HANGING ON THE OLD BARBED WIRE

                   

                        WORLD WAR ONE CENTENARY PREPARATIONS are taking place in communities across Australia. The Past is always with us - and so are the WARS...

James Brown, former ADF soldier and military scholar at the Lowy Institute said

Though we are absolutely right to mark the significance of the centenary of the First World War, Australia will outspend the United Kingdom's centenary program by 200 per cent.
Anzac remembrance on this side of the Tasman will cost nearly 20 times what our New Zealand colleagues have allocated. Rather than letting silent contemplation be our offering to those who served and died for us, we are embarking on a discordant and exorbitant four-year festival, that looks like an Anzacs arms race of sorts.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/ww1/excess-in-the-anzac-centenary-overlooks-other-military-endeavours-20140225-33foj.html#ixzz34UDkjuFY

Singing by CHUMBAWAMBA: a song written by soldiers in the trenches in the First World War.

Designed to be sung while marching. 
FORTUNATE then, and GRATEFUL to live in a country where PEACE reigns. No call up.

 

Being born in England I got to learn about the WAR OF THE ROSES at school, and WW2 on TV. about War was often through television screening black and white films about World War 2.

In 1978 arriving in Melbourne, Australia and starting High School in Year 10 we read a play by Alan Seymour called "One Day of the Year", which questioned the role of Anzac Day.
It was performed in 1960. Our Drama teacher took us to see an amateur production of the play. A thought provoking start to Australian literary and cultural studies at the start of life as a New Australian!

THEN our English Teacher Mr. Taylor, respectfully introduced us to the words written in WW1 by soldier and poet, Wilfred Owen, then acted like a spring from my own poetic depths. 

My English Heritage was not of being sent to Wars. My Grandmother said her Father shot himself in the foot so he didn't have to go! In Truth?
my parents were born during the height of Hitler's Blitz as their parents made aircraft at Longbridge and Munitions at Ladywood.

My husband's family dug for the coal to fuel the industry, and the bombs fell around them, or I wouldn't be here!

How did I grow up to think about war? What information struck a chord that still resonates? Why am I more likely to be on the cynical side, challenging, not trusting authority figures and their agendas?

Those Aussie youth who went parading onto the ships at the call-up often saw it as a chance to get off the farm or their mundane lives and see a bit of the world. They thought, and so did Prime Minister Fisher they were being deployed to help Mother England in France, but Defence Minister Winston Churchill had other plans.

When do you hear the teacher, politician or parent inform the kids about the decisions of Politicians like Churchill to send the young like lambs to the slaughter? In recent years there has been increased encouragement to participate in Anzac services.
They wave the Australian flag flying the Union Jack to remind us we are not an independent Nation. Now there are Chaplains in State Schools to learn about the God of Abraham. 

Thus we have the Trifecta - God, Queen and Country. With a populist opinion that the previous generation of kids today don't have any respect (and thus won't be as forthcoming volunteering for the battles of the future), financial and educational incentives are distributed to join the armed forces.

Being a former Colonial country(with the British Monarchy at its Head of State), it was my observation that the Imperial brain washing was more intense on the population. The legacy of Empire Day still has its influence, especially in my home State of Queensland. In England you hardly ever see a Union Jack flying and certainly not on a school flag pole to be raised at school assembly.

I was fortunate to experience the Dramas of war through T.V. in Britain because it was too cold or wet or snowing. One series which left an early impression was "The Family at War" which kept me awake whilst babysitting my cousins.

                                                             screened 1970-1972.
With an empty nest I had the time to research the family tree and found my maternal line full of Celtic Kin employed by the British Army throughout the centuries. This came as a shock because I had grown up assuming the Irish in the Republic of Ireland were all Catholic and anti-British.

The public didn't have the full story from both sides in the centuries old war because of the censorship in the media.
Growing up in Birmingham in the early 1970's where I had my bags checked for bombs at the Children's Library in town, I still had sympathy towards the under-dogs...My 10 year old brain believed there must be a good reason why they were fighting against the Government.
The distrust of Church and State must have been passed on by my mother who grew up in Catholic Orphanages in England and Australia.http://cockneyclarkclan.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/boomerang.html

THE IRISH SOLDIERS 

First cousin 3 x removed: A Roman Catholic Dubliner who died in France when he could have died at home where another Irish rebellion was taking place.


I'll be adding to this collage of cultural learnings of a military nature by the by - as my little contribution to the realities and fictions of Wars. It was supposed to be the war that ended all wars! (Yeah right)

Australia's Tory Prime Minister visited the WW1 memorials in the region this week for the commemoration of the D-Day landing of the second world war. In his government's austerity budget for the already disadvantaged which is likely to cause more homelessness, he announced they will buy

"58 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) at a cost of more than $12 billion" ABC News 

The extra aircraft will bring Australia's total Joint Strike Fighter force to 72 aircraft, with the first of them to enter service in 2020.

The $12.4 billion price tag makes the Joint Strike Fighters Australia's most expensive Defence asset.

The Government says it will also consider the option of buying another squadron of the next-generation fighter jets to eventually replace the RAAF'S F/A-18 Super Hornets(and as they fly over my house I hope they are less noisy when I'm getting the grandson to have a peaceful sleep).

No matter how poor Government's claim they are to deny their population basic health needs they always find the money for the latest killing machines.

You learn as you grow up everything is a double-edged sword and Defence R&D brought us the Internet technology.

LATELINE FRIDAY 13TH FULL MOON - IRAQ INVASION SO FAR COST THE U.S.A. around 1.3 TRILLION DOLLARS.
This does not include any decent services for their returned maimed soldiers.



Machine Gunner Corps, Royal Irish Fusiliers
AGED 24 Sgt. James Ross, cousin to the deceased Private James Fegan,19, was returned home to Dublin from France(on medical discharge), and awarded the Star Medal.
 
Grt Grand Uncle James Ross was married later in the year and worked at the Pay Office at Dublin Castle.

His sister Christina had also married at British soldier (my Great Grandparents).

Rather than being sent to France from his home in London Thomas Clark was sent to Dublin as reinforcements against the rebellious Irish Republicans!

It was an extended family living in a tenement building at Great Longford St. Dublin South. Their home town had voted overwhelmingly for Sinn Fein to form Ireland's 1st Parliament and not sitting in London's House of Commons.

                                                         

THE WELL-FARE STATE IN BRITAIN also arose from the analysis of war, including how fit and resilient were a population going to war! There were many comparisons between the physiques of the colonial Australians and those of Her Majesty's troops at Home!

Background to free school dinners from the British Archives web site:

In 1900 there was a great deal of anxiety about the health of the people of Britain.

The government and the armed forces had been shocked by the physical health of the young men of Britain when they were trying to recruit for the Boer War (1899-1902). They had found that many of the young men were too small or under-nourished to join up. As a result of this, a 'Committee on Physical Deterioration' was set up.

The government had worked hard to deal with conditions such as cholera and passed laws to ensure everyone had access to a clean water supply, better houses and education. These efforts however did not do anything to help with people's nutrition. Approximately a quarter of the people in London did not have enough money to live on, even if they had a permanent job and spent their wages wisely.

Seebohm Rowntree carried out a survey of working class families in the city of York in 1901. He found that even if they had jobs, wages were often too low to ensure a decent standard of living. Children did not get the good diet they needed - partly because their parents were too poor and partly because parents generally did not understand what was needed for a healthy diet. Medical care cost money and parents did not call a doctor for their children unless they were desperate.

My husband and I were fortunate to have my childhood in pre-Thatcherite Britain as we were grateful for a hearty warm subsidised school dinner during those cold, windy years. Puddings were awesome too, and sometimes there was seconds!

Little did we know the original purpose was to feed us little piggies up for successful breeding optimum and potential slaughter fields when words and intelligence and incompetence had failed us. At my school in Selly Oak, Birmingham we were fortunate to have the philanthropic Cadbury factory at Bourneville nearby, so we received a packet of 2 chocolate wheaten biscuits, scrumptious with our Milk!

 

Of course none of this wide-scale government intervention would have been necessary if the minimum wage rose to meeting decent living standards - but then I am an Australian citizen of humanist Labor values and principles. HIGGINS was my maiden name so it was easy to remember the landmark decision of 

 1907 "Harvester Judgement" that established the concept of the "sufficient wage" for unskilled workers. The "sufficient wage" soon became known as the "basic wage". Justice Henry Higgins, Federal Court of Australia.

Here is a gem of industrial and war-time history in my husband's family tree of Yorkshire miners who collectively organised against Capitalist exploitation.


GRAND UNCLE ISAAC CHURM'S WAR:

Issac Born Castleford Yorkshire,1885 - 1942 age 57yrs.

Following the Court case he returned as Private to the York and Lancaster Regiment, and went to France and returned home - Lucky chap of the working-class.

Isaac Churm's twin brother, DAVID was discharged from the army due to injuries from working as a coal miner since he was 14yrs. He died in 1941 age 56yrs.

Both buried in Rotherham Yorkshire FOR FASCINATING FILM HISTORY ABOUT COAL MINING CLICK - British Film Institute online

THE FRANCHISE

When my Irish kin went to World War 1, they had not been given the vote by Westminster Parliament due to an entrenched class system. 
Finally in 1918 as a reward to the men who had gone to war for the British political system and Empire a reform to the Electoral laws were passed which made ALL MEN over 21 the right to vote.
Typically the long fought for franchise was passed into law for fear the returned soldiers might instigate a revolution like that taking place in Russia!
Women had been campaigning for the franchise well before the War and still had a battle to win equal voting rights. Women were given some concession by allowing over 30 with property to go first! 

Constance Georgine Markievicz  

4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927.
was an Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist. In December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, though she did not take her seat and along with the other Sinn Féin TDs formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).
She was born Constance Georgine Gore-Booth at Buckingham Gate in London, the elder daughter of the Arctic explorer and adventurer Sir Henry Gore-Booth, 5th Baronet, an Anglo-Irish landlord who administered an 100 km2 (39 sq mi) estate, and Lady Georgina née Hill. During the famine of 1879–80, Sir Henry provided free food for the tenants on his estate at Lissadell House in the north of County Sligo in the north-west of Ireland. Their father's example inspired in Gore-Booth and her younger sister, Eva Gore-Booth, a deep concern for the poor. The sisters were childhood friends of the poet W. B. Yeats, who frequently visited the family home Lissadell House, and were influenced by his artistic and political ideas. Yeats wrote a poem, In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz, in which he described the sisters as "two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle". Eva later became involved in the labour movement and women's suffrage in England, although initially the future countess did not share her sister's ideals.


from the authors of

http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/discussions/eiri-amach-na-casca-165860/