Irish war dead being used cynically to attack Irish nationhood

Monday, March 01, 2010

THE former Fine Gael TD for Donegal North East, Paddy Harte OBE (Letters, February 8) appears to labour under the impression that Irishmen who fought for the British empire during the Great War have been ignored by the Irish state.

This is untrue. The fact that we give our primary allegiance to those who established the Irish state, not to those who tried to prevent it, does not constitute neglect of those Irish who went away and never returned.

For many years now Irish society in the South has been accused of failing to honour the memory of those who were slaughtered in the Great War. Can it be that Mr Harte is unaware that the Sunday nearest July 11 each year has been set aside to commemorate all Irish killed in all wars, including those who gave their lives on service with the UN. The President, Taoiseach, leaders of the opposition and religious leaders from all the main churches are invited to attend. This is truly a national commemoration to honour those Irish who died, with formidable respect and dignity but without the pomp and pageant of the British imperial military ethos so much associated with the British Legion version of Remembrance Sunday.

It is entirely appropriate that this National Day of Commemoration be held. What is not acceptable, however, is the effort to confer new respectability on the British army under the guise of honouring the Irish war dead.

Is Mr Harte suggesting we should forget that during the War of Independence, many Irish families with sons who had fought and fallen at the Somme and Mons were having their doors kicked in and were terrorised by men in British uniform?

These Irishmen in British uniform had been lied to and betrayed. Home Rule for Ireland was promised, but then suspended. Irish Party leader John Redmond had told them the war was a "just war, undertaken in defence of small nations and oppressed peoples". Redmond was referring to Belgium, but Roger Casement had exposed the real Belgium – a ruthless colonial power that practised genocide and slavery in Africa. Young Irishmen fought and died for freedoms that were being denied to their own country.

Why should the Irish state allow itself to become progressively more involved with the ceremonial of a quasi-military organisation like the British Legion that promotes British patriotic nationalism?

Why is the National Day of Commemoration – which remembers the barbarism inflicted on our great-grandparents’ generation – not sufficient for these revisionists? It is my view that the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in such an appalling conflict, which was more about colonial designs on Africa than the freedoms of small nations, is being used most cynically as a veiled propagandist attack on separatist Irish nationhood.

The memory of those who were mass murdered in such an inglorious, inter-imperialist conflict should be protected from political opportunists. The greatest nonsense arising from this issue raised by Mr Harte is the assumption that "poppy day" can be officially commemorated by a state that was born out of the Easter Rising. Only a naive, weak or silly government would entertain the idea that the Easter Week volunteers and the army which opposed them receive "parity of esteem" in state ceremonies. Is there any country anywhere in the world that honours its own heroes of liberation on the one hand and simultaneously the army of its colonial oppressor on the other? It would be more honourable if, instead of attempting to coerce the Irish state into commemorating a vast imperial war culture which was responsible for the mass murder of millions across Europe, Mr Harte asked who was responsible for this unparalleled act of slaughter?

Tom Cooper
Delaford Lawn
Knocklyon
Dublin 16

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, March 01, 2010