Many people, for different reasons, have a problem with Michelle O’Neill’s participation at the Remembrance Day services.
I also have a problem, not just with Ms O’Neill, but with everyone who attends such events. I have come to the conclusion that they are more about the living than the dead.
Many commemorations centre on events in 1916. Republicans honour the dead of the Easter Rising and, while the bravery and commitment of those involved is undoubted, I questioned the wisdom of the rising. Would the island of Ireland have been worse off if it had never happened? What followed was the attritional war of independence, the most bitter civil war and ultimately partition. The men who should have been leading the country for the next 30 years were lost in the now much-vaunted ‘blood sacrifice’. They would have been much more beneficial to Ireland alive than dead.
The Battle of the Somme began on July 1 1916; there were 19,240 fatalities on the first day. The battle continued and to quote the words of Eric Bogle: “We buried ours, they buried theirs and we started all over again.”
By the time the battle ended in November, 300,000 young men had been massacred. Were any of the generals, who stood by the mass graves with solemn faces, court marshalled for reckless endangerment of life?
It is the prerogative of the victors to vilify the vanquished – only Germans were prosecuted at the Nuremberg trials; in different circumstances, those who bombed Cologne and Dresden may have been tried for war crimes.
War is never a good solution; we only have to look at the state of the world today. Mr Netanyahu can justify killing thousands of civilians by alleging ‘Hamas is using them as human shields’, and of course the Israelis have God on their side. Mr Putin can justify his actions as he is ‘liberating Ukrainians from a Nazi regime’. Will either of these men be tried for war crimes?
Dead heroes are honoured by having their names carved in stone so future generations can stand around monuments with solemn faces, just like the generals did at the Somme. Do the slain rest more peacefully or will the horrific circumstances of their slaughter be eased by pompous ceremonials?
Michelle O’Neill could have excused herself by saying “I will not be standing at war memorials or Fenian graves any more; these empty gestures are of no consolation to the dead, there is always an alternative to violence”.
P McKenna, Newry, Co Down
