The Twinge of Memory: Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday in Dublin since 1919

Abstract

The cultural historian Adrian Gregory has found that the ‘silence of memory’, even though it only lasted two minutes, provided a unifying refuge and a rallying point for the bereaved and demobilised of interwar Britain. In Ireland, no such unity was found. A wartime uprising and intensified independence struggle meant that Irish veterans (almost 200 000 in number) came home in 1919 to find themselves suspect in the eyes of republicans for their war service. Division rather than dignity surrounded the commemoration of the war in Ireland. On the streets of Dublin, 11 November was marred by noisy protests, riots and bombings while the state’s attitude towards participation or abstention was frequently ambivalent and contradictory.