In politics our memories remain selective and it is simply to enforce a suitable narrative that binds with todays political desires from the ruling classes: This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, November 08, 2014 as a LEADING ARTICLE; AN EDITORIAL. We Forget Saturday, November 08, 2014 For nearly a century ceremonies in Britain to remember those who fought in the First World War, and subsequently all wars, were animated by the phrase “Lest We Forget.” In Ireland those ceremonies provoked a response far closer to “Lest We Remember” and were, unfortunately, informed by dishonesty fuelled by politically-motivated denial. This Republic’s reluctance, until very recently, to honour the fact that something around 50,000 Irishmen fought in the war was one of its less attractive characteristics. The annual Armistice Day remembrance ceremony will be held at the cenotaph in London tomorrow and the Irish ambassador to Britain Dan Mulhall will participate. It is entirely right, and over-due, that this independent country should be so represented. Recognising the tragedy of all wars is always a complex and challenging exercise and the burden of our history makes it even more difficult. Those complexities have, however, been used for far too long to deny the honourable contribution so many Irishmen made to our world. The response: Your November 8 editorial speaks of the “honourable contribution” that Britain’s Great War Irish soldiers made to the world, and of the “dishonesty” of the Irish view of that war which, you say, caused us to “dishonour” the memory of those Irish soldiers. It is right that we should remember this disgusting and atrocious war whose consequences still persist, having produced, not a mere four years of carnage, but a whole century of it. Is it really a “contribution to the world” which we can be proud of? Honour, dishonour, honesty, dishonesty. These are strong words. Truth is also a strong word. We should remember the whole truth, not some selective, sanitised, partial version which promotes such “honourable contributions” in our own era. The outcome of the war would probably have been the same if all of the Irish volunteer soldiers had kept out of it. So that particular “contribution to the world” hardly matters in the scheme of things. The most important Irish contribution to the British war effort was not our soldiers, but the war propaganda written by prominent Home Rule activists such as Tom Kettle, whose articles in the British press powerfully inflamed the public mind, creating an insane war fever there which even the deaths of millions could not extinguish, and whose embers still glow in the Poppy-Remembrance cult which your editorial praises. Think of the Sun newspaper’s “Gotcha” headlines during Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands War. Then add in the intelligence and eloquence of Kettle. We should remember truthfully, not selectively. We should remember another notable Irishman of Home Rule persuasion. This was Charles James O’Donnell who, in his 1920’s book The Lordship of the World, definitively refuted the war propaganda produced by the likes of Kettle, exposing Britain’s Great War as a criminal conspiracy aimed at the destruction of Germany, which, in 1914, was a relatively peaceful manufacturing and trading country whose industrial success was resented by Britain. O’Donnell was no Republican. Born in Donegal, he became an eminent Imperial administrator in India. He was elected as Liberal M.P. in an English constituency in 1906, working to further Indian interests. O’Donnell made a significant “contribution to the world”. Why is he neglected and forgotten? Is it because we just can’t handle the truth he told us about our Great War? Yes, let us remember. But not selectively. Remember not just Kettle but also O’Donnell. ENDS!
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:06:42 +0000
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