Should British soldiers killed in 1916 get a memorial?

Kermit.de.frog

In two minds on this. Be nice idea however how many memorials are there to honour the memories of "the other side" in key conflicts in other countries? I doubt there is many. Relatives are calling for a memorial to the soldiers and other things as well like visits to the graves etc.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0408/692695-british-soldiers-memorial/

On Twitter, Sinn Féin TD Peadar Toibin wrote: "British Soldiers imposing oppression through violence should not be commemorated equally with volunteers seeking Irish freedom."

How much support did the insurgents have at the time though Peadar? Not much. In fact they were heavily abused and derided by most Dubliners immediately after the fracas ended.

Also it's important to remember the manner in which these soldiers died was more due to stupid strategic thinking by British generals sending their troops mindlessly down streets to be slaughtered which they could easily have bypassed!

Junkyard Tom

No.

The_Valeyard

Is there a memorial in London to the German pilots who died bombing London?

Uncle Ruckus

Never!Never!Never!

conorhal

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Is there a memorial in London to the German pilots who died bombing London?

What next? A memorial for camp guards at Auschwitz?

Silly relativist nonsense.

Shenshen

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Is there a memorial in London to the German pilots who died bombing London?

There are however memorials in many places in Germany to members of the allied forces fighting in WWII.

The_Valeyard

Shenshen wrote: »

There are however memorials in many places in Germany to members of the allied forces fighting in WWII.

Because they won and occupied Germany

Wacker The Attacker

Why wouldn't they?

Where it's held is another question entirely but I see no reason why not.

Geniass

Shenshen wrote: »

There are however memorials in many places in Germany to members of the allied forces fighting in WWII.

The winners write history... and memorials.

Shenshen

Geniass wrote: »

The winners write history... and memorials.

Yes, the losers tend to learn more from every conflict than the winners, I'll grant you that.

So I suppose this would be a chance for Ireland to show that they're not sore winners.

SEPT 23 1989

Did the 1200 insurgents not impose violence on half a million Dubliners in 1916?

Egginacup

I doubt the Brits have a memorial to the crew of the Belgrano but they do have some honour for the crew of the sub that murdered the 323 Argentine sailors.

Geniass

Egginacup wrote: »

I doubt the Brits have a memorial to the crew of the Belgrano but they do have some honour for the crew of the sub that murdered the 323 Argentine sailors.

Bait is bait.

conorhal

Wacker The Attacker wrote: »

Why wouldn't they?

Where it's held is another question entirely but I see no reason why not.

What inscription should it have?

I'd suggest "What were you doing here in the first place?"

Kermit.de.frog

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Did the 1200 insurgents not impose violence on half a million Dubliners in 1916?

...and looting, and destruction. They didn't even have a Footlocker at the time.

wretcheddomain

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

In fact they were heavily abused and derided by most Dubliners immediately after the fracas ended.

It's only a fracas if Jeremy Clarkson is involved.

lertsnim

There is absolutely no way that British soliders involved in the 1916 rising should have a memorial in Dublin. The soldiers relatives would want to get some perspective.

Reoil

Ulster says NO!

riffmongous

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Did the 1200 insurgents not impose violence on half a million Dubliners in 1916?

I'd say most of the actual violence came from the British use of artillery and heavy machine guns

Timberrrrrrrr

Terrible idea and would be a magnet for vandalism.

conorhal

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Did the 1200 insurgents not impose violence on half a million Dubliners in 1916?

Who were so outraged that 90% of people voted for the parties that represented their political ideals in the 1919 election..... :rolleyes:

Crooked Jack

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

In two minds on this. Be nice idea however how many memorials are there to honour the memories of "the other side" in key conflicts in other countries? I doubt there is many. Relatives are calling for a memorial to the soldiers and other things as well like visits to the graves etc.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0408/692695-british-soldiers-memorial/



How much support did the insurgents have at the time though Peadar? Not much. In fact they were heavily abused and derided by most Dubliners immediately after the fracas ended.

Also it's important to remember the manner in which these soldiers died was more do to stupid strategic thinking by British generals sending their troops mindlessly down streets to be slaughtered which they could easily have bypassed!

This isnt really true, though. Certainly there were those who jeered the rebels as they were marched off but I dont know how you can make the claim that it was most Dubliners.
There's a lot of information out there on this and none of it suggests that most Dubliners engaged in this.

http://middleclassdub.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/dublin-1916-and-dublin-4.html

Regarding 1916, it's true that the ordinary citizens of Dublin did not respond to the call from the rebels to rise up, but then again, neither did the ordinary citizens of any other part of the country.

Waters points out that only two of the Proclamation signatories were from Dublin as part of his argument – but fails to tell us how many of the Volunteers or Citizen Army fighters were from Dublin. I don't know the figure, but would be surprised if it was not the majority.

The popularity of the rebellion in Dublin and the rest of the country is an important issue – one that has relevance today. The entirely implausible revisionist/anti-Dublin depiction is that Dubliners in 1916 were contented subjects of the Crown who were furious with the rebels but then did a remarkable volte face and became committed republicans when the leaders of the armed uprising they supposedly hated were executed.

They then went on to vote overwhelmingly for Sinn Féin at the 1918 election and the county, along with Cork, became the crucible of the War of Independence.

of course, there were those who did jeer at the rebels but as always with these issues it was a far more complicated and nuanced response than some would like us to believe

biko

They can erect a memory in UK over their dead if they like.

Red_Wake

Yes of course.

The one sided reporting of 1916 is crazy - people completely ignore the misdeeds of the volunteers, shooting unarmed policemen, using child soldiers, that if it were to occur in a modern conflict would be labeled a war crime.

Laois_Man

Will they put a statue to Bobby Sands in Trafalgar Square? Or even one for any of Pearse, Connolly, Clarke, MacDermott, Plunkett, MacDonagh etc?

Ask again when they do!

osarusan

Perhaps there could be some kind of monument dedicated to everybody from all sides who died in the conflict. That would be a bit more inclusive, less controversial, and probably less likely to be targeted for damage.

padd b1975

I think all combatants deserve a mention.

After 100 years it should be seen as a sign of our maturity as a nation.

conorhal

Red_Wake wrote: »

Yes of course.

The one sided reporting of 1916 is crazy - people completely ignore the misdeeds of the volunteers, shooting unarmed policemen, using child soldiers, that if it were to occur in a modern conflict would be labeled a war crime.

...he said with a total absense of even a hint of irony.

Red_Wake

conorhal wrote: »

...he said with a total absense of even a hint of irony.

How do you find it ironic?

You've ridiculed my point, but not disproven it. If you could explain your pov that might be more constructive.

conorhal

Red_Wake wrote: »

How do you find it ironic?

You've ridiculed my point, but not disproven it. If you could explain your pov that might be more constructive.

Your one sided view of supposed one sided views is what I find ironic.
No to mention the fact that this supposed one sided view doesn't actually exist, if anything a pathetic amount of time and energy is spent on guff like the OP and the Irish times revising history to to paint those involved in the uprising as unsupported villians while canonising imperial enforcers that indiscriminately shelled a city.

Red_Wake

conorhal wrote: »

Your one sided view of supposed one sided views is what I find ironic.
No to mention the fact that this supposed one sided view doesn't actually exist, if anything a pathetic amount of time and energy is spent on guff like the OP and the Irish times revising history to to paint those involved in the uprising as unsupported villians.

Do you dispute the documentation recording the jeering of the defeated rebels by Dubliners?

Or that they committed acts which are now considered war crimes?

Vandango

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Should British soldiers killed in 1916 get a memorial?

Yes..............in Britain.

Your Superior

I think the thing everyone seems to be missing here is the fact that the British have not asked for a memorial, and more importantly, none of us actually give a flying fûck about what Irish people do in Ireland. Ireland is never mentioned here, it's not seen as newsworthy at all. You wanted independence so please take it and stop looking at the UK for approval or as a place to vent your anger over issues that happened long before you were born, while wearing your Celtic and Man Utd shirts.

Geniass

Geniass wrote: »

The winners write history... and memorials.

Given that thinking, then the British should have memorials given that the Rising itself was a failure, was it not?

Guy:Incognito

Laois_Man wrote: »

Will they put a statue to Bobby Sands in Trafalgar Square? Or even one for any of Pearse, Connolly, Clarke, MacDermott, Plunkett, MacDonagh etc?

Ask again when they do!

Did they die there?

conorhal

Red_Wake wrote: »

Do you dispute the documentation recording the jeering of the defeated rebels by Dubliners?

Or that they committed acts which are now considered war crimes?

Well I'm sure that the Dublin Castle colaborators weren't pleased. I think you're going to have to substantiate the allegation of war crimes and perhaps place them in the proportionalte context of the number of civillans killed by indiscriminate shelling, since you don't care for one sided arguments and all.

conorhal

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Did they die there?

You're right, Sands was a British MP, a statue in the houses of parliment will be sufficient.

Crooked Jack

Red_Wake wrote: »

Yes of course.

The one sided reporting of 1916 is crazy - people completely ignore the misdeeds of the volunteers, shooting unarmed policemen, using child soldiers, that if it were to occur in a modern conflict would be labeled a war crime.

But isnt it just a matter of historical record that the behaviour of the rebels was largely exemplary while the British did indeed behave deplorably

http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/easter_rising_great_britain_and_ireland

The British Army, rather than the rebels, were responsible for most of the civilian fatalities. Being few, poorly armed and largely confined to garrisons, the rebels were in little position to inflict harm. While most British Army soldiers behaved professionally, there were vastly more of them and they were heavily armed, mobile and dispersed over a wide area. Many were young, inexperienced and inefficient. One British army captain, who described the Sherwood Foresters under his command as “untrained, undersized products of the English slums,” noted that many “had never fired a service rifle before.”[14] The scale of civilian casualties was also a consequence of the army’s use of artillery and heavy machine-guns and its crude tactics: “The head of the columns will in no case advance beyond any house from which fire has been opened, until the inhabitants of such house have been destroyed or captured,” Brigadier-General William Henry Muir Lowe (1861-1944) ordered. “Every man in any such house whether bearing arms or not may be considered as a rebel.”[15] This punitive response was, like so much else, shaped by wartime considerations which ensured that little thought was given to the political consequences of what came to be seen as a heavy-handed repression.

In areas where the military encountered stiff resistance, such as North King Street where fourteen soldiers were killed and another thirty-three wounded in a twenty-eight-hour battle for control of 150 yards, the army appeared to regard any remaining residents as legitimate targets.[16] General Sir John Maxwell (1859-1929), the British General-Officer-Commanding-in-Chief , was candid about this aspect of the fighting in one press interview:

These rebels wore no uniform, and the man who was shooting at a soldier one minute might, for all he knew, be walking quietly beside him in the street at another … Nearly everything had to be left to the troops on the spot … how were the soldiers to discriminate? They saw their comrades killed beside them by hidden and treacherous assailants, and it is even possible that under the horrors of this peculiar attack some of them “saw red.” That is the inevitable consequence of a rebellion of this kind.[17]
Maxwell’s comments reflected the confusion and frustration of street-fighting as British soldiers advanced through streets where they could be fired on by unseen snipers from almost any angle. They also highlight a revealing gulf between the rebels’ perception of their own conduct and the military’s view of the illegitimate nature of the rebellion and its methods. Significantly, it was the rebels’ belief that they had fought “in a fair and clean manner” that came to be widely shared by nationalist opinion.[18] As a result, the British authorities’ decision to execute leading rebels after the Rising was seen by many nationalists as akin to the shooting of prisoners of war.

Junkyard Tom

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Did the 1200 insurgents not impose violence on half a million Dubliners in 1916?

No. They rose up against the British regime that occupied this country and presided over a halving of the population by starvation and emigration less than a lifetime before the rising.

100 years on and some of us are still afflicted by the colonial mentality.

Your Superior

conorhal wrote: »

You're right, Sands was a British MP, a statue in the houses of parliment will be sufficient.

You don't get a statue for not eating your dinner.

Fratton Fred

Laois_Man wrote: »

Will they put a statue to Bobby Sands in Trafalgar Square? Or even one for any of Pearse, Connolly, Clarke, MacDermott, Plunkett, MacDonagh etc?

Ask again when they do!

I guess there's as much chance of that as there is of the National Graves Association erecting memorials to the innocent people the IRA murdered.

Guy:Incognito

Your Superior wrote: »

You don't get a statue for not eating your dinner.

You've obviously never been to weightwatchers.

Geniass

Deleted User wrote: »

Given that thinking, then the British should have memorials given that the Rising itself was a failure, was it not?

Itself was a failure, just like all the previous risings. The chief difference was the British reaction in a world with a fairly modern media.

They martyred the leaders and the rest, as they say, is history.

There are a few key historical events that, imho, gave rise to us being a separate country to the rest of the UK.

1. The Penal laws
2. The potato Famine
3. The martyring of the 1916 leaders.

I do think Ireland (or as great a portion that is independent today) would be independent if the 1916 rising didn't happen. Even Scotland came very close to doing so last year.

Zillah

I'd be in favour of it, but I don't think it's a good idea due to the amount of opposition it would face.

Odd how sanguine people are over a bunch of young lads from London or Liverpool or a farm in Devon getting killed because their superiors told them to do what they were trained and paid to do. Mostly just kids likely horrified that they were suddenly in a real war, shot to bits to bleed out on O'Connell St.

I'm sure they were all baby-eating monsters because that's what British people are though, right? Pearse spinning in his grave blah blah nationalistic stupidity blah Connelly

Kermit.de.frog

Your Superior wrote: »

I think the thing everyone seems to be missing here is the fact that the British have not asked for a memorial, and more importantly, none of us actually give a flying fûck about what Irish people do in Ireland. Ireland is never mentioned here, it's not seen as newsworthy at all. You wanted independence so please take it and stop looking at the UK for approval or as a place to vent your anger over issues that happened long before you were born, while wearing your Celtic and Man Utd shirts.

What are you doing on an Irish forum then? Is there not a Boards equivalent in the UK where you can discuss these matters?

And FYI the relatives have asked for a memorial.

pablomakaveli

It's not really that unusual. There are cemeteries for German soldiers in Normandy and there's one for the Argentines in the Falklands.

Crooked Jack

pablomakaveli wrote: »

It's not really that unusual. There are cemeteries for German soldiers in Normandy and there's one for the Argentines in the Falklands.

And several of the Brits who died are buried in Dublin.
Cemeteries are not memorials

I don't see why not.

If the British taxpayer wants to foot the bill, surely they can erect a nice one anywhere they want in Britain?

suicide_circus

If the British tax payer wants to fund such a memorial and pay the £200m annual rent for the site on which it stands, I for one won't stand in their way.

Your Superior

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

What are you doing on an Irish forum then? Is there not a Boards equivalent in the UK where you can discuss these matters?

And FYI the relatives have asked for a memorial.

I was born and raised in Ireland.

And no, nonsense like this seems only to be discussed on boards.ie

Location doesn't seem to stop anyone on here from reading the Daily Mail or watching british TV, supporting British football teams etc though, so why should using boards.ie have to be irish specific? Not like sharing???

floggg

Don't they already have that poppy month celebratory fashion event?

How many memorials do they want exactly.

Maybe if the families start demanding the prominent inclusion of all the victims of the Britain's war victims in the poppy month I'll pay attention to them.