FOR all the talk of the ’fighting Irish’, Ireland has little experience of war.
At the time of the First World War Ireland was part of the UK so Irish regiments went off to the front and some were cut to ribbons at the Somme and on other battlefields.
Irish nationalists were in favour of participating on the understanding that support would be rewarded after the war with Home Rule, devolved self-government.
Unionists, who had been arming and organising to oppose Home Rule, went to war on a similar bet, that Britain would owe them a debt of gratitude that would involve dropping plans for Home Rule.
Irish republicans had a different idea. This was to ally with Germany, import weapons for a revolution and, in effect, join the war against Britain.
Then they would be at the table during peace talks to argue for Irish independence.
None of these plans worked but where the war really impacted on Ireland was when the threat of conscription was introduced.
Then the country rallied behind Sinn Féin to secure a victory at the 1918 general election that would enable them to declare the country an independent republic.
The war, then fought by republican forces and endorsed by the new Dáil, was a patchy guerrilla war, followed by a civil war.
For decades after, the enormous losses in Flanders were denied full remembrance and families, like my own, which had had soldiers fighting for Britain back then kept quiet about that.
The honoured Irish military heroes were those guerrilla fighters and their leaders.
During the Second World War, the Irish state preserved a form of dilute neutrality which appears to have suited the British and the Germans too.
Some of the strongest opposition to that policy was voiced by the Irish in England.
Alderman Luke Hogan, the Labour leader of Liverpool City Council said, “I have nothing to thank England for excepting certain long vacations spent in gaol there in the fight for Irish freedom, but there will be freedom for neither England nor Ireland unless Hitler’s march is stopped”. (Liverpool Daily Post Aug 9, 1940)
Hogan had visited De Valera to work out what he meant by neutrality.
He thanked De Valera for his hospitality and said, “I left Dublin…convinced that a welcome of an entirely different sort will await Herr Hitler should he venture upon a visit there”.
That reads now like a line from Dad’s Army.
In 1941 Irish people living in England were addressed by the nephew of John Redmond, who had, a generation earlier, urged Irish nationalists to join the British army and fight Germany.
Louise Redmond-Howard’s hope was that De Valera would join the war in return for Irish unification and he believed that he would if that offer was made. (Strathearn Herald Mar 1, 1941)
Belfast and Dublin were both bombed by Germany. Belfast was horrifically blitzed. Dublin, perhaps, was being warned to stay out of the war after having sent help to Belfast when the city was in flames.
Since then, Ireland has preserved its neutrality in international affairs.
Professor Ronan Fanning, writing fifty years after the war, argued that neutrality had been in Ireland’s best interests and that Ireland was as entitled as any nation to put its own interests first.
Britain had been unable to protect Belfast, Coventry or other British cities so it would hardly have been able to protect Cork or Dublin, “assuming it had been willing (a large assumption in the case of Winston Churchill)”. (Sunday Independent Jun 12, 1994)
He cited evidence that Ireland had indeed done what it could to help Britain and the allies win the war.
Ireland’s military endeavours now focus on peacekeeping with the United Nations, particularly in southern Lebanon, under exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Ireland is not a member of NATO, but ultimately relies for its defence on those who are.
Neutrality has been compromised by American forces being allowed to land at Shannon airport near Limerick when at war in Iraq and perhaps carrying out dubiously legal measures like the secret transfer of prisoners for torture, the technical euphemism for which was ‘rendition’.
Ireland’s position is tenuous. It can hardly afford to insult or spurn America when it is so reliant.
Now that a possible third world war is brewing Ireland is vulnerable.
Russian ships have been sniffing around the underwater cables which bring internet facilities across the Atlantic, but Ireland does not have the resources to defend them.
There are about 7,000 soldiers in the Irish army.
The percentage of GDP committed to defence is currently about a quarter of what it was 25 years ago. It is a tenth of what NATO countries are asked to commit to.
There is no significant air force and no fighter planes.
Its only planes are for patrolling the seas in support of the navy which has six vessels, deployed mostly to protect fishing.
The country relies for ultimate defence on those friendly neighbours who might be disadvantaged if Ireland fell to a hostile power.
It is like the spotty kid at school who expects not to be pushed around because he has lots of big brothers.
But that’s a good arrangement for the kid who can’t hope to take on the bullies himself.
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