In April 1995 Taoiseach John Bruton spoke at Islandbridge and paid tribute to the 150,000 Irish people North and South who "volunteered to fight against Nazi tyranny in Europe, at least 10,000 of whom were killed while serving in British uniforms…In recalling their bravery, we are recalling a shared experience of Irish and British people…We remember a British part of the inheritance of all who live in Ireland."


Bruton's speech was interesting because of its implication that there is more to the issue of the volunteers than simply assimilating their role as an aspect of neutral Ireland's contribution to the allied cause. His words were uttered in the context of the unfolding peace process in Ulster, and in front of representatives from Northern and Southern Irish political parties. His allusion to a shared Irish and British experience and to the British inheritance were an obvious gesture in the direction of a concept of Irish identity or identities incorporating a plurality of loyalties, experiences and traditions.


From being a marginal and excluded group in Irish society in the 1940s the Irish volunteers of World War II had by the 1990s come to represent historically and symbolically an aspect of a refashioned and broader concept of Irish identity. There is a certain poetic justice in all this since the most frequently reported volunteer experience of loyal service in the British armed forces was that it made them feel more Irish and more patriotic. Notwithstanding this strengthening of their Irish identity most volunteers did not feel very welcome when they returned to postwar Ireland, nor for many more years to come.

I believe these statistics do not include the many thousands of Irish nationals who served as non military Merchant Seamen on allied ships, and are not included in the role of honour. Lest We Forget.

Yours, Aye. Dave