, a Negro appearance. Oh, boy. Yeah. Oh, wow.
Oh, yeah.
There's still institutions in Ireland where they have the heads of like Gaelic speakers, the skulls. And we've given back like the Pacific Islanders, but they're kind of like, no, we're holding on to the Irish ones. So some of them have only just come back.
But anyway, for the complicating matters for these star-crossed lovers, apart from the different nationalities, was the fact that Michael Joyce was a Catholic whilst his fiancƩe was Protestant. Now, such mixed marriages were controversial at the time, though nobody in Ireland today, well, in Southern Ireland at least, gives a shit about it.
So Michael and Gertrude's engagement was so controversial that her parents refused to attend their 1905 New York wedding. Instead, Queenie's parents sent her brother Gilbert, a lawyer, to the ceremony to, quote, see that the thing was done right.
Now, there have been many biographies of Joyce, but the best is probably by Colin Holmes, an English academic, who suggests that Joyce was born out of wedlock two years before the marriage, and that is the reason why her family only sent one person to the wedding who was a lawyer. Wow.
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Chapter 5: How did Joyce become involved with British intelligence?
Wow, that's such a bitchy move. Like, just sending your lawyer to their... And he's a family member as well, so they don't even have to pay him. Anyway, so throughout his life, Joyce repeatedly claimed to be born in different years and in different places. Probably. Classic bastard. Yeah. So William Joyce was born sometime between 1903 and 1906 in either America or Ireland.
As a boy, he was baptized in his father's religion of Catholicism. William Joyce's mother wanted to name him William Brooke Joyce, following in the Protestant Irish tradition of co-joining both parents' surnames. But Joyce's Catholic father forbid it because, like his son, he was a gigantic asshole. In 1913, Michael Joyce used his American wealth to buy a pub in his home place of Mayo.
But the business failed after Michael Joyce killed one of his best customers. One of his regulars got really drunk one night and Michael, instead of looking after him, simply threw him out of the pub when he ran out of money. This man's body was found lying against the pub wall the next morning.
Yeah, he had died of hypothermia whilst sheltering against the gable end of the building, trying to get shelter from the wind and the rain. This resulted in all the locals successfully boycotting the bar and the Joyce's were forced to sell it. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
Like a really good barkeeper here today who knows their locals, who like wait till the end of their shift and will actually drive them home, you know? Yeah. So, and I've seen that happen. But anyway, so the family moved to Galway City where Michael Joyce again invests in real estate. Robert, have you ever been to Galway? Yes, yes, I love it.
I mean, I think it's probably the prettiest city I've been to in Ireland. It's my second favorite after. I really like Dublin. But yeah, I love Galway. Galway is a great place.
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Chapter 6: What were the consequences of Joyce's actions during the conflict?
It's an incredible party town. And Steve Earle wrote a great song about it called Galway Girl. He did. He sure did. Yeah, but don't, listeners, confuse it with the Ed Sheeran song of the same name, which is shit. No, no, don't. But do listen to Steve Earle. Galway has long been famous as one of the last bastions of indigenous Gaelic Irish culture.
And that is exactly why young William Joyce hates Galway, because he hates everything Irish. He wants nothing more throughout his whole life than to be British, which, as Madonna discovered, is very complicated if you're actually an American.
Yes.
William Joyce was the eldest of four children. He was six years older than his brother, Quentin, who was the next eldest sibling. So unsurprisingly, for many years, William was spoiled as a mama's boy. Queenie always felt out of place in Irish-American enclaves in Brooklyn and later in Ireland.
And while her husband, Michael, was working, Queenie was left alone with baby William and doted on him, telling him, you are the sugar in my tea. Without you, there is no British empire. And you will be a great man someday. So, Robert, I've sent you a pic, if you can find it there, of we have a picture of Joyce at school.
Mm-hmm.
What's the vibe off this kid, if you can bring it up? He looks like a little shit. I'm going to be honest with you. He's got his arms crossed in a way children seldom do. Yeah, and the only two other people in the group photo who have their arms crossed are the teacher and the teacher's kid who's sitting at his feet. Yeah. He looks very unpleasant. He looks like he's judging you.
I want to say to him, you're not better than me, you little piece of shit. You're just a kid.
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Chapter 7: How did Joyce's life change after the Irish War of Independence?
What the fuck are you looking at me for that? Yeah. That way. Well, I remember without him, there will be no British Empire. So there you go. Well, that's another reason to fight this kid. From an early age, Joyce was noted for being intelligent and precocious. He was a keen chess player and boxer who showed a talent for languages, but he was also a loner.
So he came up with a plan to make friends. His dad rented a property to the cops as a police station. And William snuck in one day, stole a gun, and brought it to school. Just a normal kid thing to do. Oh, that'll make you friends. Yep. That'll make you friends. So it's totally fine. He doesn't shoot anybody.
All the other boys in school think the gun is super cool, but they still think that Joyce, who's brought it in, is a massive dork. So Joyce's parents had enrolled him in a Catholic school. And this may surprise listeners, but the Catholic Church in Ireland in the early 1900s was 100% supportive of British rule.
Since the time of the American Revolution, Catholic bishops had condemned every single Irish rebellion against the British. So in return for their loyalty, the British government allowed the Catholic Church to run almost all of the elementary schools in Ireland. That ended well. Yeah, absolutely. That's where we're going.
This not only allowed Catholic priests to ensure the spiritual indoctrination and brainwashing of Irish children, it also gave Catholic priests political power and social status required to ensure a nationwide conveyor belt of children who they could rape and abuse without legal consequence.
In the early 20th century, the British government and the Catholic Church implemented a form of cultural genocide to try and destroy any sense of Irish identity their pupils had and to replace this with a sense of Britishness.
Children in Catholic-run Irish primary schools had to recite a poem each morning which ran, I thank the goodness and the grace which on my birth had smiled and made me in these Christian days a happy English child. Each year, all elementary schools in Ireland celebrated Empire Day on the 24th of May, when pupils were taught that the British Empire is one big happy family of nations.
Like your own families, there is a father and a mother and children.
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Chapter 8: What impact did Joyce have on British fascism in the 1920s?
In Britain, the parents are the English and the children are the Scots, Irish and Welsh. If the Scots, Irish or Welsh ever went their own way, then God would be very disappointed. Now, see, that doesn't even make sense with families, because the whole point of a family is that eventually the children are adults and go their own way and get married on their own, right?
The whole point of a family is that the kids are always underneath the parents' thumbs. That's not even how family really worked back then. The analogy also fails because families inevitably end up rowing with each other quite a lot. Right, constantly, yes. The worst fights are between family members. Also, only one family member inherits at this point in time. I don't know. Right.
Which is the parent, which is not how it's supposed to work. Anyway, children were then taught the slogan of Empire Day, which was one king, one flag, one fleet, one empire. Remind you of anything, Robert? Yeah, one people, one nation, one Volk. Yeah, ein Volk, ein Reich, ein FĆ¼hrer. That's it. Yeah, one FĆ¼hrer, sorry.
So the Catholic priests running these schools, when they weren't busy abusing Irish children, loved nothing more than to beat the shit out of Irish kids who actually had the audacity to speak Gaelic, their native language. So this is similar, Robert, to what happened to First Nations kids in Canada.
But it wasn't as extreme here because even though the English establishment considered us racially inferior, at least we were white.
um so anyway young william joyce just fucking loves all the british imperialism um that he is getting in school and he loves school and education until one day he asked the priest if his protestant mother would go to heaven when she died and of course the priest says no your mother is going straight to hell where she will burn in eternal torment forever with all the other protestants because that's just how the catholic church rolls
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's fun. I had a similar I grew up Episcopalian. And I had a similar talk with a youth group leader about that, where I was asking him about like, different figures, like Gandhi and stuff. And he was like, Oh, no, they're all everyone else is going to hell. Like everyone who was not the specific kind of Christian that we are is going straight to hell forever.
At least the Mormons are nice enough to re-baptize the dead. Yeah, right. You baptize Anne Frank decades after her death like a normal person. Other things we could criticize the Mormons on, but at least they think they're well-intentioned. Anyway. When you think about it, it's nicer than some of the other things.
Yeah.
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