Banning the Dead from Employment

[steepholm]

Quite an extraordinary news item on the Today programme about the fate of soldiers who deserted from the Irish army in order to fight for the Allies in the Second World War. If what this man is saying is true it's scandalous, but since no opposing voice was heard and the whole article was partly a plug for his book, I'm keeping my outrage in check. (Why didn't the BBC invite the Irish Government to respond? Normally they mention it when they try to get an alternative viewpoint, even if no one is available.)

I can't see much else about this on the web, other than the campaign web site here.

Anyone know more about it?

Comments

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Had a chat with my elderly male relative who was in the Irish army 1952-54. Many deserted and came to England, they just did not return to Ireland. As for 1939-45 Ireland was neutral and many left wingers went and enlisted in Northern Ireland, Liverpool, London. Never heard about anything you stated as to banning, a guy who lived near my Dad's village was in the RAF until '45 and went back home, got a job, so it sounds like BS.

[sheenaghpugh]

It wouldn't surprise me. Ireland was neutral, and de Valera was accused of fascist sympathies after all.

[sheenaghpugh]

Here is another source of info, from someone who seems to have been there...

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I've heard of that section of the Emergency Powers Act before - and there seems to be a genuine injustice in that there was no provision for court martial, the least to which an alleged deserter is surely entitled. But on the other hand I've never heard of it outside the context of that chap and his book, so there does seem to be a bit of tub-thumping going on. I would guess most of the deserters stayed in Britain after the war, 40s Ireland being a dismal prospect even without statutory discrimination, and few actually experienced the ban. It's an interesting case, because it highlights some of the moral difficulties of neutrality, which is often accepted as uncomplicatedly fragrant in Ireland.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Even if many of the deserters stayed in England, there's still the question of what became of their children, of course.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Nothing I guess became of their children. As to S's point, yes Dev was far right and tacitly supported Adolf against Godless commies. If Hitler had invaded Dev was to be shot along with 90% of Irish folks.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

90%? The Nazis didn't kill 90% of the population in any country, even those full of Slavs, Jews, and Romani, all of whom they detested a lot more than they did the Irish.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

I read the papers concerning what Hitler wanted to do in Ireland and most of occupied Europe. 90% gassed, 10% as slaves or if blue eyed blonde Aryan types for breeding.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

"the papers"? Which papers?

"wanted to do"? Yeah, he had big plans for turning eastern Europe into a Slav-free desert for expanding German lebensraum, but for all the millions of people he killed, what actually happened is still a whole different thing from marching into a country and rounding up 90% of the population and having them shot. It trivializes the actual Nazi crimes to peddle fantasies like this.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If Widders is to be believed, many of the children were officially singled out for imprisonment, abuse, denial of medical treatment and slave labour, both during and after the war.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

And they certainly had the intention of dealing that way with Poland once the 'Jewish question' had been sorted out. Hitler hated Poles almost as much as he hated Jews.

Given what has happened recently in Norway, it may be churlish to mention what happened to Quislings, fellow travellers, war babies(of the 'wrong' sort) and traitors there post war, even unto the second generation but sadly, 'tis so. :o(

And given the judicial murder of PTSD victims in WWI we Brits don't have all that much to be proud of either.

Knowing this stuff is the price I pay for being a military historian with Jewish and Roma ancestry :o/

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yes, there must have been families who were stranded without support. That might have been even more of a problem for the relatives of those deserters who were killed, and who couldn't claim an Irish army pension, but I imagine would have a hard time accessing the resources to claim a pension from the British army. Children were institutionalised because of their parents' poverty, so some of them might have ended up as part of the Big Scandal of twentieth-century Irish history.

[chilperic.livejournal.com]

It was all quite new to me too, and shocking, and not entirely surprising. I shall try to find out more from my Irish history colleagues when I get back to Dublin at the end of the month.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Sadly, nothing appalling really surprises me anymore.

[valeriekeefe.livejournal.com]

It's the nature of anti-colonial regimes that there's often a siege mentality that sets in at times and repressive measures happen... it doesn't surprise me that the country of my ancestors wasn't all that different from other former British Colonies.