OR MERELY TAKING THE WHATSIT?
I refer to a visiting professor of war studies at Kings College London who wrote in THE SUNDAY TIMES last January on the 1916 Insurrection in Dublin.
He accused the Insurgents of “stabbing Britain in the back”. It seems to me that wearing uniforms, flying flags, seizing buildings in the centre of a city ringed with British Military Barracks, and posting a proclamation of their objects, and signing that proclamation with their names (in English!), and not trying to escape from their enemies when defeated, does not much look like stabbing anyone in the back. But from the vantage point of THE SUNDAY TIMES and KINGS COLLEGE, London it may well do. I’ve seen stuff emanating from both institutions which could not withstand scrutiny.
Roberts claims that at the time of the Rising “Britain was throwing all its energy into defeating proto-fascist German militarism.” This is very funny indeed. The British Army included the 36th Division from the para-military Ulster Volunteer Force which Sir Edward Carson had founded in 1912. When the UVF men enlisted in the British Army they were supplied with new weapons at the taxpayers’ expense, but Carson ensured that the thousands of rifles and other weapons they already had, were kept in Ulster under his control.
William Allen MP, elected as Unionist MP for West Belfast in 1931 switched to the British Union of Fascists and described Carson as the Leader of the First Fascist Movement in Europe.When Lord Carson died in 1935, the Unionist IRISH TIMES (which in March 1933 had exulted at Hitler’s coming to power in Germany) said that had he been born forty years later than he had, he could have been a Mussolini, or even a Hitler. The IRISH TIMES was saying that, not to bury His Lordship, but to praise him.I understand that partisan Freikorps in Germany were established AFTER Germany’s 1918 defeat and were not around in 1914 or 1916.
So my question still stands – Is Andrew Roberts a congenital idiot or is he merely taking the whatsit?
He is a Brit.
it would be very interesting to see the detail of something that is usually glossed over very quickly..I refer to the actual “deal” and payment for the first UVF guns which Carson wanted kept safe while his “new proto-fascists” were re-armed by the rest of us …before they went off to get themselves killed fighting the country that formerly supplied them.
.Which German company made and sold the guns to Carson and how much was paid before the arms were illegally supplied? I wonder what were the exact details of that deal and how it was actually made.I understand that many business-men in Belfast sponsored it too…and possibly paid for it .Who were these people ?Has anyone ever written about this in detail?
Great points paddykool, it is like all the nefarious activities carried out by the undemocratic forces disloyal to England. We are supposed to gloss over it, meanwhile Spotlight and co. make deadly dull `documentaries` on smugglers.The loyalist rebellions of Carson and Paisley are two sides of the same coin. The IRA of Michael Collins and Martin McGuinness are likewise.