Question claim IRA provoked the British
Perhaps Pearse should have put it to a plebiscite, advertising in the newspapers of the day, with something along the lines of: “Secret rebellion planned for Easter weekend in the cause of an Irish republic. Please indicate if you approve by return of post not later than Friday next.”
In this context, it is instructive to recall the experiences of Vonnie Munroe and her Dunnes Stores colleagues when they decided to protest against apartheid in South Africa. Immediately suspended from their jobs, they also had to endure a public backlash.
As with 1916, public opinion slowly swung round after a greater understanding of the issues. The argument that an action is not moral unless it has majority support is shown to be fallacious also by the history of Nazi Germany.
Fast forward to the northern Troubles. I question the accuracy of Dwyer’s claim that the IRA provoked the British, who overreacted and turned the people to the IRA. It echoes a discredited loyalist line that their violence is always a response to republican violence.
In fact, the IRA were helped in no small way by police batons and the baseball bats of loyalist thugs who drove the people to them for defence.
And initially the people complained “I Ran Away” and it looked as if they’d be left alone to the mercy of the B-Specials and loyalist mobs. That amounts to a mandate from the northern nationalist population at least.
No one else, least of all the southern government, was willing to do much in the way of help.
The IRA may not have pushed the British out, but it ensured Northern Ireland stayed firmly in the spotlight, that neither the British nor Irish Governments could sit smugly by and that the apartheid regime the unionists were keen to maintain would never again be a possibility.
One of the saddest thoughts is that had it not been for the hard-heartedness of unionism and successive governments in denying half the population the equality we all now expect as an automatic right, three decades of bloodshed and 3,500 deaths (1,700 of them attributable to loyalists, the RUC and British Army) may have been avoided.
Nick Folley
36 Ardcarrig
Carrigaline
Co Cork
