Madam, - Some of the contributions to the debate on 1916, including those from Tim Pat Coogan, John Waters and Garret FitzGerald, have been a bit rose-tinted. That said, however, to label what happened as merely "illegal and immoral", as Robin Bury (April 24th) quotes Ruth Dudley Edwards as saying, goes too far in the opposite direction.
What happened on Easter Monday 1916, when a small, marginal group took up arms against the authorities of the day, was indeed illegal. Whether it was immoral is more debatable. It certainly was no more illegal and no more of an abuse of power than Andrew Bonar Law's backing for the Ulster Unionist threat of civil war against the Home Rule Bill.
John Redmond had an electoral mandate of 80 out of 106 Irish seats to support Home Rule in the Westminster parliament. The Home Rule Act passed unamended through the most powerful parliament in the world twice - in 1912 and 1914. That exercise by a parliament, whose authority they purported to be defending, did not prevent the signing by nearly half-a-million unionists of the Ulster Covenant in September 1912.
That proclamation to "use all means necessary" including civil war to oppose Home Rule for Ireland showed contempt for Redmond's Irish majority and the significant majority by which the Home Rule Bill was passed in Westminster.
Yet this anti-democratic threat of civil war was explicitly backed by Andrew Bonar Law who, as leader of the Conservative party, was the second most powerful elected politician in an empire which governed a quarter of the population of the globe.
This irresponsible abuse of almost limitless power by Bonar Law qualifies as being much more "illegal and immoral" than anything done in 1916. The illegal arming of unionists, in which Bonar Law was complicit, was successful in delaying the implementation of Home Rule. It was in consequence of this that the arming of the Irish volunteers took place.
It can be argued, therefore, that without the scuppering of Home Rule by the "illegal and immoral" backing of Bonar Law for civil war against an act of parliament, the 1916 rebellion might not have happened. In fact Patrick Pearse, the leader of the 1916 rebellion, supported Home Rule in 1912. - Yours, etc,
A. LEAVY, Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13.