We Can Hear You

at

ww1

Wait for it…

A faraway chant of “Shame, Shame, Shame on you” can be heard during a minute’s silence following the unveiling this afternoon of a ‘cross of sacrifice’ at Glasnevin Cemetery to mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of WW1.

WW1 centenary commemoration takes place in Dublin (BBC)

Thanks C

Meanwhile…

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Protesters outside Glasnevin cemetery (pics 1-2) ; The Cross of Sacrifice (top) and President Higgins with the Duke of Kent  (above) this afternoon.

(Laura Hutton/Photocall ireland)

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102 thoughts on “We Can Hear You

  1. Helen

    fair enough – those Irishmen were sent as cannon-fodder for empire. they would be disgusted at the bigwigs shedding crocodile tears for them.

    1. Benny

      Most of joined because of the promise of home rule not for the empire. Read a book, these men fought for Ireland.

      1. Am i still On this Island

        Or some like Ledwig joined after seeing first hand what was happening. Anyone who doubts the scale or enormity of this conflict needs to visit the fields surrounding Leper and the countless graveyards some as big as 20,000 crosses some as small as 30 dotted over the landscape, the fact that shells, bodies and artefacts are still turned up as fields are tilled every spring is hard to believe.

          1. Am i still On this Island

            Helen I apologise my dyslexia upsets you and forces you to bully and insult me

        1. Spaghetti Hoop

          Iron harvest. Yes, it’s a very poignant yet troubling landscape, I visit regularly.

      2. Kolmo

        Nope. They were repeatedly told they were fighting for Ireland, and little Belgium, but they were expendable cannon-fodder in a squabble between royal cousins and the preservation of their empires. Irish Home Rule party shoveled the young men into the hideous cauldron of war as if they were cattle, absolute and shameful waste of young lives.

        1. Am i still On this Island

          Kolmo, you should probably read Tom Barry’s quote on why he signed up and went to war, it is the illustration of why your generalisation is inaccurate.

          WW1 almost single handily destroyed thee British aristocracy and their way of life intentionally or otherwise

        2. Don Pidgeoni

          And the best way to express your horror at their treatment and death is to disrupt a ceremony in their memory? Right……

          1. Helen

            the best way to honour their memory is to remember that they were murdered. Having the duke of kent there, with his usual empire celebrating words, is an insult to the men who ended up dead.

        3. Ross

          yeah they were used as canon fodder so we should disrespect them and behave like knackers during ceremonies remembering their sacrifices

        1. Am i still On this Island

          Tom Barry’s quote “I knew nothing about nations, large or small, Iwent to the war for no other reason than that I wanted to see what war was like”

      3. Mark Dennehy

        I think you lot should have talked to those who went over. It wasn’t for politics; it was for the army pay that kept food on the table when there weren’t too many jobs going.

          1. Mark Dennehy

            Oh, here we go.
            “You didn’t speak to every single one so you can’t make generalisations or say my generalisations are wrong”.
            What a lot of twaddle. There wasn’t much money, so people signed the oath with a fake name and took the paycheque. That was what was done back then, it wasn’t some big deal or some political statement and nobody was terribly worried about poor little Belgium until much later. People were a touch more pragmatic at the time, crippling poverty will do that to you.

            I mean, next you’ll be telling me we all rose up against England in 1918 and fought a war of Independence because we were upset at Pearse’s lot being executed (despite the fact that they were spat on in the streets for shooting unarmed Dublin civilians when it all kicked off), and not because England was bringing in a draft in 1918… oh, what, did they leave that bit out of your history books too?

          2. ReproBertie

            So the approximately 25,000 Redmondites who signed up to secure Home Rule for Ireland were only saying that for the PR were they? Yes, tens of thousands signed up for the pay but that doesn’t mean it was the only reason.

            Speaking of twaddle, you’re being fierce precious about your generalisation there but how lucky we are to have you with your deep insight to the history not contained in history books while the rest of us only have what we did in secondary school to base our history on. It’s just not possible that anyone else would have heard about the conscription crisis or read anything about Ireland during the first world war. Please, continue to enlighten us with your vast knowledge of untaught history.

          3. Mark Dennehy

            25,000 redmondites didn’t join up before WW1 broke out, and there were more Irish than that in the British Army before WW1.

            And “deep insight”? Give me a rest, even wikipedia covers this. You just need to read a book in your local library that wasn’t on the Leaving Cert history syllabus to learn this stuff, it’s not rocket science.

          4. ReproBertie

            Prepare yourself for a shock but the 25,000 Redmondites who joined up after the outbreak were among the men who went over. It was “those who went over” you were talking about right? That’s what you said after all.

            Please feel free to give us more excerpts from your thesis on why Irish men who went over to the Great War signed up. I’d particularly like to hear the section on how they all changed their names because, strangely, my great-uncle didn’t change his. He even left a job to do so but we’ll ignore that.

          5. Mark Dennehy

            25,000 out of 210,000. Just to keep the perspective in. The majority of those 210,000 weren’t political activists and those who saw deployment early in the war were already serving in the army, well before all the home-rule-through-service malarky kicked off. You are talking about the minority of cases, that’s all. Our history was a damn sight more pragmatic when it was happening, and the romanticised version of it we teach today has a fairly tenuous link to actual events at the best of times. But then, you can’t push a political agenda if things like “facts” keep getting in the way…

            Also, I didn’t say they changed their names, I said they signed the oath of allegiance with other names. Go look up your great-uncle’s records if they survived, you’ll notice the name is either utterly wrong or misspelled. That was the Irish solution to the problem and it was exceptionally common at the time. That’s not my thesis, that’s what’s on the paper, written before you were born, by the men we’re talking about.

            But I guess if you won’t read a history book that an underpaid teacher didn’t force down your throat, what’s the point of referring you to actual source documents, eh?

          6. ReproBertie

            So you admit that not all joined up for the money. Maybe if you had read a history book from your local library you’d have known that and thought twice before posting your generalisation.

            I have my great uncle’s service records and see no mistakes in his name.

      4. Sinabhfuil

        Mm. But were they right in placing their faith in the limited promise of the county-council-like Home Rule? From a contemporary article:
        At a public meeting after the war, when 2,000 Irish ex-soldiers refused to march in a victory parade, the widowed Mrs TM Kettle said that Irish Nationalist soldiers were being asked to march past College Green, their own House of Parliament, where their rights were bartered away, to salute Lord French, not as an Irish soldier, but as Lord Lieutenant and head of the Irish Executive, which was responsible for the rule of coercion in this country, and for the betrayal of every Irish Nationalist soldier who fought and fell in the war.
        Did any Irish Nationalist fight for any country except the country of his birth, she asked. If they went on the side of England it was because they thought for the first time in her history the grace of God was operating in her, and she was at last about to take the side of honour in the world’s conflict.
        Mrs Kettle said she hoped, in honour of her husband’s memory, not a single Dublin Fusilier would march in the procession. If they brought about an Irish settlement, she said, they would march proudly; such was not the case; but, on the contrary they were asked to join and unite with the army of occupation.

      5. Moan

        Really ?

        My great-uncle, a Dublin man, joined and fought “for King and country” as he said in one of his letters home from the trenches.
        Sadly he never made it home himself.

        As usual the republican knuckle-draggers disgrace themselves.

    2. scottser

      i’m sure those fallen soldiers might be more miffed that folks couldn’t shut the fuk up for a minute and recognise their sacrifice.

      1. Helen

        their sacrifice? they didn’t want to sacrifice themselves for empire. they were the victims of one of the largest slaughters in human history.

        1. scottser

          many thousands genuinely believed that a deal for home rule was on the cards and went to fight on that basis. not all, but some. the vast majority of those irish personel killed came from middle-class and protestant families with a tradition of service. i’m not so sure who you mean by ‘they’. ‘they’ weren’t a homogenous group with anything approaching uniform ideals or expectations.

          1. Sinabhfuil

            Scottser, where did you get that “vast majority” figure, and can you back it up? An awful lot of tenement-dwellers signed up because they needed the work; at the time it was also notorious that unionist firms sacked Catholic employees to make them join up, while keeping on the loyal loyalists.

          2. scottser

            i’m prepared to be corrected on the ‘vast majority’ being from one demographic sinabhfuil – and i wasn’t aware of the push by business owners loyal to the crown sacking workers to force them to join. comeheretome had an item on the level of anti-german feeling by dublin folk during the first world war – there was some pretty shocking violence towards them:
            http://comeheretome.com/2014/03/18/when-dublin-mobs-attacked-german-pork-butchers-august-1914/

    3. Sidewinder

      So? That’s further reason to NOT s**t all over a memorial, not a reason to chant during a minutes silence.

  2. munkifisht

    Disgraceful, simply disgraceful… Really winds me up when people don’t landscape their videos

  3. Am i still On this Island

    Absolutely disgusting behaviour, people attempting to revise our nations history and the part those who volunteered to go to fight in Europe played in our nations history.

    Some could do with reading the published works of Francis Ledwige, or forget that Tom Barry and other key figures who helped win Irish independence were trained by the British and fought in WW1

    But I am sure the scumbags are now all sitting in a pub somewhere in English football shirts drinking to their successful day

      1. Mé Féin

        Not really. It was a political show interrupted by political objections. You may disagree with the noise, but I don’t like being played for a fool by the political establishment.

        1. Am i still On this Island

          Mé Féin; try as you might to rewrite and revise Irish history, there is no hiding from our past or the reality of the VOLUNTEERS during WW1.

          Perhaps more books that are not sold in the SF shop on Parnell square will help you understand that

          1. Helen

            nobody questions the reality – they just question how they were murdered in an imperial war, they were blown to pieces for nothing.

          2. Am i still On this Island

            Helen, you know nothing, I know why my family members signed up and I know their pensions put food on my grandmothers table when she was a child I know were one of my family lies near where he fell on Flanders and I have found the name of one that lies in a grave know only to him on the Menin Gate, I know the reasons those 3 individuals went to war and none of them involve empire or imperial sacrifice.

            If anything the wars of 1914-1918 & 1940-1945 speed up the disintegration of empires and colonies

          3. cluster

            AISOTI, they may well have had their own reasons for going to war but it is hard to argue that they, along with millions if other young men from around Europe, were sacrificed by the stupidity, greed and arrogance of European elites.

            The young men involved may have done so for money, for adventure, for Home Rule, for ‘King and country’, for ‘plucky’ Belgium or whatever else but they did so in ignorance of what was involved. There was a constant stream of official propaganda and the media outlets were censored. The war was portrayed as a lark rather than the senseless bloodbath it really was.

            I personally would never heckle a memorial like this but it, in itself, is inherently political especially when there are hereditary royals attending.

          4. Am i still On this Island

            Cluster by the time of the Battle of Somme on mid 1916 that illusion of war being a lark was long gone and nobody was under any illusions. The interesting thing about the concept of Imperialism and empires was that WW1 was the start of their collapse and break up. The Ottoman Empire, the Austria Hungarian empire, and German empires were all defunct and the huge losses to the landed gentry and British upper classes helped speed up the dissolution of the British empire and the class system in Britain

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          I mean anyone using it for cheap political points, like I don’t know, the hecklers? They are just as bad as those they claim to despise.

          1. cluster

            Not sure I follow your logic, Don.

            If they feel that it is bring used to make cheap political points, can they not protest this?

          2. Don Pidgeoni

            This kind of thing should just be off bounds. And if this royal was this as head of the commission for war graves – well surely that’s his job? It irritates me how something so terrible can be killed for cheap points.

    1. Drogg

      Well put Am i still On this Island, i suppose trying to educate these people is a lost cause, but lets hope future generations don’t follow their lead to become ignorant morons and learn about our very varied history.

    2. Helen

      why don’t you read liam o’flaherty’s works? those men went to war, and died in the trenches like dogs. do you think the duke of kent, or any of his ancestors, gave a crap for the poor cannonfodder?

  4. Mister Mister

    Scumbag republicans, or whatever thy bunch of illiterates want to call themselves.

      1. ReproBertie

        The First World War is as much a part of our history as the 1916 Rising, despite what some might want us to think.

        1. Helen

          yes, it is. but let us remember them in a way they would want. do you think, after seeing the horror of the trenches, they’d want to see the representatives of the bigwigs who sent them to their deaths?

          1. ReproBertie

            Who are you to speak of what they would want?

            Isn’t it disgraecful that nobody else is ever allowed go to the memorial or remember them in any other way.

          2. Sinabhfuil

            ReproBertie, with respect, this isn’t true. I often go to the Lutyens memorial garden and remember those poor boys and men and girls and women who went to the slaughter in Gallipoli and France and Belgium and elsewhere.
            But I don’t welcome this blatant political agitprop by British royals and their lackeys.

          3. ReproBertie

            Obviously it’s not true. That was my point. We’re free to ignore this political back slapping and commemorate the fallen in whatever way we choose. We can even do so at this very same memorial.

        1. Odis

          No point. If you don’t know – you don’t know. Enjoy your double digit IQ life old chap.

          1. Dr Night

            Hahaha, you’re a funny guy. You start it off by making idiotic derogatory statements using a word that only a real dickhead would and end it with an attack on someones level of intelligence after being asked to explain what a culchie FF poilitician looks like.

  5. Huppenstop

    The heckling is disgraceful. But just once in the coming couple of years of commemorations it would be nice for us to remember something without the need to have a member of the British royal family present.

  6. eamonn clancy

    Still don’t get the idea that for Irish freedom it was better to slaughter young Germans soldiers rather than English ones.

    1. frankiej

      I agree with you. Don’t know why we always have to have some British representation. They didn’t care about some poor Irish lads dying then no more than they care about any of us now.

      The guys who went, I wouldn’t at all regard them as heroes but I do feel sorry for them and they should probably be remembered if only because so many of them fell for the British con.

      1. mauriac

        agree , the Redmond’s et al.sold them a pup but no harm putting up a few memorials to their memories.not sure about that big sword (a bit dulce et decorum est. ..) but I think it was free …

  7. H

    Fools, but I do wonder why the Duke of Kent was there, was he representing England or the English armed forces? The former wouldn’t make sense as this is a memorial for the Irish fallen, however, I could see why there might be someone there representing the armed forces because that is who the Irish fought for/with so maybe he was there in his capacity as a retired Field Marshall.

    1. Am i still On this Island

      H probably representing the British armed forces who these Irish me were fighting with when they died

      1. mauriac

        nah,think its just cos he’s president of the War Graves Commission who paid for that carbuncle.

        1. H

          Ah, that makes sense, if BS had said that at the top it could have saved a lot of the ‘why do the English always have to come’ questions

  8. CousinJack

    It was 100 years ago, build a bridge, almost no one cares who fought for what.

    btw Irish independence has been a roaring success, well worth becoming the vaticans altar boy and destroying the vulnerable, whilst the rest of western europe moved in to modernity
    Swapping a foreign royalty for gombeens, hurray the glorious revolution, tis grand like

    1. mauriac

      “moved into modernity” via the hell of WW2.not all of the european mainland is a modernist other.agree we need a new constitution though.

    1. scottser

      i take it you vote for a political party that doesn’t have blood on its hands. whcih one?

  9. Casey

    For those actually interested, the scholar Peter Karsten wrote a research paper called “Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792-1922,” and he talks about many understandable reasons why young Irish men (and women) signed up to fight or nurse in WW1.

    Foremost was economic opportunity since most volunteers came from an impoverished background or had no chance of regular work. Regular pay, daily sustenance, medical services, pension benefits, and post-service government jobs were excellent inducements.

    Next was the spirit of adventure and the oppertunity to see the world rather than just their own backyards and cities. Historical tales covering the Flight of the Earls; the Wild Geese; the Irish in the American Civil War; the San Patricios Mexican War venture; would have inspired men like this.

    A tradition of Recruiting rallies for Irishmen to join foreign armies dating back to the 1790s. These drives recruited Irish men to take part in wars all over the world.

    Family traditions of enlistments into the British Army.

    Redmond’s hope that if we played nice with English, sure they might play nice with us and give us home rule after the war.

    Many young men joined simply to be with their friends.

    Again for anyone who is interested in reading up on the subject and not just in throwing examples of their own gombeenism out there for all to see, the book ‘Irishmen or English Soldiers?: The Times and World of a Southern Irish Man 1876-1916 Enlisting in the British Army During the First World War’ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irishmen-English-Soldiers-1876-1916-Enlisting/dp/0853236003 talks about what life would have been like for the ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND IRISH MEN who signed up to fight in WW1.

    Do any of you know how many came home?

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