December 16, 2025 • 51 mins
Robert sits down with Pádraig O Ruairc to learn about a bastard from across the pond who threw his lot in with Hitler during WW2.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
As media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
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
(00:26):
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
(00:47):
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. Padrick or Rourke, Welcome to the show.
(01:08):
Thank you so much for coming on and for doing
the hard work of making an episode for me this week.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeahct we were connected through our mutual friend Jake Canrahan
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 do I can 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
(01:45):
to write ten thousand words about a shitty person.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I still have to turn up to work for my
government paymasters. But yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, yeah, well who are we learning about this week?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
While Roberts, as you know, the original plan for this
episode was 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 and that is why she has gone
into hiding.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
That's right, yes, to protect her from the British Royal family.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And as as we all know, there's nothing the British
Royal family and its armed forces love doing more than
murdering irishmen. So my next was on the line too,
and I thought, I thought it would be safer if
we cover the dead bastard instead of Saxborg. But we will.
You'll get around to Prince Andrew someday anyway, Robert.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, he is on the list, especially with all this
juicy new Epstein stuff that's late.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
I totally believe him. He's he's innocent of everything. So, Robert,
I know you've heard of this guy because you mentioned
him before on the previous podcast, but I was wondering,
how much do you know or can you recall about
William Joyce.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, you're talking about Lord of Haha, right, that's the name.
He's probably better. It was certainly better known to Americans
by I read about him for the first time and
like one of the First World War two history books
I read when I was in may Pa. I couldn't
have been much for than fifth or sixth grade, and
it was 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
(03:25):
equivalent of these like radio like pro fascist radio stars
who would tell Allied soldiers basically, you're all gonna get
killed over here, you know, disobey your orders whatnot, like
it's hopeless to try to fight us, that sort of thing.
So that's 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
(03:47):
name of the I think of the woman based in
Tokyo who was doing the same thing over in the
Pacific Theater. But yeah, that's that's what I know about him.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
That's that's the guy. Where this guy has fascinating backstory,
terrible personal life, and I think he's great a bastard material,
so luck we'll jump into it. William Joyce was born
while fuck Roberts were off to a bad start here.
(04:16):
Because no one knows for certain when or where this asshole.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I love those ones.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
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 brook who was better known as Queenie. Michael Joyce,
unlike most Irish immigrants to the USA in the late
eighteen hundreds, was not a starving peasant. He came from
(04:42):
a wealthy farming family, and he had gone to America
to seek his fortune rather than evade starvation. In the
eighteen eighties, he established a successful construction company in Brooklyn,
and he had enough money to make frequent trips back
home to Ireland.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Oh wow, that is a very rare situation. Yeah, but
who moves from Ireland to the US in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
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 Frud,
(05:24):
professor of history at Oxford declared that the Irish were
quote more like squalid apes than human beings.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Was good British.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I lived there for a while. I could kind of
do the upper class, one in the working class, but
nothing in between. Anyway. Another English academic, John Bodeaux, 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.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
That sounds scientific.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Who had quote a knee grow appearance?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh boy, yeah, oh wow, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
There's still institutions in Ireland where they of 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 were holding on to the Irish ones. So some
of them have only just come back. But anyway, Yeah.
Further complicating matters for these StarCraft lovers, part from the
different nationalities was the fact that Michael Joyce was a
(06:25):
Catholic was his fiance was Protestant. Now, such mixed marriages
were controversial at the time, though nobody in Ireland today,
while 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 nineteen oh five New York wedding. Instead,
(06:46):
Queene'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 suggest
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.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Wow. Yeaow, that's such a bitchy move, just sending your
lawyer to there.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
And he's a family member as well, so they don't
even have to pay him anyway. Yeah. So, throughout his life,
Joyce repeatedly claimed to be born in different years and
in different places.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Probably classic bastard. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So. William Joyce was born sometime between nineteen oh three
and nineteen oh six 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 Brook Joyce
following in the Protestant Irish tradition of co joining both
(07:51):
parents surnames, but Joyce's Catholic father forbid it because, like
his son, he was a gigantic asshole. In nineteen 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
(08:14):
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. Us. Yeah,
he had died of hypothermia and 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 Joyces were forced
(08:37):
to sell it.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, like a really good barkeeper here today who knows
their locals will 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, if you ever been to Galway, Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, I love it. It's I mean, I think it's
probably the prettiest city I've been to in Ireland. It's
it's my second favorite after I really like Dublin. But yeah,
I love Galway.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Galway is a great place. It's an incredible party town
and Steve Earle wrote a great song about it called
Galway Girl. Yeah, but don't listeners confuse it with the
Ed Sheeran song of the same name, which.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Is shipped no, no, don't stel.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Galway has long been famous as one of the last
bastions of indigenous gayla CoRIS 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
(09:46):
you're actually an American. 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
(10:06):
later in Ireland, and while her husband Michael was working Queen,
he was left alone with baby William and doated on him,
telling him you are the sugar in my tea. Without you,
there is no British empire and wow, you will be
a great man someday. So Robert, I've sent you a
pick if you can find it there. Of if we
(10:28):
have a picture of Joyce at school? Mm hm, and
how what what's the vibe off this kid? If you
can bring it up?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
He looks like a little shit, like I'm gonna be
honest with you, Like he's got his he's got his
arms crossed in a way children seldom do, and he like.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
The only two other people in the group photoho have
their arms crossed are the teacher and the teacher's kid
who's sitting at each other.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah. Yeah, he looks very unpleasant. He looks like he's
judging you, Like he looks like like I want to
say to him, like you're not better than me, you
little shit, You're just a kid, Like get what the
what the fuck are you looking at me for?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
That?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
That way?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Well, I remember, without him, there will be no British Empire.
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, so that's another reason to fight this kid.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
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 the property to the cops
as a police station, and William snuck in one day,
stole a gun and brought it to school.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Just a normal that'll make you friends, Yep, that's that'll
make you friends.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
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 his may S Prize listeners.
But the Catholic Church in Ireland in the early nineteen
hundreds was one hundred percent supportive of British rule. Since
(12:00):
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.
This not only well, yeah, absolutely, this not only allowed
(12:21):
Catholic priests to ensure the spiritual indoctrination and brainwashing of
Irish children. It also give 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 twentieth century, the British government and the
Catholic Church implemented a form of cultural genocide to try
(12:42):
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
poeme 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,
(13:07):
all elementary schools in Ireland celebrated Empire Day on the
twenty fourth 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 in Britain, the parents are the English and
(13:27):
the children are the Scots, Irish and Welsh. If the Scots,
Irish or Welsh ever went their own way, then God
will be very disappointed.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Now, let's 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, since the kids are always underneath the parents' thumbs.
You know, that's just that's not even how family really works.
Back then, the.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Analogy also fails because families ineverably end up rowing with
each other quite a.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Lot, right constantly. Yes, the worst fights are better family members. Also,
only one family member inherits at this point in time,
I don't.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Know which is the parents, 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.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Remind you of anything, Robert, Yeah, one people, one nation,
one volk.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, I'm volcan, I'm right, I'm fure that's it.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah yeah, one fewer sorry.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah. So the Catholic priests running these schools when they
weren't busy abusing Irish children. Love 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 what happened to First Nations kids in Canada,
but it wasn't as extreme here because even though the
(14:50):
English establishment considered us racially inferior, at least we were white.
So anyway, young William Joyce just fucking loves all the
Diish imperialism that he is getting in school, and he
loves school and education until one day he asked the
priest if he's Protestant mother would go to heaven when
she died, And of course the priest says, no, your
(15:12):
mother is going straight to Hell or she will burn
in a tonal torment forever with all the other Protestants,
because that's just how the Catholic Church rules.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
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 figure like Gandhian 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.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
At least the Mormons are nice enough to rebaptize the dead.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Didn't try, right, you baptize in Frank decades after her
death like a normal person.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Other things we could criticize the Mormons on, but at
least they think they're well intentioned anyway.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
It is when you think about it, it's nicer than
some of the other things.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
So Joyce gets super pissed when the priest who's teaching
him throws eternal shade and his Protestant month. So up
to this point he had been a modeled student, but
from then on he says fuck homework and he starts
spending all his spare time on politics. And it was
an interesting time in Irish politics. So at this time
all of Ireland north and South was still part of
(16:23):
the UK, but after centuries of colonialism, ordinary Irish people
were getting tired of being repeatedly fucked over and exploited
by an English political lead.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So after the outbreak that would get on your nerves.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, after the outbreak of World War One, a broad
popular front of Irish republicans whose politics are very different
to those of American republicans. These Irish republicans start planning
a rebellion against the English King, who, of course was
then distracted from Irish affairs temporarily by throwing millions of
British soldiers at German machine guns in the hope of
(16:58):
defeating his cousin and Bastard POD's alumni Kaiser Wilheim the
second Ah.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, yeah, so I did.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
When he comes up, who was Harney for his mother's hands?
A few research.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Spreact, Yeah, weird hand fetish.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Yeah yeah. So anyway, the rebellion is known here as
the nineteen sixteen Rising. It's largely confined to Dublin, but Galway,
where William Joyce lived, was one of the few places
outside the capital where there was fighting. We don't need
to go into all the details on the rebellion here. Basically,
the Irish rebels wanted to break free of Britain establish
(17:32):
an independent republic. Launched the rebellion in April nineteen sixteen,
fought the British army, managed to hold out for a
week before being defeated, and Margaret Kiljoy did a whole
series on this rebellion for cool people who did cool stuff,
so if you want to learn more about it, you
can start there. Yeah. So, anyway, this rebellion freaks Young
(17:52):
William Joyce out, and the following year, when the Bolshevik
Revolution happens in Russia, he goes way down the conspiracy
rabbit hole and he's convinced that both the Russian Revolution
and the rebellion in Ireland are part of the secret
global Irish German Jewish Bolshevik plot to destroy the British Empire.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, So Joyce hits on a new plan to make
himself popular at school. Instead of bringing another gun to
class that didn't work too well the first time, he
decides to tell his classmates about all his favorite new
conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Oh boy.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah. One of his schoolmates, Owen Keenan recalled quote he
was a morose and lonely little fellow. For all his brightness,
there was something missing in young Willie. He would give
him promptu speeches in the playground warning us about the
growing dangers of Bolshevism. But Robert, do you know who
won't make him prompt you speeches in the playground warning
their playmates about Bolshevism.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Some of our sponsors. Might I'm not going to categorically
say not, but you know some of them are fine
with it.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I was going to say the Irish Republican Army, yes,
that's oh well, yes, no, yeah, yeah, the good old IRA,
because in nineteen seventeen, the IRA, despite being almost entirely Catholic,
were actually very supportive of Soviet Russia. Robert, remember those
sixteen pounds of diamonds Zarien and her daughters had sewed
into their bodices and they accidentally turned into bulletproof vests
(19:23):
during the execution in the basement in Ika Trinenberg. Well,
when the Bolsheviks got the diamonds off the corpses, some
of them ended up hidden in the chimney of a
senior IRA leader in Dublin named Harry Boland, after a
senior financial a secret financial deal between the Soviet Union
and the IRA. But that's a long story. We don't
have time to quint to hear.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
What we do have time for is ads.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
That's right, coming back. I gotta say, you have to
imagine that guy has to within at least one a
have had people over gotten a little bit too drunk
and taken the diamonds out right. You gotta be like,
you gotta see this shit, man, You gotta come on,
come on, come back, have another shot. I gotta show
(20:09):
you some fucking nats.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
He ended up being shot in nineteen twenty two, so
he didn't have long enough to enjoy the diamonds, but
his family had them for years, and then in like
the nineteen fifties, the Irish Prime Minister aim and devil
Era like quietly give them back to the lasts. Just
both countries were like, maybe we shouldn't mention this.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
These probably shouldn't be here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
So anyway, after World War One, there is general election
in the UK, which Ireland was then still officially part of,
and shin fein the Irish Republican Rebel Party won a
majority of seventy three of the one hundred and five
Irish seats in the British Parliament. These seventy three Irish
(20:55):
Republican members of Parliament decided to set up their own
assembly in Dublin and it declared independence in Britain. The British,
of course, immediately declared this democratically elected Irish government illegal
and Britain's colonial police force in Ireland the Royal Irish
Constabulary or IC were mobilized to suppress Irish democracy. The
(21:17):
IRA in turn responded with a grilla campaign against them,
resulting in the Irish War of Independence, which lasted from
nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty one. So, in early nineteen twenty,
conspiracy nerd William Joyce witnessed the British shooting dead and
IRA volunteer as part of this conflict in Galway, and
(21:37):
it thrilled him, and Joyce immediately volunteered to assist the
British forces in any way he could now. Traditionally, British
rule in Ireland had been maintained not by the British Army,
but by this Irish police force or British police force
in Ireland, the Royal Irish Constabulary or IC. It was
largely staffed by irishmen recruited their fellow natives in nine
(22:02):
The RIC basically becomes the model for colonial policing across
the British Empire, from India to Palestine to Kenya, and
irishmen in the RIC were generally happy to keep oppressing
their fellow Irishmen until the IRA began shooting them dead
in large numbers. Thus, prompting hundreds of irishmen to resign
from the force now disposes a problem for the British government.
(22:27):
If they sent the British Army in as the main
force fighting the Republicans, they will be admitting that the
IRA were a real army and that there was a
real war happening. The British line, however, was that the
IRA were just a small criminal gang having regular shootouts
with the Irish cops. So in response, the British government
(22:47):
invented the Black and Tan now.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Rather than yes.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
This will surprise some of your listeners, but the phrase
black and Tan can refer to several different things. So
listeners in la will know they have a local uniform
club for gay men called the Black and Tan Society.
Different thing, different thing. Most Americans will know a cocktail
of the same name they drink along with disgusting green
(23:13):
beer on St. Patrick's Ley, But in Ireland the phrase
has a different meaning. If you ever walk into a
real Irish bar in Ireland and order a black and Tan,
or an Irish carban for that matter, you are very likely, yeah,
I have seen this happen. You are very likely to
get this shit kicked out of you.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, that good. Not a good move.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yeah, this is because the drink the cocktail. The Black
and Tan is named after the largely English mercenaries recruited
into the Riic during the War of Independence, who gained
a fairly well deserved reputation for committing war crimes against
the Irish, including torture, murder, arson and rape. So, anyway,
back to our bastard William Joyce. He sees the.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Tango song about fighting them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Check out Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge that song. It's brilliant.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
So. Anyway, back to our bastard William Joyce. He sees
the Tans coming to Ireland in nineteen twenty and he
is cheering them on. Now, some pro British loyalists in Ireland,
like Joyce, do join the Black and Tans, but remember
this kid is something around fifteen years old at the time,
so he's too young to officially become a cop. So instead,
(24:24):
Joyce ingratiates himself with members of the ri Ic and
the Black and Tans by volunteering to run errands for them,
buying their cigarettes and shops at a time when Irish
shopkeepers refused to serve British troops, that kind of thing,
real low level stuff. Joyce also passed on whatever scraps
of information about IRA activity that he could gather from
(24:47):
loose talk around the town, and he would give this
to his British pals. He also volunteered as an identifier
for RIIC patrols traveling in their motor convoys to point
out the homes of IRA members sympathizers which were then
raid It. They needed him because remember a lot of
the new RIC recruits were english Men who didn't have
(25:07):
a clue where they were going or who they were
looking for. Some members of the RIC saw Joyce as
their teenage mascot. Others found Joyce a nuisance, and one
Irish ri C constable later recalled quote, he was one
of our greatest embarrassments. His trouble was fanatical patriotism England
and a burning wish to fight the rebels. He often
(25:30):
tried to smuggle himself into our larryes. We laughed at him,
but if he was killed or wounded, it would have
caused our control a lot of trouble. According to Douglas, Yeah,
according to Douglas, Yeah, it's just it's a war zone.
I think I'll jump on his humvy and take a
ride around and point out the houses of the insurgents.
Let's see how that one.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, anybody off? No?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
According to Douglas V. Duff, an English Black and Tan
from Dorchester, Joyce eventually became such an an annoyance when
they found him stowed away one day on their patrol boat.
They threw him into the middle of Galway Harbor and
he had to swim back to shore.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Joyce had a warm harbor.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah, not harbor. It's mostly filled with bottles of buckfast
now if you know Gowaya anyway, Joyce overcame this setback
to ingratiate himself with an even worse group of British
paramilitary police, the Auxiliary Division of the Royal art Constabulary,
more commonly known here in Ireland as the Auxy's now.
(26:33):
The Auxy's were similar to the Tans or the Black
and Tans, but instead of being recruited from ordinary low
ranking ex British soldiers, they were only recruited from ex officers,
so they're a bit like an elite kind of special
forces unit. The Auxy's were a much more effective fighting force.
(26:54):
They were much more extreme in their methods, more rootless,
more violent and determined than the Tans. Quote one of
the IRA's most famous leaders of that era at Tom
Barry quote, there were good and bad men amongst the Tans,
but the Auxys were bastards to a.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Man short and sweet.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah, not a man who mixed these words. When D
Company of the Auxys arrived in Galway, Joyce immediately volunteered
to help them with the same kind of low level
intelligence work that he had done for the Tans. D
Company were one of the worst Auxy units. In a
notorious incident in November nineteen twenty, they shot dead Eileen Quinn,
(27:34):
twenty four year old woman who was seven months pregnant.
Quinn had been sitting on a wall outside her home
breastfeeding her nine month old child when the Auxys drove
up to the house and shot her dead at point
blank range without warning. D Company specialized in abducting IRA
members and sympathizers and torturing and murdering them before mutilating
(27:56):
their bodies and burying them in bogs. Same month that
they shot Oiling Quinn dead, the company captured brothers Harry
and Patrick Lochnan, who were both members of the Ira,
The Lochnan brothers were tied to the back of a
British Army lorry and forced to run behind it as
it traveled at speed. When they inevitably fell exhausted, the
(28:17):
van continued to drive, dragging the men along the road
surface until they were dead. Yeah. The Auxis then carved
their unit insignia into the flesh of Patrick Lochnan's chest
and cut off two of Harry's fingers to keep as souvenirs.
Eventually they set fire to the body and dumped them
in a leg So very reminiscent of kind of stuff
(28:38):
that was done to the Via Kong by US Viet Koan.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I mean, it's reminiscent of stuff you've seen in the
American In Texas, where I come from, there was a
very famous case of a young gay man who was
killed by being dragged behind the car. Stuff like that.
And you hear, I mean like the I'm thinking of
the barcoot in Ukraine, which you know would do these
They wasn't so much dragging people to death, but it
was like throwing them in naked into freezing snowbanks activists
(29:05):
and killing them that way. Like I think there's a
lot of things that makes me think.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Of, Yeah, it's incredible what people are capable of. But anyway,
you and I, for some reason find a fascinating to
read about this. Yeah. D Company also abducted and murdered
Michael Tolan, a physically disabled IRA intelligence officer, who they
castrated and shot dead before burying his body in a bog.
D company's best known victim was one of the few
(29:31):
Catholic priests who actually supported the IRA, father Michael Griffin.
Father Griffin was abducted from his home, shot dead, and
buried in the bog west of Galway City. Now, later
rumors would claim, and you'll still find this online, that
William Joyce, as a local young boy, had played a
role ignuring Father Griffin out of his home. But there
(29:52):
is no reliable historical evidence to support this. But these
murders will give you the listener an idea of the
kind of people Joyce is now working for. Right, so,
as the war drags on into nineteen twenty one, Joyce
came to the attention of Captain William Keating, head of
British Army Intelligence in Galway. Now, Keating probably knew Joyce personally,
(30:15):
as both of his sons attended the same school as Joyce.
Keating decided to recruit Joyce as a courier. So by
now he's not a British soldier. He's not an official
member of the British Army, but he is on their
payroll and working for the army was seen as being
more respectable than doing errands for a paramilitary police force.
(30:37):
So the Irish War of Independence ends on the eleventh
of July nineteen twenty one. About two three hundred people
were killed in the conflict. Now that may not seem
like much, but remember Ireland is a very small country
with a small population, So to put that in perspective
and think of what you know about the North of Ireland,
(30:58):
Northern Ireland and how vicious conflict was there. The Irish
War of Independence saw two three hundred people killed in
just three years, compared to three thoy seven hundred people
dying in the troubles in the North over thirty years.
So it's a much more condensed version of.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The conflict, higher intensity conflict.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, whilst the ceasefire was holding, the ira were still
gathering intelligence. Joyce was on their radar before this. Now
they had known all along that he was a British loyalist,
but he was by far wasn't the only British loyalist
who was around, but they didn't know how involved he
was in assisting the British forces until they intercepted a
(31:41):
British cipher code being sent to him in the mail.
At this point, the IRA sanctioned Joyce's execution as an
enemy agent, but they could not kill him because it
would have been a breach of the ceasefire and it
would have interfered with the political negotiations which were then ongoing.
Joyce discovered the IRA were onto him, but for the
(32:01):
moment they couldn't lay a finger on him, and he
really revels in this. He decides to rub the IRA's
faces in it. So he starts openly associating with the
British forces in Galway, who were kind of like he's,
you know, protection unit. There's going to be no more
disguises or cloak and dagger shit. He's just letting it
all hang out in the open. So one day Michael Stains,
(32:24):
who's a senior IRA leader and member of the rebel
Irish government, was walking through Galway when he encountered William
Joyce quote. William Joyce was quite a young fellow, about
sixteen years of age. I saw him with some members
of the Riic Auxiliary Division and as I went by,
he passed some jeering remarks and actually spat at me.
(32:45):
There was an IRA volunteer with me who wanted to
shoot Joyce there and then, so he's got some balls,
this kid.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Stains was one of the liaison officers between the IRA
and Theish military during the ceasefire, and he was unsurprisingly
super pissed about this, and he marched straight into the
office of British Divisional Commissioner Creuse, who was commanding that unit.
We talked about the company of the Ausis and Stains
let him know in known certain terms that the IRA
(33:17):
were ont Joyce and that he was fucked if the
ceasefire did not hold. Joyce knew the IRA could not
do shit to him for as long as peace talks
were ongoing, and he basically thinks that it's all going
to work out find for him. But in December of
nineteen twenty one, a section of the rebel Irish government
reached a peace deal with the British. Now this is complex,
(33:40):
but all you need to know is that the treaty
they agreed on in late nineteen twenty one early nineteen
twenty two divided Ireland into the two parts it's in
now the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland to give
it its official name, which would stay part of the
UK was the southern part of Ireland was going to
get partial independence on the same basis that Canada had
(34:02):
within the British Empire at the time, something called dominion
status right. So, under this peace deal, which of course
didn't deliver a lasting peace in Ireland, that's another story,
the British pulled all their troops out of the South
of Ireland and moved them either back to Britain or
up to the north. The first to withdraw were the
units that William Joyce had been most closely associated with
(34:25):
the in the ri C. So now Joyce is in trouble.
His ri Ic bodyguards are leaving Galway and the IRA
will soon be in total control of the city once
the British Army finishes its evacuation. And at this point
William Joyce is forced to stop spitting at the leaders
of the IRA and he goes into hiding nat So
(34:47):
Cocky area now Joyce. Just when it looks like Joyce
is fucked, Fate steps in and saves them. And this,
I think is one of the interesting things about him.
This is going to happen a few times in his life,
either a person or circumstances changed the last second to
his benefit. And in nineteen twenty one, his savior was
(35:07):
Captain Keating, who had recruited Joyce as a courier for
the British Army. Keating arranged for Joyce to be enlisted
in the Worcester Regiment and transferred to England, thus saving
him from the otherwise certain fate of being assassinated by
the IRA for being a British intelligence agent. But Robert,
do you know who won't assassinate British intelligence agents?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I mean, I would hope our podcast sponsors would be
capable of doing that. You know, that's certainly something we
ask each of them. Could you kill James Bond? Theoretically,
like if you tried to interfere with your aberrations and
they all say yes, But could they be lying to me?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
It's possible, possibly because I would have thought would a
British intelligence agent lie to you? Never? I would have
thought that unlike the IRA. They all support King Sausage
Fingers himself, Charles the Third of England and his weird
brother Andrew, who definitely has not done anything untoward in
Jeffrey Epstein's company.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
No, no, he's just stopping the Prince for no reason
and we're back.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
So I wonder how Coolson Media's lawyers feel about that
last ad pivot.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Anyway, I feel like it's pretty safe these days.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
I don't enjoy the First Amendment rights and legal terms
you have, so I to be more careful in Ireland anyway,
although I suspect Prince Andrew leaving the jurisdiction of Britain
anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
If we have one right in the United States, it's
talking about the British royal family. So kind of foundational.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, So in early nineteen twenty two, young William Joyce
is safe from the IRA. He's living in the British
Army barracks in England. But by now the British of
course have no real use for him. He had a
purpose when he was in Ireland, but now that the
British have done a deal with a faction of the
Irish rebels, their focus is on their other imperialist projects
(37:13):
in Egypt, in India and Palestine, or Joyce would of
course have been useless, so he was probably underage. He
was definitely physically unfit, and he had never fired a
gun in combat. So within a few months he gets
kicked out of the British Army. Now William Joyce enrolled
in Birkbeck College in London, where he joined the college
(37:36):
branch of the British Conservative and Unionist Party, also known
as the Tory Party, and he was hoping that he
would find his political soulmates there. Instead, he was disappointed
that they weren't supportive enough of the Irish loyalist cause,
and he was disappointed because they didn't express the same
interest in anti Semitic conspiracy theories about Irish affairs that
(38:00):
he did. Political disappointments aside, he managed to graduate with
a degree in English. He toyed with the idea of
studying for a masters in history, but never put the
required effort into securing a place a university. When asked
about this failure later in life, he fabricated the excuse
that quote some thieving Jew had stolen his research. Next,
(38:24):
he applied for a job in the British government's Foreign Office,
and when this application was rejected, he again used the
excuse that the Jews were responsible.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Sure, no, yeah, keep keep going back to that, well, buddy, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Joyce eventually got a job as a high school teacher,
a teaching English in England, a country where everybody already
spoke the language. I'm reminded of Ralph Wigham and the Simpsons.
Me fail English, that's impossible. At the time that he
was working as a teacher, he's conservative anti Semitic politics
(39:00):
were becoming even more extreme, and he kept ranting on
about how his supposed Jewish communist cabal were responsible for
the creation of the IRA and for all his misfortunes
in Ireland. But again, this was in England, where despite
ruling US, very few of the people, except for the
most hardcore conservatives, really knew or cared anything about Ireland,
(39:21):
so he was largely ignored. But things were soon to
change for young Willy. In late nineteen twenty two, an
Italian asshole named Mussolini pu fascism on the world stage,
and in early nineteen twenty three, these British fanboys formed
England's first fascist group. On the sixth of May nineteen
twenty three, Miss Rotha Linton Orman, the daughter of British
(39:44):
Army War hero Major Charles Orman, decided to found the
British Fascisty. She had previously helped found the Girl Scouts
and had been a suffragette and an ambulance driver during
World War One. She placed she placed a series of
six adverts in the Duke of Northumberland's newspaper The Patriot,
(40:06):
which was infamous for peddling conspiracy theories and xenophobia. I've
sent you a picture of her, Robert. It's well worth
looking up just to get an idea of her vibe
and her energy.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Oh yeah, I mean, she definitely looks like she never
looks like someone who would both be a suffragette and
also a fascist actist like she she's put together in
that way.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's worth googling other pictures of her and
finding out more about a fascinating person. But anyway, British
Fascisty campaigns to protect Britain from communism, socialism, Irish republicanism, anarchism,
trade unionism, atheism and free love. So they probably.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Weren't all the every one of them probably weren't much
fun at parties, No, Linton Norman claimed the moral, spiritual
and fundamental objects of British and Italian fascists are identical.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Those joining the British Fascisty were required to swear an
oath to uphold His Majesty Gracious King George, his heirs
and successes, and to render every service in the struggle
against all treacherous revolutionary movements now working for the destruction
of the monarchy and the British Empire. In the early years,
(41:25):
there was a significant crossover membership between the British Fascisty
and the British Conservative Party. The group's primary activity was
to act as bodyguards for Conservative politicians and protect Conservative
meetings from interference by left wing hitlers. Joyce joined the
(41:46):
British Fascisty in London shortly after their formation, and he
was soon promoted to commander of I Squad. On the
twenty fourth of October nineteen twenty four, Joyce led the
members of his unit to constituency of Lambeth North, where
they have been tasked with acting as an honor guard
for an election rally for the local Conservative candidate. The
(42:09):
meeting was disrupted by a group of anti fascist protesters,
one of whom attacked Joyce slashing his face from the
right corner of his mouth. So he's right here with
a straight racing.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
See, I can already see the problem, which is that
you know great instincts, but if you just slash someone
in the face, you're gonna wind up making him look cool.
Like if you just give someone a facial scar, you're
gonna wind up making them look cooler.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
And you have sent you an image there or people
can you've probably seen it before.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Robert's great scar. Yeah, yeah, no, that's the scar they
all want to have.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Because this is the thing that like the SS and
German military guys love fencing without masks, and they want
to descramma the scar, whereas Joyces dueling scar.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
He you couldn't buy a better scar than that if
you went to a fancy dueling college.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, it's like a fun James Bond film scar like it.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, exactly, it's like a fake scar.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Anyway. Joyce is left with a prominent facial scar for
the rest of his life, and he claimed that a
male Jewish communist had attacked him. However, his first wife, Hazel,
later told his biographer Colin Holmes, it wasn't a Jewish
communist who disfigured him. He was knifed by an irishwoman. Now,
unfortunately we don't know who this hero Irish woman was.
(43:28):
I think it was probably Jake Hanrahan's great grandmother. Once again,
Joyce was blaming Jews for all his problems, but the
anti fascist protesters had mostly been Irish Republican sympathizers, who,
according to press reports, interrupted the meeting by singing Irish
rebel songs and heckling before attempting to storm the platform
(43:49):
and seize the British flag. The protesters appear to have
been aware of Joyce's presence and his previous work as
a spy for the British in Ireland. A reporter for
the Lambeth Free Press described the scene. The tumult was
terrific and the speaker could not be hurt. A few
young men began to sing come back to Aaron, A
couple of men apparently it came to blows and the
(44:10):
crowd searched forward. The excitement was tremendous, and from out
of the crowd that suddenly emerged a young Stuart with
blood streaming from a nasty gash in the cheek. Mister
William Joyce off Allison Grove Dallich was led to the
rear and was supposedly taken to Lambeth Infirmary for treatment.
It is stated that he was slashed with a razor,
(44:31):
so Joyce's assailant was most likely a member of Kameno
Man who were the I Ray's female counterpart, and whoever
she was, she was not the only irishwoman in the
twenties to try and assassinate a Fascist leader, leaving them
with a permanent scar. The other was Violet Gibson, who
in April nineteen twenty six attempted to assassinate Moussolini by
(44:52):
shooting him in the head at a public rally. At
the last microsecond, Massolini turned his head and survived, minus
a small part to the bridge of his nose, which
he succeeded in shooting off was Sealini appeared in public
wearing a prominent bandage on his face for several weeks afterwards.
History does not repeat itself, but it does tend to
rhyme a lot.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Yeah, that's boy. Probably the less set about that, the better.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Time as a flat circle Robert Anyway, William Joyce was
hospitalized for several weeks recovering from his facial wound, but
he was troubled by the possibility that he might miss
the Armistice Day commemorations on the eleventh of November, which
commemorated the British war dead of World War One. From
the nineteen twenties, this event had always been hugely popular
(45:40):
with the British far right, and today this tradition is
still maintained by the neo Nazi group the National Front,
which still holds a march to the Cenotaph in London
every Remembrance Sunday. On the eleventh November nineteen twenty four,
Joyce snuckout of hospital without being medically discharged so that
he could attend the ceremony, but he was still so
(46:00):
weak from his injuries that the IRA had inflicted on
him that he collapsed. He was given first aid by
a fellow Fascist at the ceremony named Hazel Barr, who
was to become the future Missus William Joyce. Joyce got
a job teaching at a school in Chelsea in London.
The pair married in nineteen twenty seven, and she soon
(46:20):
became pregnant. The same year, he began an illicit sexual
relationship with one of his pupils named Mary Ogilvy. The
age of consent in Britain at the time was sixteen,
and the pair claimed that their relationship didn't begin until
she turned sixteen, which I'm not entirely sureless true, but
I have no way of proving or disproving it completely.
(46:44):
At this time Joyce was between twenty one and twenty
five years of age, So I reckon it's borderline whether
you can accurately call him a pedophile or not. I
say pedophile, you say pedophile, potato potato, But look whether
or not we can technically call Joyce the pedophile. The
relationship is pretty creepy on Joyce's part. He's barely back
(47:06):
from his honeymoon. He's cheating on his pregnant wife with
a teenage schoolgirl who's probably a decade younger thanan So
at the very least, it's an abuse of power from
an authority figure of a vulnerable miner in their care.
So anyway, Joyce's wife appears to have been unaware of
the affair, and she gave birth to their first daughter,
(47:28):
named after her mother, Hazel, and a few years later
the couple had a second daughter, the dismartaled and domestic
drama side. Joyce was still an active member of the
British Fascisty into the late nineteen twenties, but he drifted
away when the movement began to flounder in the early
nineteen thirties. The movement had always been bankrolled by Rotha Linton,
(47:51):
Orman's wealthy mother, who immediately cut off finances for her
daughter when she heard lured rumors about her daughter's morphine
habit and involvement in alcohol fueled orgies at their country mansion.
Cut off financially, Ormand grew increasingly dependent on alcohol and drugs,
and died within a year Santa Brigada under Canary Islands,
(48:12):
just forty years of age. So for the second time
in his life, Joyce was politically adrift, having been failed
by his political messiah. The first political leader to fail
Joyce had been his childhood hero, Sir Edward Carson, the
Irish loyalist leader who had led the pro British movement
against the IRA and any form of Irish independence. Incidentally,
(48:36):
Carson was also the barrister who led the prosecution of
Oscar Wilde for sodomy. Oh good, yeah, there you are
is taking all the boxes. However, Carson had failed Joyce
when he signed up to an agreement with the British
in the early nineteen twenties, and that saw Southern Ireland,
as we mentioned, begin to break away from England and
(48:56):
effectively abandoning pro British families like the Joyce Is in
the South of Ireland. So now a decade later, he'd
been failed again by the founder, Linton Norman, who died
in obscurity instead of delivering a fascist Britain. So in
the early nineteen thirties, Joyce was once more politically adrift
when a new political savior loomed into view. That is
(49:19):
where we are going to end it for today. What
do you think so far?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Robert who boy pecked a lot of bastardury into end
of this episode already I'm excited to see where he
goes from here.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
This is just people don't talk about everyone rushes spray
to World War two, but I think this is fascinating.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, no, no, why this guy was a piece of
it wasn't just a piece of shit for opportunistic reasons.
He was a dedicated piece of shit. He worked it.
Being a piece you don't want to you can't take
that away from him. You know that's not fair. He
put in the hours to be a piece of shit.
Ye know, this is that he didn't just start late
in his career. Oh, I'm a believer in honoring hard work.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
He's bringing guns to school and spitting an IRA leaders
and these teens like, yeah, he's a piece of work.
Right is another thing that's a piece of work. Are
your plugg abooks? What do you have to pull it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (50:11):
You're asking my pluggables. I mean, if you're here, you
listen to my podcast, so you know basically where to
find me. What about yours?
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Well? I have a book out. It is called Burn
Them Out is a history of fascism and far right
in Ireland. That's the title, and it is published by
Bloomsbury head of So if you just google burn Them
Out Irish Fascism, it should come up and you can
buy that online or in all good bookshops and some
(50:39):
bad ones excellent.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Well find it at a good bookshop or a bad one.
You know, I'm assuming you get money either way.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
I'm not sure if I still get money if people's shoplifted,
but I assume I did.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
No, Yeah, yeah, I mean one way or the other.
The book is moved, right, the book.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Is somebody who has read it.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, all right, everybody, this has been Behind the Bastards.
We'll be back on Thursday with part two of this story.
Until then, having a nice time.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
(51:30):
at Behind the Bastards
As media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
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
(00:26):
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
(00:47):
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. Padrick or Rourke, Welcome to the show.
(01:08):
Thank you so much for coming on and for doing
the hard work of making an episode for me this week.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeahct we were connected through our mutual friend Jake Canrahan
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 do I can 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
(01:45):
to write ten thousand words about a shitty person.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I still have to turn up to work for my
government paymasters. But yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, yeah, well who are we learning about this week?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
While Roberts, as you know, the original plan for this
episode was 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 and that is why she has gone
into hiding.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
That's right, yes, to protect her from the British Royal family.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And as as we all know, there's nothing the British
Royal family and its armed forces love doing more than
murdering irishmen. So my next was on the line too,
and I thought, I thought it would be safer if
we cover the dead bastard instead of Saxborg. But we will.
You'll get around to Prince Andrew someday anyway, Robert.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, he is on the list, especially with all this
juicy new Epstein stuff that's late.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
I totally believe him. He's he's innocent of everything. So, Robert,
I know you've heard of this guy because you mentioned
him before on the previous podcast, but I was wondering,
how much do you know or can you recall about
William Joyce.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, you're talking about Lord of Haha, right, that's the name.
He's probably better. It was certainly better known to Americans
by I read about him for the first time and
like one of the First World War two history books
I read when I was in may Pa. I couldn't
have been much for than fifth or sixth grade, and
it was 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
(03:25):
equivalent of these like radio like pro fascist radio stars
who would tell Allied soldiers basically, you're all gonna get
killed over here, you know, disobey your orders whatnot, like
it's hopeless to try to fight us, that sort of thing.
So that's 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
(03:47):
name of the I think of the woman based in
Tokyo who was doing the same thing over in the
Pacific Theater. But yeah, that's that's what I know about him.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
That's that's the guy. Where this guy has fascinating backstory,
terrible personal life, and I think he's great a bastard material,
so luck we'll jump into it. William Joyce was born
while fuck Roberts were off to a bad start here.
(04:16):
Because no one knows for certain when or where this asshole.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I love those ones.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
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 brook who was better known as Queenie. Michael Joyce,
unlike most Irish immigrants to the USA in the late
eighteen hundreds, was not a starving peasant. He came from
(04:42):
a wealthy farming family, and he had gone to America
to seek his fortune rather than evade starvation. In the
eighteen eighties, he established a successful construction company in Brooklyn,
and he had enough money to make frequent trips back
home to Ireland.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Oh wow, that is a very rare situation. Yeah, but
who moves from Ireland to the US in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
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 Frud,
(05:24):
professor of history at Oxford declared that the Irish were
quote more like squalid apes than human beings.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Was good British.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I lived there for a while. I could kind of
do the upper class, one in the working class, but
nothing in between. Anyway. Another English academic, John Bodeaux, 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.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
That sounds scientific.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Who had quote a knee grow appearance?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh boy, yeah, oh wow, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
There's still institutions in Ireland where they of 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 were holding on to the Irish ones. So some
of them have only just come back. But anyway, Yeah.
Further complicating matters for these StarCraft lovers, part from the
different nationalities was the fact that Michael Joyce was a
(06:25):
Catholic was his fiance was Protestant. Now, such mixed marriages
were controversial at the time, though nobody in Ireland today,
while 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 nineteen oh five New York wedding. Instead,
(06:46):
Queene'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 suggest
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.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Wow. Yeaow, that's such a bitchy move, just sending your
lawyer to there.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
And he's a family member as well, so they don't
even have to pay him anyway. Yeah. So, throughout his life,
Joyce repeatedly claimed to be born in different years and
in different places.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Probably classic bastard. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So. William Joyce was born sometime between nineteen oh three
and nineteen oh six 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 Brook Joyce
following in the Protestant Irish tradition of co joining both
(07:51):
parents surnames, but Joyce's Catholic father forbid it because, like
his son, he was a gigantic asshole. In nineteen 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
(08:14):
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. Us. Yeah,
he had died of hypothermia and 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 Joyces were forced
(08:37):
to sell it.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, like a really good barkeeper here today who knows
their locals will 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, if you ever been to Galway, Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, I love it. It's I mean, I think it's
probably the prettiest city I've been to in Ireland. It's
it's my second favorite after I really like Dublin. But yeah,
I love Galway.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Galway is a great place. It's an incredible party town
and Steve Earle wrote a great song about it called
Galway Girl. Yeah, but don't listeners confuse it with the
Ed Sheeran song of the same name, which.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Is shipped no, no, don't stel.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Galway has long been famous as one of the last
bastions of indigenous gayla CoRIS 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
(09:46):
you're actually an American. 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
(10:06):
later in Ireland, and while her husband Michael was working Queen,
he was left alone with baby William and doated on him,
telling him you are the sugar in my tea. Without you,
there is no British empire and wow, you will be
a great man someday. So Robert, I've sent you a
pick if you can find it there. Of if we
(10:28):
have a picture of Joyce at school? Mm hm, and
how what what's the vibe off this kid? If you
can bring it up?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
He looks like a little shit, like I'm gonna be
honest with you, Like he's got his he's got his
arms crossed in a way children seldom do, and he like.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
The only two other people in the group photoho have
their arms crossed are the teacher and the teacher's kid
who's sitting at each other.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah. Yeah, he looks very unpleasant. He looks like he's
judging you, Like he looks like like I want to
say to him, like you're not better than me, you
little shit, You're just a kid, Like get what the
what the fuck are you looking at me for?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
That?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
That way?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Well, I remember, without him, there will be no British Empire.
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, so that's another reason to fight this kid.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
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 the property to the cops
as a police station, and William snuck in one day,
stole a gun and brought it to school.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Just a normal that'll make you friends, Yep, that's that'll
make you friends.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
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 his may S Prize listeners.
But the Catholic Church in Ireland in the early nineteen
hundreds was one hundred percent supportive of British rule. Since
(12:00):
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.
This not only well, yeah, absolutely, this not only allowed
(12:21):
Catholic priests to ensure the spiritual indoctrination and brainwashing of
Irish children. It also give 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 twentieth century, the British government and the
Catholic Church implemented a form of cultural genocide to try
(12:42):
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
poeme 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,
(13:07):
all elementary schools in Ireland celebrated Empire Day on the
twenty fourth 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 in Britain, the parents are the English and
(13:27):
the children are the Scots, Irish and Welsh. If the Scots,
Irish or Welsh ever went their own way, then God
will be very disappointed.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Now, let's 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, since the kids are always underneath the parents' thumbs.
You know, that's just that's not even how family really works.
Back then, the.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Analogy also fails because families ineverably end up rowing with
each other quite a.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Lot, right constantly. Yes, the worst fights are better family members. Also,
only one family member inherits at this point in time,
I don't.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Know which is the parents, 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.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Remind you of anything, Robert, Yeah, one people, one nation,
one volk.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, I'm volcan, I'm right, I'm fure that's it.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah yeah, one fewer sorry.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah. So the Catholic priests running these schools when they
weren't busy abusing Irish children. Love 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 what happened to First Nations kids in Canada,
but it wasn't as extreme here because even though the
(14:50):
English establishment considered us racially inferior, at least we were white.
So anyway, young William Joyce just fucking loves all the
Diish imperialism that he is getting in school, and he
loves school and education until one day he asked the
priest if he's Protestant mother would go to heaven when
she died, And of course the priest says, no, your
(15:12):
mother is going straight to Hell or she will burn
in a tonal torment forever with all the other Protestants,
because that's just how the Catholic Church rules.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
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 figure like Gandhian 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.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
At least the Mormons are nice enough to rebaptize the dead.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Didn't try, right, you baptize in Frank decades after her
death like a normal person.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Other things we could criticize the Mormons on, but at
least they think they're well intentioned anyway.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
It is when you think about it, it's nicer than
some of the other things.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
So Joyce gets super pissed when the priest who's teaching
him throws eternal shade and his Protestant month. So up
to this point he had been a modeled student, but
from then on he says fuck homework and he starts
spending all his spare time on politics. And it was
an interesting time in Irish politics. So at this time
all of Ireland north and South was still part of
(16:23):
the UK, but after centuries of colonialism, ordinary Irish people
were getting tired of being repeatedly fucked over and exploited
by an English political lead.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So after the outbreak that would get on your nerves.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, after the outbreak of World War One, a broad
popular front of Irish republicans whose politics are very different
to those of American republicans. These Irish republicans start planning
a rebellion against the English King, who, of course was
then distracted from Irish affairs temporarily by throwing millions of
British soldiers at German machine guns in the hope of
(16:58):
defeating his cousin and Bastard POD's alumni Kaiser Wilheim the
second Ah.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, yeah, so I did.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
When he comes up, who was Harney for his mother's hands?
A few research.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Spreact, Yeah, weird hand fetish.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Yeah yeah. So anyway, the rebellion is known here as
the nineteen sixteen Rising. It's largely confined to Dublin, but Galway,
where William Joyce lived, was one of the few places
outside the capital where there was fighting. We don't need
to go into all the details on the rebellion here. Basically,
the Irish rebels wanted to break free of Britain establish
(17:32):
an independent republic. Launched the rebellion in April nineteen sixteen,
fought the British army, managed to hold out for a
week before being defeated, and Margaret Kiljoy did a whole
series on this rebellion for cool people who did cool stuff,
so if you want to learn more about it, you
can start there. Yeah. So, anyway, this rebellion freaks Young
(17:52):
William Joyce out, and the following year, when the Bolshevik
Revolution happens in Russia, he goes way down the conspiracy
rabbit hole and he's convinced that both the Russian Revolution
and the rebellion in Ireland are part of the secret
global Irish German Jewish Bolshevik plot to destroy the British Empire.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, So Joyce hits on a new plan to make
himself popular at school. Instead of bringing another gun to
class that didn't work too well the first time, he
decides to tell his classmates about all his favorite new
conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Oh boy.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah. One of his schoolmates, Owen Keenan recalled quote he
was a morose and lonely little fellow. For all his brightness,
there was something missing in young Willie. He would give
him promptu speeches in the playground warning us about the
growing dangers of Bolshevism. But Robert, do you know who
won't make him prompt you speeches in the playground warning
their playmates about Bolshevism.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Some of our sponsors. Might I'm not going to categorically
say not, but you know some of them are fine
with it.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I was going to say the Irish Republican Army, yes,
that's oh well, yes, no, yeah, yeah, the good old IRA,
because in nineteen seventeen, the IRA, despite being almost entirely Catholic,
were actually very supportive of Soviet Russia. Robert, remember those
sixteen pounds of diamonds Zarien and her daughters had sewed
into their bodices and they accidentally turned into bulletproof vests
(19:23):
during the execution in the basement in Ika Trinenberg. Well,
when the Bolsheviks got the diamonds off the corpses, some
of them ended up hidden in the chimney of a
senior IRA leader in Dublin named Harry Boland, after a
senior financial a secret financial deal between the Soviet Union
and the IRA. But that's a long story. We don't
have time to quint to hear.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
What we do have time for is ads.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
That's right, coming back. I gotta say, you have to
imagine that guy has to within at least one a
have had people over gotten a little bit too drunk
and taken the diamonds out right. You gotta be like,
you gotta see this shit, man, You gotta come on,
come on, come back, have another shot. I gotta show
(20:09):
you some fucking nats.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
He ended up being shot in nineteen twenty two, so
he didn't have long enough to enjoy the diamonds, but
his family had them for years, and then in like
the nineteen fifties, the Irish Prime Minister aim and devil
Era like quietly give them back to the lasts. Just
both countries were like, maybe we shouldn't mention this.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
These probably shouldn't be here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
So anyway, after World War One, there is general election
in the UK, which Ireland was then still officially part of,
and shin fein the Irish Republican Rebel Party won a
majority of seventy three of the one hundred and five
Irish seats in the British Parliament. These seventy three Irish
(20:55):
Republican members of Parliament decided to set up their own
assembly in Dublin and it declared independence in Britain. The British,
of course, immediately declared this democratically elected Irish government illegal
and Britain's colonial police force in Ireland the Royal Irish
Constabulary or IC were mobilized to suppress Irish democracy. The
(21:17):
IRA in turn responded with a grilla campaign against them,
resulting in the Irish War of Independence, which lasted from
nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty one. So, in early nineteen twenty,
conspiracy nerd William Joyce witnessed the British shooting dead and
IRA volunteer as part of this conflict in Galway, and
(21:37):
it thrilled him, and Joyce immediately volunteered to assist the
British forces in any way he could now. Traditionally, British
rule in Ireland had been maintained not by the British Army,
but by this Irish police force or British police force
in Ireland, the Royal Irish Constabulary or IC. It was
largely staffed by irishmen recruited their fellow natives in nine
(22:02):
The RIC basically becomes the model for colonial policing across
the British Empire, from India to Palestine to Kenya, and
irishmen in the RIC were generally happy to keep oppressing
their fellow Irishmen until the IRA began shooting them dead
in large numbers. Thus, prompting hundreds of irishmen to resign
from the force now disposes a problem for the British government.
(22:27):
If they sent the British Army in as the main
force fighting the Republicans, they will be admitting that the
IRA were a real army and that there was a
real war happening. The British line, however, was that the
IRA were just a small criminal gang having regular shootouts
with the Irish cops. So in response, the British government
(22:47):
invented the Black and Tan now.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Rather than yes.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
This will surprise some of your listeners, but the phrase
black and Tan can refer to several different things. So
listeners in la will know they have a local uniform
club for gay men called the Black and Tan Society.
Different thing, different thing. Most Americans will know a cocktail
of the same name they drink along with disgusting green
(23:13):
beer on St. Patrick's Ley, But in Ireland the phrase
has a different meaning. If you ever walk into a
real Irish bar in Ireland and order a black and Tan,
or an Irish carban for that matter, you are very likely, yeah,
I have seen this happen. You are very likely to
get this shit kicked out of you.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, that good. Not a good move.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yeah, this is because the drink the cocktail. The Black
and Tan is named after the largely English mercenaries recruited
into the Riic during the War of Independence, who gained
a fairly well deserved reputation for committing war crimes against
the Irish, including torture, murder, arson and rape. So, anyway,
back to our bastard William Joyce. He sees the.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Tango song about fighting them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Check out Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge that song. It's brilliant.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
So. Anyway, back to our bastard William Joyce. He sees
the Tans coming to Ireland in nineteen twenty and he
is cheering them on. Now, some pro British loyalists in Ireland,
like Joyce, do join the Black and Tans, but remember
this kid is something around fifteen years old at the time,
so he's too young to officially become a cop. So instead,
(24:24):
Joyce ingratiates himself with members of the ri Ic and
the Black and Tans by volunteering to run errands for them,
buying their cigarettes and shops at a time when Irish
shopkeepers refused to serve British troops, that kind of thing,
real low level stuff. Joyce also passed on whatever scraps
of information about IRA activity that he could gather from
(24:47):
loose talk around the town, and he would give this
to his British pals. He also volunteered as an identifier
for RIIC patrols traveling in their motor convoys to point
out the homes of IRA members sympathizers which were then
raid It. They needed him because remember a lot of
the new RIC recruits were english Men who didn't have
(25:07):
a clue where they were going or who they were
looking for. Some members of the RIC saw Joyce as
their teenage mascot. Others found Joyce a nuisance, and one
Irish ri C constable later recalled quote, he was one
of our greatest embarrassments. His trouble was fanatical patriotism England
and a burning wish to fight the rebels. He often
(25:30):
tried to smuggle himself into our larryes. We laughed at him,
but if he was killed or wounded, it would have
caused our control a lot of trouble. According to Douglas, Yeah,
according to Douglas, Yeah, it's just it's a war zone.
I think I'll jump on his humvy and take a
ride around and point out the houses of the insurgents.
Let's see how that one.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, anybody off? No?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
According to Douglas V. Duff, an English Black and Tan
from Dorchester, Joyce eventually became such an an annoyance when
they found him stowed away one day on their patrol boat.
They threw him into the middle of Galway Harbor and
he had to swim back to shore.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Joyce had a warm harbor.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah, not harbor. It's mostly filled with bottles of buckfast
now if you know Gowaya anyway, Joyce overcame this setback
to ingratiate himself with an even worse group of British
paramilitary police, the Auxiliary Division of the Royal art Constabulary,
more commonly known here in Ireland as the Auxy's now.
(26:33):
The Auxy's were similar to the Tans or the Black
and Tans, but instead of being recruited from ordinary low
ranking ex British soldiers, they were only recruited from ex officers,
so they're a bit like an elite kind of special
forces unit. The Auxy's were a much more effective fighting force.
(26:54):
They were much more extreme in their methods, more rootless,
more violent and determined than the Tans. Quote one of
the IRA's most famous leaders of that era at Tom
Barry quote, there were good and bad men amongst the Tans,
but the Auxys were bastards to a.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Man short and sweet.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah, not a man who mixed these words. When D
Company of the Auxys arrived in Galway, Joyce immediately volunteered
to help them with the same kind of low level
intelligence work that he had done for the Tans. D
Company were one of the worst Auxy units. In a
notorious incident in November nineteen twenty, they shot dead Eileen Quinn,
(27:34):
twenty four year old woman who was seven months pregnant.
Quinn had been sitting on a wall outside her home
breastfeeding her nine month old child when the Auxys drove
up to the house and shot her dead at point
blank range without warning. D Company specialized in abducting IRA
members and sympathizers and torturing and murdering them before mutilating
(27:56):
their bodies and burying them in bogs. Same month that
they shot Oiling Quinn dead, the company captured brothers Harry
and Patrick Lochnan, who were both members of the Ira,
The Lochnan brothers were tied to the back of a
British Army lorry and forced to run behind it as
it traveled at speed. When they inevitably fell exhausted, the
(28:17):
van continued to drive, dragging the men along the road
surface until they were dead. Yeah. The Auxis then carved
their unit insignia into the flesh of Patrick Lochnan's chest
and cut off two of Harry's fingers to keep as souvenirs.
Eventually they set fire to the body and dumped them
in a leg So very reminiscent of kind of stuff
(28:38):
that was done to the Via Kong by US Viet Koan.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I mean, it's reminiscent of stuff you've seen in the
American In Texas, where I come from, there was a
very famous case of a young gay man who was
killed by being dragged behind the car. Stuff like that.
And you hear, I mean like the I'm thinking of
the barcoot in Ukraine, which you know would do these
They wasn't so much dragging people to death, but it
was like throwing them in naked into freezing snowbanks activists
(29:05):
and killing them that way. Like I think there's a
lot of things that makes me think.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Of, Yeah, it's incredible what people are capable of. But anyway,
you and I, for some reason find a fascinating to
read about this. Yeah. D Company also abducted and murdered
Michael Tolan, a physically disabled IRA intelligence officer, who they
castrated and shot dead before burying his body in a bog.
D company's best known victim was one of the few
(29:31):
Catholic priests who actually supported the IRA, father Michael Griffin.
Father Griffin was abducted from his home, shot dead, and
buried in the bog west of Galway City. Now, later
rumors would claim, and you'll still find this online, that
William Joyce, as a local young boy, had played a
role ignuring Father Griffin out of his home. But there
(29:52):
is no reliable historical evidence to support this. But these
murders will give you the listener an idea of the
kind of people Joyce is now working for. Right, so,
as the war drags on into nineteen twenty one, Joyce
came to the attention of Captain William Keating, head of
British Army Intelligence in Galway. Now, Keating probably knew Joyce personally,
(30:15):
as both of his sons attended the same school as Joyce.
Keating decided to recruit Joyce as a courier. So by
now he's not a British soldier. He's not an official
member of the British Army, but he is on their
payroll and working for the army was seen as being
more respectable than doing errands for a paramilitary police force.
(30:37):
So the Irish War of Independence ends on the eleventh
of July nineteen twenty one. About two three hundred people
were killed in the conflict. Now that may not seem
like much, but remember Ireland is a very small country
with a small population, So to put that in perspective
and think of what you know about the North of Ireland,
(30:58):
Northern Ireland and how vicious conflict was there. The Irish
War of Independence saw two three hundred people killed in
just three years, compared to three thoy seven hundred people
dying in the troubles in the North over thirty years.
So it's a much more condensed version of.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The conflict, higher intensity conflict.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, whilst the ceasefire was holding, the ira were still
gathering intelligence. Joyce was on their radar before this. Now
they had known all along that he was a British loyalist,
but he was by far wasn't the only British loyalist
who was around, but they didn't know how involved he
was in assisting the British forces until they intercepted a
(31:41):
British cipher code being sent to him in the mail.
At this point, the IRA sanctioned Joyce's execution as an
enemy agent, but they could not kill him because it
would have been a breach of the ceasefire and it
would have interfered with the political negotiations which were then ongoing.
Joyce discovered the IRA were onto him, but for the
(32:01):
moment they couldn't lay a finger on him, and he
really revels in this. He decides to rub the IRA's
faces in it. So he starts openly associating with the
British forces in Galway, who were kind of like he's,
you know, protection unit. There's going to be no more
disguises or cloak and dagger shit. He's just letting it
all hang out in the open. So one day Michael Stains,
(32:24):
who's a senior IRA leader and member of the rebel
Irish government, was walking through Galway when he encountered William
Joyce quote. William Joyce was quite a young fellow, about
sixteen years of age. I saw him with some members
of the Riic Auxiliary Division and as I went by,
he passed some jeering remarks and actually spat at me.
(32:45):
There was an IRA volunteer with me who wanted to
shoot Joyce there and then, so he's got some balls,
this kid.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Stains was one of the liaison officers between the IRA
and Theish military during the ceasefire, and he was unsurprisingly
super pissed about this, and he marched straight into the
office of British Divisional Commissioner Creuse, who was commanding that unit.
We talked about the company of the Ausis and Stains
let him know in known certain terms that the IRA
(33:17):
were ont Joyce and that he was fucked if the
ceasefire did not hold. Joyce knew the IRA could not
do shit to him for as long as peace talks
were ongoing, and he basically thinks that it's all going
to work out find for him. But in December of
nineteen twenty one, a section of the rebel Irish government
reached a peace deal with the British. Now this is complex,
(33:40):
but all you need to know is that the treaty
they agreed on in late nineteen twenty one early nineteen
twenty two divided Ireland into the two parts it's in
now the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland to give
it its official name, which would stay part of the
UK was the southern part of Ireland was going to
get partial independence on the same basis that Canada had
(34:02):
within the British Empire at the time, something called dominion
status right. So, under this peace deal, which of course
didn't deliver a lasting peace in Ireland, that's another story,
the British pulled all their troops out of the South
of Ireland and moved them either back to Britain or
up to the north. The first to withdraw were the
units that William Joyce had been most closely associated with
(34:25):
the in the ri C. So now Joyce is in trouble.
His ri Ic bodyguards are leaving Galway and the IRA
will soon be in total control of the city once
the British Army finishes its evacuation. And at this point
William Joyce is forced to stop spitting at the leaders
of the IRA and he goes into hiding nat So
(34:47):
Cocky area now Joyce. Just when it looks like Joyce
is fucked, Fate steps in and saves them. And this,
I think is one of the interesting things about him.
This is going to happen a few times in his life,
either a person or circumstances changed the last second to
his benefit. And in nineteen twenty one, his savior was
(35:07):
Captain Keating, who had recruited Joyce as a courier for
the British Army. Keating arranged for Joyce to be enlisted
in the Worcester Regiment and transferred to England, thus saving
him from the otherwise certain fate of being assassinated by
the IRA for being a British intelligence agent. But Robert,
do you know who won't assassinate British intelligence agents?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I mean, I would hope our podcast sponsors would be
capable of doing that. You know, that's certainly something we
ask each of them. Could you kill James Bond? Theoretically,
like if you tried to interfere with your aberrations and
they all say yes, But could they be lying to me?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
It's possible, possibly because I would have thought would a
British intelligence agent lie to you? Never? I would have
thought that unlike the IRA. They all support King Sausage
Fingers himself, Charles the Third of England and his weird
brother Andrew, who definitely has not done anything untoward in
Jeffrey Epstein's company.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
No, no, he's just stopping the Prince for no reason
and we're back.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
So I wonder how Coolson Media's lawyers feel about that
last ad pivot.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Anyway, I feel like it's pretty safe these days.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
I don't enjoy the First Amendment rights and legal terms
you have, so I to be more careful in Ireland anyway,
although I suspect Prince Andrew leaving the jurisdiction of Britain
anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
If we have one right in the United States, it's
talking about the British royal family. So kind of foundational.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, So in early nineteen twenty two, young William Joyce
is safe from the IRA. He's living in the British
Army barracks in England. But by now the British of
course have no real use for him. He had a
purpose when he was in Ireland, but now that the
British have done a deal with a faction of the
Irish rebels, their focus is on their other imperialist projects
(37:13):
in Egypt, in India and Palestine, or Joyce would of
course have been useless, so he was probably underage. He
was definitely physically unfit, and he had never fired a
gun in combat. So within a few months he gets
kicked out of the British Army. Now William Joyce enrolled
in Birkbeck College in London, where he joined the college
(37:36):
branch of the British Conservative and Unionist Party, also known
as the Tory Party, and he was hoping that he
would find his political soulmates there. Instead, he was disappointed
that they weren't supportive enough of the Irish loyalist cause,
and he was disappointed because they didn't express the same
interest in anti Semitic conspiracy theories about Irish affairs that
(38:00):
he did. Political disappointments aside, he managed to graduate with
a degree in English. He toyed with the idea of
studying for a masters in history, but never put the
required effort into securing a place a university. When asked
about this failure later in life, he fabricated the excuse
that quote some thieving Jew had stolen his research. Next,
(38:24):
he applied for a job in the British government's Foreign Office,
and when this application was rejected, he again used the
excuse that the Jews were responsible.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Sure, no, yeah, keep keep going back to that, well, buddy, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Joyce eventually got a job as a high school teacher,
a teaching English in England, a country where everybody already
spoke the language. I'm reminded of Ralph Wigham and the Simpsons.
Me fail English, that's impossible. At the time that he
was working as a teacher, he's conservative anti Semitic politics
(39:00):
were becoming even more extreme, and he kept ranting on
about how his supposed Jewish communist cabal were responsible for
the creation of the IRA and for all his misfortunes
in Ireland. But again, this was in England, where despite
ruling US, very few of the people, except for the
most hardcore conservatives, really knew or cared anything about Ireland,
(39:21):
so he was largely ignored. But things were soon to
change for young Willy. In late nineteen twenty two, an
Italian asshole named Mussolini pu fascism on the world stage,
and in early nineteen twenty three, these British fanboys formed
England's first fascist group. On the sixth of May nineteen
twenty three, Miss Rotha Linton Orman, the daughter of British
(39:44):
Army War hero Major Charles Orman, decided to found the
British Fascisty. She had previously helped found the Girl Scouts
and had been a suffragette and an ambulance driver during
World War One. She placed she placed a series of
six adverts in the Duke of Northumberland's newspaper The Patriot,
(40:06):
which was infamous for peddling conspiracy theories and xenophobia. I've
sent you a picture of her, Robert. It's well worth
looking up just to get an idea of her vibe
and her energy.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Oh yeah, I mean, she definitely looks like she never
looks like someone who would both be a suffragette and
also a fascist actist like she she's put together in
that way.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's worth googling other pictures of her and
finding out more about a fascinating person. But anyway, British
Fascisty campaigns to protect Britain from communism, socialism, Irish republicanism, anarchism,
trade unionism, atheism and free love. So they probably.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Weren't all the every one of them probably weren't much
fun at parties, No, Linton Norman claimed the moral, spiritual
and fundamental objects of British and Italian fascists are identical.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Those joining the British Fascisty were required to swear an
oath to uphold His Majesty Gracious King George, his heirs
and successes, and to render every service in the struggle
against all treacherous revolutionary movements now working for the destruction
of the monarchy and the British Empire. In the early years,
(41:25):
there was a significant crossover membership between the British Fascisty
and the British Conservative Party. The group's primary activity was
to act as bodyguards for Conservative politicians and protect Conservative
meetings from interference by left wing hitlers. Joyce joined the
(41:46):
British Fascisty in London shortly after their formation, and he
was soon promoted to commander of I Squad. On the
twenty fourth of October nineteen twenty four, Joyce led the
members of his unit to constituency of Lambeth North, where
they have been tasked with acting as an honor guard
for an election rally for the local Conservative candidate. The
(42:09):
meeting was disrupted by a group of anti fascist protesters,
one of whom attacked Joyce slashing his face from the
right corner of his mouth. So he's right here with
a straight racing.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
See, I can already see the problem, which is that
you know great instincts, but if you just slash someone
in the face, you're gonna wind up making him look cool.
Like if you just give someone a facial scar, you're
gonna wind up making them look cooler.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
And you have sent you an image there or people
can you've probably seen it before.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Robert's great scar. Yeah, yeah, no, that's the scar they
all want to have.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Because this is the thing that like the SS and
German military guys love fencing without masks, and they want
to descramma the scar, whereas Joyces dueling scar.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
He you couldn't buy a better scar than that if
you went to a fancy dueling college.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, it's like a fun James Bond film scar like it.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, exactly, it's like a fake scar.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Anyway. Joyce is left with a prominent facial scar for
the rest of his life, and he claimed that a
male Jewish communist had attacked him. However, his first wife, Hazel,
later told his biographer Colin Holmes, it wasn't a Jewish
communist who disfigured him. He was knifed by an irishwoman. Now,
unfortunately we don't know who this hero Irish woman was.
(43:28):
I think it was probably Jake Hanrahan's great grandmother. Once again,
Joyce was blaming Jews for all his problems, but the
anti fascist protesters had mostly been Irish Republican sympathizers, who,
according to press reports, interrupted the meeting by singing Irish
rebel songs and heckling before attempting to storm the platform
(43:49):
and seize the British flag. The protesters appear to have
been aware of Joyce's presence and his previous work as
a spy for the British in Ireland. A reporter for
the Lambeth Free Press described the scene. The tumult was
terrific and the speaker could not be hurt. A few
young men began to sing come back to Aaron, A
couple of men apparently it came to blows and the
(44:10):
crowd searched forward. The excitement was tremendous, and from out
of the crowd that suddenly emerged a young Stuart with
blood streaming from a nasty gash in the cheek. Mister
William Joyce off Allison Grove Dallich was led to the
rear and was supposedly taken to Lambeth Infirmary for treatment.
It is stated that he was slashed with a razor,
(44:31):
so Joyce's assailant was most likely a member of Kameno
Man who were the I Ray's female counterpart, and whoever
she was, she was not the only irishwoman in the
twenties to try and assassinate a Fascist leader, leaving them
with a permanent scar. The other was Violet Gibson, who
in April nineteen twenty six attempted to assassinate Moussolini by
(44:52):
shooting him in the head at a public rally. At
the last microsecond, Massolini turned his head and survived, minus
a small part to the bridge of his nose, which
he succeeded in shooting off was Sealini appeared in public
wearing a prominent bandage on his face for several weeks afterwards.
History does not repeat itself, but it does tend to
rhyme a lot.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Yeah, that's boy. Probably the less set about that, the better.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Time as a flat circle Robert Anyway, William Joyce was
hospitalized for several weeks recovering from his facial wound, but
he was troubled by the possibility that he might miss
the Armistice Day commemorations on the eleventh of November, which
commemorated the British war dead of World War One. From
the nineteen twenties, this event had always been hugely popular
(45:40):
with the British far right, and today this tradition is
still maintained by the neo Nazi group the National Front,
which still holds a march to the Cenotaph in London
every Remembrance Sunday. On the eleventh November nineteen twenty four,
Joyce snuckout of hospital without being medically discharged so that
he could attend the ceremony, but he was still so
(46:00):
weak from his injuries that the IRA had inflicted on
him that he collapsed. He was given first aid by
a fellow Fascist at the ceremony named Hazel Barr, who
was to become the future Missus William Joyce. Joyce got
a job teaching at a school in Chelsea in London.
The pair married in nineteen twenty seven, and she soon
(46:20):
became pregnant. The same year, he began an illicit sexual
relationship with one of his pupils named Mary Ogilvy. The
age of consent in Britain at the time was sixteen,
and the pair claimed that their relationship didn't begin until
she turned sixteen, which I'm not entirely sureless true, but
I have no way of proving or disproving it completely.
(46:44):
At this time Joyce was between twenty one and twenty
five years of age, So I reckon it's borderline whether
you can accurately call him a pedophile or not. I
say pedophile, you say pedophile, potato potato, But look whether
or not we can technically call Joyce the pedophile. The
relationship is pretty creepy on Joyce's part. He's barely back
(47:06):
from his honeymoon. He's cheating on his pregnant wife with
a teenage schoolgirl who's probably a decade younger thanan So
at the very least, it's an abuse of power from
an authority figure of a vulnerable miner in their care.
So anyway, Joyce's wife appears to have been unaware of
the affair, and she gave birth to their first daughter,
(47:28):
named after her mother, Hazel, and a few years later
the couple had a second daughter, the dismartaled and domestic
drama side. Joyce was still an active member of the
British Fascisty into the late nineteen twenties, but he drifted
away when the movement began to flounder in the early
nineteen thirties. The movement had always been bankrolled by Rotha Linton,
(47:51):
Orman's wealthy mother, who immediately cut off finances for her
daughter when she heard lured rumors about her daughter's morphine
habit and involvement in alcohol fueled orgies at their country mansion.
Cut off financially, Ormand grew increasingly dependent on alcohol and drugs,
and died within a year Santa Brigada under Canary Islands,
(48:12):
just forty years of age. So for the second time
in his life, Joyce was politically adrift, having been failed
by his political messiah. The first political leader to fail
Joyce had been his childhood hero, Sir Edward Carson, the
Irish loyalist leader who had led the pro British movement
against the IRA and any form of Irish independence. Incidentally,
(48:36):
Carson was also the barrister who led the prosecution of
Oscar Wilde for sodomy. Oh good, yeah, there you are
is taking all the boxes. However, Carson had failed Joyce
when he signed up to an agreement with the British
in the early nineteen twenties, and that saw Southern Ireland,
as we mentioned, begin to break away from England and
(48:56):
effectively abandoning pro British families like the Joyce Is in
the South of Ireland. So now a decade later, he'd
been failed again by the founder, Linton Norman, who died
in obscurity instead of delivering a fascist Britain. So in
the early nineteen thirties, Joyce was once more politically adrift
when a new political savior loomed into view. That is
(49:19):
where we are going to end it for today. What
do you think so far?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Robert who boy pecked a lot of bastardury into end
of this episode already I'm excited to see where he
goes from here.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
This is just people don't talk about everyone rushes spray
to World War two, but I think this is fascinating.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, no, no, why this guy was a piece of
it wasn't just a piece of shit for opportunistic reasons.
He was a dedicated piece of shit. He worked it.
Being a piece you don't want to you can't take
that away from him. You know that's not fair. He
put in the hours to be a piece of shit.
Ye know, this is that he didn't just start late
in his career. Oh, I'm a believer in honoring hard work.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
He's bringing guns to school and spitting an IRA leaders
and these teens like, yeah, he's a piece of work.
Right is another thing that's a piece of work. Are
your plugg abooks? What do you have to pull it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (50:11):
You're asking my pluggables. I mean, if you're here, you
listen to my podcast, so you know basically where to
find me. What about yours?
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Well? I have a book out. It is called Burn
Them Out is a history of fascism and far right
in Ireland. That's the title, and it is published by
Bloomsbury head of So if you just google burn Them
Out Irish Fascism, it should come up and you can
buy that online or in all good bookshops and some
(50:39):
bad ones excellent.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Well find it at a good bookshop or a bad one.
You know, I'm assuming you get money either way.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
I'm not sure if I still get money if people's shoplifted,
but I assume I did.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
No, Yeah, yeah, I mean one way or the other.
The book is moved, right, the book.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Is somebody who has read it.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, all right, everybody, this has been Behind the Bastards.
We'll be back on Thursday with part two of this story.
Until then, having a nice time.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
(51:30):
at Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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