Enemy was inside government, not outside

‘What is history but a fable agreed upon’ is a well-known dictum attributed to Napoleon but one which Minister Shatter, Prof Roberts of UCC and others seem determined to uphold, in their critique of Ireland’s failure to join the ‘fight for freedom’ alongside the ‘anti-fascist Allied coalition’ in 1939.

The term ‘anti-fascist’ hardly inspires confidence considering the role that the conservative governments of Britain and France played in the years leading up to WW2.

When the forces of the dictator Franco, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany attacked the poorly-armed, democratic government of Spain, Britain and France imposed an arms and materials embargo, sealing its fate.

By his bold assertion that ‘in the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy’, the minister appears to suggest that the Irish people and government were fully aware of the Holocaust during the course of the war and that the war was, somehow, fought to prevent the Holocaust.

There is, of course, no evidence to support either proposition.

In his efforts to make light of deserting soldiers, our minister seems to be strangely unaware that Ireland was in a state of emergency.

The enemy was not just at the gate but already inside, in the form of Ireland’s own fascist movement — the Blueshirts — spawned by the Minister’s very own conservative party.

Billy Fitzpatrick

Terenure

Dublin 6