Can we commemorate a forgotten past?

In the 1960s and 1970s Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito commissioned a series of major monuments by leading artists to commemorate the country’s struggle against fascism in the Second World War. Young Pioneers visited them as part of their political education, so did millions of Yugoslavs and tourists. Now Yugoslavia no longer exists but the monuments still stand, abandoned. The battles and concentration camps they commemorate did happen – two million people did perish – and they make our various ‘wars’ look like playground tiffs.

A powerful elite in Ireland would like us to forget that 1913 ever happened. Ideally, they would also like unions to disappear. Would Jim Larkin’s statue in O’Connell Street and James Connolly’s in Beresford Place then be relegated to the same status as these monuments?

Click on link to see Yugoslav monuments.