A chara, – In response to Desmond FitzGerald's letter on the 1916 Rising (September 29th), I think a couple of points are worth mentioning.
The Ulster Volunteers were highly armed and motivated. Although we will never know what might have happened had home rule been implemented, it was likely some bloodshed would have occurred. It was evident that at many levels there was resistance to the idea of Irish home rule. The “Curragh Incident”, for example, demonstrated that, if so ordered, the British army in Ireland would not “enforce” home rule against Ulster.
It is perhaps wishful thinking too to presume that the Irish Home Rule Bill would be enacted as promised. Throughout the British Empire, colonies had been made promises of self-government only to see these promises later evaporate and Ireland was no exception. Britain in general did not let her colonies go without a fight.
A strain of Ulster unionism has always been implacably opposed to any sort of political arrangement that involves Dublin. The Sunningdale Agreement in 1974 primarily collapsed due to opposition from Ulster unionists and many were opposed to the subsequent Anglo-Irish Agreement.
Indeed a section of unionism is opposed to the current power-sharing agreement.
The ultimate resulting Catholic-centric nature of the emerging Irish State has as much to do with the players that refused to get involved in as those who did. The problem Ulster Unionists faced and still face is that they would become a minority in a united Ireland, a future that perhaps one day needs to be addressed by all of us on this island.
A case could be made that had home rule been implemented in Ireland, conscription for the British army might well have followed, resulting in thousands upon thousands more Irishmen needlessly dying on the battlefields in France.
When Irish men and women did rise up in 1916, the rebellion was crushed and the leaders executed after being dealt with in kangaroo courts. It is plausible to suggest the treatment meted out to the rebels so angered Irish people that this led directly to the War of Independence.
I think it is grossly unfair to blame the subsequent economic problems of the Irish State upon Irish men and women who heroically and tragically laid down their lives for an Irish Republic that they believed in. The fact that it was subsequently economically mismanaged is not their fault; it is down to our own inept generation of bankers, senior civil servants and politicians. – Is mise,
ROB Mac GIOLLARNÁTH,
Sandyford, Dublin 18.