Our past is only worth examining if it can guide us to a better future

In coming to terms with the 1910-1923 period that created the Irish republic, we must not play the game of ‘if’.

We must confine ourselves to the facts. This process is not just an academic, ‘hobby’ jaunt into a remote past, but a preparation for the challenges of the present and the future. Were the Easter Rising and the War of Independence ‘necessary’? Was the price we paid too much and were the wounds too deep? Was their legacy in part malign? Could we have gained more had the Easter Rising not taken place? We can never answer these questions.

To understand ourselves, we must honestly confront the past, and evaluate the results clinically and without pre-judgement. To what significant degree were the powers and competences ceded by Britain, in the Treaty of December 6,1921, substantively different from those ‘promised’ in the Home Rule Act, which became law, (though suspended) on September 18,1914? The King and British troops remained. The ‘Six Counties’ remained part of the United Kingdom. Indeed, the chasm between unionists and nationalists was deepened and reinforced. The unionist administration in the North was enabled by creating a ‘laager’ (circle the wagons) mentality, which institutionalised discrimination and sectional, sectarian hegemony. The logic of 1916, which justified a resort to violence and the defiance, by any minority, no matter how small, of the will of the majority and constitutional governance, enabled those who opposed the Treaty to claim the high moral ground. This initiated the drift into a nasty little Civil War, which poisoned families and neighbours into hatred. It paralysed the politics of the 26 counties (and, by contagion, the six counties), for the better part of 40 years, and it handicapped the development of ‘normal’ 20th century politics.