Calls for Trinity memorial to war dead

A memorial should be erected to the Second World War dead from Ireland’s oldest university, campaigners said.

While the Republic remained neutral in the conflict between 1939 and 1945, thousands of soldiers left the country and the Irish army to join the British forces, including hundreds from Trinity College Dublin. A total of 111 from the university died.

A spokesman for the campaign said: “The list of the Trinity dead is a record of the judgements of such individual consciences, for in many cases these men and women could have chosen careers and lives undisturbed by the European conflict.

“Their willingness to hazard and indeed to lose their lives in a cause they saw to be both necessary and just is beyond all admiration. But they have suffered a fate that most assuredly they did not deserve. They have been written out of the story in which they were so conspicuous a part.”

When war broke out, Ireland had just finished a protectionist trade war with Britain and wanted to carve out a foreign policy independently from its former rulers.

During the conflict Ireland pursued non-alignment between the warring parties but did make concessions to the Allies, including an air corridor for military aircraft accessing the Atlantic.

The approach to citizens who left to fight the Nazis was unforgiving. They were found guilty by military tribunals of going absent without leave and branded deserters.

After the war they faced discrimination, lost their pensions and were barred from holding jobs paid for by the State.

But since then attitudes have softened and a pardon was issued recently for thousands of soldiers who deserted the Republic to fight.

Campaigners said a Trinity College memorial would be the final piece in the jigsaw. A spokesman said: “It is time to put matters of public concern as a matter of public record, and indeed to put the record straight.

“There is no merit in disguising from public view the principled defence of freedom and democracy. By now even Sinn Féin has paid honour to the Irish dead of two world wars.

“Ireland and Trinity College played its part and often more than its part in the battle for freedom in Europe in 1939.

“Now that the Irish Government has granted amnesty and immunity and apologised to former Defence Force personnel and addressed issues of concern surrounding World War II, its time for Trinity College to address its failure to adequately remember its own dead by erecting a memorial to their memory.”