Legacy Of Pearse

Sir, - So far your correspondents have failed to highlight sufficiently the enormous influence the First World War had on Patrick…

Sir, - So far your correspondents have failed to highlight sufficiently the enormous influence the First World War had on Patrick Pearse. To quote the historian David FitzPatrick, "Pearse, intoxicated by the first 16 months of the Great War, declared that its first 16 months has been `the most glorious in the history of Europe' reflecting that `the heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields' ".

Mr FitzPatrick goes on to say: "The Easter Rising of April 1916 was indeed reckless, bloody, sacrificial and unsuccessful . . . the outcome was at least 450 deaths as well as 2,600 injuries. Civilians were the main victims." All these deaths because one man was overcome by the "glory" of sacrifices in the Great War and managed to persuade a cabal of the IRB to follow him.

There was, of course, a viable peaceful alternative. The Irish Parliamentary Party's leader, John Redmond, offered an approach which was accepted by almost all Irish people at the time: Home Rule within the British Empire. Paddy Mulcahy, the brother of Richard Mulcahy, in old age declared that Ireland had been "terribly foolish not to take Home Rule when it was offered to us", and also " bloody lucky to get the Treaty". Stephen Howe in Ireland and Empire writes, "The view has gained ground in more recent historical reassessment that by 1914 they [the Redmondites] had within their grasp at least as much as was to be achieved, after so much bloodshed, in 1921".

Had Redmond won through, it is arguable that the history of this country would have been very different since 1916. We would have had devolved government (Home Rule), a substantial benefactor (at a distance), a welfare state 20 years earlier and an advanced infrastructure and public transport system today, like Scotland and Wales.

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The sun has set on Pearse's romantic nationalist vision and the Redmondites' hour has come round again. The formation of the Council of the Isles can be seen as as a signal of our willingness to go back into an alliance, no matter how embryonic, with the peoples in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England with whom we share myriad connections. The "ourselves alone" efforts of Pearse and his successors were doomed to ignominious failure and it is heartening that the Siamese twin of nationalism, our British connection, is at last being looked in the face. - Yours, etc.,

Derek Simpson, Vice Chairman, The Reform Movement, Military Road, Killiney, Co Dublin.