An Post should issue Volunteers stamp

It is strange that so much publicity has been given to An Post’s mistake in issuing a stamp with the wrong image of Capt. Jack White, one of the founders of the Citizen Army.

No historian seems to have noticed the wrong image on the stamp issued in Nov 13 to commemorate the founding of the Irish Volunteers. Instead of using one of the many pictures of the newly-formed Volunteers in 1913/early 1914, An Post chose to use a professionally uniformed group of Redmond’s National Volunteers, based in Waterford, a group who did not come into being until after the split in the Volunteer movement in autumn 1914. The group of National Volunteers pictures also had a flag which was particular to that group, which did not exist when the Irish Volunteers were formed.

Perhaps these facts escaped the country’s historians as commemorative stamps are no longer sold at post offices, they can only be purchased at the philatelic shop in the GPO.