Sir, – Those supporting John Bruton’s defence of John Redmond ignore the role of the Great War as the backdrop to the Rising. Europe and Ireland had already been brutalised by the carnage at the front. Tens of thousands of Irishmen had already enlisted (who knows how many already felt they had been duped into enlisting) and the threat of conscription was very real.
The rejection of conscription by the mass of the Irish people was effectively a declaration of independence, making nonsense of any possible negotiated form of home rule. This was a circle that could never be squared.
Ireland could not be real part of any union if it refused to fight for that union in a total war.
Redmond continued with his illogical and intellectually dishonest policy of support for enlistment and rejection of conscription but the people saw the matter more clearly and deserted to Sinn Féin as conscription loomed ever closer.
Conscription was avoided in the end, partly because of the unexpected early end to the war, but mostly because of the likely violent opposition that it would have encountered in an Ireland now dominated by Sinn Féin.
Readers with grandfathers and great-grandfathers born around 1900 should be especially thankful. – Yours, etc,
TIM O’HALLORAN,
Dublin 11.