Lord Trimble
Main Page: Lord Trimble (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Trimble (Con)
My Lords, it is with a little trepidation that I follow the four excellent speeches that we have heard so far. I start by thanking the Minister for his introduction to the debate, in particular for his reference to the event that will take place on 4 August in St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, on the work that he has done regarding HMS “Caroline” in Belfast, which he mentioned. It is the only surviving veteran of the Battle of Jutland and will receive a grant of over £13 million for the construction of a museum, to be ready for 2016, the centenary of Jutland.
I looked at the Library note on this debate. I am sorry to say that in the six pages that it had on conscription I did not see any reference to Ireland, other than in a little note at the bottom—in so far as you can read a reference into it—which quotes the Military Service Bill 1916, extending the obligation to,
“all male British subjects in Great Britain”.
Noble Lords may have noticed that no reference was made there to Ireland. That shows to some extent how Ireland was different. I will come back to the questions of the anti-conscription campaign in Ireland and its role in Irish politics.
In some other respects Ireland was the same. When the war broke out and we had Kitchener’s famous call for volunteers, there was a strong and enthusiastic response in Ireland, too, to what was essentially a British publicity campaign. Kitchener’s first new army, authorised in August 1914, contained six divisions, numbers 9 to 14. Division 10 was an Irish division, with the full range of Irish regiments, by which I mean the Connaught Rangers, the Munster Fusiliers and the Dublin Fusiliers, alongside the Royal Irish Rifles and the Inniskilling regiments.
A difference from elsewhere in 1914 was that there were two private armies in Ireland, which were lining up to fight each other over the issue of home rule. The Ulster Volunteer Force, which was 90,000 strong and earlier that year had shipped in over 25,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of ammunition, dispersed throughout Ulster overnight in a motorised operation that preceded Gallieni’s taxis rushing people from Paris to the Marne. It can therefore be regarded as the first use of the motor car on a substantial scale in a quasi-military operation. I am sorry—that little bit of local patriotism had to get a reference. Alongside the Ulster Volunteer Force was the Irish Volunteers, which was much larger in size but perhaps not as well armed.
Kitchener obviously wanted both. After a bit of political toing and froing there was eventually an agreement and the 16th (Irish) Division was formed of Irish volunteers as part of the second new army. That is quite significant in Irish history, because John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, who in a vague sort of way presided over the Irish Volunteers, was strongly in support of enlistment in the army. Indeed, he carried with him roughly 90% of the Irish Volunteers—a small split formed the Irish National Volunteers that year, people who largely provided foot soldiers for the rebellion of 1916. The 36th (Ulster) Division was formed from the Ulster Volunteer Force slightly later, although the War Office would not allow the Ulstermen to form an artillery unit, which was a nice little echo of the Indian Mutiny.
The 10th (Irish) Division was the first into action. It was dispatched to Gallipoli in 1915 and thereafter served in Serbia and Salonika before moving to Egypt in 1917 and taking part in the campaigns in Palestine to the end of the war. Here, I have to declare an interest in that my maternal grandfather was a member of the Irish Division. I never knew him—he died before I was born—but my grandmother was very proud of the fact that her husband was part of the army that liberated Jerusalem.
Such was the lottery of warfare that the 10th’s total number of casualties throughout the war was just 10,000. That is quite a lot but the totals for the 16th and 36th Divisions were more than three times greater, one having a total casualty figure of 28,000 and the other 32,000, although I shall not indicate which was which. The 16th (Irish) Division was first engaged at Loos but it and the 36th Division were both in the Battle of the Somme, the Ulster Division on the very first day. It achieved quite a lot but, suffering considerable casualties, had been withdrawn from the line after just two days of engagement. The 16th Division came in in September, spending more than a month on the line and ultimately suffering casualties not far short of those of the Ulstermen.
There were those who at the outbreak of the war thought that the experience of the two volunteer forces fighting side by side would somehow defuse the incipient civil war in Ireland and change the political context. It might have done so had the war been shorter and not as bloody, because the political context in Ireland changed during the war, as people will realise. However, those who saw this as a means of bringing the sides together tend to think mostly of the Battle of Messines in 1917, which was a curtain raiser for the Third Battle of Ypres. It was the one time when the 36th and the 16th were side by side and it was a comparatively successful operation.
However, there is an interesting event that is an indication of what might have been. John Redmond’s brother, William, who was also a Member of Parliament, commanded the 6th Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in the 16th Division. He took part in the Battle of Messines, personally leading his battalion, but was seriously wounded. A stretcher-bearer from the 36th (Ulster) Division, one John Meeke, discovered this and went to his assistance. Meeke himself was then wounded twice and incapacitated. The two were rescued some hours later by a patrol that was bringing back some German prisoners and William Redmond was then taken to an Ulster Division casualty clearing station, where he died.
To some extent, that symbolises the impact of the war and what might have been. In the period after the war, because of the triumph of Sinn Fein and the culture that then developed, the Irish Republic was an uncomfortable place for those who had served in the British Army and they were treated very badly in the 1920s. The atmosphere, thankfully, is changing, and changing quite considerably. It is no coincidence that both Governments chose the area of Messines to erect the peace tower commemorating and honouring what the two divisions had done together. I heard with interest what the Minister said about looking for a way in which both sides can participate.
I want to conclude with a little comment on the Battle of the Somme. I am concerned about the caricatures of what happened—they are not entirely accurate. A number of years ago, I came across a book by Christopher Duffy, who has written on a number of military subjects. He wrote an account of the Somme entitled Through German Eyes. It is based on German material, examining the situation from the German point of view. In the course of this, he deals with the interrogation records of British soldiers who had been captured by the Germans. His book ends with a quotation from a German intelligence summary drawn up at the end of the war, in which there is the following comment about British prisoners:
“Most of the front-line soldiers too are extremely proud of what they have achieved so far. Again and again we hear from prisoners the self-satisfied question: ‘Don’t you think we have done very well?’”