Patience would have delivered a better freedom

In response to Noel Harrington’s letter on Aug 5, which justified the 1916 Rising on the basis that Redmond’s Home Rule project was defunct after the rearrangement of the British Government into a National Coalition in 1915, it is an often-heard argument which is totally untrue.

That coalition was completely dominated by the Liberal and Conservative parties and in the December election of 1918, which brought Sinn Fein here to electoral prominence, their election manifesto still guaranteed Home Rule.

It was they who became the government in 1918, but they would not tolerate or deal with any Irish nationalist group that wanted total separation and rejection of the British Empire which of course was the aim of Sinn Fein.