“I say to you, account yourselves as men in defence of right,
of religion in this war.”
The leaders of the Irish Party wanted to show that they still supported the British Empire in the same way that Canada and Australia do even though they have their own Parliaments. They also expected gratitude in the same way that the unionists did at the end of the war.
John Redmond also said that Belgium was a small Catholic country that had been invaded and another small country, Ireland, should help them out. Like Carson, Redmond, also wanted an army unit for his men. The British government refused to set up a nationalist division in the British Army. They had to join the existing Irish regiments. A lot of them joined the 16th division (the Irish Division). In September 1914 the British government suspended the Home Rule movement until the end of the war. Asquith, the Prime Minister, told the unionists that special arrangements had been made for Ulster. At the time nobody thought that the war was going to last long. No one expected the four years of blood shed and millions of deaths that were to follow.
Never before in the history of man had that number of soldiers from nations all across the globe gone into battle at the same time. For the first few weeks there was rapid marching and when the armies settled there was four years of fighting in trenches and vast loss of life. Occasionally troops with rifles were ordered to attempt a breakthrough but they only became entangled in barbed wire and butchered with artillery shells and machine-gun fire.
About 170,000 Irish men, whether they were nationalists or unionists, Catholics or Protestants, joined regiments in the British army. In August 1914 the Royal Munster Fusiliers were nearly completely wiped out in the Battle of Mons in Belgium. The 10th Irish Division suffered the loss of 5,000 men on the Gallipoli peninsula. On 8th May 1915 volunteers from the Ulster Division marched through central Belfast before leaving for France. They were about to take place in the biggest battle ever, The Somme.
A small portion of Irish people opposed the war and the idea of Irish people joining the British army
To Fenians the idea of taking up arms and fighting for Britain was unthinkable. Some of the Irish Volunteers refused to join the army and this caused a split in the Irish Volunteers. The majority, who remained loyal to Redmond, became the National Volunteers while those who didn’t join kept the name of the Irish Volunteers. Arthur Griffith of Sinn Féin was also opposed to this. He said,
“Ireland is not at war with Germany. England is at war with Germany.
Our duty is in no doubt. We are Irish Nationalists and the only duty we
have is to stand for Ireland’s interests.”
James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army were also against the war. They believed that working people from different countries should unite and fight their common enemy, the wealthy capitalists. This was not a very popular idea. The British Labour Party and the German Democratic Socialists weren’t against the war.
At the start of July 1916 the 36th Ulster Division suffered over 5,500 casualties. Out of these 2,000 died in the first two days of the Battle Of The Somme. The Somme attack was supposed to break through the German defences and lead to victory. Britain thought that a huge artillery bombardment would destroy the German defences and the infantry could capture the trenches with little opposition. At the start of the attack the Germans were already prepared and were waiting with machine-guns and they cut down many British Troops. The 36th Ulster Division captured their objective but suffered from German crossfire and this resulted in many casualties. A lot of Ulstermen received rewards for their bravery and four of them received the highest honour, the Victoria Cross. Due to the amount of lost lives and the impact it had in the community in Ulster the Somme is an important moment in Irish history.
