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.

Marriage breakdowns can be either a bitter road or a relatively amicable split. If the Irish nationalists had persisted in the Home Rule project during those gruelling war years that inflicted such tragedy on us all, then some sort of self-governance would have been achieved.

Home Rule Ireland might have become that state of separation before a full divorce, where we could as a people have given ourselves more time to deliberate on where we were going, instead of a complete and total emotional rejection of 750 years of history. That was another tragedy for the people on this island.

Mark Cronin

Dublin Hill

Cork