| SEMESTER 1 2025/26 |
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Bernard Kelly (Fingal County Council) |
| 16 October 2025 |
'Using War to Make Peace: the Dublin Government and World War commemoration, 1922-2025' Venue: K114, Newman Building Date: Thurs 16 October 2025 Time: 4pm |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the difficult and complex relationship that successive Dublin governments have had with commemoration of the world wars, from the foundation of the state to the present day. It argues that up to 1995 consecutive Irish governments were content to allow commemoration of the world wars in Ireland to be a private, veteran-led phenomenon, while official public memory was focussed on the revolutionary narrative and in celebrating the Rising. This changed completely in 1995 when Taoiseach John Bruton used a speech at Islandbridge war memorial park to publicly acknowledge Irish volunteer participation in the Second World War, in an attempt to demonstrate the Dublin government’s commitment to the Northern Ireland peace process. Following this major change, Irish Government policy has followed the same path from 1995 to the present, consistently using public commemoration ceremonies as a way to achieve wider political objectives. This paper will examine various Irish government’s complicated journey from 1922 to Bruton’s Islandbridge speech, and will assess its implications for the State’s view of both world wars up to the present day. At the same time, it challenges the prevailing narrative that Irish volunteer participation in both world wars was ‘forgotten’ until 1995, arguing that this is an over-simplification of a dynamic and evolving situation. |
| Bio: | Bernard Kelly obtained in his PhD in history from NUI Galway in 2010, and his thesis examined Irish veterans of the Second World War in Ireland between 1945 and 1948. He has held a Research Fellowship at the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, been a Historian in Residence at Dublin City Council and was Fingal County Council’s Research Historian until 2023, as well as being editor of Fingal Studies. He specialises in the world wars and the Irish revolution, with a particular interest in issues such as veteran welfare, commemoration, desertion, military migration and casualties. |
