Irishmen and Irishwomen who refused to kow-tow to the might of the British Empire have had a bad press in recent decades.The Jesuit Seamus Murphy who teaches in California and encouraged the United States’ destruction of the Iraqi State, the various peddlers of tripe and treason in the IRISH TIMES and the scandalously overpaid Joe Duffy and other charlatans on RTE, and the disingenuous Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson and the egregious John Bruton, have all compared Irish patriots unfavourably with the slave-owning American”democrats” who had their irons pulled out of the fire by their “gallant allies from Europe”. They would, had they thought of it, compare our patriots unfavourably with the “Free French” of the 1940s.
However, I’ll help them think about it by suggesting a narrative that would not go down well in France today. I hope it puts a cat among the hawks.
In 1940 the vast majority of France’s parliamentarians voted to disestablish their Republic and to establish a new French State which reached an accommodation with Germany. The vast majority of French citizens in France and its overseas Empire gave loyal service to the new regime.
In London a French officer who had deserted his country availed of a microphone offered by its traditional enemies to establish a force of Republican Irregulars to defy the lawful government of France.
I also believe that on D-Day 1944 some 3,000 French civilians were killed by that Officer’s sponsors, and that uncounted numbers of their fellow citizens died at their hands before the Irregular Officer realized his “will to power.”.
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