The glorious heritage

Hot on the heels of their prolonged attack on the legacy of 1916, Ireland's 'revisionist' political commentators turned their attention to the battle of the Somme. Editorials in both the Irish Times and the Sunday Independent deplored the "amnesia" which has surrounded this history of Irish sacrifice. The ideological positions of some commentators towards the two conflicts required them to rapidly invert their values. In February, Stephen Collins, political correspondant with the Irish Times, warned us against the "the cult of blood sacrifice promulgated by the 1916 leaders". On 1 July he quoted the "stirring" words of Marshal Foch "honouring the sacrifice made by Irish soldiers" at the Somme.

The "stirring tribute", by Marshall Foch, was read out at the government's commemoration. It referred to the Irish deaths as "an inspiration to duty". Over one million people dutifully marched to their deaths at the Somme. Foch was the French commander who conducted the battle. He was heavily criticised for his tactics, which involed using his infantry as cannon fodder in the face of sustained machine gun fire. He was removed to the Italian front in the aftermath of the battle which was immediately recognised as a spectacular disaster even amid the carnage of the first world war. Not even those commentators who glorified the heroism of the sacrifice claimed that there was any particular point to the battle. Foch and the rest of the generals conducted the "futile slaughter" of hundreds of thousands of young people – their average age was younger than 18 – "to no good effect". Only Tom McGurk, writing in the Sunday Business Post, noticed that commemorating these futile deaths as an "inspiration to duty" might not be wise. He suggested that, far from being amnesiac, many Irish people might remember the "terrible carnage and exploitation" well. We might prefer to remember it by refusing "to allow our children to go off and kill other people's children in other people's countries" rather than by glorifying the heroism of their sacrifice.

On 25 May, writing in the Irish Times, Ed Horgan described a "propaganda campaign to soften up Irish people towards sending their children to fight for the West against the Rest". Although the government has announced its plans to join an EU battlegroup, they still claim to be bound by the traditional "triple lock" rule which requires UN authorisation before Irish troops are deployed.

Writing in the Sunday Business Post on 2 July, Declan Power argued that this policy sees "Irish troops shackled to lightly armed UN forces that are limited in the face of aggression". The EU battlegroups with their "specialist forces from different countries" are much more suited to modern military demands. Conditions in countries such as Iraq dictate that troops must be able to "fight battles, peacekeep and assist in humanitarian operations". In support of the concept of EU battlegroups, he pointed out that "Kofi Annan requested that the West provide him with the means for a military fire brigade as far back as 1999". Unfortunately for Annan, Western governments have ignored his requests and are still concentrating on building military forces which are under their own, rather than UN, command – forces which have a much better track record in creating situations like Iraq than they have in solving them. p