Apologists and little Britons should watch this!

Rating: 9/10 (2 July 2006)

Speaking as a born-and-bred Londoner from several generations of Londoners, this is a very important film for several reasons. It's a film that angers me but not for the reasons others may think. I'm angered because, until I decided to find out myself, I had little idea of my country's bloody past with our neighbour across the Irish Sea. I didn't know that an undeclared war had raged between 1916 and 1922 as a small nation sought to take on the British empire.
Why didn't I know? Why wasn't I taught that at school? British kids know more about the build-up to the Second World War (and so they should too) than they do about over seven hundred years of Anglo-Irish history. Why is that? Why is it that most British people have never been to Ireland, they can't tell one Irish regional accent from another and don't know where the border is? Do subsequent UK governments not think that it's important that we know? Obviously not, because if kids did know, they might want to do something about it. Do Britain have a guilt complex when it comes to their past in Ireland? British kids now know more about Los Angeles or New York than they do about the UK's bloody past.
Loach is no friend of the British establishment. His earlier film, Hidden Agenda (about the armed struggle in Northern Ireland in the early eighties) was also a cause celebre here for quite a while with the usual little Englanders calling for it to be banned etc.
What did you expect? Good old lilleywhite John Bull?!
It's not a pleasant film but then it wasn't a pleasant time. War rarely is. I doubt anyone who believes in a rosy we-were-only-a-benign-landlord ideology will go to see this film but they should. It's easy to shy away from unpleasant truths from the past. There's some pretty grim scenes in this, including of the fingernail-pulling footage. Historically it's pretty accurate and the period detail is good.
Something made me smile: the treaty was signed just before Christmas 1921 and those watching the newsreel of it should've been wearing winter coats! From the treaty being ratified in late 1921, it took Ireland another twenty-eight years to achieve total independence and to move from being a dominion to a republic. This film shows the first solid steps to achieving what Collins called "the freedom to achieve freedom".
Buy a ticket, hire it or buy the DVD when it's released but go and see this, especially if you're a Brit. You might learn something.