Podcast: Pogrom in Belfast and the McMahon Murders, with Edward Burke

Cathal Brennan and John Dorney inteview Edward Burke about his new book Ghosts of a Family on the McMahon murders in Belfast in 1922. First broadcast on the Irish History Show.

The MacMahon murders were the killing of five Catholics in north Belfast in 1922, all but one of whom were members of the McMahon family. The killers were dressed in police uniforms and the murders shocked public opinion in both Britain and Ireland at the time.

More broadly, we discuss intercommunal violence in Belfast from 1920 to 1922 which claimed over 500 lives – most of them civilian. While coterminous with the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, the violence in Belfast had a more straightforwardly sectarian character and was decidely tilted in the direction of an assault by loyalists on the city’s minority Catholic community. This led to the episode’s contemporary name ‘the Belfast pogrom’.

Edward’s research on the British Army and loyalist paramilitaries in Beflast reveals a suprising picture of mutual hostility between them, tempered only by the lack of will at British government level to tackle the loyalists and the unionist government. He discusses particularly the experience of the Norfolk regiment, who often found themselves defending Catholic areas against loyalist paramilitaries and sometimes also exchanging shots with the police, in the form of the Ulster Special Constabulary.

We talk about the efects of the First World War on brutalising conflict in Belfast as well as abiding lessons for policing divided societies.

Edward Burke is an Assistant Professor of History at University College Dublin.

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