Madam, - There has been plenty of adverse commentary on John Bruton's recent address to the Reform Movement in the Mansion House, much of it ill-informed.
By 1914 the Home Rule Act had finally been passed into law, thus conceding the only nationalist demand expressed through the democratic process at that time. Unlike John Redmond, Pádraig Pearse had no mandate from the Irish people for anything, much less one to bring death and destruction to the streets of Dublin.
Of course, many people claim that when Sinn Féin won the majority of seats in the 1918 election the Irish people gave retrospective approval to the Easter Rising and the green light for the killing to start again. However, only 47 per cent of the votes cast in that election were for Sinn Féin.
Secondly, that party did not go before the people of Ireland seeking a mandate for the use of violence to achieve its aims. In fact, at the time of the 1918 election Sinn Féin leaders appeared to take the opposite stance. At the Sinn Féin Ardfheis before the election, Cathal Brugha said the party did not intend to meet English rule with assassination. Éamon de Valera said the party's actions should be in accordance with the will of the Irish people, and the moral law.
The Sinn Féin manifesto for the 1918 election was broadly as follows:-
1. Abstention from Westminster by Sinn Féin candidates if elected.
2. The creation of a national assembly.
3. An appeal to the Paris Peace Conference for support.
Physical-force nationalists have never felt the need for a mandate from the living to kill for Ireland; they always look to the dead or future generations. When the Provisional IRA was waging its "war", Sinn Féin made that very point, citing the absence of a mandate at the time for the 1916 Rising to justify the IRA's murderous campaign. Because a minority decided to act without the consent of the majority and by so doing altered the course of our history, does not make it moral, democratic, or a good foundation for a peaceful future. - Yours, etc.,
TONY MORIARTY, Shanid Road, Kenilworth Park, Dublin 6W.
Madam, - Some of your correspondents believe I do not understand that Home Rule was made law in 1914. I was and remain aware that this was the case.
It was the kind of law we know as a dead letter. Never enacted, and wholly without positive consequences, it prepared the ground for the partition of Ireland, and helped undermine the Redmondite party. (It is often forgotten that it was in response to Home Rule "achieved" peacefully, and not to 1916, that partition was outlined.)
The ifs and maybes could be argued forever. I would suggest that the subsequent treatment of the Redmondites by the British establishment settles the case.
Was Redmond treated like the great democratic statesman of his age, solver of an age-old problem, and the leader in waiting of a loyal new Home Rule govern- ment? No. He was treated like a patsy, who had been taken for everything he could usefully be taken for.
Again and again from 1914 to 1918, those who had allegedly agreed Home Rule with him treated Redmond and his party disingenuously and with contempt. Over the raising, organisation and officering of Irish volunteer units. Over the executions after 1916 (where his deputy, Dillon was prophetically right and comprehensively ignored). Over the continuing negotiations on Home Rule. (Negotiations on the implementation of the Home Rule Bill broke down during this period.)
Finally, and for the Redmondites most awfully, over conscription, where they were obliged to follow the abstentionist tactics first outlined by Redmond's great rival Arthur Griffith, who would lead the Irish State in its first troubled months.
It is for these reasons that I placed Redmond in the tradition of Home Rule failure that included O'Connell, Parnell and Gladstone. - Yours, etc.,
FRANK FITZPATRICK, St Kevin's Parade, South Circular Road, Dublin 8.
Madam, - John Bruton's argument (September 29th) that it would have been preferable if Irish freedom had been achieved without what he calls "the appalling suffering, destruction and brutality of the two wars that took place in Ireland between 1919 and 1923" is one that is hard to contradict.
That is not the issue, however. The real question is why a peaceful transition to limited self-rule for the island of Ireland, carried out as planned by the architects of the Home Rule Bill according to the rules of a parliamentary democracy, failed - and who bears most responsibility for this failure. After all, it was supported by the vast majority of the elected representatives in Ireland. Even Patrick Pearse spoke from Home Rule platforms in 1912. In addition, it had the support of a majority in the House of Commons after two general elections in 1910 and was, as John Bruton said, enacted into law in 1914.
That signing into law, however, was only the formal position. Meanwhile, Asquith as prime minister was, in his own words, "putting the screw to" the parliamentarian Redmond with a view to wringing humiliating concessions from him in order to appease unionists. These same unionists, with the active support of Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative opposition, were arming themselves and threatening civil war against an Act of their own parliament.
The start of the first World War was indeed inopportune, but the seeds of distrust in parliamentary procedures had already been sown. The war gave these seeds time to germinate. The unconstitutional recklessness of Bonar Law in explicitly supporting civil war and Asquith's failure to enforce the law were indefensible in a parliamentary democracy.
The blame for the violent break-up of the United Kingdom, for plunging Ireland into violence and for the sectarian division of this island rests primarily with Bonar Law. Asquith's failure to confront what 20 years later would be called fascism was an important contributory factor. - Yours, etc.,
A. LEAVY, Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13.