0:00:07 > 0:00:11Ireland's modern story begins in an age of empire,
0:00:11 > 0:00:15but it will be convulsed by revolution.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18The old order is overthrown.
0:00:21 > 0:00:25The religious conflict that has endured for 300 years
0:00:25 > 0:00:28will lead to the division of Ireland for the first time in history.
0:00:35 > 0:00:41From the beginning of the story of Ireland, the island has been shaped by events beyond its shores
0:00:41 > 0:00:45and this is never more true than in the modern era.
0:00:45 > 0:00:53In an age of world wars, when Europe is twice rent apart by hatred, when tens of millions die in the
0:00:53 > 0:00:59name of ideology and nationalism, Ireland, too, will experience dramatic upheaval.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05It is an age in which the island's people will confront not only the
0:01:05 > 0:01:10legacy of history but the very idea of what it means to be Irish.
0:01:42 > 0:01:49Early in the last century, my forebears lived here in middle-class respectability in the city of Cork.
0:01:51 > 0:01:58It was a world dominated by the British Empire and Cork was a thriving garrison city.
0:01:58 > 0:02:03My great-grandfather was a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary.
0:02:05 > 0:02:07But his service records are not kept in Cork.
0:02:07 > 0:02:11They're here at the National Archives in Kew.
0:02:14 > 0:02:18Here he is. 40739, Hassett, Patrick.
0:02:18 > 0:02:235ft 10, the same height as myself, from County Clare.
0:02:23 > 0:02:27In his mind there was nothing unusual about him being sent, as we can see here,
0:02:27 > 0:02:31to serve in Belfast, because it was all one Ireland at the time.
0:02:31 > 0:02:34And he wouldn't have seen any contradiction between supporting
0:02:34 > 0:02:38the monarchy, but also supporting the idea of Home Rule for Ireland,
0:02:38 > 0:02:42because, remember, if Home Rule was granted, the country was still going to stay within the British Empire.
0:02:45 > 0:02:52And that empire really framed the world in which my great-grandfather grew up and in which he lived.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57Yet the image of a serene Ireland was deceptive.
0:02:57 > 0:03:01An Irish Catholic would never rise to the top of the RIC.
0:03:01 > 0:03:08In Her Majesty's Civil Service, Catholics were noticeably absent from the more senior posts.
0:03:11 > 0:03:13The Act of Union had given Catholics economic
0:03:13 > 0:03:20power but their political destiny remained in the hands of London.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23As the century turned, a view of an Irish future utterly
0:03:23 > 0:03:28separate from Britain was finding expression in cultural revival.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35One of the many artists attempting to forge a new
0:03:35 > 0:03:39national consciousness was the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46In 1903, with Lady Augusta Gregory, he founded the Abbey Theatre.
0:03:46 > 0:03:50It would see the production of their play Cathleen ni Houlihan,
0:03:50 > 0:03:56which represented Ireland as a beautiful woman for whom young men would sacrifice their lives.
0:03:56 > 0:04:01"They shall be alive forever", Yeats wrote.
0:04:01 > 0:04:07Later he would ask, "Did that play of mine send out certain men the English shot?"
0:04:09 > 0:04:13The cultural revival in sports, literature and theatre was
0:04:13 > 0:04:18profoundly influenced by the fear that Ireland was becoming British.
0:04:24 > 0:04:27There's a fear that Ireland is losing its identity,
0:04:27 > 0:04:34that if a new generation does not embrace identity and national sentiment
0:04:34 > 0:04:35and the national language and so on,
0:04:35 > 0:04:38that something is going to be lost. Irretrievably lost.
0:04:45 > 0:04:50What was being written and talked about here in Dublin
0:04:50 > 0:04:53chimed with nationalist sentiments across the world.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57In 1911, Sun Yat-sen had declared his revolution in China.
0:04:57 > 0:05:02The following year, the African National Congress was founded in South Africa.
0:05:02 > 0:05:09And closer, in the Balkans, Serbian plotters were preparing acts that would change the world.
0:05:09 > 0:05:14Here in Ireland, the long dominance of those who'd advocated
0:05:14 > 0:05:19change through peaceful means was about to be challenged.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25Across Europe, there are premonitions of a cataclysm that will make a new world.
0:05:28 > 0:05:33In Ireland, a poet and teacher declared bloodshed a cleansing and sanctifying thing.
0:05:36 > 0:05:44Inspired by Christ and the warriors of Gaelic myth, Patrick Pearse had come to idealise martyrdom.
0:05:44 > 0:05:49Pearse was the son of an English father and an Irish mother.
0:05:49 > 0:05:53At St Enda's, his school outside Dublin, he declared it his mission
0:05:53 > 0:05:59to counter what he called the murder machine of British education.
0:06:02 > 0:06:09Pearse told his pupils to be ready to work hard for the fatherland and, if necessary, to die for it.
0:06:12 > 0:06:18Pearse joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, committed to the overthrow of imperial rule.
0:06:19 > 0:06:26His alienation from the bourgeois world of his childhood would deepen when he watched the combined forces
0:06:26 > 0:06:33of state power and a Catholic-led business elite suppress the 1913 strike in Dublin.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41But the conditions in which Patrick Pearse and other radicals would
0:06:41 > 0:06:46rebel were created by the British Government's attempts at reform.
0:06:49 > 0:06:54In 1912, the Liberal Cabinet moved to introduce Home Rule,
0:06:54 > 0:07:00but in keeping a promise to Irish Catholics, it provoked the anger of Ulster Protestants.
0:07:00 > 0:07:04Home Rule was seen as an attempt to undo the Plantation of Ulster.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06It was seen as an attempt
0:07:06 > 0:07:10to bring the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, to bring them top,
0:07:10 > 0:07:15to effect a social revolution that would have seen Protestant Ulster,
0:07:15 > 0:07:18the Ulster that they had built, destroyed.
0:07:21 > 0:07:28Protestant opposition was led by a man misrepresented as much by his allies as by his enemies.
0:07:28 > 0:07:34Edward Carson was a Dublin lawyer who to this day remains the great icon of Ulster loyalism.
0:07:34 > 0:07:40Carson had been a fierce cross-examiner of his old college friend Oscar Wilde
0:07:40 > 0:07:44during a libel trial in which the writer denied his homosexuality.
0:07:44 > 0:07:51But this man, appropriated as an implacable Ulster unionist, began with a very different agenda.
0:07:51 > 0:07:54Most Irish people would regard Carson
0:07:54 > 0:07:58as the arch partitionist, but that's not what Carson is about.
0:07:58 > 0:08:03Carson is about sustaining the union between
0:08:03 > 0:08:07Great Britain and all of Ireland, not just the northeastern corner.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11And he wants to make that union work for the benefit of all Irish people.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15But Carson understood that only in Ulster was there a
0:08:15 > 0:08:20Protestant population large enough to mobilise against Home Rule.
0:08:22 > 0:08:28On September 28th, 1912, here in Belfast City Hall, Edward Carson
0:08:28 > 0:08:32signed a solemn covenant pledging to defend Ulster from Home Rule.
0:08:32 > 0:08:36Almost 250,000 men followed his example.
0:08:38 > 0:08:41But how were they going to back up this declaration with deeds?
0:08:41 > 0:08:46The Ulster unionist leadership now made a momentous decision.
0:08:48 > 0:08:54The Ulster Volunteer Force, formed in 1913, directly challenged the state.
0:08:54 > 0:09:01It was encouraged in its threats of rebellion by British Conservatives, yet the Government took no action.
0:09:01 > 0:09:08Nationalists reacted by founding the Irish Volunteers to protect Home Rule.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12They were joined by the Irish Citizen Army, led by James Connolly,
0:09:12 > 0:09:18a Glasgow-born socialist who'd come to prominence in the 1913 strike in Dublin.
0:09:18 > 0:09:23When this paramilitarisation develops in the north, the reaction
0:09:23 > 0:09:26in nationalist Ireland is excitement.
0:09:26 > 0:09:28It's not fear.
0:09:28 > 0:09:32It's not a sense that a civil war may happen.
0:09:32 > 0:09:34It's, this is what Irishmen should do.
0:09:34 > 0:09:40Time and again you hear it said famously about Patrick Pearse that "to see arms in the hands of Irishmen
0:09:40 > 0:09:46"is an ennobling thing", even if they're in the hands of Ulster unionist Irishmen.
0:09:48 > 0:09:50It was of course a grand delusion.
0:09:50 > 0:09:54Both nationalists and the British Government seemed to have forgotten
0:09:54 > 0:09:58the bitter struggles with loyalists over Home Rule in the previous century.
0:09:58 > 0:10:04It was as if they believed Ulster Protestants would eventually peacefully come round to the idea.
0:10:05 > 0:10:10But the loyalists were busy arming themselves to fight whoever tried to impose Home Rule.
0:10:14 > 0:10:20On the 24th and 25th April 1914, 25,000 rifles and three million
0:10:20 > 0:10:27rounds of ammunition were brought in through Larne and other ports and distributed across Ulster.
0:10:27 > 0:10:33These were German weapons being imported at a time of mounting international tension.
0:10:33 > 0:10:38It would be hard to imagine a greater challenge to the authority of the state.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43And yet the Government did nothing.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47But when nationalists imported guns
0:10:47 > 0:10:50the following July, they were confronted.
0:10:50 > 0:10:55This double standard helped to radicalise many more moderate nationalists.
0:10:55 > 0:11:02Tension steadily escalated, until Ireland's quarrel was suddenly interrupted.
0:11:08 > 0:11:13During the First World War, you get a sea-change in the nature of Irish political opinion.
0:11:13 > 0:11:15People who had been thinking that
0:11:15 > 0:11:17constitutional methods would work
0:11:17 > 0:11:19changed their mind and felt that they wouldn't.
0:11:19 > 0:11:21People who felt that a more moderate goal was legitimate
0:11:21 > 0:11:24changed their minds and wanted something more radical.
0:11:30 > 0:11:33The war would claim the lives of as many as 30,000 Irishmen.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37More than 200,000 served.
0:11:41 > 0:11:44To the moderate Irish nationalist leader John Redmond,
0:11:44 > 0:11:48the war was a chance to make the case to unionists for Home Rule.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51Catholics would show their loyalty to the Empire.
0:11:54 > 0:11:58But as the war dragged on and casualties mounted,
0:11:58 > 0:12:02fears grew that Britain would introduce conscription in Ireland.
0:12:06 > 0:12:12Redmond's call to arms looked increasingly to have been a serious political mistake.
0:12:12 > 0:12:15There was growing disillusionment among nationalists,
0:12:15 > 0:12:19but Ireland wasn't seething with anti-British fervour.
0:12:19 > 0:12:25It would take the events of Easter 1916 to create the cataclysm.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30As Britain floundered on the Western Front,
0:12:30 > 0:12:33a small group of plotters gathered in Dublin.
0:12:35 > 0:12:40They were a minority, even within the revolutionary Republican Brotherhood.
0:12:41 > 0:12:44They included poets and hardened rebels,
0:12:44 > 0:12:52Pearse, who dreamed of blood sacrifice and the champion of a workers' republic, James Connolly.
0:12:52 > 0:12:54They plotted the downfall of empire in Ireland
0:12:54 > 0:13:00here above the tobacco shop of the veteran IRB man Tom Clarke.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06The rebels decided to move on Easter Sunday,
0:13:06 > 0:13:08date of Christ's resurrection.
0:13:08 > 0:13:10But the orders were countermanded by moderates.
0:13:14 > 0:13:17In the chaos of order and counter-order,
0:13:17 > 0:13:22Pearse, Connolly and the other radicals made a fateful decision.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27They would strike with a drastically reduced force
0:13:27 > 0:13:31in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37A detachment of Connolly's Citizen Army attacked Dublin Castle,
0:13:37 > 0:13:41symbol and seat of British power, but were repulsed.
0:13:41 > 0:13:43The main body of rebels,
0:13:43 > 0:13:46led by Pearse and Connolly, rushed down Sackville Street
0:13:46 > 0:13:48and took over the General Post Office.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55They raised the Irish tricolour above the building.
0:13:57 > 0:14:01Pearse stepped outside and read from a proclamation
0:14:01 > 0:14:04signed by himself and the six other leaders.
0:14:04 > 0:14:08He declared an Irish Republic.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12"In the name of God and the dead generations, Ireland through us
0:14:12 > 0:14:17"summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom."
0:14:21 > 0:14:25A witness watching from a balcony opposite described how boys quickly gathered up
0:14:25 > 0:14:29any copies of the proclamation they could find, because, as he put it,
0:14:29 > 0:14:32they would be worth a fiver when the beggars were hanged.
0:14:35 > 0:14:38The British were caught unawares, but by the end of the week,
0:14:38 > 0:14:41they outnumbered the rebels by ten to one.
0:14:42 > 0:14:44From the River Liffey, a gunboat fired.
0:14:44 > 0:14:49Irish regiments also fought the rebels.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52The Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who were drawn principally from the
0:14:52 > 0:14:56working-class districts of the city, were being rushed up along the quays
0:14:56 > 0:14:58here to join the battle near the GPO,
0:14:58 > 0:15:02when a shot rang out from a sniper across the river.
0:15:02 > 0:15:06Lieutenant Gerald Neilan, an Irish Catholic, fell dead.
0:15:09 > 0:15:11Elsewhere in the city, his younger brother Anthony
0:15:11 > 0:15:13was fighting on the rebel side.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20The majority of the dead of Easter week were civilians,
0:15:20 > 0:15:22killed in the rain of shells and bullets
0:15:22 > 0:15:26that devastated the city centre in the British counter-attack.
0:15:30 > 0:15:34Pearse and Connolly finally abandoned their headquarters
0:15:34 > 0:15:37at the GPO, surrendering on April 29th.
0:15:42 > 0:15:47As the rebels were led into captivity, they were jeered and jostled by the crowd.
0:15:47 > 0:15:53Many of the most vociferous were women whose husbands were away fighting on the Western Front.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59The rising had been crushed, and public opinion now seemed set against the rebels...
0:16:04 > 0:16:06..until the British made a grave miscalculation.
0:16:10 > 0:16:13The leaders were brought here to Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin,
0:16:13 > 0:16:16and hastily court-martialled, and sentenced to death.
0:16:26 > 0:16:30Over a period of two weeks, 14 men were executed here,
0:16:30 > 0:16:3313 at this end, including Patrick Pearse,
0:16:33 > 0:16:35and up here, James Connolly,
0:16:35 > 0:16:38who had to be carried to his execution on a stretcher.
0:16:38 > 0:16:44The manner of their deaths and the number of executions would turn these men from being
0:16:44 > 0:16:51the leaders of a militant minority into martyrs who could be acclaimed by all of nationalist Ireland.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00The poet William Butler Yeats sensed the impact of the executions.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03"I write it out in a verse
0:17:03 > 0:17:07"MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse
0:17:07 > 0:17:09"Now and in time to be
0:17:09 > 0:17:13"Wherever green is worn Are changed, changed utterly.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16"A terrible beauty is born."
0:17:19 > 0:17:25Public anger deepened following mass arrests and the imposition of martial law.
0:17:27 > 0:17:33Here in the military archives in Dublin is a trove of witness accounts from young men who were
0:17:33 > 0:17:39radicalised by the events of Easter 1916, and who joined the Volunteers in its wake.
0:17:43 > 0:17:47Matthew Davies from Roscommon - in 1916, he says, "I was unattached to any group.
0:17:47 > 0:17:50"After the rebellion there was an outcry to execute the fanatics.
0:17:50 > 0:17:53"I felt we would have to do something about it."
0:17:53 > 0:17:56And of course he formed a volunteer unit in his area.
0:17:56 > 0:18:01The Volunteers evolved into the Irish Republican Army, and among the
0:18:01 > 0:18:07young men who flocked to join them was my grandfather, Paddy Hassett, the imperial policeman's son.
0:18:07 > 0:18:10Why would Paddy Hassett
0:18:10 > 0:18:15turn his back on that family tradition of service to the Empire?
0:18:16 > 0:18:19The biggest factor was what had happened in Ireland.
0:18:19 > 0:18:26The impact of the 1916 rising and the executions and the round-ups that took place after it.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30I sense that that was what turned my grandfather, and many,
0:18:30 > 0:18:34many other young men like him, against the British.
0:18:35 > 0:18:38But if the great cause of the Irish revolution
0:18:38 > 0:18:43had been a united republic, the consequence was very different.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47I think after 1916, with the dead dedicated to a republic,
0:18:47 > 0:18:48the fires of Easter week have
0:18:48 > 0:18:52forged a new national identity, which is to be republican.
0:18:52 > 0:18:55Ulster unionists find nothing in that whatsoever.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58They found little if anything in Home Rule -
0:18:58 > 0:19:01there's absolutely nothing for them in an Irish Republic.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04It makes partition inevitable.
0:19:06 > 0:19:10In the 1918 general election, Sinn Fein, led by veterans of the rising,
0:19:10 > 0:19:12won a sweeping majority.
0:19:12 > 0:19:17But instead of going to Westminster, the party set up an Irish Republic.
0:19:20 > 0:19:22The Sinn Fein leader was Eamon de Valera,
0:19:22 > 0:19:25and his finance minister, Michael Collins.
0:19:25 > 0:19:27In an atmosphere made worse
0:19:27 > 0:19:31by renewed British threats of conscription,
0:19:31 > 0:19:34Collins would find himself directing a guerrilla war.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39The IRA campaign which began in 1919
0:19:39 > 0:19:42was met with fierce reprisals against civilians
0:19:42 > 0:19:45by security forces like the Black and Tans.
0:19:46 > 0:19:51A state-sanctioned policy of reprisal increased public support for the IRA.
0:19:52 > 0:19:55And Irishmen killed fellow Irishmen.
0:19:55 > 0:19:58Police shot IRA men and vice versa.
0:20:01 > 0:20:07This is my father's hometown of Listowel in County Kerry.
0:20:07 > 0:20:12On 20 January, 1921, an IRA squad was lying in wait at Church Street.
0:20:12 > 0:20:18The man they were going to attack, District Inspector Tobias O'Sullivan of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
0:20:18 > 0:20:21was coming up the street with his five-year-old son.
0:20:21 > 0:20:26The IRA squad ran up to him and shot him dead in front of the child.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29Now the version of the story that I was given growing up,
0:20:29 > 0:20:33was that a British soldier - not an Irish policeman - had been killed.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37Nor had there been any mention that he'd been holding his child's hand when he was murdered.
0:20:37 > 0:20:42It was as if some parts of the story were simply too painful to tell.
0:20:46 > 0:20:49O'Sullivan had taken part in a raid on a nearby village.
0:20:52 > 0:20:57After two years of violence, both sides declared themselves ready to talk.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05In October 1921, a Sinn Fein delegation
0:21:05 > 0:21:09led by Michael Collins arrived in London to discuss a political settlement.
0:21:12 > 0:21:16Michael Collins arrived as the 20th century's first celebrity rebel.
0:21:16 > 0:21:20In terms of his public image, a kind of Che Guevara for his age.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24But here, Collins would encounter a British negotiating team
0:21:24 > 0:21:29led by Lloyd George, that was both experienced and tough.
0:21:29 > 0:21:33Whatever else might be conceded, an Irish Republic was not on offer.
0:21:36 > 0:21:4226 counties of southern Ireland would become the Irish Free State, with its own army
0:21:42 > 0:21:46but swearing an Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50The Government had already allowed the six Protestant-dominated counties of Ulster
0:21:50 > 0:21:53to form a new state within the United Kingdom.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58But it wasn't Ulster that caused crisis for the Irish side.
0:21:58 > 0:22:04In Dublin, de Valera accused Collins of having agreed to the Oath of Allegiance without his consent.
0:22:07 > 0:22:13When the Dail convened in Dublin in December 1921, de Valera denounced the oath
0:22:13 > 0:22:15as an abandonment of the Republic.
0:22:18 > 0:22:24Collins argued that the treaty gave Ireland the freedom to achieve freedom.
0:22:24 > 0:22:28The one-time comrades became bitter enemies.
0:22:29 > 0:22:36When the vote on the treaty came, it was perilously close - 64 votes for, 57 against.
0:22:36 > 0:22:42De Valera led his supporters out of the Dail. As he went, Michael Collins shouted, "Deserters, all!"
0:22:42 > 0:22:45The slide to civil war had begun.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50A majority of the people supported the treaty,
0:22:50 > 0:22:55but couldn't stop a war characterised by extreme ruthlessness.
0:22:59 > 0:23:01Both sides committed atrocities.
0:23:03 > 0:23:07At Ballyseedy Cross in County Kerry, nine Republican prisoners
0:23:07 > 0:23:10were tied to a log and blown to pieces by a landmine.
0:23:10 > 0:23:13Retaliation for the killing of Free State soldiers.
0:23:20 > 0:23:25The Government army gradually captured the Republican strongholds.
0:23:25 > 0:23:31But on 22 August, 1922, Michael Collins was assassinated in County Cork.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39The Free State would triumph, but his loss was devastating.
0:23:41 > 0:23:45In death, Collins would become a romantic icon, the great lost leader.
0:23:45 > 0:23:49Yet in some of his last writings he espoused a patriotic pragmatism.
0:23:52 > 0:23:56"True devotion", Collins wrote, "lay not in melodramatic defiance
0:23:56 > 0:24:01"or self sacrifice, but in steady, earnest effort."
0:24:07 > 0:24:13By the time the Civil War ended in 1923, Ireland was a very different country to the united
0:24:13 > 0:24:17and equal nation imagined by the revolutionaries of 1916.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20The revolution had driven the British out.
0:24:20 > 0:24:25But it had also consolidated the prevailing social reality.
0:24:25 > 0:24:31This was a Catholic, largely rural and, above all, conservative society.
0:24:35 > 0:24:43It was a society not dissimilar to that imagined by Ireland's first political titans.
0:24:43 > 0:24:49The settled country imagined by Daniel O'Connell, hero of Catholic Emancipation, in the 19th Century.
0:24:49 > 0:24:54An Ireland of landowners, such as Charles Stewart Parnell envisioned,
0:24:54 > 0:24:57and which his Land League had done so much to create.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01A society whose fundamental desire now was for stability.
0:25:05 > 0:25:09In the Protestant-ruled six counties of Ulster, electoral boundaries
0:25:09 > 0:25:14had been drawn to ensure majorities for Unionists in most areas.
0:25:14 > 0:25:18There had been fierce retribution against Catholics, following IRA violence.
0:25:18 > 0:25:23More than 8,000 were driven from their jobs, hundreds were killed.
0:25:27 > 0:25:32The Prime Minister, James Craig, was a patrician landowner and proud Orangeman.
0:25:32 > 0:25:38Catholic Northern Ireland, Catholic Ulster, does not really feature in his political agenda.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42Craig, I think, associates Catholicism with a challenge
0:25:42 > 0:25:46to the state that he finds himself ruler of.
0:25:46 > 0:25:50He associates Catholicism with subversion.
0:25:54 > 0:26:01But Unionism comes together from a variety of very different institutions and forces.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04It's absolutely not a monolithic group,
0:26:04 > 0:26:08and it contains a spectrum of those who are ferocious in their anti-Catholicism,
0:26:08 > 0:26:14across towards a more liberal take on the Union and Unionism.
0:26:21 > 0:26:24Across the river is Donegal in the south.
0:26:24 > 0:26:30This is Clady in County Tyrone, one of the six counties of the new Northern Ireland state.
0:26:30 > 0:26:37The Prime Minister, James Craig, had built here a Protestant state for a Protestant people.
0:26:37 > 0:26:41Many years later, a Unionist leader trying to forge peace with Nationalists
0:26:41 > 0:26:47would ruefully acknowledge that this had been a cold house for Catholics.
0:26:47 > 0:26:50A place of discrimination and exclusion.
0:26:57 > 0:27:03Catholics materially were better off in Northern Ireland than they were in the Irish Free State.
0:27:03 > 0:27:06But politics matters more than economics.
0:27:06 > 0:27:09Catholics were not welcome, and that was clear.
0:27:09 > 0:27:15They had to listen to a tirade of abuse coming up to 12 July every year.
0:27:15 > 0:27:18They had to listen to Unionist politicians boasting that
0:27:18 > 0:27:23they'd never employed a Catholic, never would employ a Catholic, wouldn't have one around the place.
0:27:23 > 0:27:31That sort of chilly feeling of not being wanted produces serious disaffection.
0:27:37 > 0:27:42But in the South, the new government of Cumann na Gael, led by Michael Collins' heirs,
0:27:42 > 0:27:48had neither the military means, economic power or desire to wage a war of territorial redemption.
0:27:50 > 0:27:52The south opted for stability.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00Even with the arrival in power in 1932 of Eamon de Valera,
0:28:00 > 0:28:06now leading the Fianna Fail party, rhetoric would be a comforting substitute for action.
0:28:06 > 0:28:13Ireland united, Ireland free, these are the ideals
0:28:13 > 0:28:19to which enthusiastic young Ireland is now devoting its energy.
0:28:19 > 0:28:23Whatever the rhetoric, whatever the propaganda campaigns,
0:28:23 > 0:28:30de Valera realised that unification was not going to happen, and he may even have seen advantages in that.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34I think the majority of southerners were quite happy
0:28:34 > 0:28:41that Northern Ireland was gone, that the wretched Unionists were corralled in their area,
0:28:41 > 0:28:45and were not coming down and not interfering with their setup in the South.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56The founding father of Irish Nationalism, Wolfe Tone,
0:28:56 > 0:29:00imagined a nation that united Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.
0:29:00 > 0:29:08But Ireland was now an island of two states in which religion would be a primary badge of identity.
0:29:08 > 0:29:12Here at the Phoenix Park in 1932, vast crowds gathered
0:29:12 > 0:29:18for a religious festival that would symbolise the character of the new Irish state.
0:29:18 > 0:29:25Whatever rhetorical gestures might be made to the Protestants of Ulster, this was a Catholic nation.
0:29:36 > 0:29:40The clergy, for somebody like de Valera, were very important.
0:29:40 > 0:29:42They were his advisors.
0:29:42 > 0:29:47The leaders also had brothers who were priests or nuns.
0:29:47 > 0:29:54That clerical establishment was very much integrated in a way that, if you were a political leader,
0:29:54 > 0:29:58if you were a Catholic, you would not be very distant
0:29:58 > 0:30:03from some relative or brother who was in orders or a nun.
0:30:03 > 0:30:10De Valera's landmark constitution of 1937 avoided making Catholicism the state religion,
0:30:10 > 0:30:14offering instead a vaguer special position.
0:30:21 > 0:30:26Since the 19th Century, church power had been deeply embedded.
0:30:26 > 0:30:29Ireland was a nation of mass devotion,
0:30:29 > 0:30:34and the overwhelming majority of children were educated in church-run schools.
0:30:34 > 0:30:38But this central role came at a price.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43Church control of education was close to absolute.
0:30:43 > 0:30:47But its power also extended deep into the criminal justice system.
0:30:47 > 0:30:52This is the old Letterfrack Industrial School in County Galway.
0:30:52 > 0:30:55It was one of a network of such institutions
0:30:55 > 0:30:58up and down the country, where the state consigned children.
0:31:00 > 0:31:03Many of these institutions were set up under British rule.
0:31:03 > 0:31:09The new rulers of Ireland would prove as inadequate as the old in protecting the young.
0:31:17 > 0:31:23Physical and sexual abuse on a large scale was part of the secret history of the new state.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31You were constantly waiting to be set upon.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34St Joseph's Industrial School, Letterfrack,
0:31:34 > 0:31:40was an extremely violent place in an extremely violent Irish society.
0:31:41 > 0:31:47Mannix Flynn, who came from a poor Dublin background, was sent to Letterfrack in the early 1960s.
0:31:51 > 0:31:56An individual I saw one night being dragged out of the bed,
0:31:56 > 0:31:58his head beaten against a wall.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01What blood came out of the person, the Brother then
0:32:01 > 0:32:05dragged this young boy up and down the dormitory,
0:32:05 > 0:32:08wiping him in his own blood to clean it off the floor.
0:32:08 > 0:32:14But depending on what kind of venom the individual who was perpetrating the violence on you,
0:32:14 > 0:32:18whatever Brother or whatever civilian it was that was attached to the school, it could last for weeks.
0:32:20 > 0:32:23They were children from working-class backgrounds, from mixed families.
0:32:23 > 0:32:28Some of them were the children of mothers who had children out of wedlock.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32Some of them were from other institutions, having been in orphanages and orphaned.
0:32:32 > 0:32:34They were the dirty poor.
0:32:34 > 0:32:39They didn't fit into the emerging Irish Catholic middle classes.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45This society, since the foundation of the state, has continued
0:32:45 > 0:32:47the containment of a class of people,
0:32:47 > 0:32:51a segregation of a class of people that it sees as God's mistake.
0:32:53 > 0:32:56Church influence spread far beyond the care of the young.
0:32:59 > 0:33:03From the bishops' palaces came regular diktats on cultural morality.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07Eamon de Valera's friend, the Archbishop of Dublin,
0:33:07 > 0:33:12John Charles McQuaid, kept a close eye on the Republic's creative spirits.
0:33:17 > 0:33:23His files are a trove of insight into the thinking of the Archbishop on a whole range of issues.
0:33:23 > 0:33:26This is the box relating to censorship.
0:33:26 > 0:33:29And in it, there's a letter from a parish priest who wants to put on
0:33:29 > 0:33:33a showing for his parishioners of the Oscar-winning movie, Gigi.
0:33:33 > 0:33:35The plan has to be abandoned. Why?
0:33:35 > 0:33:41Well, according to this file, the film contains a reference to a prostitute.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44Banned were some of the greatest names in the Irish literary canon.
0:33:44 > 0:33:50James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Frank O'Connor and scores of others.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57And yet in this atmosphere of constraint, Irish literature flourished.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07Literature acquired a kind of weird glamour by virtue
0:34:07 > 0:34:09of being persecuted,
0:34:09 > 0:34:11probably in the way it did in Soviet Russia.
0:34:11 > 0:34:18If you say these people are important enough to suppress, you are saying they are very damned important.
0:34:18 > 0:34:21Remarkable talents like Flann O'Brien produced
0:34:21 > 0:34:25defiantly Irish masterpieces in a European surrealist tradition.
0:34:25 > 0:34:31It's as if the radicalism got annulled in political politics
0:34:31 > 0:34:33and re-routed almost entirely into literature.
0:34:33 > 0:34:38The more repression there was at an official daylight level,
0:34:38 > 0:34:41the more creatively deranged the texts produced.
0:34:41 > 0:34:46It's as if the Irish were straights by day and swingers by night.
0:34:50 > 0:34:56De Valera followed church advice on morality, but it was not his obsession.
0:34:56 > 0:34:58From the time he came to power in 1932,
0:34:58 > 0:35:03through his 16 years in office, his central preoccupation was Irish sovereignty.
0:35:03 > 0:35:09When World War II broke out, de Valera resisted Churchill's urgings to join the fight.
0:35:09 > 0:35:12Ireland remained neutral.
0:35:18 > 0:35:21There was a considerable degree of public support for that stance,
0:35:21 > 0:35:25and there was a considerable degree of pride in the idea that we could go our own way.
0:35:25 > 0:35:27Partly because this is a country
0:35:27 > 0:35:29that is still relatively raw from the Civil War.
0:35:29 > 0:35:34And if de Valera had decided to go in and fight
0:35:34 > 0:35:38on the part of the Allies, it could well have divided the body politic.
0:35:38 > 0:35:41But it was an ambiguous neutrality.
0:35:41 > 0:35:48When the German air force attacked Belfast, de Valera sent firemen to help fight the blaze.
0:35:48 > 0:35:51Germans bailing out over the South were interned,
0:35:51 > 0:35:55while their Allied counterparts were allowed to return to Ulster.
0:35:55 > 0:36:00When the IRA declared war against Britain, de Valera imprisoned and even executed its members.
0:36:03 > 0:36:07Yet, on Hitler's death, de Valera offered his condolences to Germany.
0:36:11 > 0:36:14While Europe burned, de Valera set out his vision
0:36:14 > 0:36:18for an Ireland that would be distinctive in its culture and values.
0:36:21 > 0:36:23'The Ireland that we dreamed of
0:36:23 > 0:36:30'would be the home of the people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living.
0:36:30 > 0:36:37'Of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit.
0:36:37 > 0:36:42'A land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads,
0:36:42 > 0:36:46'with the romping of sturdy children, and the laughter of happy maidens.'
0:36:48 > 0:36:55Yet to cast this giant of the Irish 20th century as an inward-looking Nationalist would be wrong.
0:36:55 > 0:36:57He had chaired the League of Nations.
0:36:57 > 0:37:02The avoidance of wars and of the burden of preparatory armament
0:37:02 > 0:37:08is of such concern to humanity, that no state should be permitted to jeopardise the common interest
0:37:08 > 0:37:12by selfish action contrary to the covenant.
0:37:12 > 0:37:18When the League was succeeded by the United Nations, de Valera made striking gestures of independence.
0:37:18 > 0:37:23From Dublin came his instruction to support Red China's application to join the UN,
0:37:23 > 0:37:26to the horror of America.
0:37:27 > 0:37:33He established the commitment which saw Irish troops serve in their thousands on peacekeeping missions.
0:37:36 > 0:37:37There is a real paradox here.
0:37:37 > 0:37:41De Valera was well aware of Ireland's international role.
0:37:41 > 0:37:48Yet his vision for the Irish demanded that they remain uncontaminated by foreign ideas.
0:37:48 > 0:37:51It was a vision at odds with modernity.
0:37:51 > 0:37:56Economic conflict with Britain had damaged Ireland at the outset of his rule.
0:37:56 > 0:38:00Stagnation deepened with the years.
0:38:00 > 0:38:06Around half a million people would leave Ireland, most seeking a better life in Britain,
0:38:06 > 0:38:11the country de Valera had spent his life fighting against for Irish sovereignty.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21If you had to characterise the Ireland of de Valera, how would you describe it?
0:38:21 > 0:38:23Very inward looking.
0:38:23 > 0:38:25Very complacent.
0:38:25 > 0:38:28And most of all, very poor.
0:38:28 > 0:38:32The last week in secondary school, the headmaster came in and asked us -
0:38:32 > 0:38:35those of us in the class - there were about 30 of us -
0:38:35 > 0:38:38how many of us saw our future in Ireland.
0:38:38 > 0:38:41And the answer was 2 out of the 30.
0:38:41 > 0:38:43I was one of those two, by the way.
0:38:45 > 0:38:50By the time de Valera retired at the age of 77, Ireland wanted change.
0:38:52 > 0:38:57The leader who took over in 1959 was another veteran of revolution,
0:38:57 > 0:38:59but he displayed a steely pragmatism,
0:38:59 > 0:39:03utterly different from de Valera's mystical vision of Irishness.
0:39:06 > 0:39:11Sean Lemass encouraged foreign investment, removed trade barriers,
0:39:11 > 0:39:16urged efficiency and modernisation in industry.
0:39:16 > 0:39:18We started off like all the other newly free countries,
0:39:18 > 0:39:21with the assumption that freedom alone was enough
0:39:21 > 0:39:25and that in freedom, economic difficulties would right themselves.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28We found out, the hard way, this wasn't so.
0:39:29 > 0:39:34Ireland had begun to catch up with the great post-war modernisation.
0:39:34 > 0:39:38The young were beneficiaries of free secondary education,
0:39:38 > 0:39:42and a society again open to outside cultural influence.
0:39:45 > 0:39:48Television challenged the voice of both priest and politician.
0:39:51 > 0:39:56Women joined the workforce in growing numbers and challenged discriminatory laws.
0:39:59 > 0:40:05And across the border, the changing world of the Sixties seemed to inspire a new kind of Unionism.
0:40:09 > 0:40:14A leader emerged who offered a friendlier face to the Catholic minority and to the South.
0:40:23 > 0:40:30In January 1965, O'Neill and Lemass made history by meeting together at Stormont.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33The beginnings of North-South detente.
0:40:33 > 0:40:35How important is that moment?
0:40:35 > 0:40:39I think it's symbolically of huge significance.
0:40:39 > 0:40:46This is the first official meeting of the two heads of state since the 1920s.
0:40:46 > 0:40:50We discussed this during our meeting, which of us would get into the most trouble.
0:40:50 > 0:40:52I said I would, and he said he would.
0:40:52 > 0:40:56He did get into a certain amount of trouble during the first six weeks.
0:40:56 > 0:40:58But nothing to the trouble that I got into.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02Captain O'Neill recently said that the South of Ireland
0:41:02 > 0:41:06was a very beautiful young lady.
0:41:06 > 0:41:11And that he was very glad to talk to her over the hay.
0:41:11 > 0:41:15We don't look upon the South of Ireland
0:41:15 > 0:41:18as a beautiful young lady!
0:41:18 > 0:41:22The liberal aspirations are very much overdue,
0:41:22 > 0:41:28but part of the difficulty with the O'Neill project is O'Neill himself.
0:41:32 > 0:41:40But O'Neill is an extraordinarily attritional figure who does not connect with Nationalism or Unionism
0:41:40 > 0:41:43and, in the end, is simply not able to deliver the votes.
0:41:46 > 0:41:52By 1968, O'Neill had been outflanked by the older forces of fear.
0:41:52 > 0:41:54Detente with the South was over.
0:41:57 > 0:42:01But in this year of rebellion, a movement rises in Northern Ireland
0:42:01 > 0:42:03to demand equal rights for Catholics.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10For the Ulster Protestants, the civil rights movement was the old Catholic conspiracy,
0:42:10 > 0:42:15not a movement for change inspired by the unrest of that momentous year.
0:42:24 > 0:42:28The following year, sectarian rioting erupted.
0:42:28 > 0:42:34The IRA, long in decline, re-emerged to present itself as the people's protector against a hostile state.
0:42:41 > 0:42:44Republican and loyalist paramilitaries,
0:42:44 > 0:42:48policemen and soldiers, fought over the old ground.
0:42:50 > 0:42:52Positively nothing fired at them whatsoever.
0:42:52 > 0:42:55There weren't even stones thrown at them, and they opened fire.
0:42:55 > 0:42:57People ran in all directions. They call themselves an army.
0:42:57 > 0:43:00It was completely outrageous.
0:43:00 > 0:43:04The bus station was crowded when a bomb went off without warning.
0:43:04 > 0:43:07In the space of 16 minutes alone,
0:43:07 > 0:43:1113 blasts sent people screaming from one place of safety to another.
0:43:13 > 0:43:17An army helicopter was flown in to remove the casualties
0:43:17 > 0:43:20and this was then caught in a separate explosion.
0:43:27 > 0:43:30There can be no question of political status.
0:43:30 > 0:43:33Crime is crime is crime.
0:43:36 > 0:43:39The Provisional IRA have said they planted the bomb
0:43:39 > 0:43:40at the Brighton hotel
0:43:40 > 0:43:43where Mrs Thatcher and her ministers are staying.
0:43:43 > 0:43:45Politics is the alternative to war.
0:43:45 > 0:43:48Politics is about dialogue. I'll talk to anyone.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51That doesn't mean that I approve of what they stand for.
0:43:53 > 0:43:57The war occasionally spilled over into the South.
0:43:57 > 0:44:01But partition had entrenched a separation of the mind.
0:44:01 > 0:44:05The six counties of Ulster truly seemed a world away.
0:44:05 > 0:44:10In the Republic, a younger generation pursued its own narrative of change.
0:44:10 > 0:44:14Pushing at the boundaries of Church and of State.
0:44:18 > 0:44:23This changing sense of Irishness was the beginning of an extraordinary journey.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30The Republic of Ireland now looked increasingly beyond its shores,
0:44:30 > 0:44:35as part of a European Community.
0:44:37 > 0:44:45Through the decades of change from the '60s to the '90s, Ireland moved from stagnation to growth.
0:44:45 > 0:44:50By the late '90s it was among the richest countries in Europe.
0:44:55 > 0:45:00The country I had left in the recession of the 1980s was now the Celtic Tiger.
0:45:00 > 0:45:06Low corporate tax and a highly educated workforce helped to produce record growth.
0:45:09 > 0:45:12Coming back on holidays during the years of boom, it was hard
0:45:12 > 0:45:16to suppress a sense of shock at the sheer scale of the development.
0:45:16 > 0:45:19Pride, too, in a country that seemed to have shaken off
0:45:19 > 0:45:23the more inward-looking elements of its historic legacy.
0:45:23 > 0:45:29But - and I claim no great prescience here - I also had a lingering unease.
0:45:29 > 0:45:31Where was the money coming from?
0:45:31 > 0:45:34And who exactly was it benefiting?
0:45:35 > 0:45:40Inequality between rich and poor was still among the worst in Western Europe.
0:45:43 > 0:45:48And the idea of a new Republic was undermined by the old deference to power.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54Whatever else might be said about the founding fathers of this state,
0:45:54 > 0:46:00the revolutionary generation, they were austere men, devoted to public service.
0:46:00 > 0:46:04But there emerged from this building a new kind of politician.
0:46:04 > 0:46:10One who understood that political power could be the pathway to great personal wealth.
0:46:10 > 0:46:14The man who came to symbolise the Irish politics of cronyism
0:46:14 > 0:46:18was Charles Haughey, leader of the party de Valera had founded.
0:46:18 > 0:46:26Talented, modernising, yet he lived like an Ascendancy Lord, bankrolled by businessmen.
0:46:26 > 0:46:31Haughey entered a very different Ireland in the 1960s, demographically and economically,
0:46:31 > 0:46:33there were more urban people living in Ireland
0:46:33 > 0:46:36for the first time than rural people in history.
0:46:36 > 0:46:38That brought on all sorts of pressures.
0:46:38 > 0:46:42More people wanted access to services, more people looking for planning permission,
0:46:42 > 0:46:43where a lot of the corruption was.
0:46:43 > 0:46:46New politicians stepped in.
0:46:46 > 0:46:48They were self-made men.
0:46:48 > 0:46:52While Ireland embraced Europe and the technology of modernity,
0:46:52 > 0:46:57the political system was rooted in 19th-century localism.
0:46:57 > 0:47:03Ireland's new political titan sailed his own yacht to the small island he owned.
0:47:04 > 0:47:11In Ireland, the parish and not the nation remained the centre of the democratic universe.
0:47:11 > 0:47:15Land, such a fundamental obsession of the Irish psyche for centuries,
0:47:15 > 0:47:18was at the centre of the new clamour for wealth.
0:47:18 > 0:47:26Beginning in the 1960s, bribes had been paid to rezone green fields for building development.
0:47:26 > 0:47:31The lost fields of de Valera's Gaelic idyll were the new currency of wealth and power.
0:47:34 > 0:47:41Even as the country boomed, judicial tribunals revealed the scale of corruption in Irish public life.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44The Moriarty Tribunal, which sat in this very yard,
0:47:44 > 0:47:49estimated that between 1979 and 1996, the substantive phase
0:47:49 > 0:47:52when Charles Haughey was Taoiseach during that time,
0:47:52 > 0:47:54he received over nine million in donations.
0:47:54 > 0:47:58There seems to be a very clear relationship between Haughey receiving
0:47:58 > 0:48:03substantive amounts of donations when he was in power and when he wasn't in power,
0:48:03 > 0:48:05he didn't seem to receive that much money at all.
0:48:07 > 0:48:12As Ireland turned towards a new millennium, the gleaming buildings rose.
0:48:12 > 0:48:14But old certainties unravelled.
0:48:16 > 0:48:22Scandals rocked the authority of the Church as the full scale of clerical child abuse was revealed.
0:48:22 > 0:48:27The tribunals continued to hear allegations of corruption in public life.
0:48:28 > 0:48:33Yet prosperity and the old habits of deference ensured public quiescence.
0:48:35 > 0:48:41It's often remarked that the Irish people are very sophisticated, politically.
0:48:41 > 0:48:43That the Irish are very defiant.
0:48:43 > 0:48:45That the Irish are rebels.
0:48:45 > 0:48:51When you contrast that with the lack of protest, the lack of civic engagement, the lack of demand for
0:48:51 > 0:48:55accountability, for the abuse of power, you have to ask yourself,
0:48:55 > 0:49:01are a lot of those assertions about the Irish character and Irish rebelliousness actually mythical?
0:49:03 > 0:49:07But in 2008 a financial catastrophe unleashed public anger.
0:49:09 > 0:49:13Ireland's economy was already in decline when America's property bubble exploded.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18In Ireland, prices collapsed.
0:49:18 > 0:49:20Thousands were forced to emigrate.
0:49:20 > 0:49:25The ghost estates became a symbol of a nation in decline.
0:49:28 > 0:49:33Here, opposite Kilmainham Gaol, where the leaders of 1916 were executed,
0:49:33 > 0:49:38there's a monument which stands next to the empty office buildings of the Celtic Tiger.
0:49:41 > 0:49:48It reminds the Irish people of the proclamation of a nation that would cherish all its children.
0:49:48 > 0:49:52As Ireland enters the second decade of the 21st century, there seemed
0:49:52 > 0:49:57the possibility that the old way of doing things might be overthrown.
0:49:57 > 0:50:02This wasn't a transformation that could happen overnight or in the space of one election.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05But there were deeper stirrings of dissent
0:50:05 > 0:50:09that suggested that an entire political culture could be changed.
0:50:09 > 0:50:13And there was already a recent powerful example of that
0:50:13 > 0:50:17here on the island, in a place we might least have expected.
0:50:19 > 0:50:22And if what has been agreed is implemented in full good faith,
0:50:22 > 0:50:25all the people of Northern Ireland will gain.
0:50:25 > 0:50:28There are no victors, nor any losers.
0:50:31 > 0:50:33The agreement proposes changes
0:50:33 > 0:50:37in the Irish constitution and in British constitutional law
0:50:37 > 0:50:41to enshrine the principle that it is the people of
0:50:41 > 0:50:47Northern Ireland who will decide, democratically, their own future.
0:50:49 > 0:50:53I think the change came when war weariness overtook war readiness.
0:50:53 > 0:50:59And I think that happens some time in the 1980s and certainly by the early 1990s.
0:50:59 > 0:51:03There was the feeling that this cannot go on. We're into the second generation now.
0:51:03 > 0:51:09People were committing atrocities who had not been born when the Troubles began.
0:51:10 > 0:51:11EXPLOSION
0:51:22 > 0:51:24The peace has so far endured
0:51:24 > 0:51:28the challenge of unreconciled Republican dissidents.
0:51:30 > 0:51:36But the pain of 30 years of killing haunts quiet living rooms across Ulster.
0:51:44 > 0:51:50We want better lives for our children and our grandchildren and their children, too.
0:51:52 > 0:51:55That's a lovely photograph of the two of you, in a harbour somewhere.
0:51:55 > 0:51:59- In Ardglass.- Right. Down at the coast.- Yeah.
0:52:03 > 0:52:08Bridget Mooney's husband, Raymond, was murdered in the grounds of a church in September 1986
0:52:08 > 0:52:12in retaliation for the IRA murder of a leading Loyalist.
0:52:13 > 0:52:17That's where we had our wedding reception.
0:52:17 > 0:52:19- So, this is the two of you on the day of your wedding?- It is indeed.
0:52:19 > 0:52:21Where were you married?
0:52:21 > 0:52:27- In Ardoyne.- So were you married in the same church that Raymond would later be murdered in?- Yeah.
0:52:27 > 0:52:32And all of my grandchildren who have been born so far, all of them christened in Ardoyne.
0:52:35 > 0:52:40So much of this conflict - and I'm not just talking about what has happened in at the last 30 years,
0:52:40 > 0:52:45but for hundreds of years - has been driven by fear and by hatred.
0:52:45 > 0:52:51I just wonder, do you feel hatred, now, towards the people that killed your husband?
0:52:51 > 0:52:58No. For the simple reason, hatred and bitterness are feelings.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03And I refuse to let people who took my husband's life
0:53:03 > 0:53:07have any place in my body.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09In my heart, in my head.
0:53:09 > 0:53:12An no, I hate nobody.
0:53:12 > 0:53:17Have you ever wanted to, and have you ever thought about, leaving Northern Ireland?
0:53:17 > 0:53:22Never. Not while my husband's body's in the city cemetery. Never.
0:53:22 > 0:53:26And I've never even thought about it, no.
0:53:26 > 0:53:28And I'll never leave Northern Ireland now.
0:53:38 > 0:53:41The poet John Hewitt, writing at the height of the Troubles,
0:53:41 > 0:53:48urged that "we should bear in mind these dead, I can find no plainer words."
0:53:48 > 0:53:55He was reflecting on a conflict in which men killed and died for the sake of contested identities.
0:53:55 > 0:54:00This was not, Hewitt implied, patriotism.
0:54:00 > 0:54:03"Patriotism has to do with keeping the country in good heart,
0:54:03 > 0:54:07"the Community ordered with justice and mercy."
0:54:07 > 0:54:14Hewitt's lines might stand as one of the enduring lessons of the Irish story.
0:54:16 > 0:54:23The decommissioning of the arms of the IRA is now an accomplished fact.
0:54:23 > 0:54:30The IRA abandoned war and Unionists agreed to share power with Catholics.
0:54:30 > 0:54:36After 30 years of war in which over 3,500 people died, the IRA accepted
0:54:36 > 0:54:41the partitioned Ireland agreed by Michael Collins and the British.
0:54:41 > 0:54:45Unity was an aspiration to be achieved by peaceful means.
0:54:53 > 0:54:58In the South, the romantic nationalism of earlier generations had largely vanished.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06When the Republic voted to abandon its territorial claim on the six counties,
0:55:06 > 0:55:10it seemed an act of practical patriotism.
0:55:11 > 0:55:15It's an acceptance of political reality and an acceptance
0:55:15 > 0:55:18of engagement with the outside world, including Northern Ireland.
0:55:18 > 0:55:21We no longer have to, as it were, wave the flag.
0:55:21 > 0:55:26There is a feeling of Irishness that is real, much deeper,
0:55:26 > 0:55:28in my view, than what existed in the '30s and '40s.
0:55:31 > 0:55:36The Republic is now having to accommodate a broader sense of Irishness.
0:55:38 > 0:55:42There is racism, but far-right politics have not taken root here.
0:55:45 > 0:55:48How many children have parents who are from outside of Ireland?
0:55:48 > 0:55:51- How about yourself? Where are your parents from?- Russia.
0:55:51 > 0:55:54- And you over here?- Lithuania. - Lithuania, Poland as well.
0:55:56 > 0:56:0010% of the population of the South is now foreign-born.
0:56:02 > 0:56:05These are the children of those who came here in the boom to find work.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09THEY CHANT IN IRISH
0:56:23 > 0:56:28Economic globalisation changed the idea of Irish identity.
0:56:31 > 0:56:35The old concept of an Irish identity, the one that I grew up with,
0:56:35 > 0:56:41which was that being Irish was Gaelic and Catholic, that's gone, really, hasn't it?
0:56:41 > 0:56:44There are still plenty of Gaels around, plenty of Catholics around,
0:56:44 > 0:56:47but what's nice about the time we are entering now is that
0:56:47 > 0:56:53you don't have to be both of those things to be Irish.
0:56:53 > 0:56:58And that Irish identity now can draw from many, many wells.
0:56:58 > 0:57:02And we're going to build, between us, the Ireland of tomorrow.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07And who can say what Irish identity will morph into?
0:57:16 > 0:57:20The first inhabitants of this island came from Europe.
0:57:22 > 0:57:26They were open to change and absorbed waves of invasion.
0:57:26 > 0:57:34They embraced a spiritual revolution and carried it to distant lands.
0:57:34 > 0:57:41The old hatreds have not vanished but the Irish have moved to peaceful co-existence.
0:57:44 > 0:57:47There has been famine, revolution and civil war.
0:57:52 > 0:57:59But, in an age of uncertainty, we can surely draw strength from the memory of what has been overcome.
0:58:01 > 0:58:08The story of Ireland has always been a narrative of change, unpredictable and dynamic.
0:58:08 > 0:58:14The past is no longer a melancholy burden or a reason to hate.
0:58:14 > 0:58:19We're never entirely free of the claims of history, but neither are we its prisoners.
0:58:19 > 0:58:24Ireland today is an island of possibility, an open island.
0:58:35 > 0:58:38Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:38 > 0:58:41E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk