MacBride and Coughlan remembered
Nollaig Ó Gadhra
MILITARY history is perhaps a legitimate aspect of a modern tourism
industry. Certainly since my time, 30 years ago, with Ireland West, I
always accepted that the full spectrum of a legacy and a historical
heritage should be available to visitors when they come into an area,
any area. That was reflected, I am told, by common consent, in the old
Galway Guide for Co Galway and a bit of Mayo, which I penned as part of
the Bord Fáilte series. But, then as now, there was history, and
history! Shortly after (the second) Bloody Sunday – the one in Derry in
1972 as opposed to the first one in Croke Park in 1920 – it was not
easy to promote the idea of retired British Army Brass visiting the
west of Ireland in search of their ‘roots’, or worse still, those new
generation historians who wished to see where grandfather had served in
the Black and Tans.
The Connaught Rangers was a more difficult business, because by that
time, and after the re-burial of Commandant Jim Daly and the others who
died in the Indian Mutiny in protest against British policy in Ireland
in 1920 (Finance Minister Charlie Haughey paid to bring their remains
back from India in 1970!), there were two views in Britain itself and
amongst regiment survivors about what their role had been and how they
should be honoured.
I had just written (my first) book in Irish on Gandhi to mark the 100th
anniversary of the Mahatma’s birth, but accepted it was for each group
of visitors to make up their mind about how ‘we’ should honour the
fallen. In essence, families and relatives, old comrades, should always
be allowed to come, remember, mourn and pray as they saw fit.
All we had to do was to facilitate the visitors, make sure places were
marked, well-kept, and well sign-posted and provide as much factual and
honest information as possible – and in as many languages as possible
in order to ensure that everybody went home happy. That is still my
basic view about these matters and indeed about ‘commemorations’ of
whatever kind. As long as it is clear that we stick to basic truths, do
not preach revenge or animosity to old ‘enemies’ (I always wonder at
the patience of German visitors to Ireland, neutral Ireland, when you
hear some of the copy-cat anti-German reactions we repeat from British
films and TV and even the big lie techniques of American movies, which
never even recall that, up until the attack on Pearl Harbour at the end
of 1941, the US was neutral also, and did not raise a hand to ‘protect
the Jews’ under Hitler – the most fashionable excuse for their
carpet-bombing of Germany in the last couple of years of World War II).
It is only when you recall that RTÉ banned records selling in their
millions all over the world, from groups like the Wolfe Tones in those
years, while visiting travel-writers who probably came to Ireland to
enjoy a pub ballad session with the Tones were consciously discouraged
from going to such places by Irish officialdom (and not for artistic,
musical or aseptic reasons!) that one finds it possible to comprehend
why Gerry Collins, Conor Cruise O’Brien, etc got away with the Section
31 censorship regime for so long.
I did not get to India at the time of writing the Gandhi book. But one
of the things that was hinted to me as I began to write up aspects of
the Connaught Rangers, in later years, was a suggestion that a great
‘cover up’ had taken place in 1947-48, when the British finally
withdrew from India, because the old colonial master, in the person of
Lord Mountbatten, having partitioned the sub-continent, and presided
over another ‘bloody disaster’ of Britain’s making, made sure to bring
home to the vast vaults of Imperial Archives every possible scrap of
paper concerning the Connaught Rangers, including their wage sheets.
This had led some people to suspect that this ‘home’ regiment from ‘the
homeland’, white Europeans, were paid less than the other ‘United
Kingdom’ regiments though probably not as badly as the ‘local’ Indian
Regiments, the Gurkas, etc. It is only an allegation, and I was unable
to pursue the matter further, even after going as far as New Delhi four
years ago, and making some searches in the Gandhi Library and other
State archives. The British legacy is still evident in this great
Indian city, in architecture, public policy and sharp class
distinction, while the Irish contribution to the great British colonial
experiment is assured by the fact that Connaught Place remains one of
the most fascinating stops in the inner city/downtown area of India’s
capital city. But not a scrap of paper is to be found on the detail,
the nuts and bolts, of the British legacy. When the British finally
decided to withdraw, to pull out, and go home, they certainly made sure
there was a clean break as far as past legacies were concerned!
This is a timely reminder, perhaps, of what in fact was involved when
Sergeant Major Cornelius Coughlan was awarded the VC while fighting in
the British Army in the Indian Mutiny. He was, no doubt, a brave
soldier, and probably joined the British Army for the same combination
of family, financial and career reasons that prompted Irish
Nationalists and Catholics to enrol in that imperial force down the
years. But for me the bottom line is that anybody who gets a VC,
especially on a war abroad, then as now, invariably was involved in a
bloody conflict against some other ‘natives’, be it in India, or South
Africa (echoes of Major MacBride’s Westport legacy!) or Lance Corporal
Ian Malone, the first Irishman to be awarded the Iraq Medal in 2004
whose poor mother was recently awarded the honour for her son’s
‘contribution’ to the Coalition Forces and the war in Iraq.
I have no objection to families remembering their dead, or even
honouring their involvement in overseas adventures of dubious validity
or merit. In that regard we are a very patient people and usually allow
those who clearly sided with the British might against our own people
to go their way and remember their dead without let or hindrance. In
contrast to the objections frequently raised by British media, and
others, when the Irish abroad pay tribute to those who fought for the
freedom of this country.
If those who wished to honour Cornelius Coughlan in Westport wanted to
make a balanced contribution to the Irish historical experience, then
one might have expected an active presence and an invitation to the
Indian Ambassador and Embassy in Dublin so that the full facts of the
Connaught Rangers’ contribution to British Imperial policy in India
might justly be recalled. Instead, we had Jim Fahy’s RTÉ television
report dominated by the British Ambassador to Ireland going on about
‘the courage to debate matters we might have been reluctant to debate
in the past’, laced with loaded phrases like ‘answering the call’, etc.
As if joining the British regiments in whatever circumstances, and for
whatever reasons, was always a brave and laudable thing to do! This is
the same British Ambassador who had to present Mary Malone with that
medal for her son ‘who had fought and died with the first Battalion of
the Irish Guards’ in that dubious adventure, and probably illegal war,
in Iraq where in RTÉ-speak the locals are now ‘insurgents’ or ‘rebels’,
the US and UK forces are the ‘coalition forces’, and the natives are
‘re-taking part of the city’ in their own country which have been
occupied by ‘western’ forces some 4–8,000 miles away from their home
bases! For the record, let it be stated that most citizens of this
neutral Ireland have no reluctance in discussing these or other complex
historical and political issues, though why this is not reflected in
mainstream political and media circles is another matter.
It does, however, raise another matter as to why our then Defence
Minister, Michael Smith, was involved in the Connaught Ranger-VC man’s
ceremony. Especially given some of the rather ‘western-style’
statements Mr Smith made to justify the lease of Shannon Airport to the
highest bidder over the recent past, and the ongoing policy of the
Fianna Fáil-PD Government in this regard, even after the whole world
has been told about some of the criminal activities of the ‘boys in
blue’ who drop off for a pint on their way to Iraq without even having
to put on their civvies, as used to be the case in Foynes during World
War II – in the age of De Valera. Worse still, it seems members of the
Irish army, our neutral Army, were allowed to dress up in old-style
Connaught Ranger gear at the Westport ceremony and fire shots over the
British soldier’s grave to honour and endorse his achievements for King
and ‘country’ in ‘the Jewel in the Crown’ of British colonial plunder,
half a world away. Tourism? Movie business? Hardly. These were live
shots, it seems; they certainly were interpreted by all involved as
signifying the ‘coming together’, not of the Irish and English (or even
British!) peoples but of their two armies and their two military
traditions. This is unacceptable, dishonest and was particularly wrong
for Minister Smith at this time, when, as Minister for Defence, he
should be making it clearer than ever that not only are we neutral or
unaligned by command of the Irish ballot box, but we have serious
reservations about anything that would blur the distinction between us
and those forces who are breaching every international law in the book
in Iraq, and trying to pass it off as a ‘coalition’ that has the
support of all ‘westerners’.
In that context also, the recent reminder in this paper by Liamy
MacNally on the legacy of Major John MacBride is timely, not just
because of the South African and anti-colonial legacy he represents but
also because it seems Westport, like the whole nation, has largely
overlooked the fact that his son, Dr Seán MacBride was born just over
100 years ago, on January 25, 1904.
It is still not too late for Mayo at least to honour this remarkable
man, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs in the first Coalition
Government, the only person I know who won both the Nobel and the Lenin
Peace Prizes and did a stint as Chief of Staff of the IRA (in the
1930s) as well! The legacy of this man is as complex as that of the
Connaught Rangers and will, hopefully, start to be unravelled before
this year is out. But not by the sort of selective, inaccurate and
confusing approach to honest factual history we witnessed in the
Coughlan case. No insult of any sort is meant to genuine local
interests or relatives. But more than Minister Smith – fighting for his
cabinet seat at that time according to the media gossips – and the
British Ambassador – who has to try and justify what his army is doing
in Iraq as well as in part of our country – need to have their
‘positions’ heard in such cases.
Nollaig Ó Gadhra is one of the country’s most prolific writers on
history and politics. He is a regular contributor - in both English and
Irish - to Irish publications, as well as to many foreign newspapers
and journals.