Imagine if we were still in the UK

BRIAN McCAFFREY (Irish Examiner letters, May 17) speculates that Home Rule “might have been as good — if not better — than what ensued from 1916”.

Let’s try to imagine what kind of Ireland might have ensued. It would be still tied at the hip to the UK. It would have been bombed during World War II and possibly invaded (as it almost was by the Allies themselves).

It would be directly involved in an illegal and immoral war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, just as the UK government is against the wishes of the majority of its people.

Irish people and resources would still be used ultimately for the benefit of the UK imperial project. Ireland would have no separate representation at either the UN or European Parliament.

Our passports would not open doors worldwide.

But speculation aside, Mr McCaffrey is incorrect on a number of points.

He describes John Redmond as a man of ‘non-violent disposition’. Surely he’s not thinking of the same man who encouraged hundreds of thousands of Irishmen to flock to the slaughter in France? They went there to kill people, not to play hurling.

Revisionists often overlook the fact that these same British/Irish soldiers were responsible for hundreds of thousands of victims: German soldiers, their widowed wives and orphaned children plus the inevitable civilians caught up in shelling and crossfire (a similar charge is frequently levelled against the 1916 Rebels).

In terms of bloodshed, the Great War produced about 50 times more Irish casualties than the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War combined.

The dent in recruitment to the British army caused by 1916 may actually have saved Irish lives.

Partition was neither caused nor copperfastened by 1916, having already been achieved by threat of armed unionist rebellion in 1912 and through the machinations of a unionist-dominated cabinet during the early stages of World War I.

Mr McCaffrey asks: “What about 30 years of sectarian slaughter unleashed by the Provos who chose the men of 1916 as mentors?”

Indeed — what about it? Only willful ignorance of recent history could lay the blame for the Troubles on 1916.

Had unionist thugs, the RUC and B-Specials not laid into nationalist civil rights marchers with clubs, bricks and batons as they demanded not independence, but simply to be treated as equal citizens of the UK, there would have been no Troubles to speak of.

The Easter Rising wouldn’t have mattered a jot.

Critics often claim that it — and republicans — introduced the gun into 20th century Irish politics, and of ‘unleashing sectarian slaughter’, as Mr McCaffrey puts it.

That is fundamentally incorrect. The ‘honour’ goes to the unionists in 1912. It’s their legacy we live with today.

Nick Folley

36 Ardcarrig

Carrigaline

Co Cork