Part One: Lord Haw-Haw: Hitler's Favorite Anglo Propagandist | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Sophie, William Joyce, Jay Canrahan, Michael Joyce
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Michael Joyce, William Joyce, Colin Holmes, James Frud
3. 10:00 – 15:00: William Joyce
4. 15:00 – 20:00: William Joyce, Owen Keenan
5. 20:00 – 25:00: William Joyce
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Eileene Quinn, Father Michael Griffin, William Joyce
7. 30:00 – 35:00: William Joyce, Michael Stains
8. 35:00 – 40:00: William Joyce, British Conservative and Unionist Party, British Fascist, Burkebeck College
9. 40:00 – 45:00: British Fascist, William Joyce, British Conservative Party, Colin Holmes
10. 45:00 – 50:00: British Fascist, Burn Them Out, Mary Agulvie, Rotha Linton Orman

Notable quotes from "Part One: Lord Haw-Haw: Hitler's Favorite Anglo Propagandist | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"

• 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…

  about Sophie · at 0:28

• Got it finished. Yeah, I you connect we were connected through our mutual friend Jay Canrahan and you came on the show to talk about the Irish farright on it could happen here…

  about Jay Canrahan · at 1:18

• [clears throat] previous podcast, but I was wondering how much do you know or can you recall about William Joyce?

  about William Joyce · at 2:53

• 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 Gertude Brookke, but who was better known as Queenie.

  about Michael Joyce · at 4:11

• Bigotry because back then the Irish were still considered primeval savages by the English establishment. James Frud, professor of history at Oxford declared that the Irish were…

  about James Frud · at 5:06

• Was done right. Now, there have been many biographies of Joyce, but the best is probably by Colin Holmes, an English academic, who suggests that Joyce was born out of wedlock…

  about Colin Holmes · at 6:42

• One of his school 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.

  about Owen Keenan · at 18:20

• Orman, the daughter of British Army war hero Major Charles Orman decided to found the British fascist. She had previously helped found the Girl Scouts and had been a…

  about British Fascist · at 39:18

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• William Joyce — Person · 17 mentions · first at 2:56
• Michael Joyce — Person · 4 mentions · first at 4:16
• Sophie — Person · 2 mentions · first at 0:32
• Colin Holmes — Person · 2 mentions · first at 6:47
• Rotha Linton Orman — Person · 2 mentions · first at 39:15
  1923, these British fanboys formed England's first fascist group. On the 6th of May 1923, Miss Rotha Linton Orman, the daughter of British Army war hero Major Charles Orman…
• Hazel — Person · 2 mentions
• Patrick Oorc — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:00
  Seen on It Could Happen Here if you're a regular listener of that podcast. Patrick Oorc, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on and for doing the hard work of making an episode for me this week.
• Jay Canrahan — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:23
• James Frud — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:12
• John Bedau — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:33
  The working class with nothing in between. Anyway, another English academic, John Bedau, held that the racial inferiority of the Irish made us genetically inclined to…
• Owen Keenan — Person · 1 mention · first at 18:22
• Eileene Quinn — Person · 1 mention · first at 27:16
  One of the worst Augie units. In a notorious incident in November 1920, they shot dead Eileene Quinn, a 24year-old woman who was 7 months pregnant. Quinn had been sitting on a…
• Father Michael Griffin — Person · 1 mention · first at 29:17
  Best known victim was one of the few Catholic priests who actually supported the IRA. Father Michael Griffin. Paul Griffin was abducted from his home, shot dead and buried in…
• Michael Stains — Person · 1 mention · first at 32:07
  Dagger [ __ ] He's just letting it all hang out in the open. So one day, Michael Stains, who's a senior IRA leader and member of the rebel Irish government, was walking through Galway when he encountered William Joyce.
• Lenton Orman — Person · 1 mention · first at 40:28
  They probably weren't much fun at parties. no. Lenton Orman claimed the moral, spiritual and fundamental objects of British and Italian fascists are identical. Those joining the British fascist were required to swear an oath.
• Violet Gibson — Person · 1 mention · first at 44:21
  20s to try and assassinate the fascist leader, leaving them with a permanent scar. The other was Violet Gibson, who in April 1926 attempted to assassinate Mussolini by shooting…
• Mary Agulvie — Person · 1 mention · first at 46:02
  Same year he began an illicit sexual relationship with one of his pupils named Mary Agulvie. The age of consent in Britain at the time was 16. And the pair claimed their…
• Sir Edward Carson — Person · 1 mention · first at 48:02
  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, Carson was.
• Captain William Keating — Person · 1 mention
• Gertrude Brookke — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• Burn Them Out — Book · 1 mention · first at 49:58
  Well, I have a book out. it is called Burn Them Out. It is a history of fascism and the far right in Ireland.

Companies & orgs

• British Fascist — Company · 5 mentions · first at 39:25
• Burkebeck College — Company · 1 mention · first at 37:07
  Combat. So within a few months, he gets kicked out of the British army. Now, William Joyce enrolled in Burkebeck College in London where he joined the college branch of the…
• British Conservative and Unionist Party — Company · 1 mention · first at 37:13
  William Joyce enrolled in Burkebeck College in London where he joined the college branch of the British Conservative and Unionist Party, also known as the Tory Party. and he…
• British Conservative Party — Company · 1 mention · first at 41:05
  There was a significant crossover membership between the British Fascist and the British Conservative Party. The group's primary activity was to act as bodyguards for…

Places & events

• Lambeath North — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 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, uh, basically every other week of the year, uh, I read a story about a terrible person that I have researched and written and spent a lot of time on, uh, to one of our guests who is generally a comedian or an academic or somebody who we thought would be fun to horrify for roughly 2 to three hours. This week we're doing a little bit of a different thing. Uh, 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 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 [ __ ] in

0:50 history. And I'd like to welcome a guest, well, the guest host to this episode. uh someone that you will have seen uh on It Could Happen Here if you're a regular listener of that podcast. Patrick Oorc, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on and for doing the hard work of making an episode for me this week.

1:09 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. Yeah, I you connect we were connected through our mutual friend Jay Canrahan and you came on the show to talk about the Irish farright um on it could happen here which was a great episode. Um 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 to write 10,000 words about a shitty person. I still I still have to turn up to work for my uh my government pay masters. But yeah, there you go.

1:49 Yeah. Yeah. Well, who are we learning about this week? Uh well, Robert, as you know, the original plan for this episode was to cover Andrew Windsor, or as he's now known, the alleged rapist, formerly known as Prince. Uh but

2:03 but seeing as how women who annoy 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. And

2:13 that's right. Yes. To protect her from the British royal family. And as as we all know, there's nothing the British royal family and its armed forces love doing more than murdering Irish men. So my neck was on the line, too. And I thought I thought it would be safer if we covered a dead bastard instead of Andrew Saxberg.

2:34 But we you'll get around to uh to Prince Andrew someday. Anyway, Robert, yeah, he he is on the list, especially with all this juicy new Epstein stuff that's leaked.

2:45 Oh, I I totally believe him. He's he's innocent of everything. Um, so Robert, I know you've heard of this guy because you mentioned him before on a [clears throat] previous podcast,

2:55 but I was wondering how much do you know or can you recall about William Joyce?

2:59 Yeah, you're talking about Lord Haha, right? That's his his the name he's probably better certainly better known to Americans by. Um, I read about him for the first time in like one of the first World War II history books I read when I was in May. I couldn't have been much further than fifth or sixth grade. And it was it was t there was a chapter that talked about him and it talked about there was kind of a a a woman in Japan who was sort of the Japanese equivalent of these like radio like pro-fascist radio stars who would tell Allied soldiers basically, you're all going to get killed over here, you know, like disobey your orders or whatnot.

3:34 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 name of the I think it of the the 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.

3:52 That's that's the guy. Well, this guy has fascinating backstory, a terrible personal life, and um I think he's great a bastard material. So look, we'll jump into it. William Joyce was born. Well, [ __ ] Robert. We're off to a bad start here because no one knows for certain when or where this [ __ ] was born.

4:10 I love those ones. 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 Gertude Brookke, but who was better known as Queenie. Michael Joyce, unlike most Irish immigrants to the USA in the late 1800s, was not a starving peasant. He came from a wealthy farming family and he had gone to America to seek his fortune rather than evade starvation. In the 1880s, he established a successful construction company in Brooklyn and he had enough money to make frequent trips back home to Ireland. And

4:47 oh wow, that that is a very rare situation for somebody who moves from Ireland to the US in the 1800s.

4:53 He's doing well. Um yeah so on one such trip to Gway he meets and falls in love with Gertrude or Queenie.

5:00 Uh so true love blossomed but there were two small problems racism and religious bigotry because back then the Irish were still considered primeval savages uh by the English establishment. James Frud, professor of history at Oxford declared that the Irish were quote more like squalid apes than human beings. was a good British.

5:25 Yeah, I lived there for a while. I could I can kind of do the upper class one and the working class with nothing in between. Anyway, another English academic, John Bedau, held that the racial inferiority of the Irish made us genetically inclined to criminality. Um, which was evident by studying the skulls and phronology of Irish.

5:45 That sounds scientific. Who had who had quote a negro appearance. Oh boy. Yeah.

5:53 Oh wow. Uh oh yeah. There's still institutions in Ireland where they have 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 we're holding on to the Irish ones." So some of them have only just come back. But anyway,

6:07 yeah. Um further complicating matters for these uh starcross lovers, apart from the different nationalities, was the fact that Michael Joyce was a Catholic whilst 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 [ __ ] about it. So, Michael and Gertrude's engagement was so controversial that her parents refused to attend their 1905 New York wedding. Instead, Queen'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 suggests 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. Uh,

7:00 wow. Wow. That's such a [ __ ] move. Like, just sending your lawyer to their And he's he's a family member as well, so they don't even have to pay him anyway. So throughout his life, Joyce repeatedly claimed to be born in different years and in different places, probably to hide this.

7:19 Ah, classic bastard. Yeah. Yeah. So, William Joyce was born sometime between 1903 and 1906 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 Brookke Joyce, following in the Protestant Irish tradition of co-joining both parents' surnames, but Joyce's Catholic father forbid it because, like his son, he was a gigantic [ __ ]

7:49 In 1913, 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 of looking after him, simply threw him out at a pub when he ran out of money. This man's body was found lying against the pub wall the next morning.

8:12 Jesus. Yeah. He had died of hypothermia um uh 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 joy were forced to sell it.

8:29 Yeah, that makes sense. 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.

8:38 Yeah. So, and I've seen that happen. But anyway, so the family moved to Gway City where Michael Joyce again invests in real estate. Robert, have you ever been to Gway?

8:48 Yes. Yes. I love it. It's uh it's it's I mean I think it's probably the prettiest city I've been to in Ireland. Uh I I it's it's my second favorite after I really like Dublin. Um but yeah, I I love Gway. Gway is a great place. It's an incredible party town and uh Steve wrote a great song about it called Galway Gor, which you should check out. You

9:06 sure did. Yeah. But don't listeners confuse it with the Ed Sheeran song of the same name, which is [ __ ]

9:11 No, no, don't. But do you listen to Steve Earl? Gway has long been famous as one of the last bastions of indigenous uh Gaelic Irish culture. And that is exactly why young William Joyce hates Gway 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 you're actually an American.

9:40 William Joyce was the eldest of four children. He was 6 years older than his brother Quentyn, 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 later in Ireland. And while her husband Michael was working, uh, Queenie was left alone with baby William and doted 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.

10:14 So, Robert, I've sent you a pic, if you can find it there, of We have a picture of Joyce at school. Mhm.

10:23 Uh, how what's what's the vibe off this kid, if you can bring it up? He looks like a little [ __ ] Like, I'm going to be honest with you. Like, he's got his he's got his arms crossed in a way children seldom do.

10:34 Yeah. And like the the only two other people in the group photo who have their arms crossed are the teacher and the teacher's kid who's sitting at his feet.

10:42 Yeah. He looks very unpleasant. He looks like he's judging you. Like he he looks like like I want to say to him like you're not better than me, you little piece of [ __ ] You're just a kid. Like get what what the [ __ ] are you looking at me for that?

10:54 Yeah, that way. Well, I remember without him there will be no British Empire. So there you go.

10:59 And that's another reason to fight this kid. From an early age, Joyce was uh 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. Just a normal friends.

11:25 Yeah, that's that'll make you friends. 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.

11:37 Um, so Joyce's parents had enrolled him in a Catholic school. And this may surprise listeners, but the Catholic Church in Ireland in the early 1900s was 100% supportive of British rule. Since 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. It's not only

12:06 that ended well. Yeah, absolutely. That's where we're going. This not only allowed Catholic priests to ensure the spiritual indoctrination and brainwashing of Irish children, it also gave 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 20th century, the British government and the Catholic Church implemented a form of cultural genocide to try and destroy any sense of Irish identity uh their pupils had and to replace this with a sense of Britishness. Children in Catholic run Irish uh primary schools had to recite a poem each morning which rang 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, all elementary schools in Ireland celebrated Empire Day on the 24th of May when pupils were taught that

13:05 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, [clears throat] the parents are the English and 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.

13:28 Now, that 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 isn't the kids are always underneath the parents' thumbs. You know, that's just that's not even how family really works back then.

13:43 The the analogy also fails cuz families inevitably end up rowing with each other quite a lot,

13:48 right? Constantly. Yes. The worst fights are between family members. Also, only one family member inherits at this point in time. I don't know.

13:56 Which is the parent, 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. Remind you of anything Robert?

14:09 Uh, yeah. One people, one nation, one vulk. Yeah. Invulkure. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One fur. Sorry. Yeah. So the Catholic priests running these schools when they weren't busy abusing Irish children love nothing more than to beat the [ __ ] out of Irish kids who actually had the audacity to speak Gaelic, their native language. So this is similar, Robert, to what happened to First Nations kids in in Canada. Um but um it wasn't as extreme here because even though the English establishment uh considered us racially inferior, at least we were white. Um, so anyway, young William Joyce just [ __ ] loves all the British imperialism um that he is getting in school and he loves school and education until one day he asked the priest if his Protestant mother would go to heaven when she died. And of course the priest says, "No, your mother is going straight to hell where she will burn in eternal torment forever with all

15:07 the other Protestants because that's just how the Catholic church rolls." Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's funny. I had a similar I grew up Episcopalian and I had a similar talk with a a uh a youth group leader about that where I was asking him about like different fig like Gandhi and 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."

15:32 Yeah. At least at least the Mormons are nice enough to rebaptize the dead and try

15:38 you baptize Anne Frank decades after her death like a normal person. O other things we could uh we could criticize the Mormons on, but at least I think they're well intentioned. Anyway,

15:48 it is when you think about it, it's nicer than some of the other things. Yeah. So, Joyce gets super pissed when the priest who's teaching him throws eternal shade on his Protestant mom. So, up to this point, he had been a model 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 the UK. But after centuries of colonialism, ordinary Irish people were getting tired of being repeatedly [ __ ] over and exploited by an English political elite.

16:24 So after the outbreak, Yeah. that would get on your nerves. Yeah. After the outbreak of World War I, a broad popular front of Irish Republicans whose politics are very different uh to those of American Republicans. Um 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 defeating his cousin and bastard Pod's alumni Kaiser Wilheim II.

16:53 Ah yeah. Yeah. always good when he comes up. Who was horny for his mother's hands if your research is correct? Yeah.

17:00 Weird hand fetish. Yeah. Uh so anyway, the rebellion uh is known here as the 1916 rising. It's largely confined to Dublin, but Gway where William Joyce lived was one of the few places outside the capital where Thor was uh fighting. Um we don't need to go into all the details on the rebellion here. Um, basically the Irish rebels wanted to break free of Britain, established an independent republic, launched the rebellion in April 1916, 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 you can start there.

17:40 Um, yeah. So anyway, this rebellion uh freaks young William Joyce uh out and the following year when the Bolshevik revolution happens in Russia, he goes way down the conspiracy uh rabbit hole and he's convinced that both the Russian Revolution and the rebellion in Ireland are part of a secret global Irish, German, Jewish, Bolshvvic plot to destroy the British Empire.

18:05 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Um, 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. One of his school 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. It would give impromptu speeches in the playground warning us about the growing dangers of Bcheism. But Robert, do you know who won't make impromptu speeches in the playground warning their playmates about Bcheism?

18:43 Uh, some of our sponsors might. I I'm not going to categorically say not. Uh, but but you know, some of them are fine with it.

18:52 Uh, I was going to say the Irish Republican Army. Yes, that's Oh, yes. No. Yeah.

18:56 Yeah. the good old IRA because in 1917 the IRA despite being almost entirely Catholic were actually very supportive of Soviet uh Russia. Robert, remember um those 16 pounds of diamonds the Zarya and her daughters had sewed into their bodesses and they accidentally turned into bulletproof vests during the execution in the basement in E Katrinaburg. Well, when the Bajvix 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 secret financial the a secret financial deal between the Soviet Union and the IRA. But that's a long story. We don't have time to go into here. What we do have time for is ads.

19:40 That's right. Coming back, I gotta say, you have to imagine that guy has to have on at least one occasion have had people over gotten a little bit too drunk and taken the diamonds out, right? You gota be like, I you got to see this [ __ ] man. You got Come on. Come on. Come on. Have another shot. And I got to show you something [ __ ] nuts.

19:56 Well, he he ended up being shot in 1922, so he didn't live long enough to enjoy the diamonds, but his family had them for years. And then in like the 1950s, the Irish um prime minister Aean Deera like quietly gave them back to to to Russia. Just all countries were like maybe we shouldn't mention this.

20:16 These probably shouldn't be here. Yeah. After World War I, uh there is general election in the UK, which Ireland was then still officially part of. and Shinfane, the Irish Republican Rebel Party, won a majority of 73 of the 105 Irish seats in the British Parliament. Uh these 73 Irish Republican members of parliament decided to set up their own assembly in Dublin and at 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 Conabulary or RAIC were mobilized to suppress Irish democracy. The IRA in turn responded with a Greta campaign against them resulting in the Irish War of Independence [clears throat] which lasted from 1919 to 1921.

21:10 Mhm. So in early 1920, conspiracy nerd William Joyce witnessed the British shooting dead an IRA volunteer as part of this conflict in Gway and 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 Conabulary or RIC. It was largely staffed by Irish men recruited to keep their fellow natives in line. The RAR basically becomes the model for colonial policing across the British Empire from India to Palestine to Kenya.

21:54 and Irish men in the RA were generally happy to keep oppressing their fellow Irish men until the IRA began shooting them dead in large numbers, thus prompting hundreds of Irish men to resign from the force. Now, this poses a problem for the British government. If they sent the British army in as the main force fighting the Republicans, they would be admitting that the IRA were a real army and that there was a real war happening. 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 invented the black and tan.

22:33 Now, Robert, yes, 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.

22:49 Different thing. different thing. Uh, most Americans will know a cocktail of the same name they drink along with disgusting green beer on St. Patrick's Day.

22:59 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 car bomb for that matter, you are very likely I have seen this happen. You are very likely to get the [ __ ] kicked out of you.

23:14 Yeah. Not good. Not a good move. Yeah. This is because the the drink, the cocktail, the black and tan is named after the largely English mercenaries uh recruited into the RAIC 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.

23:34 So anyway, back to our bastard William Joyce. He sees the Pretty good song about fighting them.

23:40 Yeah. Check out Steve Kugan's Alan Partridge version of that song. It's brilliant. Um,

23:45 yeah, it is. So, anyway, back to our bastard William Joyce. He sees the Tans coming to Ireland in 1920 and he is cheering them on. Now, some pro- British loyalists in Ireland, um, uh, like Joyce do join the Black and Tans. Uh, but remember, this kid is something around 15 years old at the time, so he's too young to officially become a cop. So instead, Joyce ingratiates himself with members of the RAIC 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. Um, Joyce also passed on whatever scraps of information about IRA activity that he could gather from loose talk around the town, and he would give this to his British pals. He also volunteered as an identifier for RA patrols traveling in their motor convoys to point out the homes of IRA members and sympathizers

24:44 which were then raided. They needed him because remember a lot of the new RA recruits were Englishmen who didn't have a clue where they were going or who they were looking for. Some members of the RA saw Joyce as their teenage mascot. Others found Joyce a nuisance. And one Irish RI constable later recalled, quote, he was one of our greatest embarrassments. His trouble was fanatical patriotism to England and a burning wish to fight the rebels. He often tried to smuggle himself into our lries. We laughed at him, but if he was killed or wounded, it would have caused our patrol a lot of trouble.

25:23 According to Douglas, Yeah. according to Douglas. Yeah, it's just it's a war zone. And I think I'll jump on this Humvey and take a ride around and point out the houses of the insurgents. Let's see how that works.

25:35 That's not going to piss anybody off. No. Uh, according to Douglas V. Duff, an English black and tan from Dorchester, Joyce eventually became such an an annoyance that when they found him stowed away one day on their patrol boat, they threw him into the middle of Gway Harbor and he had to swim back to shore. Joyce,

25:52 not a warm harbor. Yeah, not a warm harbor. Uh it's mostly filled with bottles of buckfast. Now if you know Gway anyway

26:02 Joyce overcame uh the this setback to ingratiate himself with an even worse group of British paramilitary police, the auxiliary division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, more commonly known here in Ireland as the Auxies. Now, the Axis were similar to the uh tans or the black and tans uh but instead of being recruited from ordinary lowranking exritish soldiers, they were only recruited uh from ex officers. So, they're a bit like an elite kind of special forces unit.

26:34 Uh the Axis were a much more effective fighting force. They were much more extreme in their methods, more ruthless, more violent and determined than the Tans. to quote one of the IRA's most famous leaders of that era, Tom Barry, quote, "There were good and bad men amongst the Tans, but the Augies were bastards to a man."

26:55 Short and sweet. Yeah. Uh, not a man who mixed these words. When the company of the Augies 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 Augie units. In a notorious incident in November 1920, they shot dead Eileene Quinn, a 24year-old woman who was 7 months pregnant. Quinn had been sitting on a wall outside her home breastfeeding her 9-month-old child when the Augies drove up to the house and shot her dead at point blank range without warning.

27:33 D Company specialized in abducting IRA members and sympathizers and torturing and murdering them before mutilating their bodies and burying them in bogs. The same month that they shot Een Quinn uh dead, deco company captured brothers Harry and Patrick Loch Nan who were both members of the IRA. The Loch Nan 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 van continued to drive, dragging the men along the road surface until they were dead.

28:06 Yeah. The Augies then carved their unit insignia into the flesh of Patrick Loch Nan's chest and cut off two of Harry's fingers to keep as souvenirs. Eventually, they set fire to the body and dunk them in a lake. Uh, so very reminiscent of kind of stuff that was done to the Vietkong um by US. Vietkong. I mean, it's reminiscent of of stuff you've seen in in the American like in Texas where I come from, there was a very famous case of a young gay man who was killed by being dragged behind a car, stuff like that. Um, and you hear I mean like the I'm thinking of the Birkoot in Ukraine, which you know would do these it wasn't so much dragging people to death, but it was like throwing them in naked into freezing snow banks activists and killing them that way. Like I think there's a lot of things that makes me think of.

28:53 Yeah, it's it's incredible. watch what people are capable of. But anyway, uh you and I for some reason find it fascinating to read about this. D Company also abducted and murdered Michael Tolen, a physically disabled IRA intelligence officer who uh they castrated and shot dead before burying his body in [clears throat] a boany's best known victim was one of the few Catholic priests who actually supported the IRA. Father Michael Griffin. Paul Griffin was abducted from his home, shot dead and buried in the bog west of Gway 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 in luring Father Griffin out of his home, but there is no reliable historical evidence to support this. Uh, but these murders will give you, the listener, the an idea of the kind of people Joyce is now working for.

29:47 Right. So as the war drags on into 1921, Joyce came to the attention of Captain William Keiting, head of British Army Intelligence in Gway. Now Keating probably knew Joyce personally 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. So, the Irish War of Independence ends on the 11th of July 1921.

30:27 About 2,300 people were killed in the conflict. Now, that may not seem uh like much, but remember Ireland is a very small country with a small population. So to put that in perspective, um, think of what you know about the north of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and how vicious the conflict was there. Uh, the Irish War of Independence saw 2,300 people killed in just 3 years compared to 3,700 people dying in the troubles in the north over 30 years. So it's a much more condensed version of the

31:00 higher intensity conflict. Yeah. Whilst the ceasefire was holding, the IRA were still gathering intelligence. Uh 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, you know, the only British loyalist who was who was around. Um but they didn't know how involved he was in assisting the British forces until they intercepted a 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.

31:42 Joyce discovers that the IRA were on to him, but for the 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 are kind of like he's, you know, protection unit. Uh there's going to be no more disguises or cloak and dagger [ __ ] He's just letting it all hang out in the open. So one day, Michael Stains, who's a senior IRA leader and member of the rebel Irish government, was walking through Galway when he encountered William Joyce.

32:15 Quote, "William Joyce was quite a young fellow, about 16 years of age. I saw him with some members of the RAIC auxiliary division and as I went by he passed some jeering remarks and actually spat at me. There was an IRA volunteer with me who wanted to shoot Joyce there and then. Uh so he's got some balls, this kid.

32:37 Yeah. Uh Stains um was one of the liazison officers between the IRA and the British military during the ceasefire and he was unsurprisingly super pissed about this and he marched straight into the office of uh British divisional commissioner Cruz who was commanding that unit we talked about the company of the Augies and Stains let him know in no uncertain terms that the IRA were on to Joyce and that he was [ __ ] if the ceasefire did not hold. Joyce knew the IRA uh could not do [ __ ] to him for as long as peace talks were ongoing. And he basically thinks that it's all going to work out fine for him.

33:15 But in December of 1921, a section of the rebel Irish government reached a peace deal with the British. Now, this is complex, but all you need to know um is that the treaty they agreed on in late 1921, early 1922 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 kind of [snorts] on the same basis that Canada had within the British Empire at the time something called dominion status

33:49 right so under this peace deal which of course didn't uh 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 uh the in the RAIC. So now Joyce is in trouble. His RAIC bodyguards are leaving Galway and the IRA will soon be in total control of the city once the British army finishes its evacuation. But at this point, William Joyce is forced to stop spitting at the leaders of the IRA and he goes into hiding. Uh

34:29 yeah, not so cocky are you now, Joyce? Just when it looks like Joyce is hooked, fate steps in and saves him. And this, I think, is one of the interesting things about him. This is going to happen a few times in his life where either a person or circumstances [clears throat] change at the last second to his benefit. Uh, and in 1921, his savior was Captain Keating, who had recruited Joyce as courier for the British army. Keating arranged for Joyce to be enlist enlisted in the Wister 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. Robert, do you know uh who won't assassinate British intelligence agents?

35:15 Uh I mean, I would hope our podcast uh sponsors would would be capable of doing that. You know, that's certainly something we ask each of them. Uh, could you could you kill James Bond theoretically? Like if he tried to interfere with your operations and they all say yes, but

35:31 could they be lying to me? It's possible. Possibly, cuz 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 III of England, and his weird brother Andrew, who definitely uh has not done anything untoward in Jeffrey Epstein's company. ads.

35:51 No, no. He he he just stopped being the prince for no reason. And we're back. So, I wonder how uh Kuzon uh media's lawyers feel about that last ad pivot. Anyway,

36:02 I feel like it's pretty safe these days. I I don't I don't enjoy the First Amendment rights and legal terms you have, so I'd be more careful in in Ireland. Anyway, although I suspect Prince Andrew won't be leaving the jurisdiction of of Britain anytime soon. If we have one right in the United States, it's talking [ __ ] about the British royal family.

36:25 See, so kind of foundational. Yeah. So, in early 1922, [clears throat] young William Joyce is safe from the IRA. He's living in a 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 in Egypt, in India, in 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 Burkebeck College in London where he joined the college branch of the British Conservative and Unionist Party, also known as the Tory Party. Um, and he was hoping that he would find his political soulmates there. instead uh he was

37:24 disappointed that they weren't uh 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 he did.

37:38 That's a shame. 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 at university. When asked about this failure later in life, he fabricated the excuse that quote, "Some thieving Jew had stolen his research. [sighs] Next, 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."

38:09 Sure. No. Yeah. Keep keep going back to that well, buddy. Yeah. Uh Joyce eventually got a job as a high school teacher in uh teaching English in England, a country where everybody already spoke the language. Uh I'm reminded of Ralph Wigum in The Simpsons. Me fail English, that's impossible. Uh at the time that he was working as a teacher, his conservative anti-semitic uh politics were becoming even more extreme. and he kept ranting on about how a 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. So he was largely ignored. But things were soon to change for young Willie. In late 1922, an Italian [ __ ] named Mussolini put fascism on the world stage. And in early

39:08 1923, these British fanboys formed England's first fascist group. On the 6th of May 1923, Miss Rotha Linton Orman, the daughter of British Army war hero Major Charles Orman um decided to found the British fascist. She had previously helped found uh the Girl Scouts and had been a suffragette and an ambulance driver. She placed Yeah. Uh, she placed a series of six adverts in the Duke of North umberland's newspaper, The Patriot, 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.

39:51 Oh, yeah. I mean, she definitely looks like she she definitely looks like someone who would both be a suffragette and also a fascist activist. Like, she she she's she's put together in that way.

40:03 Yeah. Um, yeah, it's worth googling other pictures of her and finding out more about her. Fascinating person. But anyway, British fascist campaigns to protect Britain from communism, socialism, Irish republicanism anarchism trade unionism, atheism, and free love. So, they probably weren't

40:21 all the isms. Jeez, all the isms that they every one of them they probably weren't much fun at parties. Um,

40:28 no. Lenton Orman uh claimed the uh moral, spiritual and fundamental objects of British and Italian fascists are identical. Those joining the British fascist were required to swear an oath to uphold his majesty, gracious King George, his heirs and successors, 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, there was a significant crossover membership between the British Fascist and the British Conservative Party. The group's primary activity was to act as bodyguards for conservative politicians and to protect conservative meetings from interference by left-wing headlers.

41:19 Joyce joined the British fascist in London shortly after their formation and he was soon promoted to commander of I squad. On the 24th of October 1924, Joyce led the members of his unit to the constituency of Lambbeath North, where they had been tasked with acting as an honor guard for an election rally for the local conservative candidate. The 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 razor. Ah, 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 going to wind up making them look cool.

42:03 Like, if you just give someone a facial scar, you're going to wind up making them look cooler.

42:08 And you have I sent you an image there or people can Google it. You've probably seen it before. Robert [ __ ]

42:16 Oh, yeah. No, that's the scar they all want to have, too. right up to the this thing that like the SS and German military guys love fencing without masks and they want the the scar whereas Joyce

42:28 the dueling scar he you couldn't buy a better scar than that if you went to a fancy dueling college

42:34 it's like a [ __ ] James Bond film scar like it's Yeah, exactly. It's like a fake scar. Anyway, Joyce was left with a prominent facial scar for the rest of his life

42:45 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 Irish woman. Now,

42:59 nice. Unfortunately, we don't know who this hero Irish woman was. I think it was probably Jake Hanhan's great-g grandandmother. Uh once again,

43:09 Joyce uh was blaming Jews for all these 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 uh before attempting to storm the platform and seize the British flag. Protesters appeared to have been aware of Joyce's presence and his previous work as a spy for the British in Ireland. A reporter for the Lambbeath Free Press described the scene. The tumult was terrific and the speaker could not be heard. A few young men began to sing Come Back to Aaron. A couple of men apparently came to blows and the crowd surged forward. The excitement was tremendous and from out of the crowd there suddenly emerged a young Stewart with blood streaming from an nasty gash in the cheek. Mr. William Joyce of Allison Gro Dalich was led to the rear and was supposedly taken to Lambeath Infirmary for treatment. It is

44:03 stated that he was slashed with a razor. So Joyce's asalent was most likely a member of Kuman, who were the IRA's uh female counterpart. And whoever she was, she was not the only Irish woman in the 20s to try and assassinate the fascist leader, leaving them with a permanent scar. The other was Violet Gibson, who in April 1926 attempted to assassinate Mussolini by shooting him in the head at a public rally. At the last microcond, Mussolini turned his head and survived, minus a small part in the bridge of his nose, which he succeeded in shooting off. Mussolini appeared in public wearing a prominent bandage [clears throat] on his face for several weeks afterwards. History does not repeat itself, but it does tend to rhyme a lot.

44:48 Yeah, that Oh, boy. Probably the less said about that, the better. Time is a flat circle, Robert. Anyway,

44:55 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 11th of November, which commemorated the British war dead of World War I. From the 1920s, this event had always been hugely popular with the British farr right. And today, this tradition is still maintained by the neo-Nazi group, the National Front, which still holds a march to the Senate in London every Remembrance Sunday. On the 11th of November 1924, Joyce snuck out of hospital without being medically discharged so that he could attend the ceremony. But he was still so weak from his injuries uh that the IRA had inflicted on him that he collapsed.

45:40 He was given first aid by a fellow fascist at the ceremony named Hazelbar who was to become the future Mrs. William Joyce. Joyce got a job teaching at a school in Chelsea in London. The pair married in 1927 and she soon became pregnant. The same year he began an illicit sexual relationship with one of his pupils named Mary Agulvie. The age of consent in Britain at the time was 16. And the pair claimed their relationship didn't begin until she turned 16, which I'm not entirely sure is true, but I have no way of proving or disproving it completely.

46:19 At this time, Joyce was between 21 and 25 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. Um, But [clears throat] look, whether or not we can technically call Joyce a pedophile, the relationship is pretty creepy on Joyce's part. He's barely back from his honeymoon. He's cheating on his pregnant wife with a teenage school girl who's probably a decade younger than him. So, at the very least, it's an abuse of power from an authority figure of a vulnerable minor in their care.

46:56 Yeah. So anyway, Joyce's uh wife appears to have been unaware of the affair and she gave birth to their first daughter, a baby girl um uh named after her mother Hazel. And a few years later, the couple had a second daughter. This marital and domestic drama aside, Joyce was still an active member of the British fascist into the late 1920s, but he drifted away when the movement began to flounder in the early 1930s. The movement had always been bankrolled by Rotha Linton Orman's wealthy mother who immediately cut off finances for her daughter when she heard lurid rumors about her do daughter's morphine habit and involvement in alcoholfueled orgies at their country mansion. Uh cut off financially, Orman grew increasingly dependent on alcohol and drugs and died within a year at Santa Brigada on the Can Canary Islands just 40 years of age.

47:52 So for the second time in his life, Joyce was politically a drift, having uh been failed by his political messiah. 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, Carson was also the barristister uh who led the prosecution of Oscar Wild for soding.

48:18 Oh, good. Yeah, there you are. is ticking all the boxes. However, Carson uh had failed Joyce when he signed up to an agreement with the British in the early 1920s and that saw southern Ireland, as we mentioned, begin to break away from England and effectively abandoning pro- British families like the Joyices in the South of Ireland. So now a decade later, he had been failed again by the founder uh Linton Orman, who had died in in obscurity instead of delivering a fascist Britain. So in the early 1930s, Joyce was once more politically a drift when a new political savior loomed into view. That is where we are going to end it for today. Uh what do you think so far Robert?

49:04 Boy, uh packed a lot of bastardy into into this episode already. Uh I'm excited to see where he goes from here.

49:10 This is the stuff people don't talk about. Everyone rushes straight to World War II, but I think this is fascinating. Yeah.

49:17 No. No. Why? This guy was a piece of wasn't just a piece of [ __ ] for opportunistic reasons. He was a dedicated piece of [ __ ] He worked at 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 [ __ ] You know, this is He didn't just start late in his career.

49:34 I'm a believer in honoring hard work. He's bringing guns to school and spitting at IRA leaders and these teens. Like, yeah, he's he's he's a piece of work. So, Robert is

49:44 another thing that's a piece of work are your pluggables. What do you have to plug?

49:48 Oh, 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?

49:55 Well, I have a book out. Um, it is called Burn Them Out. It is a history of fascism and the far right in Ireland. That's the title. And it is published by uh Bloomsbury, head of Zuks. 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 bad ones.

50:17 Excellent. Well, find it at a good bookshop or a bad one. You know, I'm assuming you get money either way.

50:23 Yeah. I'm not sure if I still get money if people shoplift it, but I assume I did.

50:27 No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one way or the other, the book has moved, right? Somebody has read it. Yeah.

50:34 All right, everybody. This has been Behind the Bastards. We will be back on Thursday with part two of this story. Until then, have a nice time.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Part One: Lord Haw-Haw: Hitler's Favorite Anglo Propagandist | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

In order: 0:00 Sophie, William Joyce, Jay Canrahan, Michael Joyce; 5:00 Michael Joyce, William Joyce, Colin Holmes, James Frud; 10:00 William Joyce; 15:00 William Joyce, Owen Keenan; 20:00 William Joyce; 25:00 Eileene Quinn, Father Michael Griffin, William Joyce; 30:00 William Joyce, Michael Stains; 35:00 William Joyce, British Conservative and Unionist Party, British Fascist, Burkebeck College; 40:00 British Fascist, William Joyce, British Conservative Party, Colin Holmes; 45:00 British Fascist, Burn Them Out, Mary Agulvie, Rotha Linton Orman.

What is mentioned in this Behind the Bastards episode?

26 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including William Joyce, British Fascist, Michael Joyce, Sophie, Colin Holmes, Rotha Linton Orman. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Part One: Lord Haw-Haw: Hitler's Favorite Anglo Propagandist | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

The episode runs 51 min; the transcript is about 9,145 words in 129 timestamped sections.

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