Ireland’s Independence Centenaries Threaten to Reopen Old Wounds

On Veteran’s Day in the USA, we do not honor the Confederate soldiers of the Civil War or the loyalists from America’s War of Independence. The French do not honor the turncoats who served the Vichy government during WW2. Norway does not honor Quisling. Ireland should behave no differently.

The British were and are occupiers. They violently crushed decent and stole from the Irish. False equivalencies such as the Irish did some bad things sounds a bit like Trump. One nation was the violent occupier. I may visit Great Briton, and when I set foot on English soil I will plant a flag and claim the land for my King, King Flimflam, who lives in the sky and tells me the magic words. At that point I will own England and will have a divinely provided right to extract whatever I want from them, and if they don't obey I have a King God's permission to kill every one who disobeys.

Bloody Sunday was not in 1920

My maternal and paternal great grandparents all immigrants from Galway. Their land stolen, their children died from hunger, their good friends murdered. No celebration of repressive governments. Just is not okay to murder people for money.I’m grateful for their sacrifices, and I choose to celebrate them instead.

More people were killed in the Irish Civil War (1922-23) than in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). A lot of blood has been spilled in that beautiful land for Irish nationalism. Isn't it time to live and let live?

In any war of independence in human history, there have always been traitors. They usually end up getting what they deserve.

I keep a house in Co. Mayo. I believe it is difficult for Americans to understand the depth and pervasive nature of British rule on Irish thinking. All of my neighbors have relatives who were evicted or starved. All have siblings or children living in other countries. Even the very surroundings provoke thoughts of the bad days: to this day, abandoned houses, abandoned Catholic churches, mass graves, even entire abandoned villages are a common sight, all the result of eviction or starvation or disease.

I'm not a religious man, but as a sensitive human who has marveled at the ability for these people to live in peace since the Good Friday Agreement, I can't help but pray that they will find a peaceful way through this transition.

The Irish have unsettled business with the UK. Northern Ireland needs to be reunited. There is only one Ireland, Germany, Korea etc. Reparation payments are due Ireland for centuries of unspeakable abuse.

You can see parallels with other countries-Israel for example. In putting down the various intifada uprisings of the Arabs against the Israelis the security forces with the toughest reputation among the Arabs were Druze members of the Israeli border police. The Druze are not mainstream Sunni or Shia Muslims but they are ethnic Arabs and they earned the reputation of being more brutal in putting down the intifada than the Israeli Jews. Ironically, across the border in Lebanon the Druze under Walid Jumblatt were some of the strongest opponents of Israeli incursions and attacks in Lebanon. Go Figure!

This is quite a superficial version of the story. The Irish Times repeatedly reported that the Black and Tans were not going to be honoured. Maurice Manning's thoughtful remarks on the subject are also not included here. He is the chair of the commission on Commemorations. Nor are historians like Mary Daly queried. Note, in fact, the all-male list of sources!

People are complaining about what the Brits did to the Irish. Hey, the Brits compelled the Chinese to allow them to bring opium into China from India as well as forced many concessions, including losing its territorial sovereignty including Hong Kong. Pushing a drug trade as the official government policy. Great Britain was the first. Now that was something to complain about.

The empire is dead and the UK is breaking up. Let's move on.

"...We are about to land at (Fill in the Blank) Airport in (Choose One) The Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland. Please set your watches back to 1689..."

Moral equivalency is the only moral principle of the Left, including folks like Varadkar. Why stand up for your country which, until his advent, was too national, Catholic, pro-life, etc.?

‘the men who dared the ‘Auxies’ and beat the Blacks&Tans were the Boys of Barr Na Staide who hunted for the Wren’

It is interesting to read how the Irish should take a more "nuanced" view of the forces of the colonial power that robbed and raped and oppressed them for centuries . . . . Meanwhile, a play written by an Englishman, "The Ferryman," featuring every hoary, ignorant, anti-Irish cliche--from parents giving whiskey to toddlers, characters barely able to restrain themselves from bursting into rebel songs and (of course!) the sinister, IRA killer villain--was hailed as a masterpiece by all the critics in London and the equally ignorant, racist critics in New York. As an Englishman told Dedalus, "It seems history is to blame."

‘& when the hills were bleeding, & the rifles were aflame, to the rebel homes of Kerry the Saxon strangers came, & the men who dared the Auxies, and beat the Black&Tans were the boys of Barr Na Sraide, who hunted for the Wren’

"The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past" We need to realize that in war, all the poor schlubs like you and me are victims. Whether it is WW1 or WW2 or Vietnam or India or Congo or Ireland or Spain, the men and women who die and leave behind orphans, siblings, parents and spouses ARE victims (as are their kith and kin). We keep demonizing the "others" in hopes of showing ourselves in a good light when the reality is that every country, every society, every tribe is busy doing equally shitty things - "enhanced interrogation" is nothing but a veneer over torture, "rule of law" is bandied about when dealing with illegal immigrants but not when people in power rape children and it is easy to call people of other countries "barbarians" while forgetting that we have borrowed their foods, clothing, numbers, scientific methods, road building etc. Ireland can show the rest of the world that we can recognize the deaths of all people on all sides without belittling anyone.

I was born in the US but had family in County Meath dating back into the mid-1700's, when Ireland was a colony. Prior to my only trip (October 2019) I read a few books, saw some YouTube history videos & "tried" to learn a bit of Gaelic. Never the less, I felt an evident undercurrent about a war the Irish won't forget & the English wish they could. It was, after all, only 100 years ago and, layered on the absolutely horrible things inflicted over 700+ years of occupation, I was astounded at the insensitity of the RIC ceremony. Choose a side, just like in the US Civil War, & your family is divided, a consequence of those joining the RIC post WWI. Had the RIC not been populated with thugs, had the British more thoughtful, then the ceremony MAY have worked. But it didn't and doubt it ever will.

I wonder how would there be outcry if the Germans built and honored SS members. Hey, after all they had families also, This article only deals with a part of the story the Black and Tan were mercenaries - the Brits have always been good at that. He does mention and I understand it is a small article that after World War I there was high unemployment and the last thing the Brits wanted with the Russian Revolution and other violent struggles to have a large number of WW I veterans who knew how to kill very effectively without work. Also as the Brits are good at in their history pay others to do the "dirty work". The Black and Tan were killers and lets not pretend they were there to keep the peace. They had grown many of them damaged from the war and had grown to enjoy killing and torture. As for the killing of innocent RIC and others the author needs to read a history of how that started. The British Black and Tan would knock on the door of a man who was suspected of being in the IRA and shot him in front on his family at the front door or at the dinner table, it did not matter to them. After the Easter Rebellion the Brits executed in fake trails the men who had been deemed to be the ringleaders. Trial lasted a couple of minutes and then out you went to be shot. The executed men had uniforms and were soldiers. Now, with there have to be a vote since Northern Ireland has left the EU watch the violence or Troubles come again brought on by the Brits and their lackeys, Jim Trautman

Some might argue that as "police officers," the RIC ought to have been subject to different rules of engagement from those applied to an "army." Two circumstances militate against that notion. For one, centuries of persecution, expropriation, and terror had obviated any possibility of the type of strategic or moral equivalence between hostile parties that might warrant a concern for the usual niceties of armed combat. If two men agree to fight to settle a score and one of them throws sand in the others eyes, you can call him a scoundrel and I'll agree. If one man, unprovoked, has planted his boot on another man's neck, that other man can use any means at his disposal to escape the situation. Second, this was no ordinary police department, committed to upholding civil law in an impartial and professional manner. This was an institution whose pattern of behavior consistently affirmed its purpose as an instrument of imperialist oppression. “Some were off-duty, some were unarmed, and many were killed after capture,” he said. There is no such thing as an "off-duty" soldier in an occupying army during a struggle for independence. As for some of them being unarmed, it sounds to me as if they forgot to bring their guns to the war they were fighting.

My Donegal-born great uncle Jacob (a Protestant), who served in the Great War, came back to Ireland to his father's farm in 1918, then served in the RIC. He disappeared in the early '20s. We've no idea where he died or where his body is. Although some of his distant ancestors came to Donegal from Scotland in the 1600s, he was as Irish as any European American is American. To refuse to acknowledge his existence merely because he was on the "wrong side" during the War of Independence or practiced the "wrong" form of Christianity is also wrong.

This is the equivalent of honoring the confederate soldiers who rebelled over the desire to enslave people in their state.

You have to accept that the United Kingdom was a colonial power, guilty of many crimes against humanity in Ireland, to have any hope of understanding why we object to commemorating the RIC. This is a proven fact unless you are an apologist for the British Empire.

Given that the British Police assassinated one of my ancestors in her backyard during the Independence War, I am shocked that the Republic would even consider honoring these murderers.

My grandfather was 17 when he served in the British army in WWI. He was sent to Gallipoli and survived one of the worst military slaughters in history. He returned to Dublin utterly traumatized and ostracized, unable to find employment. He had fought in the “wrong war,” while those at home were involved in the Easter Uprising and fight for Irish Home Rule. He subsequently enlisted in the RIC - loyal to the forces that paid him a pension until his death. He believed fiercely in civility and saw the rebels as leading Ireland to the same kind of destruction he witnessed in Gallipoli. The IRA blew the front door off of his house while his children slept. He emigrated to America, but was a broken man. Unable to witness anymore killing, he would usher a cockroach from his house. One man’s hero is another’s tyrant. Wars are a bloody, messy business that produce no winners - just foolish bickering about the rights and wrongs of events long past our understanding. Would my grandfather want his service commemorated? Only if it meant a greater peace. He never returned to Ireland and it broke his heart.

I think this issue just illustrates how the “troubles” of Ireland are still there... they’re just lurking a little below the surface. Unfortunately, I think it will take a new generation to fully recover from the ills of the past.

The problem is not just that Ireland should not be celebrating the Tans or the RIC, but also what it says about the thinking of the politicians who came up with the plan in the first place, and whether they are the right people to be charting Ireland's course at a pivotal moment of history. Ireland faces both danger and opportunity from Brexit. Most importantly Brexit, coming together with the arrival of a nationalist majority in the North, gives Ireland a unique chance to end partition and reunite.  But Ireland is stuck with a taioseach who doesn't care and says he feels no urgency. Ireland can't afford to fritter away this opportunity under a leader who doesn't get it. Ireland needs a taoiseach who feels it in his (or her) bones. Varadkar is just a technocrat and a bit of a seanin at that.

These were the armed enforcers of a brutal and unrelenting oppression that resulted in literally millions of Irish deaths through famine, torture and outright execution. Millions more were forced off their homeland. To say some were good, or some well-liked is nonsense and irrelevant. As a body, they were hated and the people fought them tooth and nail in order to win independence. One cannot celebrate both oppressor and rebel without mocking the Irish cause for freedom and all who served it.

There is an awful lot of sadness in Irish history. One bears the past in mind; but it is best to project positively,constructively and forcefully into the future.

Poor old Ireland still can't get out of its own way. Peace and strength will only come when the Irish people stop burnishing their grudges and learn to truly forgive. Clearly, the pain inflicted by English colonization runs deep and people were torn and did bad things - that was then. It would truly serve the Irish to now recognize that all corners of their society lost loved ones. Recognize all for their humanity and move on.

It’s time for the Republic of Ireland to do what it needs to do...to unite Ireland into one country.

Wait until discussions proceed further on how to commemorate Ireland's Civil War (1922-23). If all the casualties of that conflict are to be recognized (as a government-appointed group has said), how will the matter of those Irishmen executed by the new Free State government - officially 77, but more likely 81 or more - be handled? These men were members of the IRA who opposed the provisions of the Treaty by which Ireland's independence with England was sealed. They were tried by military tribunals in which they had no guaranteed rights to representation; to know the charges brought against them; or to call witnesses on their behalf. Because of the way cases were screened before being set for trial, they were effectively denied even the basic presumption of innocence. The government carried out multiple executions (at times on dubious or manufactured evidence) strategically - in parts of the country where fighting was fiercest, to send a message. It is only in relatively recent decades that the full story of the Civil War has been taught in Irish schools - although the conflict is fundamental to understanding the country's modern history (it is the genesis of two major political parties, for instance). The next few years should be interesting.

If that main image is not mislabeled, the next game at Croke Park will be a more somber affair.

Seems to me someone in Dublin just turned off their brain. Of Course there were some good people (as trump would say) in the RIC. But the record of the Constabulary and the Black and Tans is not likely to be forgotten in generations. I don't see the parallel to Iraq Police. We are tribal and our tribe is humanity. Find something more humane to celebrate.

This was not about honouring the Black and Tans, it was for RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police officers. Please report accurately! https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/justice-minister-insists-ric-commemoration-is-not-a-celebration-of-the-black-and-tans-38837971.html It was appalling the way that people used social media to disparage everyone who served in the police and their families. It seems we have not moved on, 100 years later. If Brexit taught us anything, it is how little Ireland matters to most people in the UK, and how it's time to stop pointing fingers (and guns) at each other in Ireland and to respect one another.