Podcast: Youth culture and Loyalist paramilitaries with Gareth Mulvenna

Loyalist paramilitaries march against the Sunningdale Agreement, 1974.

Cathal Brennan and John Dorney interview historian Gareth Mulvenna on his work on how 1960s 70s Protestant youth culture in Belfast – football supporting, Tartan gangs and neighbourhood gangs, morphed into loyalist paramilitarism in the context of the Troubles.

Gareth has interviewed many of the participants in the violence of those years and discusses their range of motivations for becoming involved in political violence in the early 1970s.

We discuss what their political understanding was, if any and how many later came to support the peace process of the 1990s.

Gareth is the author of Tartan Gangs and Paramilitaries: The Loyalist Backlash. His podcast, Hidden Histories of the Northern Ireland Troubles, is available on most podcast platforms and his blog is available here.

This was first broadcast on the Irish History Show.

One Response to "Podcast: Youth culture and Loyalist paramilitaries with Gareth Mulvenna"

Jim Higgins says:

5 June, 2023 at 10:00 pm

Being a Scotsman with a Northern Irish dad I was involved in orangism and loyalist flute bands etc when I was in my teens and early 20’s. Without stereotyping myself I have been a Christian since I was 28. I am now 63. In all my dealings with Northern Ireland going back and forth and living both in The Shankill Road and Tigers Bay I find that most of the antagonism is stoked by people on this side of the Irish Sea. In my own satirical way I say that most of them are lucky if they have seen an Irish tea towel but they still have so much militancy on both sides about a conflict they know very little about. I still pray for peace in Northern Ireland.

Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply