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Alan Shatter Minister of Defence : Irish WW2 Neutrality 'Morally Bankrupt'
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Given his unquestioning support for every atrocity and crime committed by the zionazi terrorist rogue state entity that occupies the land of Palestine and is busy committing slow (for now) genocide against the people that have lived there for many centuries before millions of immigrants were imported from Russia and elsewhere, I am not sure what value need be assigned to Alan Shatter's views.:rolleyes:
However, my view of war is that the first duty of every government must be to keep its country out of war if that is at all possible. War brings death, maiming, destruction and misery, and no sane government would want to become embroiled in one.:cool:
The First World War was essentially a dog fight into which five or six competing imperialist empires allowed themselves to be drawn through a network of secret treaties and insane ambitions, and it led to the collapse and dissolution of four of them and severely weakened a fifth. Millions of people and many small nations paid a bitter price for the stupidity and greed of the imperial powers.:(
The Second World War was no more than a delayed continuation of the first. Numerous countries tried to keep out of it - Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, at least.
Only Sweden, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland managed to keep out - the others were attacked and suffered great loss of life, but they would not have been involved in the war if they had been able to avoid it. There was nothing morally bankrupt about it, and those countries - especially Sweden and Switzerland - were in a position to render valuable humanitarian aid both during the war and after it. Even impoverished Ireland helped out a bit, as the statue erected in St. Stephen's Green by the German government as thanks for our post-war aid demonstrates.:)
There is nothing morally bankrupt about avoiding war, and Shatter should really shut the fcuk up. He is a minister of our government and has plenty of things on his plate that need urgently seeing to instead of just re-writing history and badmouthing our country rather than doing his duty to protect our reputation.
I stopped reading at zionazi. I mean seriously, that destroys the credibility of everything else you said.0 -
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I disagree with Alan Shatter - No it was not Morally Bankruptmarcsignal wrote: »In your opinion.
Yes, in my opinion.
WTF.marcsignal wrote: »Because we could have fully depended on Churchills help, just like the Poles, and we know now, in hindsight, how that worked out for them, don't we....
No, nothing like Poland. For one, and I find myself repeating what I've already posted...
We don't share a land border with Germany!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!0 -
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Other - please explainjohngalway wrote: »
Yes, in my opinion.
WTF.
By not including 'imo' after your original post, you, by default, automatically made a blanket dismissal of all of the other extrapolations that Dev would have had to consider at the time. In my opinion (and I believe there are many on here who would agree), the idea of tens of thousands of Irish Soldiers/Men, being sent off on the Dun Leary mail boat, in Irish uniforms, or in civvies to don British uniforms, to fight a war that was essentially 'Britains war', would not have gone down at all well with the general populous here, 20 odd years after the Rising, and War of Independence. I believe Dev knew this, and knew he would have had also, to lock up his former IRA mates in the K-Lines sooner than he did, because of the potential upsurge in sympathy for the IRA, perhaps leading to another Civil War here.johngalway wrote: »No, nothing like Poland. For one, and I find myself repeating what I've already posted...
We don't share a land border with Germany!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our land border with Britain was irrelevant to our neutrality :edit-(in terms of Churchills attitude):. Churchill was chomping at the bit to sail a force across the fckn North Sea to invade Neutral Norway. I've already pointed out, that had Britain needed our Treaty Ports, he was going to sieze them anyway. Neutrality meant as little to him, as it did to the Austrian Painter. In that respect, I think Dev was right to stand his ground.
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Other - please explain
Not entirely the same thing as Irish neutrality however is it ? Neutrality which Germany DID respect let's not forget, covering Britains atlantic approach.
Wait a minute in 1938 Germany was allowed to annex the Sudetenland part of the Czech Republic and "Peace for our Time" Deal brokered by Britain and France
A chumsy little pic here
The Czechs loved that.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the Third Reich & the Soviet Union carved up Poland.
Little countries like Ireland did not feel safe.0 -
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Pure, total and utter drivel.
Why?
The debate would be better served if you were to construct a reasoned rebuttal or is this the equivalent of the old lawyer's adage....
"When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, call the other lawyer names"
The country was never nearly as poor as has been made out, indeed in terms of relativities the country was holding it's own.....
From the table above you can see that at the outset of WWII Ireland had the ninth highest in income per capita in Europe, behind the UK, Germany and the Scandinavians but ahead of such countries as France, Austria and Italy - by 1948 were up to 6th.0 -
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Other - please explainWhy?
The debate would be better served if you were to construct a reasoned rebuttal or is this the equivalent of the old lawyer's adage....
"When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, call the other lawyer names"
The country was never nearly as poor as has been made out, indeed in terms of relativities the country was holding it's own.....
From the table above you can see that at the outset of WWII Ireland had the ninth highest in income per capita in Europe, behind the UK, Germany and the Scandinavians but ahead of such countries as France, Austria and Italy - by 1948 were up to 6th.
I notice by your chart that neutral Switzerland and Sweden topped it - were they also 'profiteering'? Or - as neutral countries were they free to trade with whom they wished?0 -
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Other - please explainWere things costly wholly because of the war situation or because of the tariff legacy from the Economic War?
On the coal front, the lack of it, more than anything else according to Cormac Ó Gráda in UCD, caused a lot of hardship. However, it seems there were two sides to this.
Ireland tried to use it's buying power as a consumer of coal to strong arm the British suppliers, not realising that at the outset of the war the one thing colliery owners would not be short of was customers - we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with that one because by the time the Irish representatives realised that they didn't have the power they thought they had, the colliery owners had committed their supplies elsewhere.
Further, there was also a belief that we could use turf to make up any shortfall and that we didn't really need as much coal as we thought we did. It was reckoned we could cut eight million tons of turf to make good the shortfall in British coal supplies.
Turf production increased but not to anywhere near the levels required. Plus turf is not a viable substitute for coal - kilo for kilo it puts out less heat and in Ireland it was remotely located from where it was needed with insufficient infra-structure to allow it to be transported in the quantities needed.
Maybe the Brits did strangle us on coal and they may have tightened the noose, but we tied the rope and put it around our neck:)
It's not an either/or situation.
Ireland had little industry - and a lot of what it had remained part of the UK due to partition.
In terms of exports it was therefore utterly reliant on agricultural products - this as a direct result of British policy. This trade had been severely hit by the Great Depression.
The Economic War was the result of Ireland's refusal to continue to pay Land Annuities to the UK (We won't get into a discussion here of the issue of the Irish State repaying loans made by the British government to enable Irish people to buy back lands which had been 'acquired' by British conquest in the first place
) and instead divert those monies towards infrastructure via Local Authorities. The impact of the 'war' on Irish exports cannot be underestimated.
Given that Ireland was independent then it would be natural for the Irish government to attempt to negotiate the best possible deal when it came to the cost of vital imports - that is not using a 'strong arm' - that is a tactical position adopted in the best interest of the country. The fact that the government miscalculated is neither here nor there...the British also 'miscalculated' when they agreed to give back the Treaty Ports in 1938
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My point is that Ireland was under severe economic pressure. It came into existence with poor infrastructure, severe poverty, high unemployment, little or no welfare support and a stupid agreement to pay 'back' a punitive amount of money.
http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/?id=115131the land purchase annuities amounted to over £3m per annum, a substantial figure (given that the total revenue intake in the early 1930s was approximately £25m). The average burden of the annuities on the individual farmer was not huge—about 10% of net income—but it was a fixed amount, so the burden increased in difficult times.
The Great Depression impacted greatly on the export trade plus the income of Farmers - but the percentage amount of income - at a time of plummeting incomes -these farmers had to pay towards the Land Annuities did not change - a double whammy in effect.
The Irish government took steps to relieve this pressure by 'burning the bondholders' (:p) and diverting that money to provide an infrastructure and increase employment. For this they were punished when the British government imposed tariffs on Irish imports to recoup the money - Ireland responded by imposing similar tariffs on imports from GB.
The matter was settled in 1938 when Ireland agreed to pay £10 m - or 40 years payments upfront - the British agreed to 'return' the ports.
So having just paid £10 million to the UK, money it desperately needed to recoup, Ireland found itself again in a position where fuel supplies were restricted as it was vital to the UK's war effort and exportation of agricultural products became not only expensive - but physically dangerous.
I think that to claim Ireland was 'profiteering' if it increased the price of its exports or that we put the noose around our own necks' is a bit disingenuous in the circumstances TBH -the noose was placed around our necks many years before and when we tried to cut it, it was tightened.
MODS - I apologise for participating in dragging this thread off topic. And for the record re: Shatter's remarks - bang out of order IMHO. :mad:0 -
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Other - please explainFratton Fred wrote: »I look forward to it.
Me Too
- can we talk about Winnie's Daddy - Randy Churchill - too? 0 -
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