Sir, – Your Editorial (“Redmond’s moment”, April 11th) asks us to remember the “massive, excited demonstrations” at which Irish nationalists welcomed the prospect of self-government in 1912. It would also be well to consider the rhetoric employed at these demonstrations and what it said about the promise that Home Rule held out to many nationalists.
In Dublin’s O’Connell Street the crowds were told that “Cromwell’s work” was being undone: for many Home Rule meant not limited self-government, but the “virtual undoing of the conquest”. The reality was always likely to be a huge disappointment. There has been a tendency for some commentators to sentimentalise John Redmond’s party. In fact the Home Rulers were often sectarian, had no compunction about using intimidation and violence against their political rivals and promised far more than they could deliver.
There is every likelihood that Home Rule, far from satisfying nationalist aspirations, would have eventually produced some new form of separatist rebellion. – Yours, etc,