Wars and ConflictsÌý permalink
Wind that shakes...
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by IrHist (U4245554) on Monday, 29th May 2006
Ken Loach reckoned the era his film protrays has similarities to the conflict in Iraq. What did he mean?
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Message 2
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Tuesday, 30th May 2006
Probably something to do with an occupying army. Sounds like a bit of artistic spin, though. You could equally point to similarities with Germany's occupation of most of Europe during WW2, Britain's occupation of India and many other countiores in the 18th & 19th centuries, Napoleon's occupation of Europe, etc, etc, all the way back to ancient military occupations like the Persian occupation of Egypt under Cambyses.
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Message 3
Posted by DrkKtn6851746 (U2746042) on Tuesday, 30th May 2006
It's just another uninformed pinko getting his kicks by taking a swipe at the British establishment/military.
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Message 4
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Tuesday, 30th May 2006
I agree. More Irishmen were killed fighting each other in the Civil War that followed independence in 1922 than were killed fighting the British in the so-called "War of Independence" prior to that. It's a pity noone has yet made a film devoted to the Civil War showing the atrocities that were committed by both sides in that but I'd guess you'd have to be Irish rather than English like Mr Loach. Ireland is an example of where the withdrawal of an occupying force caused the outbreak of a civil war which is where Loach's analogy with Iraq breaks down since lefties like him argue that the withdrawal of coalition forces would bring about the end of the present civil war there or at least the potential for one.
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Message 5
Posted by MB (U177470) on Tuesday, 30th May 2006
There is quite a good letter in the paper today about how the IRA supported the Nazis during WWII and how they betrayed the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who thought it more important to fight the Nazis.
MB -
Message 6
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 30th May 2006
JMB, 'The IRA supporting the Nazis during WWII' is a bit like saying 'the flea supporting the elephant'. It had little meaning to anyone, least of all the Nazis who apparently investigated the possibility of utilising the flea in question but quickly drew the correct conclusion that it was comprised of fools, incompetents and ineffectual eejits. Given their impotency and tiny size the term 'betrayal' in that context is a little ludicrous. The IRA of the 1940s was an emasculated version of its former self, and had as much impact on public opinion as the Irish Communist Party of the day (three guys who met in a cellar in Parnell Square once a month).
As for Loach, he can be forgiven for trying to publicise his movie with contemporary references, and a few Irish historians with a special interest in the period in question have even said that he has managed to keep his subject matter quite authentic, but these comments by him smacked of hyperbole and do neither his film nor the true history of these times a service. About the only similarity between that war and modern day Iraq is that blood-letting broke out in the vacuum created by inept administration - in the Irish case of a retreating power that 'spiked' the mixture on the way out and in Iraq's case by an occupying power that is under equipped militarily and intelligently to fulfil its stated ambition. But that is no similarity worth pointing out, and the writer of the letter to the Telegraph is right to suspect that Loach is simply trying to appeal to the uninformed and biased in his comments.
I'll watch the film with interest, but I'll avoid the advance publicity as much as I can if the tenor of it remains pitched so low. -
Message 7
Posted by IrHist (U4245554) on Wednesday, 31st May 2006
'It's a pity noone has yet made a film devoted to the Civil War'
AFAIK the film also portrays the civil war. -
Message 8
Posted by IrHist (U4245554) on Wednesday, 31st May 2006
‘quite a good letter in the paper today about how the IRA supported the Nazis during WWII’
Hell-o. What has that got to do with the ‘Wind that shakes…’ or the 1920s. A bit out of period there JMB. -
Message 9
Posted by OrganettoBoy (U3734614) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Nordmann,
You may be right about the size of the IRA and its support of the Nazis but a Catholic Ulster man who was highly decorated (X craft attack IIRC) was persecuted so much by his fellow catholics that he emigrated to England to get away from it. I also understand that many of the Irish who came over to the UK to do war work (not necessarily to fight) were also very poorly treated by their friends and neighbours! -
Message 10
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
One must not forget that many people in Ireland at the time - north and south - had lived through murderous times. From 1914 right through to the end of the civil war (and for several years longer in certain quarters) a whole generation had grown up with the threat of a violent end hanging over them, not just in foreign fields but in one's own home. The situation in Northern Ireland that prevailed through the 70s and 80s was very similar. What typifies such a community when peace eventually breaks out (even an awkwardly maintained one) is relief and a committment not to be so easily seduced into returning to the fatal uncertainties that preceded it.
I am not saying that everyone in Ireland shared that viewpoint, but enough did to give it political expression. From speaking to people of that generation I have myself surmised that it was this as much as any antipathy towards Britain's plight that motivated the southern Irish neutrality stance condemned by Britain during the war and afterwards. In the north of Ireland the southern stance was seen as a vindication of the more extreme nationalist position, which indeed contained a fair share of antipathy towards Britain, and which found expression in something rather more sinister than a neutrality stance. The disenfranchised nationalists (and please do not use nationalist and Catholic as interchangeable terms) often resorted to more parochial methods of advertising, and even enforcing their views on those within their community who they saw as deviant.
I have no doubt that the experiences you cite are genuine, and were repeated many times over, but it is salient to refelect that such vindictiveness was as much an inevitable outcome of the gerrymandered political system in Northern Ireland as the other forms of sectarianism we have all been forced to acknowledge and suffer in more recent times. But to cite such sectarianism as representative of the island as a whole would be wrong.
One expression of the southern stand that gained popularity and is still often expressed has a ring of truth about it. During WWII Ireland was neutral, but it was neutral in favour of Britain. -
Message 11
Posted by MB (U177470) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
"Nordmann,
You may be right about the size of the IRA and its support of the Nazis but a Catholic Ulster man who was highly decorated (X craft attack IIRC) was persecuted so much by his fellow catholics that he emigrated to England to get away from it. I also understand that many of the Irish who came over to the UK to do war work (not necessarily to fight) were also very poorly treated by their friends and neighbours!"
You find a lot of war graves have an alias on them, often because it was an Irishman.
MB -
Message 12
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Don't forget either that a protracted 'economic war' between Ireland and Britain throughout the 30s, at a time when economic depression had already impacted disastrously on the fledgling state, had left a considerable portion of the population at or under starvation levels by the time hostilities broke out in 1939. Just how impoverished the average Irish citizen was at that time is something that is very difficult to comprehend nowadays.
Many Dubliners that I know of - men and women - saw the war therefore as an opportunity for employment in Britain, and were welcomed (by the business world, if not by the average Briton) as both a source of cheap labour and as recruitment material for the armed forces. Some of these men served in the British forces with great honour, but returned to Dublin afterwards condemned to live the rest of their lives in anonymity or denial, and often in poverty and without access to the pensions they had earned for their services. Those that remained in Britain often had to endure a lifetime of taunts and insults from ignorant people who did not acknowledge the contribution they had made to the British cause.
Their true numbers will never be known, I feel. They were an embarrassment to an Irish government set on avoiding being embroiled in the conflict, and to Churchill since they represented a contradiction to his claim that the Irish had turned their back on their neighbour in need. But from my own experiences talking to people of my parents' generation they were much larger in number than conventional history relates, including those who used aliases or not. -
Message 13
Posted by Buckskinz (U3036516) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
You are replying to:
Message posted by DrkKtn
It's just another uninformed pinko getting his kicks by taking a swipe at the British establishment/military.
Ìý
Go get em Tiger....... -
Message 14
Posted by Buckskinz (U3036516) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
You are replying to:
Message posted by JMB
There is quite a good letter in the paper today about how the IRA supported the Nazis during WWII and how they betrayed the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who thought it more important to fight the Nazis.
www.telegraph.co.uk/...
MB
Ìý
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
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