Redmondite Ireland and the resort to physical force

Madam, - I was surprised to read that John Bruton had told the recent Reform Movement conference that "Ireland could have achieved…

Madam, - I was surprised to read that John Bruton had told the recent Reform Movement conference that "Ireland could have achieved independence without 1916."

A couple of years ago I published a book entitled The Rise and Fall of Imperial Ireland. In researching this book I discovered that by 1915 even the Home Rule leaders themselves doubted that Home Rule could be achieved without physical force, or at least the threat of it, and were making provision for extra-constitutional force to be applied, if necessary.

There is a forgotten event in Irish history - the great Volunteer review of Easter 1915. This was a gigantic parade of Redmond's National Volunteers in the Phoenix Park on the first Sunday in April. The London Times's special correspondent described it as "the largest military display Dublin had ever seen." Almost 30,000 men took part.

The report of it in the Freeman's Journal makes clear what this great military demonstration by constitutional nationalists was all about. John Dillon told the volunteers: "Some day or other this war will be over. . .then we will have to return to the great questions which were interrupted by the war.

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"We learnt the lesson last year - even the oldest of us Irish politicians - at some times eloquence and speech making, organisation and civil demonstrations are not the last word in an argument such as we have been engaged in, and demonstrations of force were brought forward and we had the formula, 'We won't argue; we won't have Home Rule'. When the hour comes to make the supreme appeal to the National Volunteers - I do not believe and I hope and pray it will not be necessary to resort to force - but we look forward to the day when we have to resume these arguments, and when the National Volunteers may be again be summoned to this capital, and shall march, not 20,000, but 50,000 or 100,000, all armed and disciplined, and drilled, through the streets of Dublin; and then I think it will become manifest to every politician, be he English or Irish, that Ireland free and indivisible must be conceded, or we will want to know the reason why [ loud cheers] . That is my view of the role of the National Volunteers. That is why I longed to see this review. . ."

John Bruton has argued that the Easter Rising was unnecessary and that Home Rule was on its way in any case. But that was not the calculation that Redmondite Ireland was making in 1915. It was quite clearly felt that, owing to the experiences of the previous year (the arming of the UVF, the Curragh Mutiny and the support these developments received from the British Conservative Party), an Irish military expression would be necessary to make sure that the British state followed through on its promises and its suspended legislation.

As Dillon said, even the old constitutionalists had learnt, as a result of the Unionist resort to force and the British army mutiny, that "sometimes eloquence and speech making, organisation and civil demonstrations are not the last word."

In this sense the Sinn Féin election victory in 1918 and the IRA campaign to defend it from 1919 to 1921 was in perfect continuity with the contingencies that the Irish Party leaders were making during the first World War in the light of the failure of Parliamentary democracy to bring about Home Rule. And the military confrontation between the Irish democracy and the British state which occurred over the result of the 1918 general election was wholly in keeping with the chain of events which the Irish Party had begun itself, before and during the Great War.

The establishment of an Irish army was accepted by the Irish Parliamentary Party leaders as being required to make sure England conceded Irish self-government in 1915, and it was proved beyond doubt that it was necessary for it to do so, between 1919 and 1921 - albeit for higher stakes.

The important difference was not in the Irish making provision for the use of force, if the Irish democratic will was not carried through, but in the fact that in the intervening period of the Great War Ireland had lost all faith in British democracy and wanted out of the Imperial sphere altogether. - Yours, etc.,

Dr PAT WALSH,

Ballycastle,

Co Antrim.