Rewriting history

I AGREE fully with the sentiments expressed by Ms Sullivan of Co Cork (‘We must make sure the lessons of history can still be learned by all,’ Irish

Independent, September 13) but I do not share some of her examples of the effects of Irish history.

She states that the lock-out strike of 1913 “partially led to the 1916 Rising and in turn to the War of Independence”.

All the lock-out contributed was a pool of starving young men which John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, exploited by recruiting 150,000 to fight in World War I. He hoped it would gain recognition from Prime Minister Asquith for the granting of Home Rule.

Alas, all it achieved was to leave 50,000 of these mostly young men dead on the battlefields of Europe and in Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles.

The bribe given to the wives and mothers they left behind was a payment of 25 shillings and sixpence per week which, in the case of death, would become the pension.

At that time the weekly wage for a labourer was 13 shillings per week. It is little wonder the women of Dublin jeered the remnants of the GPO survivors as they were marched to their imprisonment and, in some cases, their death.

Another case mentioned was the torpedo attack on the ‘Lusitania’ in 1915 which brought the Americans into the war in 1917. In fact, it was the Balfour Declaration which brought America into the war, having promised Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people. This was regarded as the reason the Jewish lobby in America urged the government to enter the war.

The Balfour Declaration stated the Jewish people were not to “disturb the Arab population’s religious freedom or their property”. This condition was observed until 1946, after World War II. Hugh Duffy Cleggan, Co Galway