New Mayo Member of the British Empire (M-MBE): insult to Indian (and every other) fight for freedom

mayo | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Saturday January 09, 2010 20:20

by Harry Wells - The Well Well Well Foundation

'For God and the Empire,' says Mayo man's medal

Michael Feeney is becoming an M-MBE for organising a war park that is called, not surprisingly, a ‘peace’ park. It celebrates soldiers who helped put down India’s first fight for independence, and who fought and died in the British and US armies. It is a celebration of those who killed people struggling for their freedom against imperialism and colonialism.

The only qualification the killers meet is having been born in Ireland. Feeney's Member of the British Empire (MBE) medal also states, 'For God and the Empire.'

Irish brutality in Britain's army in India - an indian view CLICK TO READ

Mid Western Radio (MWR), reported on January 5th 2010:

“A mayo man has been named in the 2009 [British] queen’s honours list. Michael Feeney from Mac Hale Road, Castlebar, will travel to Buckingham Palace with his family later this year to personally receive an MBE [Member of the British Empire] from Queen Elizabeth.

In 1999, Mr. Feeney first proposed erecting a fitting memorial to the legions of young men and women from the county who have lost their lives in conflicts and wars from the last century to the present day.

Mr. Feeney’s dream was realised on October 7, 2008 when the president, Mary McAleese, officially opened the mayo peace park garden of remembrance…

The [British] queen’s citation says Mr Feeney is deemed to merit his award because of his work in “improving Irish - UK relations.”

A previous Indymedia report stated: “a participant in one of the greatest war crimes in history was honoured in Mayo [in 2004] by a minister of the Irish government. Sergeant Major Cornelius Coughlan (Victoria Cross) of the Gordon Highlanders was praised by Defence Minister Michael Smith for his role in putting down the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857, which Indians call their First War of Independence.” Smith was accompanied by a pantomime army of volley firing redcoats with muskets of the type used to kill Britain's imperial subjects and a very self-satisfied British Ambassador - who probably could not believe his luck.

The corny Cornelius Coughlan celebrations started the war park bandwagon, propelled along by supporters in the Irish Times, Independent and in RTE. Objectivity is out in the headlong rush to re-embrace imperial culture and to dismiss the 1916 uprising, the 1918 Sinn Fein election victory and the War of Independence. A recent RTE published book on the Irish who fought and died in British uniform in the First World War is called ‘Our War.’ The only reason there were not more Irish dead to celebrate is because of republican anti-recruiting activity and the 1916 uprising. After that enlistment in the killing machine dried up. In their desperation, the British threatened conscription in 1918, an action that generated further support for Sinn Fein and the IRA.

For the Irish pro-imperial cheer leaders and literati today, Imperialism rocks, it is the new black. What’s next, role on racism and fascism? Don’t be surprised, unless this current media promotion of pro-imperial propaganda is challenged and rolled back.

What did the Irish do in Britain’s army, anyway?

University of Delhi academic, Harish Trivedi, said “the Irish in India had a dubious reputation for being particularly cruel as occupiers. Amidst widespread brutality, the Irish distinguished themselves as being even more brutal than the British” (see graphic – CLICK to READ). Why not, they were British hirelings, obliged to vent their subservient self-hatred on a subject people they were paid to put down. Just as the Germans enlisted Ukranians, Austrians, Romanians and others to run its death camps, the British enlisted subject peoples in its armies and colonial administration to tame other parts of its empire.

See also, The Irish in Foreign Armies: REMEMBRANCE, http://www.indymedia.ie/article/89339, for info on the Irish who helped put down the Kenyan rebellions of the 1950s. Have a look at the British soldier holding up the two severed heads contributed in aid of Britain putting down resistance in Malaya. If he was Irish, why not celebrate him?

The Mayo War Park is park of the effort to sanitise Britain’s imperial project, while the Irish government and its mass media tries to reverse Ireland’s anti-colonial heritage and become part of the EU’s imperial project. The Irish Times, returning to its pro-British roots, even ran a regular column in 2008 from a Lt Bury, a British soldier in Afghanistan, simply on the basis that he is from Wicklow.

Part of the big lie suggests that Irish cannon fodder willingly joined these armies in the past. The answer came from Irish former members of the British and US armies who had no illusions about the nature of the forces they had joined and who dismissed the colonial mindset of Irish apologists for empire:

Irish Times Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Irishmen in British uniforms

Madam, - Six months after emigrating to the US in November 1961, I received a notice from "Uncle Sam", through the local draft board, to report for duty at an induction centre in Brooklyn, New York. My instinct was to go home to Ireland, but having neither the wherewithal to return, nor any prospects on a small farm in the West of Ireland, I felt I had no choice but to comply.

Days later I was inducted, sworn to "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America" given a uniform and sent off to Fort Dix, New Jersey for basic training. I served six years with the US army engineers during the "Cuban Crisis" and the early years of the Vietnam War before being discharged in 1968.

I may have wished, as Sarsfield did, "that this were for Ireland", but it wasn't; and at no time did I consider myself to be an Irish soldier. How could I? I agree with Séamus Ua Trodd (September 11th) that he was an Irish soldier. But I was not.

The Irish nation afforded neither me, nor my fellow countrymen in the American army, any recognition - nor did we ask for any! We were cannon fodder for empire, nothing more.

The notion that Irishmen in the British army, either now or in the past, deserve special attention because they claim to be Irish soldiers or to serve Ireland, is preposterous.

As a nation we have broken the physical chains of the British Empire that bound us; decolonisation of the mind may yet take some time. - Yours, etc,

JOE McGOWAN, Mullaghmore, Co Sligo

Irish Times Thursday, September 18, 2008

Irishmen in British uniforms

Madam, - I write on the on-going debate on "Irishmen in British uniforms". I was that soldier.

I ended up many years ago in the British Army due to the fact that (a) I happened to be resident in England for work purposes and (b) was officially a British subject having been born before the Declaration of a Republic in 1949, and was unfortunate to receive my "call-up papers" for national service. I was completely surprised by this, not being aware of my eligibility. But for the fact that I had been engaged to my English girlfriend for only one week, I would have been on the first boat back home, hoping to continue the relationship from long distance. However, my heart ruled my head, and I accepted my fate.

Having spent all of my childhood in care, I took to the discipline and security of military life like the proverbial duck to water. After a few months, I signed up as a regular, as opposed to a conscript, the extra pay being welcome as I was now married. I served a total of 18 years, reaching the rank of sergeant.

My subsequent disillusionment, and shame, at having been a British soldier came about as a result of the treatment of Irish nationalists by the British Army during the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, but even more so by the attitude of Margaret Thatcher towards the hunger strikes; to the extent that I returned the two medals awarded during my service.

Had I realised that I was suited to military life prior to being called up to the British army, I would most certainly have joined the Army of my own country, and not, like Lt Bury and others, join a foreign army in order to "gain adventure" in assisting the occupation of another country and, let us be honest, the deaths of innocent civilians. - Yours, etc,

PETER PALLAS, Clarecastle, Ennis, Co Clare

A fitting Irish response to this imperial craw thumping would be an event in remembrance and memory of the victims of empire on the day the Feeney fool appears in Buckingham Palace to get his gong.

FF minister Michel Smith celebrates British redcoat (Irish turncoat) Cornelius Couglan

How the British put down rebellion in Malaya - Mayo War Park please copy

How the British put down rebellion in Kenya - plenty of Irish to help out

Another view of the Mayo War Park CLICK TO READ

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Comments (9 of 9)

Imperialism

by Damien

Sat Jan 09, 2010 20:50

Good story Harry, that little matter in Kenya was conveniently glossed over by them.
Much like the people of Diego Garcia as well.
Like the comment about the turncoat, it turns my stomach, Irishmen in the British army.

The Great Game

by Subhas Chandra Bose

Sat Jan 09, 2010 21:09

Mayo still playing The Great Game in Afghanistan? See below:

1.
http://www.westernpeople.ie/news/story/?trs=eyojojaumh&...=news
Western People
Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Queen honours Mayo man
BY KEITH BOURKE

CASTLEBAR man and founder of the Mayo Peace Park, Michael Feeney, has received an MBE (Member of the British Empire) in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list.

Mr Feeney, who is the driving force behind the Mayo Peace Park, which honours Mayo’s fallen war heroes, will receive the MBE at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace later this year.

Mr Feeney was awarded the accolade for fostering Anglo-Irish relations through his work with the Peace Park.

The Peace Park, which was officially, opened by President Mary McAleese in October 2008, remembers Mayo soldiers who died in conflicts all over the world.

The centrepiece of the Peace Park is a polished stone memorial bearing the names of more than 1,000 men and women from Co Mayo who died in all wars and conflicts of the past century.

In September this year a number of memorial seats were dedicated to Mayo’s fallen soldiers and gardaí, including Westport marine Robert McKibben, who died in Afghanistan in 2008. The Park and Garden of Remembrance is the culmination of almost 10 years of work by Mr Feeney.

2.
http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&vie...id=46

Mayo News
Mayo Peace Park founder honoured by Queen
Monday, 04 January 2010 18:52

Áine Ryan

WHAT have Status Quo’s ageing rockers, Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi, Star Trek’s Patrick Stewart and Mayo Memorial Peace Park’s, Michael Feeney got in common? They were all honoured in Queen Elizabeth’s New Year’s Honours List.
Founder of the County Mayo Peace Park in Castlebar, Mr Michael Feeney (pictured) was last week awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for services to UK-Ireland relations.
Speaking to The Mayo News yesterday, Mr Feeney expressed his delight and feeling of pride on behalf of the peace park committee with which he observed that he ‘shares this honour’.
“I was taken aback by the news. I knew that international sources had submitted a nomination and this had then to be approved by a committee and later signed-off by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown,” Michael Feeney explained.
“Of course, they then have to check if you are willing to accept the honour. I have been a dual citizen for many years and I am proud to accept it. Many of my relatives, on both side of my family, emigrated to Britain in the past,” he continued.
“ I believe the honour reflects well on the county and the park. But I must stress that it is a shared honour with the committee and, of course, Castlebar Town Council and Mayo County Council,” Michael Feeney added.
In the coming months he will travel to Buckingham Palace, along with his wife, Mary, and two teenage children, Patrick (17) and Anna (14) to receive his MBE – a special medal and pin – from Queen Elizabeth.
Since last week’s award, Mr Feeney has received congratulations from emigrant groups all over the world, he also told The Mayo News.
It is just over 15 months since President Mary McAleese officially opened the Mayo Memorial Peace Park, situated on the edge of county town, Castlebar. The park is the culmination of two decades of work and is now an important symbol dedicated to the cause of the forgotten war dead.
On that historic day of the official opening, Mr Feeney welcomed families of the fallen, who had travelled to the ceremony from Hong Kong, Australia, the USA, Britain, Canada and other parts of the globe.
“Today, the families have respect and dignity given back to them as their years of silent grief can be committed to the past,” he said on the day. “This is a day for the people of Mayo, and to all who have shown up here today, I thank you for showing respect for the work that has been done, but most of all, for showing respect for our fallen.”

3.
http://www.advertiser.ie/mayo/article/20678

Queen honours Feeney for Mayo Peace Park work
Mayo Advertiser, January 08, 2010.

By Colm Gannon

The traditional New Year’s honours handed out by the Queen in Great Britain was given a Mayo twist this year with the inclusion of Castlebar man Michael Feeney on the list. The man who has worked hard behind the scenes for numerous years on the Mayo Peace Park will be awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace later this year.

Mr Feeney, who started his crusade to get the war dead of Mayo remembered back before the turn of the millennium, saw his dream come to fruition in October 2008 when the Mayo Peace Park was officially opened by President Mary McAleese in Castlebar.

Mr Feeney, a native of McHale Road who now lives in Milebush, will receive his honour for improving Irish and UK relations. Mr Feeney’s grandfather died in the Great War in France on July 22 1915 where he was serving as part of the Connaught Rangers.

Lest We Forget "Our Sacrifice"

by Sir Michael O'Dwyer "MBE" - Irish Catholic Hero of Amritsar

Sun Jan 10, 2010 09:34

FROM “A FENIAN BALLAD” [ aka “SWEET IVELEARY”]
BY JEREMIAH O’DONOVAN ROSSA:

.. I joined the Redcoats then – mo lein! – what would my father say?
And I was sent in one short year on service to Bombay.

I thought to be a pauper was the greatest human curse
But fighting in a robber’s cause I felt it ten times worse!
I helped to plunder and enslave those tribes of India’s sons
And we spent many a sultry day blowing sepoys from our guns.

I told these sins to Father Ned, the murder and the booty.
These were no sins for me, he said, I only did my “duty” ...

No sin to kill for English greed in some far foreign clime
How can it be that patriot love in Ireland is a crime?
How can it be, by God’s decree, I’m cursed, outlawed and banned?
Because I swore one day to free my trampled native land.

more British militarist memorials to come

by Kevin Murphy

Sun Jan 10, 2010 16:45

It was announced at the opening of this British edifice that it was the first of numerous others now planned for every county of the southern state . Rte were very proud of this fact also . Apparently everybody can be proud now . Mr Feeney has certainly earned that MBE .

MBE = The greatest insult to be awarded to any Irish person

by Jacqueilne Fallon

Sun Jan 10, 2010 18:02

An "MBE" is the greatest official insult the British Imperialist Queen can award to any Irish person. How on Earth can any Irish person feel proud of such an insulting 'award', it is nothing but a formal British insult to all Irish people - to declare an Irish person as a member of the ever decreasing failed British Empire. Anyone stupid enough to accept such an official insult from the British Imperialist Queen, or who honours any Irish person stupid enough to join the British army or the British Military Police in Ireland (a.k.a. the "PSNI") should be strongly condemned.

The loyalist loving so-called 'President of Ireland' is nothing but a disgrace and embarrassment to all who truly value Irish independence.

Sacre bleu

by Tribe 14

Sun Jan 10, 2010 22:35

We shouldn't leave Bono and Louis le Brocquy out of this. A "Legion d'Honneur" is the greatest official insult the French Imperialist President can award to any Irish person. How on Earth can any Irish person feel proud of such an insulting 'award', it is nothing but a formal French insult to all Irish people - to declare an Irish person as a member of the national order founded by the Imperialist Napoleon Bonaparte.

Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!

by Lest We Forget - Our Gallant Allies

Mon Jan 11, 2010 09:06

An interesting point, Tribe 14. But on the other hand, while King George and his friends were raping and slaughtering defenceless Irish people by the thousand, Napoleon at least sent ships and soldiers to try to help us. And in desperation, after bloody Victoria's ministers had implemented the policies which consigned millions of us to perdition, Irish patriots turned in desperation to some of Napoleon's less admirable successors, - successors who did not have as much interest in French revolutionary values as Napoleon had.

By 1916 France had sunk to its lowest ebb and, having joined forces with Britain, was NOT one of our gallant allies - quite the reverse. But it's arguable that France has now withdrawn somewhat from the British embrace, so perhaps, in the Napoleonic spirit, we can extend a little leeway to Bono & Co.

But I'd agree with you in principle. Citizens of an independent state should be forbidden from accepting honours from any foreign state without first applying for, and receiving, permission from their own elected government.

In our case the foreign states which are most problematic in regard to "Honours" are Britain and the Vatican, because of the intense and troublesome relationship (not to say interference and domination) that each of them has had with us. And, of course, the two of them operated hand-in-glove to secure their domination over us during some of the most critical periods of our history; not least the Napoleonic period. (And during the Fenian period, and during the War of Independence, when the Excommunication sanction was applied by one to help the other.)

No doubt the Irish State would plead "extenuating circumstances" in permitting this encroachment on our independent status. For policy reasons of community relations etc etc, it seems this state allowed its citizens to retain British citizenship, British passports, hereditary Irish seats in the British House of Lords and so on, even though this was inconsistent with our independence. (Other factors in regard to Vatican honours, which fortunately seem to have disappeared off the radar in recent years.)

But yes, I agree with Tribe 14 in principle. It's high time to sweep these anomalies aside. Especially in regard to British Honours, whose resurgence in Ireland has gone hand in hand with the resurgence of war mongering, conquest and criminality of the British rogue state around the world.

Down with all empires!

by Diarmuid Breatnach - personal capacity

Mon Jan 11, 2010 15:06

Interesting post and comments -- thank you. O'Donovan's song (quoted by one post) puts it well -- I've heard that song sung a few times at the Clé Club in Liberty Hall and at the Goleen in the Teachers' Club. I'd be surprised if Michael Gaughan's name is on the list at the park -- an IRA man who died really fighting "for Ireland", from force-feeding while on hunger-strike in the 1970s:
"My body cold and hungry, in Parkhurst jail I lie --
for the loving of my country, on hunger-strike I die ...

Take me home to Mayo, across the Irish sea ..."
Action should be taken against this park, including public pickets and demonstrations, I feel.

Subject people who join the forces of their enemies are often characterised by particularly bad behaviour. Black Panther George Jackson commented (Soledad Brother) that the black prison guards treated them worse than did the whites. I also found Irish in the London Metropolitan Police force to be particularly bad, both on a general level and on a political one.

With regard to the Irish and India, there were also Irish people who helped the Indian revolutionaries in India and in London also (including providing them with a secret firing range in Victorian London, apparently) and Mac Swiney's family received condolence messages from Indian nationalist leaders after his death on hunger strike.

With regard to Napoleon, he did sent help to the Irish -- too little to make a real difference. However, while we may enter into temporary alliance with the "enemy of my enemy" we need to remember who our true friends are. As people struggling against imperialism, our true friends are those also struggling against imperialism elsewhere around the world. Napoleon extended no "liberté et egalité" to the subject nations of the French empire and even tried to reverse the liberation of slaves. The great Haitan slave uprising leader Toussaint L'Ouverture ended his days in a sunless dungeon of Napoleon's, as did his wife and children. France played a disgusting role in many places, notably perhaps, because of the strength of reistance there, in Vietnam and Algeria. Today France denies the Basques of the south of their state (and the north of the Basque's country) not only the right to nationhood, but any regional autonomy, recognition of their language, etc.

Mayo Pride

by Bahadur Shah Zafar - The Red Fort

Thu Jan 21, 2010 13:40

Should Mayo be proud of its sons who took (and take!) the Queen's Shilling?
Should Mayo be proud of the Holocaust of Ten Million?
See the Guardian article below .

The Guardian, Friday 24 August 2007

(Full text at this link)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/24/india.rande...amesh
1857 mutiny revisited
India's secret history: 'A holocaust, one where millions disappeared...'
Author says British reprisals involved the killing of 10m, spread over 10 years

* by Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
* The Guardian, Friday 24 August 2007

A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them.

In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world's superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.

Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra.

The author says he was surprised to find that the "balance book of history" could not say how many Indians were killed in the aftermath of 1857. This is remarkable, he says, given that in an age of empires, nothing less than the fate of the world hung in the balance.

"It was a holocaust, one where millions disappeared. It was a necessary holocaust in the British view because they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. It was simple and brutal. Indians who stood in their way were killed. But its scale has been kept a secret," Misra told the Guardian.

His calculations rest on three principal sources. Two are records pertaining to the number of religious resistance fighters killed - either Islamic mujahideen or Hindu warrior ascetics committed to driving out the British.

The third source involves British labour force records, which show a drop in manpower of between a fifth and a third across vast swaths of India, which as one British official records was "on account of the undisputed display of British power, necessary during those terrible and wretched days - millions of wretches seemed to have died."

There is a macabre undercurrent in much of the correspondence. In one incident Misra recounts how 2m letters lay unopened in government warehouses, which, according to civil servants, showed "the kind of vengeance our boys must have wreaked on the abject Hindoos and Mohammadens, who killed our women and children."...

Misra also claims that the uprisings did not die out until years after the original mutiny had fizzled away, countering the widely held view that the recapture of Delhi was the last important battle.

For many the fact that Indian historians debate 1857 from all angles is in itself a sign of a historical maturity. "You have to see this in the context of a new, more confident India," said Jon E Wilson, lecturer in south Asian history at King's College London. "India has a new relationship with 1857. In the 40s and 50s the rebellions were seen as an embarrassment. All that fighting, when Nehru and Gandhi preached nonviolence. But today 1857 is becoming part of the Indian national story. That is a big change."

What They Said (in 1857):

Charles Dickens: "I wish I were commander-in-chief in India ... I should proclaim to them that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the race."

Karl Marx: "The question is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton."

L'Estaffette, French newspaper: "Intervene in favour of the Indians, launch all our squadrons on the seas, join our efforts with those of Russia against British India ...such is the only policy truly worthy of the glorious traditions of France."

The Guardian: "We sincerely hope that the terrible lesson thus taught will never be forgotten ... We may rely on native bayonets, but they must be officered by Europeans."

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New Mayo Member of the British Empire (M-MBE): insult to Indian (and every other) fight for freedom

Comments (9 of 9)