A crime against their own people
It is a campaign that is eminently worthy of public support. The policy of shooting one’s own volunteers is indefensible, and was indefensible in 1914 (as comparison with the practice of the Australians and the Germans makes indisputably clear).
The legal procedures adopted were often hasty and ill-considered (for the object was not justice, but example).
And in many cases the verdicts were not only unreliable but patently unjust. It is remarkable that recent British governments have shown themselves so insensitive to the need to make reparations for what was, after all, a crime against their own people.
In such a failure to make an adequate response we may discern the reason why such injustices were committed 90 years ago, namely, a lack of respect for the ordinary working man (whether English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh).
We may reasonably ask where were the Nelsons and the Wellingtons of the Great War.
We admire Nelson because he led his men into battle and died in their midst with the utmost courage. We admire Wellington for the care that he took in the disposition of his men. He placed them (’the scum of the earth’, as he called them) on the reverse slopes to prevent unnecessary casualties.
We can be sure that he would not have sent the flower of our four nations by thousand upon thousand into needless death in Gallipoli or on the Somme or at Ypres.
The heroes of the First War are those ordinary soldiers who gave their lives with such patriotic devotion at the behest of men whose sense of humanity had been numbed by the slaughters to which they had become habituated (and for which, in no small part, they were responsible).
The British government has still an unpayable debt to pay to its people, and it is still unable to admit error.
Even the will to grant pardons at the remove of 90 years seems beyond the capacity of politicians still willing to send young British soldiers to their deaths in far-off lands.
The distinction (for distinction in a way it is) to be the first soldier to be shot at dawn fell to Private Thomas James Highgate, 1st Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment, on September 8, 1914.
We have his will in his own handwriting. It runs as follows: “If I get killed all I have to come from the Goverment (sic) for my Services I leave to Miss Mary MacNulty, No 3 Leinster St, Phibsborough, Dublin.’
The Kents had been stationed in Dublin just before the outbreak of the war and Thomas Highgate had evidently fallen in love with a Dublin lass from Phibsboro.
I, for one, do not find that at all surprising. But I fear that Miss MacNulty did not benefit greatly from the generosity of the British government. We owe it to the memory of young people such as these to continue our protest in support of pardons for all 306 young men shot at dawn.
I welcome the expressions of support from politicians such as John Bruton and Brian Cowen, and in particular applaud the magnificent efforts of Peter Mulvany of the Irish Seamen’s Relatives Association (1939-‘46).
It is time for us to give our renewed support to these campaigners, for the families of these dishonoured young men have already endured many years of sorrow in the (so far) vain expectation of justice.
Gerald Morgan
School of English
Trinity College
Dublin 2.
