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ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the First World War, veterans often became symbols of broken masculinity, standing in the popular imagination every Armistice Day as emblems of the futility of war. In stark contrast, Ulster—reconstituted as Northern Ireland after the partition of Ireland in 1921—did not consign the Great War to the pages of history. Veterans of the trenches became cherished icons of manly heroism and bravery. However, the sectarian tensions that pre-dated the war by many years infiltrated commemorations of ex-servicemen, and some men were honoured far above others. Soldiers from the 36th (Ulster) Division were remembered in a ‘language of sacrifice’ as valiant unionist heroes whose blood shed at the Somme had sanctified the British connection; men who had fought elsewhere, particularly in the 10th (Irish) or 16th (Irish) Divisions, were pointedly omitted from this pantheon of warrior masculinities. Veterans of the 36th Ulsters were given preference in labour, political and social circles, while presumed nationalists were discriminated against and even terrorized by those who felt that service in the Ulster Division was the only acceptable war record. The consequences of the Great War created a hierarchy that had far-reaching consequences in Northern Ireland for the rest of the century.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Deputy Keeper of the Records of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland for permission to publish from the collections cited in this article. The papers of W. J. Lynas and J. L. Stewart-Moore are held at the Imperial War Museum, London. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and the author, and the Imperial War Museum would be grateful for any information that might help to trace those whose identities or addresses are not currently known.
Notes
1Robert Barr, ‘Last British survivor of WWI trenches refused to romanticize the sacrifice’, Globe and Mail (Toronto), 27 July 2009; Tracy McVeigh and Mark Townshend, ‘Harry Patch, Britain's last surviving soldier of the Great War, dies at 111’, Observer, 26 July 2009. Both newspapers quoted Gordon Brown's statement regarding Patch's death: ‘I had the honour of meeting Harry, and I share his family's grief at the passing of a great man. The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten. We say today with still greater force, “We will remember them.”’
2Westminster Abbey, ‘A service to mark the passing of the World War One generation’, 11 November 2009, available on the Westminster Abbey website at www.westminster-abbey.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/32198/web-friendly-WW1-service.pdf (viewed 20 March 2012).
3Kathleen Harris, ‘Canadians pay tribute to WWI soldiers’, Toronto Sun, 9 April 2010; Richard Goldstein, ‘Frank Buckles, last World War I doughboy, is dead at 110’, New York Times, 28 February 2011. Buckles's family requested that his body lie in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol, but they were refused by Republican and Democratic leaders. President Obama privately visited Buckles's grave in Arlington Cemetery the following month. Helene Cooper, ‘Obama pays respects to World War I veteran’, 15 March 2001, blog on the New York Times website at http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/obama-pays-respects-to-ww-veteran/?scp=5&sq=last%20veteran&st=cse (viewed 20 March 2012).
4Robert Hall, ‘Obituary: Claude Choules’, 5 May 2011, BBC News, available at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10205174 (viewed 20 March 2012); D. J. Taylor, ‘Claude Choules is dead. Long live the Great War’, Independent, 6 May 2011.
5See comments by Sir James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, in ‘Sir James Craig and the Orange Order: firm as ever’, Northern Whig, 13 July 1922, and those by Joseph MacRory, Bishop of Down and Connor, in ‘Bishop MacRory and Belfast: attack on the government’, Belfast Telegraph, 7 February 1921.
6In this article, the term ‘Unionist’ refers to those who belonged to a specific political party, whereas ‘unionist’ (lower case) refers to all those who wished to maintain the British connection. Likewise, ‘Nationalist’ refers to followers of the Irish Parliamentary Party, while ‘nationalist’ refers to the larger community of Irishmen, including republicans, who desired some form of independence from the United Kingdom.
7Letter from W. J. Lynas to Mina Lynas, 15 July 1916: Imperial War Museum, London, 89/7/1; ‘References in the churches: tributes by Belfast ministers’, Northern Whig, 10 July 1916; Captain Wilfrid B. Spender, ‘The attack of the Ulstermen by a staff officer’, 2 July 1916: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Carson Papers, D.1507/A/18/2. See also Jane G. V. McGaughey, Ulster's Men: Protestant Unionist Masculinities and Militarization in the North of Ireland, 1912–1923 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 2012), 84–107; David Officer, ‘“For God and for Ulster”: the Ulsterman on the Somme’, in Ian McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), 160–83 (182).
8R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press 1995), 77.
9Sean Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861–1913 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005), 34.
10John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman 2005), 68.
11John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman 2005), 3.
12McGaughey, Ulster's Men, 87–9.
13Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London and New York: Routledge 1994), 151–2.
14St John Ervine, Craigavon: Ulsterman (London: George Allen and Unwin 1949), 73–4.
15 Ulster's Tribute to Her Fallen Sons (Belfast: Ulster Division Battlefield Memorial Committee 1918): Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, D.1098/2/1/2; Officer, ‘“For God and for Ulster”’, 162; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-century Britain, 94.
16‘The glorious Ulster Division’, Belfast News-Letter, 11 August 1919.
17‘The Twelfth: normal procession and normal speeches’, Irish News, 13 July 1920.
18Bryan A. Follis, A State Under Siege: The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920–25 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), 11.
19‘The Boyne anniversary: Sir James Craig’, Northern Whig, 13 July 1922.
20‘Belfast's peace days’, Irish Independent, 11 August 1919.
21‘Derry nationalists and the Belfast parade’, Irish News, 9 August 1919.
22‘Derry nationalists and the Belfast parade’, Irish News, 9 August 1919.
23Eric Kaufmann, ‘The Orange Order in Ontario, Newfoundland, Scotland and Northern Ireland: a macro-social analysis’, in David Wilson (ed.), The Orange Order in Canada (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2007), 42–68 (45).
24‘The Twelfth: normal procession and normal speeches’.
25Officer, ‘“For God and for Ulster”’, 181–2.
26‘The Boyne anniversary: Sir James Craig’.
27‘For ex-servicemen’, Belfast Telegraph, 29 June 1923.
28J. L. Stewart-Moore, ‘Random recollections’, 11–12: Imperial War Museum, London, 77/39/1.
29Timothy Bowman, Carson's Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910–22 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2007), 164–8, 171–6.
30Letter from Lionel Curtis to Colonel Wilfrid Spender, London, 22 March 1922: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 6/9.
31Letter from Colonel Wilfrid B. Spender to Lionel Curtis, Belfast, 24 March 1922: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 6/9.
32Joanna Bourke, ‘Effeminacy, ethnicity and the end of trauma: the sufferings of “shell-shocked” men in Great Britain and Ireland, 1914–39’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 35, no. 1, 2000, 57–69 (66).
33Letter from Major A. E. Knight to Colonel Wilfrid Spender, Belfast, 24 March 1922: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 6/9.
34Bourke, ‘Effeminacy, ethnicity and the end of trauma’, 59–60.
35Bourke, ‘Effeminacy, ethnicity and the end of trauma’, 61.
36Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2009), 2.
37‘Belfast peace celebrations’, Irish News, 11 August 1919.
38Letter from Colonel Wilfrid Spender to Lionel Curtis, Belfast, 24 March 1922: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 6/9.
39Sir James Craig, 30 October 1923: House of Commons Debates, Northern Ireland, vol. 3, 1923, col. 1646, available on the Stormont Papers website at http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/stormontpapers/pageview.html?volumeno=3&pageno=1646 (viewed 20 March 2012).
4036th Ulster Division Patriotic Fund (Ulster Chelsea Hospital), ‘Chelsea Hospital Scheme for Northern Ireland,’ confidential memorandum, n.d.: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 9/G/65/2.
41Letter from Harold R. Charley to Lord Craigavon, Belfast, 25 November 1936: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 9/G/65/2.
42Letter from Harold R. Charley to Lord Craigavon, Belfast, 25 November 1936: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 9/G/65/2.
43Letter from Harold R. Charley to Lord Craigavon, Belfast, 23 April 1937: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 9/G/65/2.
45Letter from Lord Basil Blackwood to his mother Lady Dufferin, Vice Regal Lodge, 16 April 1916: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Blackwood Papers, D1231/G/5/289. Lord Basil was killed in action in France in July 1917.
44Peter Hart, The IRA at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003), 241.
46T. J. Smith, ‘Inspector General's Monthly Report, Belfast’, July 1920: National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office Papers, CO 904/112.
47Alan F. Parkinson, Belfast's Unholy War: The Troubles of the 1920s (Dublin and Portland, OR: Four Courts Press 2004), 33.
48Austen Morgan, Labour and Partition: The Belfast Working Class, 1905–23 (London and Concord, MA: Pluto Press 1991), 265.
49‘Darkest Belfast: virulent anti-Catholic campaign, violent speeches’, Irish News, 29 July 1920.
50‘Queen's Island Union Jack: unfurled on largest gantry’, Northern Whig, 22 October 1920.
51Sir James Craig, quoted in Oliver P. Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster: 1603-1983: An Interpretive History (London: Hurst 1994), 211.
52‘Our baby parliament: Sir E. Carson to his constituents’, Belfast Telegraph, 4 February 1921.
53Minutes of Cabinet meeting, 4 August 1921: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 4/12.
54Minutes of Cabinet meeting, 4 August 1921: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 4/12.
55Minutes of Cabinet meeting, 4 November 1921: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Records of the Cabinet Secretariat, CAB 4/26.
56Ulster Volunteer Force Pledge, ‘For the Preservation of the Peace’, 1913: National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office Papers, CO 904/27/2; Ulster Solemn League and Covenant (unsigned copy), 28 September 1912: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Moore Family Papers, D.877/28. See also Pembroke Wicks, The Truth about Home Rule (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons 1913), 92.
57See the opinions regarding Thomas Kettle and Major Willie Redmond in Rowland Feilding, War Letters to a Wife: France and Flanders 1915–1919 [1929], ed. Jonathan Walker (Staplehurst, Kent: Spellmount 2001), 81, 116.
58Woods, as the only independent MP in the Northern Ireland House of Commons until 1925, often served as the lone public voice of opposition to the Ulster Unionist Party in the Belfast parliament.
59J. M. Andrews, in ‘Roman Catholic Ex-Servicemen in assisted schemes’, 18 March 1926: House of Commons Debates, Northern Ireland, vol. 7, 1926, col. 248, available on the Stormont Papers website at http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/stormontpapers/pageview.html?volumeno=7&pageno=248 (viewed 22 March 2012).
60J. M. Andrews, in ‘Roman Catholic Ex-Servicemen in assisted schemes’, 18 March 1926: House of Commons Debates, Northern Ireland, vol. 7, 1926, col. 248, available on the Stormont Papers website at http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/stormontpapers/pageview.html?volumeno=7&pageno=248 (viewed 22 March 2012).
61Laura K. Donohue, ‘Regulating Northern Ireland: the Special Powers Acts, 1922–1972’, Historical Journal, vol. 41, no. 4, 1998, 1089–120 (1089–90).
62Carolyn Strange, ‘The “shock” of torture: a historiographical challenge’, History Workshop Journal, no. 61, 2006, 135–52 (145–7).
63Letter from Geoffrey Whiskard to Lionel Curtis, London, 15 September 1922: National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office Papers, CO 739/1.
64Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922, 12 & 13 Geo. V, c. 5.
65John L. J. Edwards, ‘Corporal punishment in Northern Ireland’, Criminal Law Review, 1956, 814–21 (818).
66Case of John Moore, ‘Memorandum of Ministry of Home Affairs on Flogging Cases’, 16 September 1922: National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office Papers, CO 739/1.
67Case of Anthony Canning, ‘Memorandum of Ministry of Home Affairs on Flogging Cases’, 16 September 1922: National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office Papers, CO 739/1
68Case of Patrick Bell, ‘Memorandum of Ministry of Home Affairs on Flogging Cases’, 16 September 1922: National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office Papers, CO 739/1.
69Advertisement from the Citizens’ Committee of 1000, in Winnipeg Telegram, 6 June 1919.
70Norman Penner (ed.), Winnipeg 1919: The Striker's Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike, 2nd edn (Toronto: James Lorrimer and Company 1975), 52.
71Jonathan F. Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 1997), 231.
72Andy Pollack, ‘Solemn ceremony inaugurates memorial to Irish who died in first World War’, Irish Times, 12 November 1998.
73Warren Hoge, ‘Orange protesters evicted from encampment’, New York Times, 16 July 1998; Mervyn Jess, ‘The Drumcree “dance” that spawned a monster’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 May 2007. See also Susan McKay, Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 2000).