Ireland should not honour ‘warmongers’

In 1937, Irish voters enacted the Constitution, affirming the State’s adherence to pacific settlement of international disputes by international arbitration or judicial determination.

The voters also ruled that the State should not declare, or participate in, any war, save with the assent of Dáil Eireann.

So far as I know, successive generations of citizens have not changed their minds.

I’m therefore surprised that An Phost has issued a postage stamp honouring John Redmond and Edward Carson, ‘warmongers’ responsible for human death and suffering on a gigantic scale.

Redmond had no mandate to commit Ireland to war, and he did not even consult his party colleagues before his speech at Woodenbridge in September, 1914.

Redmond was motoring in the countryside when he happened upon National Volunteers drilling, and made an off-the-cuff speech reported verbatim in the newspapers.

Redmond directed Irishmen to wherever the British Empire would send them, notably to Mesopotamia, which is now called Iraq.

Perhaps there are people in Iraq today receiving letters stamped with John Redmond’s portrait, and are grateful for them? As for Carson, a hypochondriac fat cat who never wore a military uniform — he was organising other men for civil war in the United Kingdom when that Kingdom was at peace.

He was co-opted into the British Cabinet without a by-your-leave of the electorate and pressed strongly for conscription in Ireland.

He supported the massacre of Indians in Amritsar, by British-commanded forces, in 1919, when even such belligerent blackguards as Winston Churchill condemned it.

What further disgrace can Ireland’s Government bring on her people when it chooses to honour these warmongers?

I suppose I needn’t hold my breath and that there’s more where that came from.

Donal Kennedy

Belmont Ave

Palmers Green

London

England