Anti-Irish Racism in 1930s Britain

The Irish War of Independence & Revolution saw the IRA pitted against Crown forces across the island. However, on the ground in Ireland, allegiance was often more complicated than is sometimes remembered.Ireland had a long tradition of service in the British Army, and during the ...  Show more

How did Ireland become an English-speaking country? Was it colonialism, the Great Hunger, the education system or emigration that drove the shift from Irish to English?In this episode, I am joined by Dr Nicholas Wolf to explore one of the biggest questions in Irish history: how I ...  Show more

Sixties Britain didn’t swing for all its citizens – with racism, anti-immigration rhetoric and the spectre of unemployment affecting many black and Asian Britons. But those affected were determined to fight for their rights. Speaking to Rhiannon Davies, Preeti Dhillon revisits th ...  Show more

On the 8th of June 1948, the HMT Windrush sailed from Kingston with almost 500 migrants on board, destined for England. The ship docked at Tilbury on the 22nd of June, and history was made. Since that day the legend of Windrush has gradually come to characterise an increasingly b ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million people died from disease or starvation after the blight and another two million left the country within the decade. There had been ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics. Yeats lived through a period of great change in Ireland from the collapse of the home rule bill through to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the partitioning of the country. In May 1916, 15 men were shot by the B ...  Show more