Legion in turmoil as Remembrance Sunday looms

The skirmish, if not quite trench warfare, that has broken out at the top of the Royal British Legion in the Republic comes at a time when the organisation is gearing up for its big annual event – Remembrance Sunday and all that comes with it.

It emerged this week that Major General David O’Morchoe, the organisation’s genial district president in the Republic, resigned his position – but subsequently withdrew the resignation – after he was suspended while efforts are made to get to the bottom of an internal dispute.

It is clear that, nothwithstanding his suspension, O’Morchoe remains a figure held in high esteem within the legion, which described him in a statement as “a highly respected, senior member of the Legion”. “His work for the charity is greatly valued,” it said, “however all complaints must be carefully examined.”

This year, the legion under his leadership has basked in a profile unprecedented in recent decades. This was in part because of the general rapprochement in Anglo-Irish as well as North- South relations, but also because of the volume of commemorative events associated with the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first World War.

Board of trustees

Rememberance of all that peaks here on the weekend of November 8th and 9th, when many communities North and South will mark Armistice Day, November 11th. The days around the 11th, which commemorates the formal end of the war in 1918, are the focal point of the legion’s annual Poppy Day appeal, the proceeds of which fund much of the organisation’s continuing work for ex-British service personnel and their families.

Day-to-day running of the legion is devolved to an executive board of seven who are based at the charity’s headquarters in London. The legion was founded in 1921 just three years after the end of the first World War when those who survived the conflict, and the families of those who did not, were searching for a way to commemorate the dead and aid the injured living.

The organisation is governed by a 17-strong board of trustees, of whom seven are elected by the 360,000-strong membership. Membership costs £15 a year and is open to all, but beneficiaries must be serving or former members of the British armed services and/or their dependants, or members of resistance organisations of a nation allied to the UK.

The legion has 2,500 branches throughout the UK and overseas. In the Republic of Ireland, there are 10 legion branches – in Claddagh, Cork, Dublin Central, Dún Laoghaire, Kildare, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, and the Irish Metropolitan branch – with a total membership of 601.

Welfare aspects

Not surprisingly, the legion is far larger and more widespread in Northern Ireland, where it is organised into 10 groups in which there are 77 individual branches and clubs with a membership of 12,687.

To ex-service personnel, their families and volunteers who work with them, it is the welfare aspect of the organisation that is perhaps most keenly felt.

Support given includes help in securing education for dependants, spouses and children, and help to “protect the mental and emotional health of the spouses, children, dependants and immediate family members of beneficiaries who have died or been severely injured”.

The “old soldier’s club” aspect of the legion’s presence in the Republic, and the sense of pride and comradeship members feel about themselves and their former careers, is evident nowhere more than in obituaries.

For instance, Dublin Central Branch marked the death in February of Mick Goucher, its former president and former member of the Royal Air Force, with an obituary recalling how he was in Belfast on the night of April 15th, 1941, when German bombers struck the city and fire fighters from Dublin went north to help.

Goucher “witnessed the horrors of that night with 900 killed and 1,500 injured. The contingent of Dubs remained in Belfast for another four days to assist with rescue operations. Mick completed his service in India and was part of the RAF repatriation team of British POWs of the Japanese,” according to the obituary, which noted that the legion’s annual Poppy Day appeal was his “passion”.