A chara, – While I can fully understand Stephen Kearon's pleasure at the remembrance accorded to his great-uncles by the opening of the World War One Memorial Park at Woodenbridge (September 23rd), as a fellow Wicklow man I cannot share his retrospective endorsement of John Redmond's call to Irishmen to join the British Forces. In our rush to make amends to these long-forgotten local men, it is important that we remember the context in which they were recruited into the British forces.
The celebrated left-wing republican George Gilmore (1898–1985) was in no doubt that the thousands of Irish Protestants and Catholics who answered the call were all equally duped by their British imperial overlords, assisted on the unionist side by Carson and on the nationalist side by Redmond.
In an incident recalled to his friend Proinsias Mac an Bheatha in the early 1980s, and recorded by the latter in his book I dTreo na Gréine (1987), Gilmore told how in 1914 when travelling north by train from Dublin he saw the same British army recruiting poster in Amiens Street station and in Portadown. The only difference was in Dublin the poster showed churches being burnt by the "Huns" and the inscription underneath "Join the army and help to defeat Germany – the one great Protestant power". In Portadown the same image featured but the inscription read: "Join the army and help to defeat Austria – the one great Catholic power".
As a republican from a Protestant background, George Gilmore understood more than most the significance of the sectarian divisions in Ireland but he also understood how these could be exploited to support the interests of the British ruling class both at home and in their imperial wars abroad. – Is mise,
JOHN GLENNON,
Bannagroe,
Hollywood,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – Stephen Kearon refers to “forgotten heroes of Co Wicklow” in relation to those who fought and some of whom died serving in the British army during the first World War. Merely serving or dying in a war does not constitute heroism. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN P Ó CINNÉIDE,
Essenwood Road,
Durban,
South Africa.