REMEMBERING FALLEN AS WORLD AT WAR AGAIN
Posted on 11th November 2023
On my mantlepiece at home I have a framed notice which reads “ I join with my grateful people in sending you this memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War”. It was signed by King George V, the then King of England. It relates to my great uncle Victor who died during the first World War. It was from him that my father inherited the Slane Castle Estate. Thousands of Irish men served in both World Wars and many lost their lives. I choose to remember my great uncle on Remembrance Day. So today I hope and pray that there is no trouble in London between those choosing to remember the dead and those marching against the war in Gaza. On balance I think the decision of the Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to allow the Gaza March to go ahead was the right decision. Now he has the unenviable task of keeping the peace. However, I really do think that the British Prime Minister needs to rein in his Home Secretary. In an article in the Times she acquaints pro-Palestinian protests in London to sectarian marches in Northern Ireland. This has provoked wide-spread condemnation. Colin Eastwood, M.P. and Leader of the S.D.L.P. calls her a “ Pound shop Enoch Powell” and said “She has managed to offend just about everyone – no mean feat in a divided society”. I regard Rishi Sunak as a good man with the right instincts, but the truth of the matter is that he is not strong enough to dispense with Suella Braverman, as she is too beloved by the Right of the Conservative Party.
So what of this terrible war. The U.S. is feeling the heat as the civilian casualties mount, and the horrific images of anguished and distressed people are beamed around the globe, the clamour for a cease-fire rises. Israel has now at least agreed to 4 hour daily humanitarian pauses. Biden has admitted that he has been looking for longer 3 day pauses. Without question the Israelis need to open proper humanitarian corridors and they urgently need to let medical supplies in and to avoid scenarios where doctors are operating on patients without anaesthetics.
So now on Remembrance Day when we are confronted by a conflict in Ukraine which in many respects resembles the awful trench warfare of the First World War and in Gaza with a desperate struggle between a terrorist organisation buried in tunnels against a highly militarised State seeking to defend its very existence. One might well wonder how can there ever be peace ? This is a question I ask myself on almost a daily basis but today I will remember all those who fell in war.
