Namely no British songs, no three cheers for the King and there shouldn’t be a Union Jack in sight. His attendance, his office made clear, was conditional on, “the absence of anything which might tend to create ill-feeling or resentment or to embarrass the Government in the slightest degree”. ![]() In 1939 Dev, however, made it known he would attend the opening of the much delayed Irish National War Memorial Gardens in Dublin. Respect them for the love of their dead people.”Īn Armistice Day stripped of overtly British symbols was the only acceptable way to mark the day for republicans and a new, more staunchly green Government, led by Éamon de Valera, banned the wearing of British uniforms in parades, the display of Union Jacks and the sing of the God Save The King - although the latter provision was summarily ignored. Many will wear them in memory of friends who were deluded into dying for fine ideals in a horrible capitalist war. “I ask you to give the benefit of the doubt,” he urged his republican friends, “to those who wear poppies tomorrow. “I urged the new approach,” he wrote, “because of the disgust, I felt when I saw some ex-servicemen being set upon for wearing their medals and poppies on their ragged coats. ![]() In 1934 a new commemorative event was added to the Armistice Day roster: Patrick Byrne, a republican, set up an alternative, anti-war, republican Armistice Day service that would remember those who fought and died without the frills of the Empire. ![]() It was a day many in the state’s new police force, An Garda Síochána, came to dread and Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy wrote a bitter letter in 1932 to the Minister of Justice complaining about the manpower and effort required to keep participants from coming to blows. Counter-demonstrations by anti-imperialists were common in Dublin, poppy wearers were sometimes attacked by men wearing Easter Lilies - in memory of the republican dead of 1916 - prompting the safety conscious to stop buying the flowers and stay away from ceremonies heckles of “Up the Republic” wafted over the streets of Dublin and any singing of God Save The King was countered with the Free State anthem, The Soldiers’ Song.
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