Sir, – Some of your correspondents have taken issue with Prof Diarmaid Ferriter’s statement that there is “no evidence that Britain was prepared to settle its Irish question until it was forced to do so”. His view, however, concurs with that of Charles Stewart Parnell, the great champion of Irish constitutional agitation for home rule. He is quoted as saying, in relation to the attitude of English politicians towards Ireland, that “they will do what we can make them do”.
Two indecisive general elections in 1910 gave Parnell’s heirs – the Irish Party at Westminster – the balance of power in parliament, and thus enabled them to get home rule for Ireland back on the political agenda for the first time since Gladstone’s fall from power in 1894. The Liberal government in 1910 took up the cause of home rule out of political necessity – and not with any Gladstonian moral purpose. In short, they were forced to do so by parliamentary arithmetic.
However, the threat of armed resistance from Ulster unionists, aided and abetted by the grandees of the Tory party in London, immediately queered the pitch for home rule – and this threat ultimately proved a far greater force in British politics than parliamentary arithmetic. The government was unwilling to coerce Ulster unionists out of the United Kingdom, and in any event the so-called Curragh “mutiny” in March 1914 showed that the army would not obey an order to move against the unionists.
The stalemate which resulted was broken by the start of the Great War in July 1914, and home rule was shelved for the duration of that war. Eventually, the formation of a coalition government comprising both Liberals and Tories – first under Asquith, then under Lloyd George – deprived the Irish Party leaders of their parliamentary leverage and left them without a coherent political strategy to counter the rise of Sinn Féin after the 1916 Rising.
Nationalist Ireland learned from the Ulster unionists that violence would force the British government to respond to its demands, and it acted accordingly. Not for nothing was Eoin Mac Neill's famous article that led to the creation of the Irish Volunteers entitled " The North Began ". The contagion of violence spread from its roots in unionist Ulster to the whole island of Ireland.
Those of us who abhor political violence in all its manifestations should not lose sight of the reasons why nationalist Ireland resorted to it in the years 1916–22 too. Yours, etc,
FELIX M LARKIN,
Vale View Lawn,
Cabinteely,
Dublin 18
Sir, – Your columnist Stephen Collins (April 12th), commenting on the news that a member of the British royal family might be in attendance at the commemorations marking the centenary of the 1916 Rising, displays a deference towards British royalty not seen since former taoiseach John Bruton referred to his meeting with Prince Charles in 1995 as “the happiest day of my life”.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr Collins was acting as Ireland’s indigenous public relations officer for the British royal family and not a columnist for the leading national Irish newspaper.
His claim that Queen Elizabeth’s announcement that her family will stand alongside the President at the centenary commemorations of the anniversaries of the events that led to the creation of the Irish Free State will ensure that Sinn Féin will not hijack the event, implicitly implies that British royalty will.
This commemoration, however, has already been hijacked by the State’s decision to invite members of the royal family to the Easter commemorations in advance of consulting with the Government’s own expert advisory group on the centenary. Historian Prof Diarmaid Ferriter (April 14th) said “the State doesn’t own the legacy of 1916. Nobody does except the people.” Such a view, I believe, has almost universal support.
On the 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1991, the Irish Government bowed to pressure from unrepresentative groups who were ideologically opposed to Irish separatism and shamefully ignored the anniversary of the Rising.
If the centenary commemoration is going to be embroiled in controversy over the presence of British royalty, there are those of us who will take it upon themselves to honour those brave women and men of 1916, just as we did for the 75th anniversary. Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER,
Templeville Road,
Templeogue,
Dublin 6W
Sir, – Every year the State sends representatives to the USA, on St Patrick’s Day, in recognition of that country and the Irish contribution to its founding.
The history of the native Americans and their decimation and impoverishment at the hands of the European occupiers, including the Irish, is ignored, along with our involvement in the slave trade, the past screened by tickertape and convenient amnesia. Are we not capable of a similar pretence in Ireland in 2016? Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM,
Monalea Park ,
Firhouse,
Dublin 24