Sir, - Whether one likes it or not - and John Newman (August 26th) clearly does not - the 1916 Rising became the foundation stone of this sovereign Irish State, which is widely acknowledged to have been since 1923 a model democracy among newly independent countries in the 20th century. While important contributions to this were made by earlier generations of constitutional and revolutionary leaders, the Rubicon was crossed between 1916 and 1921.
Critics of Pearse and the Rising should answer whether the Irish people 100 years ago had a right to self-government independent of Britain if they chose, and whether they should have been bound unconditionally by constitutional rules which did not require British governments to respect the wishes of the Irish electorate. Parnell's answer to these questions, not just Pearse's or de Valera's, was quite clear. National democracy is not just about elections, but the right to sovereignty or, if acceptable as a compromise, autonomy.
There would have been no Rising if successive British Governments from 1886 had implemented, instead of thwarting, or dithering for 30 years over, the repeated wishes of a large majority of the people of Ireland. Home Rule on the whole island within the United Kingdom arguably could at that time have been a reasonable compromise between the unionist and the nationalist viewpoints. 1916 would also not have occurred without the example of unionist willingness to rebel against its lawful enactment, leading to its further watering down and deferment.
Democracy has often come about through revolution. The French celebrate Bastille Day, even though they had a national assembly in 1789. Why should Ireland be asked to be ashamed of those who fought in the GPO and of being a separate country? If they had no prior mandate, their aims received sweeping democratic endorsement in the General Election of 1918 over their domestic opponents.
Neither nostalgia nor unrealistic ambitions for the British-Irish Council will bring back to life the stillborn pre-independence and pre-partition models of 1914, the inept handling of which, let it not be forgotten, brought Ireland to the brink of civil war. The 1916 Rising in reality marked the reluctant beginning of a move away from the idea of persuading unionists in north-east Ulster to live under an all-Ireland Government and giving priority instead to the complete separation of the rest of Ireland.
Even admirers of Pearse have problems with the glorification of blood sacrifice (Connolly did, but nevertheless took part in the Rising), and with the native identification with a pretty brutal imperial Germany, as Casement found to his cost, repeating the error recognised by de Valera in 1920 of confronting Britain's vital strategic interests. But without Pearse's vision of "the sovereign people", it is far from certain when or if the greater part of Ireland would have become an independent country.
1916 is not the exclusive property of any political party in the island. All parties in the Dail attend the annual Arbour Hill commemoration in honour of the executed leaders, thus clearly acknowledging their debt as an important part of the lineage of this democracy. In defence of it, de Valera argued cogently in 1957 and 1958 a propos the 1956 IRA campaign that it was a fallacy to claim that precedents from 1916 to 1922 had legitimate application to partition or to the situation in the North, where there is a deeply divided community, or that the success of the independence struggle could be repeated in the North. The more recent Northern Troubles had their own causes, but they may have been intensified by the lack of deep analysis not just among the Republicans but among those strongly opposed to them, which would have pointed up the essential differences and drawn the necessary distinction between different situations and times and not just the elements of continuity. If, in time, a new Ireland emerges, it will need to be provided with broader foundations.
The necessity, the wisdom and the longer-term effects of the Rising will no doubt long continue to be debated, but its continued contemporary relevance to Northern Ireland today, while important for many, should be kept in perspective. There is today in place in the Good Friday Agreement a new democratic framework and dispensation that has been fully endorsed without coercion by the people of Ireland North and South, the implementation of which removes any vestige of justification derived from the past for continued armed action by groups from any section of the community. - Yours, etc.,
Martin Mansergh, Special Adviser to the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Dublin 2.