I’ve just consulted Wikipedia on Laurence Olivier’s HENRY V film whose battle scenes were filmed in 1944 in Neutral Ireland ,as propaganda for the British forces and population. It says that Olivier had met with Winston Churchill, who advised him what was required.
The battle scenes were filmed in the Powerscourt Estate on the Dublin/Wicklow border and employed many local people as extras. Those who supplied their own horses were paid an extra £1.00 but whether that was for a day or a week was not specified.
The project came up smelling of roses, and the acting, photographing and the horses all played their part. So too, did the unacknowledged collaboration of the Irish Government.
For some decades now the very concept of Ireland having her own Government and determining her own domestic affairs and external relations has been under constant attack. The concept would never have made any progress were it not for the 1916 Insurrection and its endorsement by Ireland’s voters in numerous elections.
The Insurgents of 1916 were not slave-owners, nor did they live on the sweat of the poor, nor did they covet riches, power or martyrdom. They were not deluded, unlike the tens of thousands who joined the British forces, whom the Daily Telegraph tells us, fell for the Lie that Edith Cavell was not a spy.
Complicit in the attack on Ireland’s right to freedom are a Jesuit, Seumus Murphy SJ, with his corner-boy sneers at Connolly and Pearse, Professor David Murphy whose Moral Compass veers between West Point and Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, Eoghan Harris and Ruth Dudley Edwards, both of whom know better, Fergal
Keane OBE, Kevin Myers and a Monstrous Regiment of Minions (as in the film spin-off from “Despicable Me.”)
Between them they’ve produced more horse manure than Agincourt and the Charge of the Light Brigade put together and sought to bury us in it. It would be an awful injustice if those who commission or direct Britain’s propaganda wars don’t pay them well for it.
The “Irish” and “Sunday” Independent is the most tenacious opponent of anything remotely nationalist or republican in Ireland.I thought it might change after The O’Reilly”‘s ignominious departure. Like an out of tune orchestra playing slightly different versions of the same tune the Indo Unionists have quite literally made a career, some of them as long as 40 years, out of attacking anything remotely smacking of Irish Nationalism. Particularly Northern nationalists. Formely independent minded journalists who join the paper quickly learn to become Stepford Scribes and join in the anti-republican feeding frenzy. Tho long departed Irish Press for all its faults was sympathetic to the views and aspirations of northern nationalists. Would it be too much to hope that it can be some say awakened from its induced coma?