Britishness and commemoration: National memorials to the First World War in Britain and Ireland

Abstract

The 1917 call for a national memorial to the First World War led to the establishment of the Imperial War Museum in London. It also inspired Scottish, Welsh and Irish national memorials. No English national memorial was ever proposed; instead the Cenotaph and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were conceived as imperial memorials. The new statelet of Northern Ireland did not commemorate its overall war effort within its own territory. This article surveys the organisation, location and design of the Scottish, Welsh and Irish national war memorials to the First World War. It examines some aspects of the complex set of relationships between the local, regional, national and imperial layers of identity that are inherent in Britishness. In doing so it reveals the confused and contested nature of national identity in the United Kingdom at the close of the First World War