A chara – Ronan O’Brien’s article (July 21st ) on John Redmond is timely. Redmond’s most important contribution was to political practice and culture: how we should, in dialogic and pluralistic fashion, negotiate our differences.
Redmond was "disappeared" from Irish history, not because he was a failure (for Irish history is full of celebrated failures), but because remembering him would raise uncomfortable questions about the Easter 1916 rising. Patrick Pearse's 1915 essay "Ghosts" identifies Redmond as a traitor. As Sinn Féin's political target in Northern Ireland was the SDLP, so the 1916 insurgents' target was Redmond and his party.
If I were an Irish voter in spring 1916, what would each have said to me?
Redmond would ask for my vote. Pearse would tell me that he and his associates were now the new government of a new state, neither of which needed votes. He might commandeer my property, and his men would shoot me if I obstructed them (as happened during the rising).
Redmond might tell me about his difficulties with unionists, and sound me out on how far he could go in accommodating Carson. Refusing even to mention unionists, Pearse would present the non-negotiable demands of Cuchulainn’s and Tone’s ghosts.
Redmond would point to the land legislation, local government reform and the beginning of work to tackle the Dublin slum as positive achievements. Pearse would say (as he said to Denis Gwynn in 1913) that it were better that Dublin burn than that the Irish people should, as a result of such reforms, be content within the British empire.
Redmond would lament the horrors of the first World War and regret its necessity. Pearse said that it was the most glorious and sublime chapter in Europe’s history. Redmond would be all for non-violent nationalism and conciliating the British and the unionists. Pearse would assert that an Irish blood sacrifice was not just necessary but utterly desirable and spiritually elevating.
Redmond would be pleased that the Scots will soon vote on independence. Pearse (and Collins, as reflected in his letter in The Irish Times of October 26th, 1917) would hold that the Scots have no right to decide against independence, and that a majority not wanting full independence could be forced by an armed revolt into accepting it.
Given what he says in "Ghosts", Pearse would regard the 1998 Good Friday agreement as national treason, whereas Redmond would think it a programme for peace and reconciliation between unionists and nationalists. With big majorities North and South endorsing that agreement, it seems that most of us are, after a fashion, Redmondites. – Is mise,
SÉAMUS MURPHY SJ,
Ignatius House,
N Kenmore Avenue,
Chicago