IRISH MY ERSE!

LETTER PUBLISHED IN THE WEEKLY IRISH  WORLD (London) w/e 5 April 2008

It's a funny old world indeed where Michael Gove can be not only Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath, but also Conservative Shadow Minister for Families, Schools and Children; for he frequently presents like Private Pike, the "Stupid Boy" of "Dad's Army".

Take his latest effusion, in THE TIMES of March 18, where he describes the Insurgents of 1916 as "Squalid Gangs Who Betrayed Ireland." One might imagine that the Irish people were and are best placed to judge who served and who betrayed her.

Certainly the British Government thought so in 1916, for the Insurgent leaders were not charged with betraying Ireland, nor were they tried by a jury of Irishmen.

Rather were they tried, away from the public eye, by British Courts Martial, and shot.

Even Sir Roger Casement, (who had tried to have the Rising called off) - a Dublin man captured in Kerry, had to be sent to London for a jury to find him guilty of High Treason to England's King, not the bertrayal of Ireland.

Within three years of the Rising, its veterans were feted in Ireland, and in or out of jail were elected to Parliament, supplanting those Irish politicians who had urged tens of thousands of Irishmen to death in the Great War.

For decades thereafter, very few politicians were elected in Ireland who had not participated in the 1916 Insurrection or the struggle it had inspired .

But young Mr Gove would have us, and the rising generation of British children, believe otherwise.

We, and they, deserve better.

Donal Kennedy

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As I write, it seems that the 84 year old Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, is in denial over the results of the Presidential and Parliamentary elections just held, and that he is unwilling to cede power to the election winners.

In 1918, six years before Mr Mugabe was born, a General Election was held in Ireland and the losers, their successors and apologists are still in denial about the results, and they never ceded  power to the winners.

In 1918 Sinn Fein at a General Election won 73 of Ireland's 105 Parliamentary Seats.

The Irish Nationalist Party took a total of 6 seats, 5 of them in Ulster, some of them with the agreement of Sinn Fein.

The Ulster Unionists won 26  seats.

Sinn Fein took 47% of the VOTES CAST.

But as they took 25 seats where there was no contest, the careless student or the disingenuous commentator, such as Queen's University Belfast Professor Richard English, may be heard saying "Sinn Fein had the support of ONLY 47% of the public."

In 1886 and 1906 the Irish Parliamentary Party took over 75% of Irish Seats, but with less votes than the Unionist Party - because, and this will surprise careless students, but will scarcely have escaped such disingenuous scholars as Professor Richard English, the Irish Party took most of its seats UNOPPOSED.

Within a month of the 1918 Election. Edward MacLysaght (1887-1986) noted the way some British commentators were misrepresenting the electoral victory of Sinn Fein.

This is part of his Diary entry for 28 January 1919 -

"Just one thing occurs to me before I put this diary away: an example of how our claim for self-determination of small nations - championed by Britain in the case of the Czechs - is misrepresented by politicians and newspapers there. In quoting statistics for last year's general election they give the total votes cast for and against Sinn Fein only in contested elections, completely ignoring the 25 constituencies where Sinn Fein candidates were returned unopposed, thus presenting an entirely misleading picture."

In 1978 Edward MacLysaght published "CHANGING TIMES - Ireland since 1898" which quoted that diary entry. MacLysaght was a most interesting character with a very varied career. He was also possessed of perhaps the most gentemanly nature of any of his contemporaries in Europe.

In the UK General Election of 2005 the winning Labour Party took 35.2% of the votes cast. . In the 12 UK General Elections between 1964 and 2005 the average percentage of the votes cast for the winning party was 42.04%.All constituencies, except that of the incumbent Speaker were contested in each of the 12 General Elections..

For a more extended commentary see "DID SINN FEIN REALLY WIN THE !918 GENERAL ELECTION?" on this Blog for 13/03/06.

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I've been reading "THE BLAIR YEARS" - extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries,reviews of "GREAT HATRED, LITTLE ROOM" by Jonathan Powell and watched the recent Peter Taylor programme THE SECRET PEACEMAKER on TV which all dealt with the negotiations leading to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998.Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy (or Spin Doctor) from 1997 to 2003 and Jonathan Powell was Blair's Chief of Staff from 1997 to 2007. The TV documentary maker Peter Taylor interviewed Brendan Duddy, the Derry business man who acted as a secret go-between for many years.

The personalities involved, Reynolds and Major, Hume and Adams,Clinton, Trimble, Blair and Ahern, Senator George Mitchell, Martin McGuinness, Mo Mowlam etc.etc. are well presented. Even the "Celtic Tiger" takes a bow. I would not disparage any of the actors in the drama. But the bigger picture is either unseen, or, if seen, unacknowledged. 

What's missing is the global,  geopolitical context that made the British and their American allies (or vice versa?) amenable to a settlement, which might, just possibly, lead to a united Ireland free from British overlordship.

That context is the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, signalled by the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989.

Thirteen months later, in November 1990,  the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, declared that Britain had no strategic interest in remaining in Northern Ireland.

To quote W B Yeats -all was changed utterly,for from the 12th to century onwards Ireland was of strategic interest to London's rulers.

Henry II of England had established his Lordship of Ireland to forestall any ambition that Norman adventurers already established there would use it as a springboard to usurp his Crown

.Cromwell and William III fought wars in Ireland to scotch the retrieval by the Stuart Charles II and James II of the English Crown.

When England was at war with Spain, or France, or Germany, she had no intention of being snookered by a hostile landing in Ireland.

When the First World War ended it was feared that the next Great War would be between the United States and Britain.The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty allowed the British naval bases in Lough Swilley in Donegal, Berehaven in Bantry Bay, and in Cork Harbour ,covering Ireland's Atlantic coast from the Northwest to the far South.

When Ireland negotiated British withdrawal from these bases in 1938, the then backbench MP, Winston Churchill, a former (and future) First Lord of the Admiralty, condemned the agreement, with great anger, in the House of Commons.

With the emergence of the Cold War in the late 1940s, Ireland's strategic indispensibility to British strategy was as great as ever. 1948 saw the Berlin Airlift, the coming to power of Communists by coup in Czechoslovakia and their feared coming to power by election in Italy.1948 also saw the coming to power by election in Ireland of a disparate coalition, led by the unlikliest of Republicans, John A Costello.

Ireland had adopted a  sovereign republican constitution in 1937 and had maintained military neutrality during the Second World War. But she had not formally declared a Republic nor formally left the British Commonwealth. In 1949 Costello declared Ireland a Republic and the British deemed Ireland to have left the Commonwealth.

The British (Labour) Government responded with  the 1949 Government of Ireland Act which, quite fraudulently, purported to vest the future of the six northeastern Irish Counties in the "Parliament of Northern Ireland." The 1920 Government of Ireland Act placed "every person, matter and thing in Ireland" under the supreme control of the Imperial Parliament in Westminster, and in 1972 that Imperial Parliament blew  the "Parliament of Northern Ireland" away, leaving not a wrack behind. In the UK, Parliament at Westminster is sovereign and no one session can bind its successors. The 1949 Act was a fig leaf to cover the naked strategic concerns of  the British, who, in that same year co-founded NATO to check the presumed predatory intentions of the Soviet Union.

In January 1980, under the 30 year rule, British Cabinet documents for 1949 were made public. One was a Memorandum by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brooke, following the Irish Government  declaration of a Republic, which was taken by the British as a formal departure from the British Commonwealth. The Memorandum was marked "Noted" by Prime Minister Clement Attlee. It said, in part-

"For many years past, members of all political parties here have been able to take the line over partition that there is nothing they would like better than to see a united Ireland, but this is a problem which Irishmen must settle for themselves.

It has been very convenient for the political parties to be able in this way to avoid the responsibility of favouring one side or the other in this controversy.

It seems to me that Eire's new status will make it impossible for any political party in this country to preserve this detached attitude any longer. So long as Eire owes no allegiance to the Crown, and is not a member of the Commonwealth, it seems to me that any United Kingdom government will be compelled to take a positive line in supporting the continuance of partition - partly because they must support the Loyalists in the North,BUT MAINLY BECAUSE IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR STRATEGIC REASONS THAT SOME PART OF IRELAND SHOULD REMAIN WITHIN HIS MAJESTY'S DOMINIONS"

The Memorandum continues that the strategic isssue  was"self-evident and fresh in everybody's mind as a result of experiencein the last war" and advised that in approaching particular proposals being put forward by the Northern Ireland Government at the time, there were "overriding political and strategic reasons for giving these proposals a rather more sympathetic hearing than they might be thought to deserve on their strict merits".

So  the wishes and the interests of Irish people, North, South, East or West, Catholic, Protestant or Dissenter, counted for little in British government calculations.Just as the wishes of the islanders of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, counted for nothing when Britain'sAmerican allies wanted their homes as bases from which to bomb other poor people.

Nor is it a coincidence that the Western Alliance waited for the collapse of the Soviet Union before it made the end of Apartheid in South Africa possible. But for that Soviet collapse, Nelson Mandela and his comrades might still be prisoners on Robbin Island.In fact Nelson Mandela was released from imprisonment within three months of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The following quotation is from analyses of the leaked US National Security Study Memorandum, a.k.a. THE KISSINGER STUDY STUDY OF SOUTHERN AFRICA, which was published in the US in 1976-

"A key element in South Africa's military links with NATO isthe highly sophisticated communications and surveillance center, Silvermine, just north of the Simonstown naval base. This complex system, known as Project Advocaat, is capable of covering 25 million square miles of ocean, stretching from South America to Bangladesh. A despatch in the WALL STREET JOURNAL quoted a South African naval officer that the system at Silvermine is linked to the US via the American communications center in Derry, Northern Ireland......................The extension of the communications facility on Diego Garcia..........................."

It is incontrovertible that the strategic imperatives of the United States, Britain and their allies impinged on the populations of South Africa, Diego Garcia and Ireland and that the interests, wishes, sentiments and human rights  of the peoples of those places counted for nothing with those allies.

(see also "Professional Fouls" a book review I had published in The Irish Democrat in September 1985 and which was copied onto this BLOG on 04 May 2007)

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The following  review  was published in the Connolly Association journal THE IRISH DEMOCRAT in February  1985 under the heading SHAM JUSTICE:-

Death On The Streets of Derry . Tony Gifford. NCCL

Tony Gifford is a Labour Peer and a Queen's Counsel.

His pamphlet follows visits to Derry where he questioned eye-witnesses to two incidents in April 1981. In them three young civilians, all unarmed, Catholic and Irish, met their deaths.

Fifteen year old Paul Whitters was shot by the RUC with a plastic bullet after the police had been attacked with stones. From the evidence Gifford is satisfied as regards the fact that the RUC were not in danger; that the boy was alone when shot;that the range was at most ten yards; and the shot was head-high, apparently (against regulations), aimed that way deliberately. As regards law, he is certain that a charge of murder should have been brought, and sustained, in court.No charge whatever was brought against the RUC.

Nineteen year Gary English and eighteen year old James Brown died after two Land Rovers,armoured and weighing three quarters of a ton each, were driven at a speed of between fifty and sixty miles per hour , into a crowd. Already felled by one of the vehicles, and orobably already dead, English's body was run over by one of the vehicles reversing.

From evidence, including that of an experienced BBC journalist, Gifford is convinced that the direction and speed of the vehicles were deliberate, and that charges of muder should have been brought and sustained against the soldiers in court.One British soldier was charged with causing death by dangerous driving,and another was charged with aiding and abetting him. They were acquitted by a jury after a trial which prompts Gifford to inform us as to the correct procedure for a court of justice.

For one thing, a judge should direct a jury on the law, particularly on the definition of a crime. For another he should remind them of the evidence. Mr Justice Hutton failed to explain the law, disposed of the evidence in five paragraphs, and in passages covering six pages of transcript spoke for the defence.

Gifford is not satisfied with the conduct of the prosecution either. Wrongfooted from the start by not bringing a charge of murder and using the damning evidence to convince the jury, they allowed the judge throughout to impute innocent motivation to the army. TheCrown QC abandoned the case at the critical stage, leaving a Junior Counsel with  the burden of cross-examing the defendants and the other crucial task of making the final speech for the prosecution.

Introducing the booklet, Gifford asks  the following questions. What is the real nature of the "minimum force" policy of the security forces? What restraints are there in practice and what faith can the community have in the processes of judicial hearing?

It its many years since these questions exercised the keenest minds in Derry. Government propaganda, as instanced by Humphrey Atkins in the Daily Mail includes the three youths amongst those killed by the IRA, whilst THE TIMES numbers them amongst its spurious calculations of Protestant martyrs.

Donal Kennedy.

Mr Justice Hutton was raised to the Peerage, and as Lord Justice Hutton was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland from 1988 to 1997. He had been Counsel for the British Army at the Tribunal on Bloody Sunday presided over by England's then Lord Chief Justice Widgery which found that  the the discharge of firearms by the Parachute Regiment bordered on the reckless. As a member of the Law Lords he was instrumental in the release of General Pinochet, the mutinous ex-soldier and murderous renegade, from fear of extradition to answer murder charges in Spain. He was recalled from retirement to conduct an inquiry which exonerated the British Government from improper conduct regarding the dossier on the "threat from Iraq" which induced Parliament to support the Anglo-American attack on that oil-rich country. Consult Google for further coverage of his distinguished career.

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On November 3rd 2007, Dr Garret FitzGerald, who has served a number of  terms as Taoiseach and one term as Ireland's Foreign Minister, dealt with deliberate untruths in a recently published study of the conflict in or over the North of Ireland from 1969 ,commissioned by the Chief of Britain's Defence Staff.

Britain's  propaganda warriors have not been decommissioned.

The study misrepresented the attitudes of Irish Governments under Fianna Fail's Jack Lynch, and under Fine Gael-led Coalition Governments led by Dr FitzGerald himself and the one in which he was Foreign Ministers.

Dr FitzGerald was understandably peeved that these Governments were depicted as ultra-nationalist and anti-British.

A great many Irish people, and not only IRA or Sinn Fein supporters, believed that those Irish Governments collaborated with British repression and acquiesced in false anti-Irish propaganda to a disgraceful extent.

For myself, I personally published letters and articles suggesting that those Irish administrations were the equivalent of the Vichy Governments under Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval which earned those two gentlemen a life sentence and a firing squad, respectively, under a liberated France.

(to be continued)

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Some twenty odd years ago, following one of many  misinformed or misguided editorials in The Times (of London, England)  that paper was gracious enough to publish a letter of mine, written in the hope that it would learn from it.

Though my circumstances at the time were straitened, nay, penurious, I began to receive curious mail. One came with a promotional audiotape featuring Captain Mark Phillips singing the praises of the Land Rover.( Those were the days when 4x4s could be expected in urban areas only if the military were mounting a coup d'etat or the "Police" in the North of Ireland were going about their Constabulary Duties.)

One came inviting me to a fine wine tasting, and another to view some objets d'art in Chelsea. Another invited me to invest in a Condominium in Florida. But I'm a Roman Catholic of the Old School, (motto: Inter Mutanda Constantia).Besides, I couldn't afford the fare.

Perhaps the most curious letter, dated 29th January January 1987, came from one A.J. Lewis, Chairman & Chief Executive of Hartley Investment Trust Limited.

I just found it in my attic today and it almost caused my involuntary defenestration.I think it deserves preservation for posterity:-

Dear Mr Kennedy

I am writing to you on a personal basis to see if you are interested in working together with myself to raise capital for a fighting fund to ensure the Conservative Party achieves success at the next election.

You are no doubt deeply concerned about the possible threat of a Labour victory at the next election and are obviously considering, as I am, the ramifications of such a success on your ability to create and conserve wealth. I can only assume that your circumstances are comparable  to mine, in that you are eager to protect the wealth you have created and the quality of life you and your family enjoy.

It is my considered opinion that if the Conservative Party do not win the next election, penal taxation, exchange controls and a breakdown of our traditional values will take place.

My purpose in writing to you is to seek your assistance, financially or by direct participation with a group of likeminded individuals, to raise substantial funds to meet a special requirement of the Conservative Party. The funds raised  will be directed at specific aspects of  election organisation and political campaigning by providing the constituencies with modern technology and advanced management systems.The total of the sums raised will be directed only towards this project and will not be diverted to any other activites within the Conservative Party.

If you do not wish to be actively involved in this initiative may I presume to ask for a donation made payable to the "Conservative Board of Finance Tactical Committee" and sent to me at the address below. However if you contribute already to the Conservative Board of Finance or to the Treasurers of the Conservative Party please ignore my request for a contribution.

Would you  please contact me if you can assist in any way.

Yours sincerely"

When THE TIMES published my letter they made a minor error in transcribing my address. All my curious mail repeated this error. Advertisers assume that anyone who has a letter published in The Times is not short of money, and they pass the addresses on to businesses and the Conservative Party, a party which I renounced at my Baptism, or which was renounced for me by my sponsors, when I renounced the Devil and all his works and pomps.

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BEARS IN THE WOODS AND THE BOW-WOW FACTOR

Once upon a time, in a land where bears frolic in the woods, there lived a man called Aleksei Grigoryevich Stakhanov.

Aleksei Grigoryevich, as his friends called him for short, was a coalminer.Each shift he mined twice as much coal as the previous shift.

He would work one extra shift every day, for half-pay. And on Sunday he would work two extra shifts, for no pay at all.

Aleksei Grigoryevich was much admired by the owner of the mine, who also owned newspapers, radio stations, film studios, cinemas, recording studios,theatres, and acting and ballet troupes. Newspapers, radio programmes, films, songs, plays, opera and ballet united in praise of Aleksei Grigoryevitch. All coalminers, at first, and then all the workers  were encouraged to follow the example of Aleksei Grigoryevich Stakhanov.

Though the Private Finance Initiative did not operate there, the owner of the mine owned all the schools, all the hospitals, all the jails and even all the summer camps in the land where  bears frolic in the woods.

After some years the owner of the mine passed on, and some years later it was revealed that the reputation of Aleksei Grigoryevich Stakhanov did not bear scrutiny. It was a fairy story, part of a campaign of fun and frolics.

Workers in Britain are fortunate, some say blessed by Divine Providence, for they will not be surprised by frolicking bears when they venture down to the woods.

But they are liable to endure a surfeit of bull ordure from some bosses, while at their places of work.In John Bull's Green and Pleasant Land there's a lot of it about.That's not to suggest that the bosses are parsimonious when it comes to frolics.Au Contraire, as they say at polite dinner-parties.

I could name an employer that urges workers to routinely go the extra mile for no extra payment, (try that  on a Cabbie!), and to wag their tails like grateful dogs whilst going it.

They call it the Bow-Wow Factor.

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IRISH MY ERSE! A HIBERNIAN DIARY

ORIGIN AND INSPIRATION

For many, many years, which seemed like many, many centuries, one  Kevin Myers contributed a daily column,  " An Irishman's Diary," to the Irish Times.As a counterweight to his effusions and those of his fellow-travellers I decided to open my own blog.

Some pieces were letters, published or not , submitted in answer to editorials or articles that needed challenging. Some are pieces which were published in the tiny circulation Irish Democrat and might, through the Internet find, wider circulation.

Most of the pieces were written to blow holes in the wall of falsehood which supporters of British rule in Ireland, and of the conduct of British rulers in Ireland, have erected and maintained over the centuries. Or to lift that wall, like the effect of  a charge of ammonol under a bridge, using laughter to send it up.

It has been suggested to me that I am indulging in stage-Irish whimsy, self-indulgent Blarney.

I would suggest to anyone of that opinion that they read

i) Groundhog Day, I'm Convinced

ii) How Reliable is Keane?

iii) Melting a Heart of Stone

iv) Professional Fouls.

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FROM The Irish Democrat May 1985.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER by Donal Kennedy

VISITING friends in the 1920s, my mother once shared a table with Padraic O Conaire, novelist, short-story writer and essayist. The great wordsmith uttered "nary a peep" during the encounter. Instead he seemed to transfix the company with his eyes as if trying to read their souls. I'll bet is was disconcerting for a young woman of good looks (not, as my friends know, inherited by this son.)  But if  Fate didn't bless me with looks, I got more change out of my own meeting with Brendan Behan. Advice, no less, on my choice of reading from one of the widest read writers of his day..

I was then but a lad of eighteen summers, newly released from a boarding school buried sixty miles from Cork and a hundred from civilisation. I was enjoying the novelty of a pay-packet, back in civilisation, and it was my habit of a lunch-hour to promenade streets broad and narrow , window-shopping or assessing the talent or to browse through the bookstalls along the Liffey Quays.

One such lunch-hour, in Eason's in O'Connell Street, I bought "The United Irishman" which reported and supported the IRA campaign in the Six Counties. It was a useful complement to the coverage of the daily papers. Besides, shortly before that I had been North for the first time, to Armagh city on a July evening. The virtual desertion of the streets by civilians, and the sight of up to a hundred armed "B" men had come as a shock.So too, last August, did the midnight patrol of Andersonstown by a British helicopter, playing its blinding searchlight on the homes and gardens of Her Majesty's reluctant subjects. But back to Eason's.

I was just after picking up my paper when I was made aware of a customer on my right side also making a purchase, for he spoke to me.This is what he said: "Son, yeh don't want to be readin' that. Why don't yeh buy a dacent paper - like the Daily Express."

At the time I was more familiar with Behan's reputation as a Roaring Boy than his merits as a writer. I had occasionally seen him in various states of dishevelment. This time I looked into his face, which showed evidence of a rough time lately, but which struck me as having great intelligence, and being essentially, (and this was a surprise)  handsome.

Not yet a master of badinage with strangers, and fearful of the effect a bleeding nose might have on my one good suit and shirt, I averted my eyes and retreated. But not before I  had seen for myself that the man had actually bought the Daily Express!

Now I knew a lot of Dublinmen who bought the Daily Express and whose political sentiments were closer to those of the United Irishman. I understood it was for the Racing pages, as they mostly enjoyed a flutter on the nags. But I've never heard that Behan, whose first published piece was in the United Irishman, ever took much interest in the gee-gees. Could it just be an example of opposites attracting? Behan, generous,compassionate and highly literate, reading a mean, heartless, philistine  mindless rag , requires some explanation. Perhaps his very compassion drove him to examine the mental fare of the poor deluded blighters who'd willingly bleed for Imperialism? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?

But then, why try to make me subscribe?  It may be remembered,  too, that Brendan Behan could say more than his prayers.

I was reminded of all this by the rediscovery of a snapshot of Brendan given me a long time ago. It is a world-exclusive scoop, showing a very hevelled Brendan taken some time in the 1950s. Some readers may be unfamiliar with the practice of Catholic friends asking God's Blessing from newly-ordained  Priests, and kneeling for it. Here in England the same posture is adopted by atheist Privy Councillors for their own anointed Monarch. Perhaps someone can identify the Priest?*

For all his Roaring Boy waywardness, Brendan Behan was deeply Catholic, as also, he used to remark, had been most of the great artists of Europe.Shortly before his death, aged 41, he addressed a nun nursing him with the prayer that she become the mother of a Bishop.

*When I learn how to match pictures with blog I will do so, in black and white. The original is in Colour.

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The following  Book Review was published in The Irish Democrat in May  1988.

As today is 12 JULY I thought it appropriate to BLOG it.

THE ROAD TO THE SOMME- Men of the Ulster Division Tell Their Story. Philip Orr.Blackstaff Press, Belfast. 248 pp. p/b £9.95

Reviewed by Donal Kennedy.

Of  all the units of all the armies that fought in the First World War, the British Army's Ulster Division was surely the most curious. Most of it was transferred en bloc from the Ulster Volunteer Force, a private, wholly Protestant army, raised in 1912 to fight against the British on the enactment at Westminster of the Irish Home Rule Bill. Its rhetoric had included inviting Kaiser Wilhelm to copy William of Orange and to chase England's King George V over the Boyne. Within four years it was to sacrifice itself to the Kaiser's massed machine guns at the Somme, in an attemot to drive the Germans from Republican (and Catholic) France.

The oral and written reminiscences of veterans are used extensively throughout this book, but it owes more to Philip Orr than its sub-title implies.His interest stems from curiosity about a portrait of a great-uncle killed in the Division. Well researched and written,humane, honest and fair, the book's coffee-table format should not put off the "serious" student who might expect a public relations exercise for Unionism or a gung ho approach to slaughter. The reader cannot but be impressed by the endurance and quiet heroism of deluded youths led to the Hell of the Somme. The book has no villains, not even the vainglorious old fools who led them there, bit it is an indictment of militarism and war itself.

For me the early chapters have the period charm of an episode from "Upstairs, Downstairs,"  the TV series of a few years back. All those titled and landed gentlemen, training their retainers on their estates. For "the poor man at the gate" the uniform, arms carrying and drilling gave him an importance unattainable in his civilian roles, and motor charabanc jaunts in the Mournes may have been an intimation of Heaven, where the class system could be expected to remain unchanged and Papists likewise excluded.Before the first Ulster Volunteer was recruited a meeting of magnates in London had underwritten the force to the tune of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds - more than the total income tax paid in Belfast that year. The effect of such money might be guaged by the UVF's deployment of 827 motor vehicles for the Larne gun-running in April 1914 - against the 500 which accompanied the British Expeditionary Force to France the following August. For the gentry for whom such new-fangled transport lacked charm there was the Enniskillen Horse, a UVF unit pictured booted and saddled, as if ready to hunt foxes - or Priests.

Mr Orr makes the point that the UVF's Irish campaign was a "game of bluff with a perplexed and benign British Government." He continues -" The massive military marches and open-air rallies of the Volunteers had been what Orange demonstrations and marches have always been - a form of psychological offensive,designed to scare the enemy with a rattle of sabres and the boom of big drums." On the Somme they were to engage with troops no less used to big parades - the Kaiser would watch some 50,000 at a time drill at Berlin's Templehof base, and a million rounds of British artillery rained on German positions, causing little more damage than a Lambeg drum-roll on a gathering of Fenians.

Britain's Somme offensive of July 1916 was planned to take pressure off the French Army, which since since the previous March had been resisting the Germans at Verdun. It was believed that the German positions would be smashed by a week-long artillery barrage and that the British infantry could simply walk up to the positions after the barrage, overcome the surviving Germans, and punch through the German lines and break the stalemate which had existed for nearly two years. In the event, although at times the barrage and the detonation of huge landmines could be heard in London, the Germans had dug-in very deeply, and sat out the barrage in relative safety.

In the time it took the British to reach the German trenches, the Germans sprinted back to ground level and mowed the advancing British down like grass. Alone of the British forces, the Ulster Division had left their own front line just before the barrage lifted, and sprinted to the German lines. Thus, alone of the attacking forces,they captured the positions allotted them, but the failure of the forces on their flanks left them exposed to the full might of German firepower when those had been dealt with. They had to abandon their gains. In the first morning of the Somme the British suffered over 50,000 casualties, 16,000 of them fatal, and they were to suffer over 500,000 fatalities there  by the time the battle was over some months later. As "Kitcheners Army" was largely made up of units recruited  from particular factories, schools and streets, so the destruction of any unit could leave a whole street, or a town , bereaved. Carson's Ulster Division was similarly closely knit with similar local effect. In all, some 50,000 men recruited in Ireland died in the First World War, the majority of them Catholic and Nationalist, as were most of the units raised from Irish communities in Britain, for example the Tyneside Irish, decimated that first day of the Somme. Of the Ulster Division's Somme sacrifice Mr Orr remarks that it never achieved anything, and I myself have seen graves of men of the Division killed on that 1st July interspersed with those of Dublin Fusiliers  killed on the same spot in November.

One veteran tells of a comrade he'll never forget - "He made himself a special weapon for using in the trenches. It was about half the length of a pickshaft and on one end he screwed a pear-shaped lump of cast iron, on the other a leather thong which he kept tied around his waist. He used parry a bayonet thrust with a rifle, then swing this lump of cast iron upwards. No matter where it hit the man it broke bones. He'd smash a man's wrist or hand, then when the rifle flew from the man's hands he'd shoot him. He fought like the devil. He must have killed a dozen Germans. I don't know how long we were in the 'D' line but while there we fought every second, there was no rest at all. The blood had got about the tongues of our boots and our socks were soaked with it."

One veteran, George MacBride from the Shankill, returned from the war to find Belfast "a town filled with pawnshops, pubs, politicians and preachers." He joined the Labour Party and married Elizabeth Carney , who, as James Connolly's Secretary, took part in the 1916 Easter Rising. Young Billy McFadzean, also from the Shankill, saved the lives of his comrades by falling on a grenade. His bereaved father went to collect his Victoria Cross from the King at Buckingham Palace, "having been granted a third-class return ticket to London."

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