The story of Mr John Redmond’s controversial speech at Woodenbridge is well known and has been discussed before in the Woodenbridge Newsletter. But on this 90th anniversary year of the Battle of the Somme, that took the lives of so many Irishmen it is worth recalling again, as well as the wider aspect of the Great War in its effects on County Wicklow. John Redmond, M.P. a native of County Wexford was leader of the Irish National Party the constitutional political party of elected M.P’s to Westminster which party manifesto aspired to bring about Home Rule for all Ireland by peaceful means. To his credit Redmond got a bill for Irish Home Rule passed in Parliament in May 1914 but the legislation was scuppered with the outbreak of the Great War the following August. The subsequent four and a half year long conflict was the 20th century’s defining event fought between the British-French-Russian alliance against Germany –Austria Hungry and their allies. (In all 32 countries were involved in the war). In the field now occupied by the Woodenbridge new course John Redmond gave an impromptu speech calling for Irish involvement in the war by encouraging the Irish Volunteers to join the British military, stating his firm belief that “the war is undertaken in the highest principle of religion and morality and right. The consequences for John Redmond personally, for his party, and for Irelands constitutional politics following this speech has filled many books, but it is suffice to say that the ‘John Redmond’s Woodenbridge Speech’ earned its place in the history of great events.

But there was another consequence of the Great War felt at local level throughout County Wicklow. Thousands heeded Redmond’s logic and took up the call for arms. Thousands more joined up because of recruitment propaganda or out of a sense of identity with ‘gallant little Belgium’, grinding under the heel of the Prussian jackboot, or for the economic reason of a regular pay packet and in the belief ‘it will all be over by Christmas’, or just to follow the glamour of arms and express patriotic feelings. Many simply followed the footsteps of relatives or friends who had joined the army earlier. The number of military volunteers from County Wicklow is not fully known, but it ran to well over 3000 young men, and that was just into the direct military services. There were many thousands more indirectly employed in the war, like the munitions workers of Arklow’s Kynoch Factory, the horse buyers who travelled from fair to fair purchasing strings of horses for the army, sailors on the very dangerous commercial home trade, and numerous persons fully employed in relief work, medical services and in general supply work. While figures for the living were not systematically calculated, unfortunately those who died in the war were better documented, and it makes a grim toll when one considers the entire population of County Wicklow in 1914 was only about 62000. In all 371young men were ‘Killed in Action’, but many more died in the immediate aftermath, of wounds, of infections and traumatic shock. If the fatalities of the Arklow Kynoch’s disaster are added it brings the figure of actual persons killed by direct hostile action to over 400. At least three times that number received debiliting injuries. For a generation after the conflict every town and village of the county had its population of war cripples and maimed and the psychologically traumatised who were generally described as ‘shell shocked’. The statistics make chilling reading. Wicklow town lost 43 young men, Arklow 35, Bray 70, Tinahealy 17, Rathdrum 17, Newtown 11, Carnew 6, Avoca 7, Aughrim 4, Newcastle 5, Shillelagh 6, Delgany 8. Hardly a community in Wicklow escaped some loss. From the houses of the former county grandees to humble fishermen’s abodes in Arklow, the Great War mopped up the lives of young men. And it was this that made the carnage of the Western Front such a singular event, for almost all the slain were between the ages of 16 to 40. Among the victims of the war were many officers of the regular military, who in more peaceful pre-war days enjoyed a day’s golf in Woodenbridge. That such a thing could happen today, as say the loss of 7 young men in Enniskerry, is unthinkable, yet that was the consequence for that particular Wicklow village in the tragedy of the Great War, an event who’s hundreds of victims, to our collective shame, have for all too long been airbrushed out of our local and national history.