In the past the commemoration of the Somme has been an all Unionist affair in Ireland. Bertie Ahern is determined to follow up the full on commemoration of the Rising with a rather more sobre recognition of the Irishmen who died in the same battle alongside the 36th (Ulster) Division, featured in this Irish stamp and which was launched on Monday. An Post had been lobbied by the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.
It’s not published until 3rd March, but one book I recommend you place an advance order for from Slugger’s Bookstore is James Harkin’s Niche. Belfast émigré Harkin examines a number of stories from business, culture and politics and comes to a single insight: everywhere the broad middle is collapsing. He offers Woolworths as an iconic exemplar [...] read our review »
Ireland is in the middle of a boom – a running boom. Chances are, even if you have never run a step yourself (apart from some painful P.E. classes many moons ago), someone you know has taken up running over the last little while. Road races in Northern Ireland and in the Republic have seen [...] read our review »
Writer Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62. He was as contrary as he was brilliant. Here is a brief In Memoriam from Vanity Fair (his outlet of choice since 1992) and, here, a longer tribute from his friend Christopher Buckley Stanley in The New Yorker. Better, perhaps, though to post one of Hitchens’ own writings in [...] read our review »
Taigs: “The Gemran U Boat cmapaign in World War One surpassed all its objectives but had the opposite to the desired effect. Instead of starving Britain, it did the opposite. ”
Actually, the suspension of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915 is what creates the duality of success and negative results. Had it not been suspended, the submarine blockade likely would have been successful.
Harry: “In the first instance, the British. How do we get it off them? Overrun them. Do many die? Undoubtedly. But many were dead anyway. The British did not have the power to overcome a truly determined countrywide uprising, that’s why they were so determined to get a deal on Home Rule and get the ‘leaders’ of Irish nationalism on side during the war.”
And were there the will for such a lemming-like assault extant, it would have already happened. In WWII, the Russians were able to achieve this sort of success because A) they had no other choice and B) there was an entity in the NKVD willing to shoot those unwilling to demonstrate the appropriate fervor on the battlefield.
Harry: “In the second instance, by inviting Germany to use Irish ports. ”
You mean the same German fleet that couldn’t break out of the North Sea?
Harry: “In the third instance possibly through a new trade with America but in any case through our own metallurgy and chemistry. ”
And where, exactly, was the capital supposed to come from to support this noble endeavor?
And were there the will for such a lemming-like assault extant, it would have already happened.
This ‘lemming-like’ behaviour was being demonstrated every day of the week during 1916 by over a quarter of a million Irishmen, but in the name of the British Empire. You think there was an historical inevitability about that that made it understandable that Irishmen should do that for Britain but you find it inconceivable that they should do that for Ireland’s freedom at home?
I’m not saying anthing other than what largely happened. The men and women of 1916 did go out to fight with these things in mind. 1916 was not meant to be a heroic failure, it was meant to be a countrywide uprising with the aim of achieving the things I have laid out and with the aim of taking advantage of Britain’s difficulties in the war with Germany. From 1919 the Irish did take their weapons from the British. But by 1919 the opportunity for defeating a weakened British army on a larger scale had passed, so a greater compromise was eventually agreed.
Tell me, do you think that if the British had not been able to persuade Redmond to get Nationalist Ireland to support the war that they would have gone ahead and entered the war anyway?
Contrary to some people’s image, Ireland was never a poor country; only it’s majority population was poor. As Roger Casement explained in 1915 in ‘The Crime Against Europe’ (link here):
I read but yesterday “Few people realise that the trade of Ireland with Great Britain is equal to that of our trade with India, is 13,000,000 pounds greater than our trade with Germany, and 40,000,000 pounds greater than the whole of our trade with the United States.”
How completely England has laid hands on all Irish resources is made clear from a recent publication that Mr. Chamberlain’s “Tariff Commission” issued towards the end of 1912.
This document, entitled “The Economic Position of Ireland and its relation to Tariff Reform,” constitutes, in fact, a manifesto calling for the release of Ireland from the exclusive grip of Great Britain.
Thus, for instance, in the section “External Trade of Ireland,” we learn that Ireland exported in 1910, £63,400,000 worth of Irish produce. Of this Great Britain took £52,600,000 worth, while some £10,800,000 went either to foreign countries, or to British colonies, over £4,000,000 going to the United States. Of these eleven million pounds worth of Irish produce sent to distant countries, only £700,000 was shipped direct from Irish ports.
The remainder, more than £10,000,000, although the market it was seeking lay chiefly to the West, had to be shipped East into and to pay a heavy transit toll to that country for discharge, handling, agency, commission, and reloading on British vessels in British ports to steam back past the shores of Ireland it had just left.
So it’s more than just ports and recruits that may have worried the British. A rebellious Ireland with up to 500,000 men if not more bent on independence, during a time when the British were struggling in a war with germany, was a very real threat to British power. The men and women of 1916 knew this and struck for freedom.
We had no quarrel with the people of Germany, who had never done anything to us. The release of this stamp, with its glorying pro-british posture, is a direct offence to the meaning of the memory of 1916. Bertie Ahern stands for nothing in particular except unseen deals and so thinks he can play around with images and meanings because they don’t cost him anything, even profoundly offensive images such as this. A government led by a ducker-and-diver which thinks prostituting its own historical interpretation has nothing but positive outcomes for ‘peace’. Greater anglicisation and the deliberate forgetting of the true meaning of our history is not a price we should have to pay.
Nor is opening up Ireland as a recruiting ground for the British army for the first time in almost 100 years.
I notice that unionists are largely quiet on this whole issue, other than giving brief murmurs of approval. Have they no historical analysis to add to this, no interpretation of British involvement in WW1 that might credibly counter Irish nationalism’s analysis of these events? Have they nothing to say about how commemorating these events is itself a political statement within the modern context, whether that be to promote pride in the union or to get young Irishmen to enlist for service in Iraq?
“It is interesting that some people are of the opion that foreigners have no right to meddle in Irish affairs.
De Valera was born in America and James Connolly was born in Scotland and yet people think that these two foreigners were irish heroes.”
Under Irish citizenship law, someone of Irish parentage is automatically entitled to Irish citizenship so I don’t consider them foreigners as Dev’s mother and both of Connolly’s parents were Irish. In fact this also applies to the children of British citizens born abroad who are entitled to claim British citizenship on this basis, known as “jus-sanguine” (law of blood). In fact jus-sanguine applies in around 140 countries worldwide. In the same way that Bonar Law, a Canadian, supported the Loyalist cause in NI because of his Loyalist ancestory. Roots are a component of national identity and geography alone doesn’t tell the whole story, as the unfortunate partition of the island shows.
“De Valera should heve had his brains blown out by a british bullet and only got off due to the fact that Britian wanted America to come into the war and didn’t want to shoot an American.”
I agree he was saved by his American citizenship but disagree with the proposition that it would have been good for him to be shot.
“Under Irish citizenship law, someone of Irish parentage is automatically entitled to Irish citizenship so I don’t consider them foreigners as Dev’s mother and both of Connolly’s parents were Irish.”
This is both a good thing and a subtle trap. I have relatives in England and Australia, and they were always irish, because they had Irish blood. And that’s a good thing – it widens Irishness for those who wish to keep close to their roots. I think the “Law of Blood” can run quite deep in Ireland becauise the number of people that left.
But the flipside of that coin is it could be easy to say that, if Irishness is based on blood, those coming in can never be Irish or true Irish, and there is a subtle (or not so subtle) form of racism in that. I’d like to see a wider form of Irishness that can emcompass everyone, because we are going to have an awful lot of people coming in.
They forgot to mention Erskine Childrers, the damn’d Englishman whose execution by the Free Staters was one of the most disgusting episodes in the entire Civil war.
Harry: though Germany did nothing to Ireland, Rebel Cork withdrew the freedom of the city from Kuno Myer, the famous Old Irish scholar. A shameful episode by a group of shoneens.
Also when the King arrived in Irleand, in 1905 (?), the southern Orangies and Crown Catholic wannabes were out in force to greet the Royal lackeys. 1916 was also about removing those stains on Irish history.
The Somme and episodes like it were a tragedy for all concenred. The pity today is that Orange and Crown Catholics continue ot milk it for all it is worth.
http://tinyurl.com/kryvq
http://tinyurl.com/kjp8y
British warship visits Dublin and hard line Daily Telegraph points out the Orangies did not answer the call in significant numbers in 1914. More loyal to the half crown and all that. So, as in Waltzing Matilda, we have ot ask what precisely the Orangies are marching for? That the misguided Catholic Irish died in their stead?
Taigs:
I don’t think that the Tele is saying that Ulstermen did not serve in “significant numbers” (your phrase). The phrase used was: “Ulstermen were a minority”. Well, they would be wouldn’t they. They are/were a minority in the whole island.
The inverse conclusion is tempting. Northern Prods and Southern Catholics, on the face of it, served roughly in proportion to population, ie, the Southerners were as willing to go as the Prods.
All the best
Perhaps now that this has been done the Orange Order will recognize that the pope financed William of Orange’s army?
It’s a funny thing the Grand Lodge of Ireland lobbying an entity of by their definition a foreign goverment (Eire) for an externally recognised symbol (the stamp) commerating through their horrendous deaths their overwhelming loyality to their Britishness.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0709/commemoration.html
The lunatics are at it again in the South. This time it is for all wars with 1916 thrown in as a sop. While the Irish UN sldiers killed in places like Niemba and Soth Lebanon deserve mention, does this include Irish mercenaries, and those who died in Vietnam? Does it include fatalitis in the Spanish Civil war?
Still, it was good to see the Romanian Orthodox Church represented as they are at least as Irish as most others.