Sir, – If there was such a thing in history as a charge of “criminal misjudgement”, then surely John Redmond must be a prime suspect. Redmond stands indicted for the central role he played in sending tens of thousands of innocent young Irishmen into yet another useless and grotesquely violent imperial war. This was done, it would seem, on foot of a vague promise of home rule – what Roger Casement reputedly called “a promissory note payable only after death”. By contrast, Redmond’s great predecessor, Parnell, had years before shown that he recognised and, more importantly, was prepared to yield to and support the growing separatist and anti-imperial movement, the “march of a nation”, if such were the will of the Irish people.
The real “war to end all wars” was about to unfold in John Redmond’s own land: the 1916-21 Irish War of Independence. For most of the island, the outcome of this infinitely less violent event ended the empire’s practice of recruiting young, mainly impoverished, Irishmen as fodder for its endless colonial wars. (Recent research by eminent historian Orlando Figes reveals that in my native parish of Aghada in Co Cork, as many as one in every three men lost their lives in the all but forgotten Crimean War. In fact, post-Famine Irish recruits made up a full one-third of the entire British army engaged in that particular disaster.) By contrast, since independence, Irish soldiers have carved out an enviable reputation for themselves as a universally respected peacekeeping force within the UN.
Whatever the intention behind the newly-issued first World War postage stamps, I think most will agree that the choice of images and text merely serves to underline the manipulative nature and the very bad judgment of that particular pro-war lobby.
In contrast to Redmond and others, and with commendable good judgement, the Irish Labour and Trade Union Congress published the following address to the women of Ireland, on the eve of the war:“ ... a war for the aggrandisement of the capitalist class has been declared … it is you who will suffer most by this foreign war. It is the sons you reared at your bosom that will be sent to be mangled by shot and torn by shell, it is your fathers, husbands and brothers, whose corpses will pave the way to glory for an Empire, which despises you.” – Yours, etc,
BILLY FITZPATRICK,
Ashfield Park,
Dublin 6W