THE TIMES (13 August) and the BBC (12th August) referred to Lloyd George’s appeal a century ago, for the British public to go the their cinemas to watch the Government-sponsored film on the Battle of the Somme.
The paper said some of the film covered the first day of the battle six weeks previously. Plenty of time to prepare bogus footage. In 1920 British propaganda pictures, taken on Dublin’s Vico Road were presented as footage from the Kilmichael ambush site 170 miles from the Vico Road.
(In 1917 the funeral through Dublin of Thomas Ashe was filmed and shown on that same day in Dublin cinemas.)
So I’d be very wary of any film promoted by a British government. During the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899 British propaganda invented Boer atrocities, including an an attack on the Red Cross. Film purporting to show the results of the attack was shot on London’s Hampstead Heath.
Much surviving film footage of the Somme Battle was probably as false as Lloyd George, Asquith and their gang. Certainly they were party to the lie that Edith Cavell was merely a nurse rsther than a British agent behind German lines, a lie recently exposed by Dame Stella Rimington, former Director of MI5. That lying story suckered tens of thousands of chivalrous young men into the British forces, where many of them perished.
I’ve been holidaying in France regularly for nearly forty years, camping, or staying in self catering places or hotels and have been in every region.I’ve visited battle sites including the Somme and Verdun, visited British, French,German, American and other graveyards, and cursed the scheming, lying politicians who inflicted such suffering on generations of generally decent people.
I think that British media, hand in glove with government, glamorise war. Considering that British forces are virtually perpetually at war with somebody or other, this should not come as a surprise.
On the other side of the Irish Sea this glamorisation is also a commercial racket. The Irish papers advertise trips to continental battlefields, not so their readers should thank Connollyand Pearse whose actions saved hundreds of thousands from such carnage. They also, with their supplements, cash in on the Rising Centenary, though the Indo called for the shooting of Connolly and THE IRISH TIMES for the execution of all the insurgents
Another interesting post Jude. When it comes to cashing in on misery there are is a group you have left out, Sinn Fein/IRA, cashing in on self-harm and suicide.
The Bobby Sands trust a business that keeps on giving, that does not fund Bobby Sands son, but funds Sinn Fein/IRA, a bit of Sinn Fein/IRA capitalism. Bobby Sands comic sir, keeps them there tills ticking over.
“Relatives of the IRA leader who died in the Maze prison in 1981 said they were disturbed at “intimate family scenes” contained in Bobby Sands: Freedom Fighter.
In a statement sent to the Guardian the Sands family said “at no time” were they consulted regarding the accuracy of the content of the story based on the hunger striker’s life.
“We are given to understand that the book contains intimate family scenes that no one, other than our family members, would be privy to. It is unfortunate that well meaning people, such as Mr [Gerry] Hunt [the author] are misled by those who profess to be authorities on Bobby’s life story,” they said.
The Sands family has consistently called for the disbandment of the Bobby Sands Trust, which they regard as aligned to Sinn Féin. Ever since the 1998 Good Friday agreement members of the Sands family including his sister Bernadette have claimed Sinn Féin abandoned the principles their brother died for by accepting a political settlement within Northern Ireland – a state her brother tried to destroy while in the IRA.
The Sands family said: “Our family once again reiterates that the Bobby Sands Trust does not act on behalf of Bobby, nor does it represent our family, in any shape or form. We again call upon the trust to disband and desist from using Bobby’s memory as a commercial enterprise.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/25/family-of-bobby-sands-attack-graphic-novel-about-ira-hunger-striker
Well ..Donal and Glenn , much of what you both say I could agree with to some respect.When I say “agree”, I mean thta I can see how each point of view might be seen as valid in a certain context.We are all open to emotional manipulation anyway and our emotions are always being tugged at by governments,commentators, reporters and propagandists of every stripe.Just now on television there’s a short film of a small boy who’s been rescued and dug out after a bombing raid. He’s sitting bedraggled, covered in dust and is wholly innocent .It’s appalling stuff…as was the small, dead boy lying on the beach some months ago.There’s no doubt that foot-soldiers of any stripe are being manipulated should it be by a government requiring cannon-fodder for its latest adventure or should it be the Hunger Strikers dying for their cause….or the signing of covenants in your own blood.These are all ritualistic, theatrical switches .They also sell lots of news.
I make sense of it by realising that much of what we conceive of as our “Western morality” is in fact based on the original icon of self-harm …and you might also say “suicide”. That hanging image of the flagellated Jesus on a cross-shaped scaffold. To some that is the” ultimate sacrifice” from which western religion ..and ultimately society, draws its power . To others, it is a sure sign of suicidal self-harm and even possible psychosis. Is it any surprise that the laying down of one’s life for your comrades…right across the board…. could be so ingrained in a personality ,when role -models such as this are held up from our early days of schooling. We are all already primed for manipulation and sacrifice and are malleable .it hardly matters who is pulling the emotional strings .