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Remembered Today:

Ian Hislops Not Forgotten Series - Soldiers of Empire


FGC61

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Dear Forum Members,

For any of us WW1 appreciates who watched this program this evening I was somewhat confused by Ian's conclusion that all of the participants from Empire/Commonwealth joined up and fought because, in his own words, "they were us". What did the "us" mean? A various collective sense of duty, boredom, pay, adventure, Empire, social pressure, spoiling for a fight, romantic heroism?

OK, cards on table here, I'm Irish and Tom Kettle is one of my heroes and I understand his motivation entirely and a lot of the motivation of the Irish participants. My father was in the RAF in WW2 as a medic and my grandfather was in the RIC during WW1 and the subsequent troubles so I'm no Republican rabble rouser.

I really do want to enter the various minds of other dominion participants to understand the mindset of these young guys who joined up and died in their hundreds of thousands so far from home. I'd love to hear from Australians, Canadians and Indian descendents of those who answered the call to try to understand their motivation.

I'm new to this forum but I have read extensively on WW1 and have a good appreciation of tactics, actions, battles, timelines and theatres.

Cheers

Fin

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Hi Fin. My maternal GF joined in August 1914 because he thought it would, in his words, give my Gran some money coming into the house until the New Year. Unemployment had been bad that year in Dundee. He was mid thirties, married with 3 surviving children.

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Hi Fin. My maternal GF joined in August 1914 because he thought it would, in his words, give my Gran some money coming into the house until the New Year. Unemployment had been bad that year in Dundee. He was mid thirties, married with 3 surviving children.

Hi Truthergw,

Doesn't strike me as very "us"!! More very poor - and, clearly, that was an enormous motivation, rather than the Sandhurst graduate's desire to fulfill his fathers notion of honour and duty.

I wonder how we would react if similarly threatened today, with our nice homes, cars, and plenty of food on the table? Would any Edwardian values surface?

Any Indian forum members out there?

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I'm currently putting together a database of all men with the name Swarbrick who served in WW1. There are twelve men with the name Swarbrick listed on the Library Archives of Canada website who served in the Great War. All of them had been born in Lancashire. Some of them had only been in Canada for a year or two when the war started, others had been taken there with their parents as children. Now I obviously don't know, but I suspect that most if not all of them felt that they still had loyalty to the mother country, and so all stepped forward to do their bit. Of the 4 Australians that I know about - one had been born in Lancashire the other three had been born in Australia, but all had strong family ties with Lancashire and England, so I suspect the same process was at work.

Given also that at the time there would seem to have been a very definite sense of Empire and the King in London was also the head of state of both Canada and Australia, those men and their families may well have thought of themselves as "us" - we all still have layers of loyalty - to our birthplace, our county, our country, some of us may even feel European. I don't think that it requires a great leap of imagination to guess at the motivations of these men.

Dave Swarbrick

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Dave,

Interesting reply about your family who had already left the mothership, but still answered the call. I'm very curious to know do you know what their occupations were after they emigrated? It's very clear that en masse they volunteered so there must have been a collective sense of needing to fight for Empire. It's a very curious phenomenon. I cannot conceive of this happening today in those circumstances. For example the Irish raised thousands of exiles in the Tyneside Battalions, Liverpool Irish, London Irish etc for Kitcheners new armies. Would you, for example, have the same motivation for Afghanistan or Iraq? I think not. But if Britain was severely threatened by an alien overwhelming power, say as a purely academic example, Egypt and the whole of North Africa developed a significant conventional military capability and had success in invading Europe (again, this is just madly hypothetical) would you answer the call? I know my answer and it's actually very tribal. Even though I'm Irish I would. There's a superb book by the Scottish Historian Neil Ferguson called The War of The World which puts most of the global conflict in the 20th C down to racism which is still going on. i.e. those who we can demonise we can exterminate without dent to conscience.

Again I ask you about duty etc Or was it just xenophobia?

Fin

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Fin,

I suspect that the governments of the day played a big part as well. In those days probably over 90 percent of the population originated from UK

or were only one or two generations on and at that time a national identity had not fully formed. The only member of my family who joined from Australia

was my step-father and I am sure that he joined because everyone of his age were joining and he didn't want to be left out. The rest of my family were

already in the UK armed forces either as permanent or through local militias.

Going back to my first sentence the government of the day promised, I think 20000 men to help out and threw their whole weight into the war. Once your

government is involved it is hard to keep out.

David

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While we may quibble with Ian Hislop's broad-brush conclusion, I thought that this was an excellent programme which tried to go beyond the familiar depiction of the war and did look at some of the complexities and contradictions of Empire troops' involvement. It has certainly seemed to inspire thoughtful debate.

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Mods - I'm aware of two threads on this programme (there may be more). Can they be merged?

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While we may quibble with Ian Hislop's broad-brush conclusion, I thought that this was an excellent programme which tried to go beyond the familiar depiction of the war and did look at some of the complexities and contradictions of Empire troops' involvement. It has certainly seemed to inspire thoughtful debate.

Yes, another excellent programme from Ian Hislop. I must admit that I could watch one of these every week and never tire.

Well done Ian and Channel 4, keep up the good work; and yes they will cause some debate and a lot of thought, but then that will directly or indirectly cause us to think of those who gave their lives.

"For our tomorrow, they gave their today" --and we must always remember that.

Robert

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What did the "us" mean? A various collective sense of duty, boredom, pay, adventure, Empire, social pressure, spoiling for a fight, romantic heroism?

I took it to largely mean that he simply meant British, or at least, those that perceived themselves as British (the Irish notwithstanding).

For instance, it is often overlooked that nearly a full 50% of the ANZACs at Gallipoli were actually British born.

When you consider those not British born, but whose parents and grandparents were British (and like as not, resident here); the ANZAC connection to the UK rises to something like 90%.

Adventure, pay, peer pressure and all those romantic connotations (which all applied equally here) aside; many of the Empire and Dominion troops were fighting for what they thought of as 'home'.

Best wishes,

GT.

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Interesting ... many forum members will be unaware that a sizeable slice of the Canadian contingent were associated with the Orange Order. Now, what you may or may not think about the Orange Order is a different issue and not for here BUT in the historical context you are seeking guidance on, it is entirely valid to say that these Orange Canadians would have had the same empathy with Empire and 'duty' (and all the other patriotic buzzwords) which probably influenced the 'UK -centric' Kitchener Volunteers?

Again, as stated above, the numbers of 'Colonial' troops with very close ties to Britain (recent emigres etc) was pretty high.

Just an observation.

Des

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I do not understand - indeed I actually dislike - the curious assumption that a Irish soldier in World War One was, in some way, different from his English, Welsh or Scottish counterparts. The 32 counties of undivided Ireland were not some kind of overseas "colony". They were an integral part of the British homeland, and to think otherwise is to dance to the tune of Sinn Fein/IRA.

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I do not understand - indeed I actually dislike - the curious assumption that a Irish soldier in World War One was, in some way, different from his English, Welsh or Scottish counterparts. The 32 counties of undivided Ireland were not some kind of overseas "colony". They were an integral part of the British homeland, and to think otherwise is to dance to the tune of Sinn Fein/IRA.

So that is why conscription was not extended to Ireland in 1918 - they were not a colony! Britain's (England's) relationship with Ireland from the 12th century to 1914 was colonial. It had been towards the Welsh and the Scots originally but Bannockburn and Glendower were centuries before. The Irish demand for Home Rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was within an Empire context true but there were enough adherents to Irish nationalism before 1916 to take advantage of the fall out from the Easter Rising. The Irish were our first real colony and the first to set a new pattern towards the end of Empire by winning the concessions in the Treaty in the early 20s.

Remond and Co did not beat a King and Empire drum in 1914 to encourage enlistment but a tactical help Britain win the war and Home Rule postponed in 1914 would be achieved. Also empathy with Belgium - a small Catholic country struggling to be free of the invader.

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Dave,

Interesting reply about your family who had already left the mothership,

Fin

Sorry, I don't think I made myself totally clear, not all of the Swarbricks were related to me, although two were-distantly, I just collect Swarbricks. If you are interested in their occupations then they are mostly listed in their service papers which are available online from the Canadian Memorial site: http://genealogy.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/X...ef/index-e.html

Dave Swarbrick

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I thought that the 'Us' that he refered to was the British Subject status of all the empire peoples. There was no Australian, British, Canadian, Indian, Irish, West Indian etc citizenship back then. Everybody was a British Subject whether you were Australian, Canadian, English, Indian, Irish, Scots, Welsh or from the empire's West Indian islands. These people weren't foreigners, they were British as defined by the rules of that era. British peoples from across the globe came together and fought together.

Of course, the individual's reasons for joining are wide and varied.

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Yes, the peoples of the Empire were all regarded as British in 1914 but, over and above that, the inhabitants of what was then undivided Ireland were also citizens of the United Kingdom of "Britain & Ireland". That is the point which I was trying to make.

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Yes, the peoples of the Empire were all regarded as British in 1914 but, over and above that, the inhabitants of what was then undivided Ireland were also citizens of the United Kingdom of "Britain & Ireland". That is the point which I was trying to make.

Sorry Stanley, my post was in answer to Fin's initial question about "us". I should have made that clearer in my post.

With regards to your point. I agree. For example, It is absolutley correct to ask Why did Irishmen with nationalist and even republican outlooks enlist during the Great War. It is not correct to think of Ireland in the same terms as the likes of Canada, New Zealand etc.

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I agree with Ulsterlad2's point. I took 'us' to mean that the men from the Dominions, Colonies and Dependencies (or ex-patriots) enlisted for exactly the same reasons as did the British soldiers; that they felt themselves to be no different from those from the 'Motherland' who signed up for King and Country. Regardless of whether that was for loyalty to country, in order to escape from poverty, to support the cause of Belgium or any number of other reasons.

Another great Hislop programme.

Roxy

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In New Zealand, 'us' meant that we were British. Many were born in Britain. My maternal grandfather's grandparents were English, as were my grandmother's. They were amongst the first European settlers who emmigrated to NZ. My paternal grandfather (who did not fight in WW1) was a Scot. Ian Hislop was correct in his analysis of the motivations of many NZers going to war, IMHO.

Robert

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The story about the Indians who fought at Neuve Chapelle and elswehere in Flanders and Artois 1914-1915 was moving to watch, and told so well by Ian Hislop. The annual comemmoration at that little shrine in the Downs near Brighton where the Indian soldiers were cremated was especially poignant, particularly when the sons of the men of 1914 kept the tradition alive as serving soldiers. We deplore the racism that excuded black soldiers from the Carribean from being allowed to fight in the front line, but are reminded of the ties of affection and mutual admiration that made the British Empire such a potent force.

Phil

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Remond and Co did not beat a King and Empire drum in 1914 to encourage enlistment but a tactical help Britain win the war and Home Rule postponed in 1914 would be achieved. Also empathy with Belgium - a small Catholic country struggling to be free of the invader.

And of course Redmond was damned if he did and damned if he didn't support the British government. Carson and the unioninsts had already stolen a march by seeing the UVF formed into the 36th Ulster Division, and Redmond worried that not encouraging the Irish Volunteers to fight would mean the unionists doing their duty to Britain and thus eliciting post-war sympathy from the British government. If the Irish Volunteers weren't encouraged to join in, Redmond believed that he would lose support from the government. Joining in, however, meant running the risk of being labelled a traitor by the 'true' nationalists.

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Taking a geopolitical view of the world on 4th August 1914, the British Empire was a legitimate long-term target of German expansionism ['lebensraum', naval expansion, African colonies etc], and any threat to GB triggered by GB's declaration of war might well, if GB lost, result in the colonies being converted over a period of time to speaking German.

This is in no sense adequate motivation for all but the most far-sighted and altruistic patriot, but it seems a self-evident consequence.

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To try and answer Fin's first post I believe that the Indian & African soldiers joined up for the pay and prestige, plus the after-service perks that military service bestowed.

The unfortunate ones were the labour element, particularly African & Egyptian, who were supplied by being drafted by Village Headmen & Chiefs, under political pressure from the British authorities.

These men, often drafted because other chosen men payed bribes to avoid service, suffered and died in their thousands.

Their ordeal and sacrifice has yet to be publicly recognised.

Harry

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A very large proportion of the CEF (of whatever religion) were born in Britain, including my grandfather and great-uncle.

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