Returning home to hostility

There were mixed reactions in Ireland to the soldiers who came home from the Great War, writes Stephen Collins

After the Easter Rising, and the Somme, John Redmond made one last effort to regain control of the political situation by participating in the Irish Convention of 1917, established by Lloyd George to try to devise a political settlement by agreement with all the parties in Ireland.

Like so many attempts at a political solution before and since, the efforts of moderate nationalists and unionists to find an accommodation foundered as Sinn Féin boycotted the proceedings and Ulster unionists insisted on partition.

An incident during the Convention showed how the political tide had turned against Redmond. One day while walking along Westmoreland Street, after leaving the Convention, Redmond was confronted by a group of young Sinn Féin members, including Todd Andrews, and physically attacked. Only for the intervention of passers-by who escorted him into the front office of The Irish Times he could have been badly injured.

At that stage Redmond had suffered personal and political body blows. His brother Willie, an MP for East Clare, was killed in action on the Western Front in July, 1917, and his seat in parliament was captured for Sinn Féin by Eamon de Valera. It was just one of a series of by-election defeats for the Irish Party.

Redmond died in March, 1918, a broken man at the age of 61. His son, Capt. William Redmond, defied the Sinn Féin tide by holding his father's seat in Waterford in the by-election. In the general election that followed that year the Irish Party was almost wiped out, but Capt. Redmond retained his seat and held on to it after independence serving in the Dáil until his death in 1931.

The Volunteers and other Irishmen who had fought at the Somme and the other battles of the first World War returned to a changed Ireland. Some of them, such as Tom Barry and Emmet Dalton, joined the IRA and took part in the War of Independence. However, many were victimised. Some estimates suggest that the IRA murdered around 200 ex-servicemen between 1919 and 1922. Changing political circumstances also served over time to obliterate the memory of those who died in the first World War. Initially, though, the dead were widely remembered. In the early 1920s, thousands of people would gather at various centres around the country on Remembrance Day, such as College Green in Dublin, where the Ginchy Cross was temporarily erected each year as an Irish cenotaph.

In 1923, 150,000 poppies were sold within a few days in the Irish Free State. In November, 1925, The Irish Times reported that 120,000 people attended the College Green commemoration. However, a smoke bomb was let off in the crowd and there was violence following a Sinn Féin protest. The escalating violence accompanying Sinn Féin protests led to the relocation of the commemorations. Subsequently the Dublin event was held in the Phoenix Park but crowds of up to 30,000 continued to attend during the 1920s.

On the Sunday prior to Remembrance Day, veterans gathered to parade to Requiem Mass at the Pro-Cathedral and later to a service in St Patrick's Cathedral. These religious services were attended by the Lord Mayor of Dublin and foreign ministers accredited to the Irish Free State.

In 1927 ex-servicemen had a direct political influence when a party called the National League, headed by Capt. Redmond, won eight seats in the Dáil. The party almost made it into government with Labour, supported from outside by Fianna Fáil but the Cosgrave government survived a vote of confidence and the National League quickly faded as a political force.

After the victory of Fianna Fáil in 1932, Remembrance Day commemorations were scaled back as the political climate grew increasingly hostile. Wearing the poppy was regarded as a provocative political symbol.

The establishment of a permanent memorial to those who died in the war was mooted in 1919, but a plan to locate a memorial in Merrion Square never got off the ground. The Cosgrave government came up with the proposal for the War Memorial Gardens by the side of the Liffey, opposite the Phoenix Park.

Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, the gardens were built by a workforce made up of ex-servicemen from both the British and Irish armies. It was completed in the 1930s but was allowed to fall into a state of dereliction by the 1970s. The FitzGerald government in the 1980s allocated funds for the repair of the gardens and they were restored to their former glory.

In the 1980s there was also controversy about the formal representation at the annual Remembrance Day service in St Patrick's Cathedral. The president, Dr Patrick Hillery, was invited to attend by the British Legion, and was willing to go, but then taoiseach Charles Haughey refused to allow it .

However, Mary Robinson as president did attend the ceremony and during the 1990s there was a renewed interest in Ireland's role in the first World War.

This came to a head when President McAleese and Queen Elizabeth inaugurated the Peace Tower at Messines in Belgium on November 11th, 1998, in the presence of King Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium. The tower, dedicated to the memory of those from the island of Ireland who fought and died in the first World War, was erected at the site of the Messines Ridge battlefield, the only location in that conflict where the 36th (Ulster) Division and the 16th (Irish) Division fought side by side. The Irish and British governments helped fund the project.