crumb#003: It Started With a Song on a Pen Drive. It Ended With the IRA
What started with U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday turned into a crash course in Irish pain, rebellion, and legacy.
Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead-end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall
Like most of you, I love music. And I love listening to songs- not just for the beats or the vocals, but for the way they feel when you're walking down a street with your headphones in, or lying on the floor late at night trying to make sense of the world.
I grew up in the era of pirated MP3s and bootlegged torrents, when pen drives were traded like secret treasure maps, each holding a vault of illegally downloaded music. There was a thrill to it- getting your hands on the latest Linkin Park banger, or sneaking in a guilty Enrique Iglesias track, even if you’d never admit it. One of my earliest and most consistent sources of music was a neighbour a few years older than me. He had completely disappeared into that world of sound- headphones on, reality off. For him, music wasn’t just background noise; it was escape, obsession, identity. And through him, I got introduced to U2. It was an instant connection. There was something about their sound- the ache in Bono’s voice, the echo of the guitar, the way the lyrics didn’t just rhyme, but haunted. I was hooked. It wasn’t until much later that I realised U2 wasn’t just any band- they were giants, Grammy-winning, era-defining icons.
If you’ve ever been into their music, you’d probably recognise the lyrics I opened with. They’re from Sunday Bloody Sunday. Back then, I didn’t have a clue what the song was about. I didn’t need to. Like most teens, I was just vibing, and if a song made me feel something, that was enough. I passed it along, shared it, made it part of my growing collection.
A few years down the line, as pen drives made way for hard disks and MP3s gave way to seasons of downloaded TV shows, I found myself binge-watching Sons of Anarchy. In one episode, the protagonist Jackson Teller looks up grimly and mutters: “It’s Bloody Sunday, brother.”
And just like that, it clicked. That song- Sunday Bloody Sunday- wasn’t just about pain. It was about a specific pain. A story rooted in real violence, real blood, real history. A story that stretched across centuries and continents. A story that, strangely enough, also connects a protest anthem, a controversial cocktail, a gritty motorcycle drama, and one of the most feared paramilitary groups in modern history.
And then, memory flickers again.
Back in school- Class 7, maybe- I remember reading a short story called The Sniper, written by Liam O’Flaherty. It’s set during the Irish Civil War, but at the time I didn’t really grasp what that meant. I just remember the story gripping me. Two snipers on opposing rooftops. One finally kills the other after a tense game of death. When the survivor creeps across the street to see who he’s shot (spoiler alert!)- it’s his own brother.
That last line, in the voice of our old and sweet English teacher’s narrative landed like a punch:
“Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.”
I didn’t understand it fully back then, but it stayed with me. A war where the enemy might be your family. A land so divided that even bloodlines couldn’t protect you. That story was fiction, yes, but it wasn’t just imagination. It was rooted in something painfully real.
And all these years later- through songs, shows, stories, and slow realisations- it becomes clear that I’d been circling the same history all along. A history of Ireland and the IRA. A history that keeps echoing in the most unexpected places.
That’s the story I want to tell you today. A story born out of colonialism and rebellion. A story sung into stadiums and whispered through street corners. A story of Ireland, the IRA, and how history doesn't just live in textbooks- it leaks into pop culture, into our drinks, our playlists, and our shows.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Ireland’s relationship with Britain wasn’t just a colonial footnote- it was the opening act. If India was the crown jewel in the British Empire, Ireland was the first wound. And like any first wound, it never quite healed.
The English first dipped their toes into Irish soil back in the 12th century, but by the 16th and 17th centuries, they were planting settlers and rewriting maps. Entire counties were handed over to English and Scottish Protestants while native Irish Catholics were stripped of land, power, and dignity. This wasn’t just empire-building. This was identity theft at a national scale. In 1801, they made it official. Ireland was folded into the United Kingdom. One flag, one crown, one parliament- in theory. In reality, it was anything but equal.
Then came the famine.
The Great Hunger in the 1840s wasn’t just a natural disaster- it was a human failure. One million Irish died. One million more fled. All while food was still being exported under British rule. If the Union was ever going to work, it broke here- in empty fields and mass graves. But Ireland doesn’t stay silent for long. The fire that rose from that hunger wasn’t just about food. It was about freedom. Political movements started demanding autonomy. Others wanted full-blown independence. And as it generally goes in fights for independence, when non-violence doesn’t seem to move the bricks, the radicals come out. That’s what happened here. In 1916, a group of rebels stopped asking.
They seized parts of Dublin and declared a republic. Just like that. A handful of Irish rebels, armed with conviction and very little else, launched what would become the Easter Rising in 1916. It was bold. It was chaotic. And everyone knew it was doomed from the start. The British Empire, at the height of its power, was never going to let a rebellion fester in its own backyard- least of all in Ireland, the country it had long viewed as both property and problem.
The fighting lasted six days. Streets were shelled. Buildings crumbled. Civilians ran for cover. The rebels held out as long as they could, holed up in the General Post Office and other key buildings in Dublin, until they were surrounded and forced to surrender.
But what happened next changed everything.
The British decided to make an example out of the rebels. They didn’t just jail them. They executed them- fifteen men, one after the other, by firing squad. Some were shot while barely able to stand.
The public, at first, had been lukewarm to the Rising. The chaos had disrupted daily life. There wasn’t overwhelming support. But the executions? That was different. That was brutal. That was unforgivable.
Almost overnight, the rebels became martyrs. Folk heroes. Symbols of a cause that now had blood on it- and momentum behind it.
Out of that blood, a new force emerged: the Irish Republican Army.
The IRA didn’t want reforms. They didn’t want negotiations. They didn’t want a seat at the table- they wanted to burn the table to the ground. Independence was the only goal, and it would come, if necessary, at the barrel of a gun.
By 1919, Ireland was in full guerrilla war. The IRA fought like ghosts- no uniforms, no formal battles. Just ambushes, targeted killings, hit-and-run attacks against British troops and police. The countryside became a chessboard of resistance. The British struck back with their own brutal force, sending in the Black and Tans, a paramilitary force known for its violence, looting, and reprisals.
The violence became unbearable on both sides. And so, in 1921, a fragile compromise was reached: the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It gave birth to the Irish Free State- what would later become the Republic of Ireland. But it carved off six counties in the north and left them under British rule.
To the world, this looked like progress. But to many Irish republicans, it was betrayal in ink.
The country fractured.
Civil war erupted- Irishmen fighting Irishmen. Comrades who had once stood shoulder to shoulder now stood across battlefields. Families split. Friendships dissolved. The war ended, but the bitterness never really did. The IRA split, weakened, and faded into the shadows. Wonder how many brothers were against each other, shooting at each other from the opposite ends of the same rooftop, or across the road. Connecting all these dots now, the story sends an even deeper shiver down my spine than before.
But the IRA never disappeared. And the embers flared again in the late 1960s.
In Northern Ireland, Catholics were second-class citizens in almost every way that mattered. Housing. Jobs. Voting rights. Policing. The discrimination was systemic, open, and ugly. Inspired by the civil rights movements sweeping through America, Irish nationalists began organising peaceful marches- demanding dignity, not war. But dignity was not what they were met with.
Marches were harassed. Protesters were beaten. Homes were raided. And the police- overwhelmingly Protestant- looked the other way, or worse, joined in. Frustration boiled over. Tensions mounted.
And then came January 30, 1972.
A peaceful protest in the city of Derry, calling for civil rights and an end to internment without trial, became a massacre.
British paratroopers, heavily armed and on edge, opened fire on the unarmed crowd.
Fourteen people died. None were armed. Some were shot in the back while running. One was killed while waving a white handkerchief. No warning. No restraint. No humanity.
It became known as Bloody Sunday.
And from that Sunday, everything changed.
Moderate voices were drowned out. The Provisional IRA- until then a fringe force- became a magnet for young Irishmen who’d had enough. No more peaceful protests. No more trusting the system. The idea of armed resistance wasn’t radical anymore- it was survival.
In the eyes of many, the war had returned.
The world was horrified. Ireland was enraged. And the IRA? They were ready.
The war was back on.
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The bullets of Bloody Sunday didn’t just tear through bodies- they ripped through the fragile illusion that peace was even possible under British rule in the North. That day, the Provisional IRA- the more militant faction that had split from the older movement- became heroes to some, terrorists to others, and front-page news for everyone.
This wasn’t just a rebellion anymore. It was a war. Not on open fields, but in city streets, back alleys, and borderlands. The IRA had safe houses, stockpiles, secret networks. The British had intelligence agencies, informants, and military patrols. And caught in the middle- always- were ordinary people.
The Troubles, as the world would come to call it, weren’t clean. They weren’t simple. Bombings in pubs. Assassinations in daylight. Retaliations that bred more retaliation. Belfast became a war zone with murals instead of memorials. Every wall told a story, and none of them ended happily.
And then, in 1979, the IRA did something that shocked even the world that had grown used to the bloodshed. On the morning of August 27th, Lord Louis Mountbatten- a war hero, the last Viceroy of India, and Queen Elizabeth’s cousin- climbed aboard a small fishing boat near the coast of Sligo, Ireland. It was a quiet family outing. A slice of normalcy. He brought along his daughter’s family, including his 14-year-old grandson.
They didn’t know that beneath the planks of that boat, a bomb had been planted. Set to detonate by remote.
When it went off, it tore the boat in half.
Mountbatten was killed instantly. So was the boy. The blast echoed far beyond that harbour- it ripped through Buckingham Palace, through Westminster, through every British newspaper. The IRA claimed responsibility, coldly, in a statement that framed it not as murder, but as war.
It was shocking not just for who he was, but what he represented.
Mountbatten wasn’t just any target. He was a symbol. A man who had presided over the British withdrawal from India- the so-called end of the empire. He was the crown, the uniform, the history. Killing him wasn’t random- it was theatre. Violent, brutal theatre.
In many ways, it felt like the culmination of all those lines from The Sniper- where even a man on a peaceful fishing trip could become fair game in a war without front lines. Where the past was never really past. Where symbols bled just like people.
But if the aim was to shake Britain, it did. If the aim was to remind the world that the IRA meant business, that too landed.
What it didn’t do, though, was end the war.
It dragged on. And on.
But somewhere in this whirlwind of violence and politics, something strange started to happen: culture began to pick up the echoes. Art, music, TV- storytellers started grappling with the chaos. Not always accurately. Not always tastefully. But the conflict had carved its way into our psyche. Everything you didn’t understand as a teenager becomes something else entirely.
A history lesson.
A tragedy.
When I first heard Sunday Bloody Sunday, I didn’t hear a protest. I heard a cool song with a haunting melody and a catchy chorus. I didn’t know about the paratroopers in Derry. I didn’t know about the mothers who buried sons that day. I didn’t know that the snare drum in the intro wasn’t just musical flair- it was mimicking a march. A funeral. A fight. And now that I do know, the song hits different.
The IRA’s story didn’t stay confined to politics and music. Somewhere along the way, its shadow made its way into something far stranger- drinks menus. In American bars, you’ll sometimes find a cocktail with a name that punches you in the gut once you know the backstory: the Irish Car Bomb.
It’s made by dropping a shot of Baileys and Irish whiskey into a half-pint of Guinness. It curdles fast- you have to chug it. But the name? That’s where it lands like a bad joke. During The Troubles, car bombs were one of the IRA’s most devastating weapons- used in cities, near pubs, in marketplaces. Naming a drink after that kind of violence is like calling something a “Molotov Mojito” or a “9/11 Martini.” Tasteless, but normalised in places far removed from the pain. It’s a strange artefact of cultural distance: how something deadly and deeply traumatic in one part of the world can become a novelty somewhere else.
The echoes don’t stop at music, TV, or bar menus. They roll into stadiums.
In British football- especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland- the history of the IRA shows up not as education, but as tribal war paint. Celtic and Rangers, the two Glasgow giants, aren’t just football clubs; they’re symbols of opposing identities. Celtic fans, largely Catholic and Irish-leaning, have sometimes sung pro-IRA chants during matches. Rangers fans, traditionally Protestant and unionist, respond with their own chants laced with anti-Irish sentiment.
It’s not about who scored the goal- it’s about whose history you’re shouting for.
In one corner of the stadium, you might hear “Ooh, ahh, up the ‘RA!”
In another, a chant about the Queen or a bitter jeer at Irish independence.
It’s performative. It’s passionate. And it’s poisonous.
And it doesn’t stop in Glasgow.
In Northern Ireland, sport often inherits the divisions of the streets. Even outside the UK, in bars from Boston to Sydney, you’ll find fans- some knowingly, many not- chanting slogans rooted in IRA history. Sometimes it’s just noise. Sometimes it’s memory wearing a football jersey.
That’s the thing about history: when it gets absorbed into sport, it becomes part of the roar. Not always understood. Not always respectful. But always present. And maybe that’s what struck me most, looking back on it all. That history doesn’t always arrive in textbooks or documentaries. Sometimes it sneaks in through a song you downloaded as a teenager. Sometimes it’s buried in a gritty drama or whispered in a football chant or poured into a pint with a name like the Irish Car Bomb. You don't question it at first. You just absorb it, like background noise. Until one day, it clicks. And suddenly, you realise you’ve been carrying fragments of a story that was never really yours- but somehow, now it is.
The IRA, Bloody Sunday, Mountbatten, The Sniper, Sons of Anarchy, that U2 track on loop- none of it came to me as a single, neat lesson. It came in shards. Out of order. Emotional before it was educational. And maybe that’s how we all learn about the past. Sideways. Slowly. By accident.
And when we finally connect the dots, the picture isn’t clean. It’s raw and conflicted and still bleeding at the edges. But it’s also real. And that matters- it makes us just a little less careless with memory. A little more human.
That’s it for this crumb, see you in the next one!
Thank you. It takes a special craft to tell the history of the IRA intertwined with so many fascinating cultural Easter eggs, like the Irish Car Bomb. Fascinating storytelling!