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Tag: Ireland

John Bruton RIP

John Bruton, a respected politician and former Taoiseach of Ireland, and a friend, passed away peacefully at the age of 76. Known for his dedication to public service and commitment to peace in Northern Ireland, John leaves behind a legacy of leadership and diplomacy. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family, colleagues, and the Irish people during this difficult time.

WE NEED ONE VOICE ON FOREIGN POLICY

The President of Ireland , Michael D Higgins, chose the address he was invited to give at the National Ploughing Championship  in Co Laois to attack the UN for failing to do things that the member states of the UN had given it neither the authority, nor the means to do.

The President had  not been invited to give his personal opinions on a topic of his choice.

No,  The Ploughing Championship is a  major public event, at which Mr. Higgins was speaking in his official capacity as President, and he was speaking for the Irish people as a whole.

The President’s remarks about the United Nations was such that the Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is the address the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of Ireland,  felt it necessary publicly  to disagree with the President.

This is  not something that should happen. 

It is the Minister for Foreign Affairs, not any other office holder, who is charged under the Constitution, with primary responsibility for articulating Irish foreign policy, including on the UN. He does so in collective responsibility with his cabinet colleagues. Articulating foreign policy is not among the Presidents constitutional responsibilities.

Ireland cannot have two foreign policies, one expressed by the government , and another expressed by the President.

We need to have a united policy.

THE POLITICS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND  OVER A CENTURY AGO.

 A century ago, events in Britain influenced Ireland far more than they do today. 

 So understanding British politics of that era, was more important  than now to understanding Irish politics.

 That is what makes“ The strange survival of Liberal Britain….. Politics and Power Before the First World War” by Vernon Bogdanor so interesting.

The book  is published by Biteback Publishing .

It is an account of the politics of the British Isles between 1890 and 1914, and is essential reading for a student of Irish history.

 It is comprehensive. It gives a good account of the Boer War, of the struggle for votes for women, the rise of the Labour Party, and of the introduction of unemployment and sickness insurance.  It deals with the evolution of British  Foreign policy, including the alliance with Japan and, the increasing, though not inevitable, rivalry with Germany. It covers the tragic events that led to the First World War.

 It is, in every sense, a big book.  

The title of the book is misleading, in the sense that  the book is about far more than the survival of Liberalism.

It explores the issue of tariff reform, forgotten today, but politically convulsive for the first  20 years of the  20th Century,

 In the 1890’s, a leading figure in the Conservative and Unionist Party, Joseph Chamberlain, committed his party to what he called “tariff reform”. 

 By this he meant something was quite radical, turning the British Empire, which spanned every continent on the globe, into an economic union, like the EU is today. 

 As with the founders of the EU in the 1950’s, Chamberlain envisaged giving trade preference to goods produced within the British Empire, over imports from elsewhere (like continental Europe and the US), and thereby strengthening the political unity of the Empire. 

In the 1890s , Empires were regarded as progressive concepts. They were seen as vehicles for the promulgation of civilized ideas, such as the rule of law. 

 Other powers, like France, the Netherlands and the United States, were also seeking to build their own Empires. Empires were seen as efficient, enjoying economies of scale that smaller powers could not match. “The Empire” was something that helped keep England, Scotland and Wales united in a shared endeavour.

 So Chamberlain’s proposal for Imperial trade preference was seen, at least superficially, to be going with, rather than against, the grain of history. 

As a result of Chamberlain’s advocacy, the Conservatives were to promote tariff reform, on an on and off basis, for almost 30 years.

  But it proved to be a vote loser.

 This was because the British Empire could not produce all the food that Britons wanted to eat, and tariff reform would have required a tax on food coming from outside the Empire.

 High food prices, then as now, were politically lethal for the Conservatives.  Chamberlain’s protectionist ideas also ran against the free trade, laissez faire, ideology that had dominated economic thinking in Britain for much of the nineteenth century. 

Winston Churchill, a young Conservative MP, left the party and became a Liberal in 1904, because he believed in free trade. Joseph Chamberlain’s son, Neville, would put some of his father’s protectionist ideas into practice, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1930s.

Joseph Chamberlain was a dynamic force. A successful businessman, and Mayor of Birmingham, he was non conformist by religion, and was an early advocate of old age pensions and anti poverty programmes.  He was originally a Liberal MP, but left the Party because of its support for Home Rule for Ireland. He was never really a Conservative.

Tariff Reform is just one of the many themes explored in Vernon Bogdanor’s comprehensive history of the 30 years preceding the First World War. It is a history of policy making, rather than just of politics. 

The drama is there, but so also is the solid content.

The book covers developments affecting Ireland, just as it covers England, Wales and Scotland. 

Ireland was run by 29 different government Departments, each with its own board, and all supervised by a single non resident Chief Secretary for Ireland, usually an English or Scottish MP from the governing party in Westminster. 

By some measures, Ireland did well during this final period of British rule.

The amount spent by the UK central Exchequer in Ireland increased more quickly than the amount of tax raised here.

 In 1893, there was a surplus on the budget of the Irish Administration of £2million and Ireland was making  net contribution to the overall UK budget.

 In contrast, by 1912, the surplus was turned into a deficit of £1.5million. This was for two reasons……

  • the cost of old age pensions (introduced in 1909) for which a lot of Irish people qualified, and
  • the UK Exchequers subsidies to the transfer of Irish land from landlords to tenants under legislation passed in 1903.

Ireland was actually over represented in the House of Commons, with one MP for every 44,000 voters as one for every 66,000 in England

But that was not worth much.  The only input anyone, elected in Ireland, had to the process by which Ireland was actually governed was through the Irish MPs in the House of Commons .  But Irish MPs, other than a few Unionists, rarely became Ministers.

 This was totally insufficient,  and  it explained the growing demand  here for a Home Rule Parliament in Dublin , with its own elected Ministers, to take over the powers of the over stretched Chief Secretary for Ireland. 

The idea of Home Rule was resisted in Britain. It was seen as heralding the beginning of the disintegration of the Empire. As Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister at the beginning of the period, put it.   

”If Ireland goes, India will go 50 years later” 

The forces in Britain ranged against Home Rule were substantial and serious. 

This is why it is truly remarkable that Home Rule for Ireland passed into law, without a shot being fired, in September 1914.

 This peaceful achievement by Irish politicians in Westminster, like John Redmond, John Dillon and Joe Devlin, was largely ignored by the Government at the beginning of our recent decade of  Centenary Commemorations. It was ignored in favour of physical force nationalism.

Bogdanor deals with how Home Rule became law, peacefully, in 1914. 

The Liberal government of the day depended on the Irish Party and the Labour Party to stay in office.

 The Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George introduced a radical budget. This budget was rejected in the House of Lords, creating a constitutional crisis. In response the Liberal government introduced a Parliament Bill to curb the power of the Lords to veto legislation passed in the Commons. 

The Irish Party then told the government that they in turn would oppose the budget, unless the Parliament Bill removed the Lords’ indefinite veto on Home Rule. 

It was brinkmanship, but it worked. 

If the Lords had not rejected the budget in the first place, Home Rule might have been postponed by a Liberal Government, who had only a half hearted commitment to it.

The book also deals with the lead up to the First World War.

Joe Chamberlain in the 1890s had favoured a Teutonic (Protestant) alliance between the UK, the US and Germany. But majority opinion in Britain preferred closeness with France and Russia.

 The British Cabinet seems to have had little discussion of foreign and defence policy in the years before the War. Exaggerated reliance was placed on the Royal Navy, and the Army was neglected.  In general, the Cabinet had no agenda, no regular meetings, and no minutes in this period!

  It was the German invasion of Belgium, in August 1914, that enabled the UK to enter the War, as a united country on the allied side.

 If Germany had avoided Belgium, the UK would have been deeply split on whether to support France militarily, or stay out.

 As far as war guilt is concerned, it was the belligerent and irresponsible demands of Austria on Serbia, that dragged Russia and Germany into war with one another.

I strongly recommend this book. The reader will find that many of the problems we sense as being unique to our era were around in our grand parents time too.

RIP Brigid Hogan O Higgins

I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of Brigid Hogan O Higgins. I extend deep sympathy to all he family.
Brigid was a warm and engaging person and preserved  her youthful enthusiasm to the end of her life.
She was a brave and effective representative of the people of Galway in the Dail , carrying on a tradition established by her father . Had she had the opportunity to serve in government, she would have done so with the same spirit of selfless service, as he did as Minister for Agriculture.
Her family can be very proud of her

AN EU/UK AGREEMENT ON PLANT AND VETERINARY ISSUES COULD UNBLOCK THE PROTOCOL IMPASSE.

There were contradictory signs in the past week about the possibility of resolving the impasse over the Northern Ireland Protocol. 

The prospect of a visit to Britain next spring by United States President, Joe Biden, creates a time line towards which EU and UK negotiators could work, if they can agree to start talking to one another and a minimum level of mutual trust is achieved.

After all , the US is closely allied with both the EU and the UK in its effort to sustain the territorial integrity of Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion.

The US needs the EU and the UK to be seen to be  working together, and pooling their resources, rather than imposing sanctions on one another because of their disagreements over the Protocol. 

Another positive sign was the almost casual announcement, to journalists while on a plane on the way to the US, by the new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss, that a post Brexit Trade deal by the UK with the US was no longer a realistic prospect.

Former President Obama had told the British public this during the 2016 Referendum campaign but Liz Truss is the first UK Prime Minister to accept it. 

Apart from longstanding Irish American concerns about British policy in regard to Northern Ireland, there is a general reluctance in US public opinion and in Congress the reduce barriers to foreign imports. During its period of rapid growth from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth century, the United States remained a highly protectionist country, with high tariffs and regulatory barriers to foreign imports. The UK, in the other hand, was a champion of free trade.

The fact that the UK is now no longer pitching for a trade deal with the US means that it is no longer under pressure from the US to scrap, its still in force and EU originating, bans on Chlorine washed chicken and hormone treated beef.

If, in order to keep open the possibility of a trade deal with the US, the UK were to insist on getting rid of these bans on chlorine washed chicken and hormone treated beef, it would have been impossible for it to negotiate a Plant and Veterinary (SPS) agreement with the EU. A deal on those lines would not pass in the European Parliament.

Plant and Veterinary issues are at the heart of the disagreement over the Protocol.

Denial of access to British sausages and to English garden centres are among the most prominent practical problems cited by Northern Irish objectors to the Protocol . These difficulties would disappear if there was a comprehensive SPS Agreement between the UK and the EU.

But what form might such an Agreement take?

The EU has a land boundary with the UK.  So Plant and animal diseases can pass easily from one jurisdiction to the other. There is a single food chain encompassing both the EU and the UK. The connections are so close that the EU will insist an Agreement under which the EU and the UK would have the same rules governing plant and veterinary health.

The UK, on the other hand, wants an agreement whereby the UK would make its own separate and different rules, but that these British rules would be accepted by the EU as “equivalent “to the EU rules. In other words, the UK rules could be accepted by the EU as “different but just as good”. 

In order to justify Brexit, the present UK government is planning to scrap all EU originating laws, and replace them with British originating laws, by the end of next year. Any EU rule still in place by the end of 2023 will simply lapse.

This process of removing and replacing EU rules will be a hugely burdensome bureaucratic exercise. It will be hard to justify all the effort, if all that emerges, at the end of 2023, are new British laws that are so similar to the EU laws they replace, that they qualify as being “equivalent” to them. 

If that happens, people will ask what was the point of Brexit?

So there is a clash between the rhetoric of Brexit, and reality of trade.

Having a single set of rules for standards of goods across the continent of Europe eases the path for exporters from Britain. But adopting EU rules to achieve this removes the central justification of Brexit.

This is a choice Liz Truss will have to make in coming months. 

THE IRISH BACKSTOP….HOW DIFFICULT?

The harder the Brexit, the harder will be the resolution of the Irish border problem.

In a Joint Report of 8 December 2017, the UK agreed to respect Ireland’s place in the EU and that there would be no hard border in Ireland. This was to apply

“in all circumstances, irrespective of any future agreement between the EU and the UK”.

The further the UK negotiating demand goes from continued membership of the EU, the harder it will be for it to fulfill the commitments it has given on the Irish border in the Joint Report.

If the UK government had decided to leave the EU, but to stay in the Customs Union, the Irish border questions would have been minimized.  But the government decided to reject that, because it hoped to be able to make better trade deals with non EU countries, than the ones it has as an EU member.

If the UK government had decided to leave the EU, but  to join the European Economic Area (the Norway option),this would also have minimized the Irishborder problems. The government rejected that because it would have meant continued free movement of people from the EU into the UK .

In each decision, maintaining its relations with Ireland was given a lower priority than the supposed benefits of trade agreements with faraway places, and being able to curb EU immigration.

The government got its priorities wrong.

Future trade agreements that may be made with countries outside the EU will be neither as immediate, nor as beneficial to the UK, as maintaining peace and good relations in the island of Ireland. The most they will do is replace the 70 or more trade agreements  with non EU countries that the UK already has as an EU member and will lose when it leaves.

EU immigration to the UK, if it ever was a problem, is a purely temporary and finite one.

Already the economies of central European EU countries are picking up, and, as time goes by, there will be fewer and fewer people from those countries wanting to emigrate to the UK(or anywhere else) to find work.  These countries have low birth rates and ageing populations, and thus a diminishing pool of potential emigrants.

Solving the supposed EU immigration “problem” is less important to the UK, in the long run, than peace and good relations in, and with, Ireland .

If, as is now suggested, the UK looks for a Canada or Ukraine style deal, the Irish border problem will be even worse. Mrs May has recognized this and this is why she rejects a Canada style deal..

A Canada style deal would mean the collection of heavy tariffs on food products, either on the Irish Sea, or on the Irish border. Collecting them on the long land border would be physically impracticable, so the only option would be to do it on the Irish Sea.

The all Ireland economy, to which the UK committed itself in the Joint Report, would be irrevocably damaged. The economic foundation of the Belfast Agreement would be destroyed.

It is time for the Conservative Party to return to being conservative, and conserve the peace it helped build in Ireland on the twin foundations of the Belfast Agreement and the EU Treaties.  Conservative Party members might remember that, without John Major’s negotiation of the Downing Street Declaration in 1993, there would have been no Belfast Agreement in 1998.

The proposals the UK government is making for its future relationship with the EU will run into a number of obstacles in coming days.

The first will be that of persuading the EU that the UK will stick to any deal it makes.

Two collectively responsible members of the UK Cabinet, Michael Gove and Liam Fox, have both suggested that the UK might agree to a Withdrawal Treaty on the basis of the Chequers formula, but later, once out to the EU, abandon it, and do whatever it liked. This would be negotiating with the EU in bad faith. Why should the EU make a permanent concession to the UK, if UK Cabinet members intend to treat the deal as temporary?

The second problem relates to the substance of the UK proposals.

They would require the EU to give control of its trade borders, and subcontract control to a non member, the UK. While the UK proposals envisage a common EU/UK rule book for the quality of goods circulating, via the UK, into the EU Single Market, the UK Parliament would still retain the option of not passing some of the relevant legislation to give effect to it. The UK would not be bound to accept the ECJ’s interpretation of what the common rules meant. Common interpretation of a common set of rules is what makes a common market, common.

Mrs May is not the only Prime Minister with domestic constraints.  Creating a precedent of allowing the UK to opt into some bits of the EU Single Market, but not all, would create immediate demands for exceptions from other EU members, and from Switzerland and Norway (who pay large annual fees for entry to the EU Single market). It would play straight into the hands of populists in the European Parliament elections, which take place just two months after the date the UK itself chose as the end of its Article 50 negotiation period.

It does not require much political imagination to see that aspects of the UK proposal, if incorporated in a final UK/EU trade deal in a few years time, would be a hard sell in the parliaments of some of the 27 countries.  We must remember that all that would be needed for the deal to fail, would be for just one of them to say NO.

Remember how difficult it was to get the Canada and Ukraine deals through.

WHY I BELIEVE THE UK SHOULD STAY IN THE EU

IMG_3745

Stonyhurst College

THE EU IS A VOLUNTARY UNION

The fact that the British voters are free to have a referendum, and free to decide to leave the
European Union shows that the European Union is a voluntary Union.
It is not an Empire, which something a country would not be free to leave.
Nor is it a Federal Union like the United States, which does not permit its member states to leave either.
The EU’s voluntary character is one of the reasons why a number of states are still looking to join the EU.

THE FIRST TIME IN 60 YEARS ANY COUNTRY HAS CONSIDERED LEAVING

The 23 rd of June 2016 will, however, be the first time in the EU’s 60 year history, that any state has contemplated leaving.
This is a serious matter not just for Britain, but for all the countries of the EU.
So British voters, acting as as citizen legislators on 23 June, ought to think of the risks, that a British decision to leave might create for neighbouring countries in the EU, like Ireland. Voters here in Lancashire need to think about the consequences for peace in Ireland of the deepening of the border in Ireland that would flow from a Brexit decision on 23 June.

They also should consider the risk that Britain deciding to leave would create a precedent that would weaken the bonds that hold the remaining 27 countries together. The Parliament in Westminster has passed to voters the responsibility for deciding if a possible breakup of the EU would really be good for Britain, and for Europe too. It is a big responsibility.

STABILITY IN EUROPE HAS ALWAYS BEEN IMPORTANT TO BRITAIN

Stability in Europe has been a long term British goal.
Edmund Burke in the 1790’s favoured a Commonwealth of Europe.
Castlereagh worked for a Concert of Europe, with regular Summit meetings like the EU now has, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Winston Churchill, in 1930,advocated a United States of Europe.
These statesmen did not advocate these ideas out of some sort of dewy eyed sentimentalism. No, they had a hard headed appreciation of the fact that stability on the continent meant greater security for Britain, and they made their suggestions to achieve that end.

Now it is British voters, not British statesmen, who must decide what is best for Europe,

+ a Union with Britain on the inside, or
+ a fractured Union, which Britain has left of its own free will.

BREXIT COULD DOUBLE THE REGULATORY BURDEN

We hear much about EU Regulations and the burdens they impose. But even if Britain left the EU, it would still have regulations of its own on things like the environment, financial services and product safety.

In fact, to the extent that a Britain that had left the EU wanted to sell goods or services to Europe, it would have to comply with TWO sets of regulations,

+ British regulations for the British market, and
+ EU regulations for the EU market, including Ireland.

Arguably the duplicated post Brexit regulatory burden on British business would be greater than the present one.

A UK/EU TRADE DEAL COULD TAKE YEARS TO NEGOTIATE

Some believe that the UK could leave the EU, and then quickly negotiate a free trade agreement which would allow British firms to go on selling in Ireland and the other EU countries.
I am sure an agreement of some kind could eventually be worked out, but it would not be quick.
Switzerland negotiated trade agreements with the EU, but that took 9 years.
Canada negotiated a Free Trade agreement too, but that took 7 years.
The British Agreement would be much more complicated than either of these, because it would involve new issues like financial services, and freedom of movement ,and access to health services, for example for Britons in Spain. It would have to cover agriculture.
Even with maximum goodwill from the European Commission, a post Brexit EU trade agreement with Britain would become prey to the domestic politics of the 27 remaining EU countries, each of whom would have their own axes to grind.
There would be a lot of uncertainty, over a long period.

STAY IN, AND MAKE EU BETTER

I believe British people should accept that entities like the EU, which provide a structure, within which the forces of globalisation, can be governed politically are essential, if the prosperity that flows from globalisation is to be shared fairly.
Rather than leave, Britons should consider how they can make the EU better than it is, and there is plenty of scope for that.

Speech by John Bruton, former Taoiseach of Ireland, in Stonyhurst College, near Clitheroe in
Lancashire on Sunday 29 May at 5pm

EVE OF ELECTION PROGNOSIS

cropped-irish-flag.jpgThe possibility of a Dail being elected tomorrow, where no feasible combination of parties will be able to form a government, is unfortunately quite high.

Party leaders were incessantly pressed, by the media and others during the campaign, into ruling out coalition options.
There was no space allowed for “constructive ambiguity”, although Irish people know well that, without “constructive ambiguity” in the short term, we might have had no peace process in the long term. Media interest and public interest are not always identical.

The questions asked by moderators, in the leaders’ debates, seemed to focus heavily on catching leaders out about things they said, or did, in the past, rather than on their thoughts about the future, which is what is really important now.

Some of the issues pursued were trivial, like the appointment of a member to the board of an art gallery

It is almost as if the moderators, in the debates, wanted to ask questions about the past, because they were, themselves, uncomfortable dealing with challenges about the future, like

+ the ballooning cost of health services, relative to resources available
+ the looming pensions crisis, where numbers at work will decline relative to numbers on pension
+ the changes required of Ireland to meet its climate change obligations
+ what the leaders would do, next June, if the UK leaves the EU
+ the shape of the 2017 budget ( all the focus was on what might be possible in 2021!)
+ what the leaders would do if, when the Dail meets, no combination of parties, willing to coalesce with one another, could attain a majority
+ how long could we go without a government, if one is not elected on 10 March

These are not very original questions, but they are the ones voters should be thinking about.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENTARY PARTY ON THE 1916 REBELLION

220px-Major_William_Redmond_bust,_Wexford_cityI have been asked to address the above topic.

If one scrutinises the record of debates in the House of Commons in 1916, one can get a sense of the perspective of the Irish Party members.

The remarkable speech of Captain William Redmond, the MP for East Clare, in March 1916 gives a sense of how he and other Irish soldiers fighting on the Western front , as they saw it to defend the violated neutrality of Belgium, would have seen things.

He spoke of their terrible conditions, but also of their cheerfulness. “The harder the conditions, the more cheerful they seem to be” be said. Willie Redmond, a man in his late 50’s, and 35 years an MP, was to die of his wounds later in the year. Willie Redmond  would have been  disappointed to think that, within days of his speech, a Rebellion would have been initiated in Dublinin alliance with Germany, against whom he and other Irish soldiers, all volunteers, were fighting on the Western Front.

 That would be one perspective….before the Rebellion.

During the Rebellion itself, the Irish Party leaders were dispersed and had difficulty communicating with one another. John Dillon was in Dublin, Joe Devlin in Belfast, and John Redmond and TP O Connor in London.

After the Rebellion, on 11 May, another perspective came to the fore, this time expressed by John Dillon MP in the House of Commons.

He spoke of his opposition to the Rebellion and of how Irish Party MPs had persuaded some of their constituents not to take part. He referred particularly to Thomas Lundon MP in Limerick. He said nine out of every ten Irish people were opposed to the rebellion.

But he went on to condemn the house searches undertaken after the Rebellion was over in parts of the country where there had been no trouble at all. He said it was “insanity” to leave Ireland in the hands of General Maxwell.  He said his prime object in his speech was to stop the executions. He said the river of blood was undoing the work of reconciliation.

He recalled that when the American Civil War ended, Abraham Lincoln did not execute anyone

He said Premier Botha had put down a pro German rebellion in South Africa without any executions. The Irish Rebellion was also undertaken in alliance with Germany so this comparison was apt.

John Redmond had also urged the Prime Minister to stop the executions the day before Pearse and Clarke were executed.

In his speech in the House of Commons, John Dillon drew attention to the stupidities of the post Rebellion repression by Sir John Maxwell.  He gave the example of the Commander in Chief of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin McNeill , who, by giving a clear military order that the the rebellion was not to take place, in Dillon’s words “broke the back of the rebellion on the very eve of it, and kept back a large body of men from joining it”. Despite this , McNeill was also imprisoned by the British.

Incidentally, given that a democracy relies on military discipline, the commemoration of actions taken in breach of orders, is inherently uncomfortable for soldiers and politicians alike.

In considering the overall policy record of the Irish Party, one must draw attention to a few important points.

Earlier in 1916, the Irish Party has prevented conscription being applied in Ireland, while it was being applied on the entire island of Britain.

A year and a half earlier, it had had another vital parliamentary achievement which invalidated the case for a Rebellion. The principle of Irish legislative independence for Ireland was  won from the Imperial Parliament, in September 1914, by the passage into law and signature by the King of the Home Rule Bill. That happened BEFORE any rebellion here, and, as Conservative leader Bonar Law subsequently admitted, there was no going back on Home Rule. The point of principle was won without a shot being fired.

This, along with the transfer of the effective ownership of the land of Ireland into the hands of those who were working it, were signal achievements of the Irish Party. Indeed it was the Irish Party achievement of land reform, which created an Irish rural middle class, that in turn enabled  Ireland to remain democratic in the 1920’s and 1930’s, when so many other new states became authoritarian.

The only open question was whether or how Home Rule might apply to Antrim, Down, Armagh and Derry (and perhaps Fermanagh and Tyrone). The open question was whether such exclusion would be temporary or permanent.

But if that exclusion was once accepted, there was no barrier in the way of the rest of Ireland progressively winning ever greater degrees of sovereignty. That could have been achieved by peaceful negotiation, if it was what the voters of the 26 or 28 counties wanted.

Indeed some of the exclusions from the powers of the Home Rule Administration(eg. Marriage law and tariffs) were only put therein the first place, to reassure Ulster Unionists, when  it was envisaged, as in the original Home Rule Bill, that  that all 32 counties would be fully included from the outset.

The same principle of legislative independence, conceded to Ireland in September 1914, was conceded b to Canada, Australia and other dominions.  We know now that they all of them proceeded to full sovereignty, without   the suffering and bitterness of war.

The path of violence, started upon by Pearse and others in 1916,and followed from 1919 to 1923 by his imitators, was traversed at a terrible price.

I believe the Irish Parliamentary Party would have been aware of this. They would have realised that once violence is introduced into the blood stream of politics, it is very hard to get it out again. So it has proved.

Given the value Irish people place on each human life, those who take life, have the primary burden of proof to discharge. It was for them to prove that no other way was open.  I believe that the Irish Parliamentary Party would have felt that that test was not passed by those who initiated the Rebellion in 1916.

They would have felt  that Home Rule, already law, could, once brought into force have led Ireland to the same position of Canada enjoys today, if that was the wish of the Irish people.

The Home Rule Parliament would have elected under the same wide suffrage that applied in 1918. Sinn Fein would have won significant representation in the Home Rule House of Commons, as would the Irish Labour Party and the group led by Tim Healy. All three groups would have pressed for ever greater degrees of independence, going beyond Dominion status.

Home Rule was not brought into force immediately on its passage into law because it was felt that it would distract from what was expected to be a short duration war effort. That postponement was not controversial in Ireland at the time .Indeed John Dillon had said “No rational man would expect the government to set up an Irish Parliament while war was raging”

Home Rule could have also come into effect in late 1916, and Carson had agreed to that on the basis that the six counties would be excluded for the time being and would be administered directly from Westminster. That did not happen because some Conservative members of government, Lansdowne, Selborne, and Long, objected because of the disturbed state of Ireland in the wake of the Rebellion and the fear that Germany, who had allied themselves with the rebels, would exploit the situation militarily.

But, regardless of that Home Rule would have come into effect at the end of the war, if that was the path the Irish people chose in the  December 1918 Election. They did not do so

It would not be  credible to say that the UK would have denied to a Home Rule Ireland, the powers it freely granted to dominions like Canada and Australia, under the Statute of Westminster of 1931, if that is what the Irish people really  wanted.

The suffering of the War of Independence was, I believe, not needed to achieve Dominion Status.

In the 1918 Election, the policy of the Irish Party, led by John Dillon, was Dominion Status for Ireland.

The policy of Sinn Fein, led by Eamon de Valera was complete separation of the 32 counties from the UK on the basis of the 1916 Proclamation.

Sinn Fein won the election but, after all the killing in the War of Independence, all they ended up with was Dominion status, the very policy of their defeated Irish party opponents.

Therein lay the roots of the Civil War from 1922 to 1923. After all the deaths of the War of Independence, the separatists had to accept, in the Treaty, the exact policy of their democratically defeated  Irish Party opponents of 1918.

It is said that Home Rule would have left British forces on Irish territory. But so also did the Treaty of 1921. It left the UK military in control of ports on Irish territory.

But these ports were handed back in 1938, through entirely peaceful negotiation.  The fact that those ports could be won back by purely peaceful negotiation on the eve of World War Two, shows that the limitations on Home Rule could also have been negotiated away, peacefully.

If a nation is to learn anything at all from history, it must be willing to examine, using all it knows now, what might have happened, if a different historical choices had been made. Otherwise there is little point studying history.

The choice to use force in 1916, and again in 1919, must be subjected severe reappraisal , in light of what  we can see  might been achieved, and was in fact achieved by other former British dependencies, without the loss of life .

Remarks by John Bruton at a Seminar on the 1916 Rebellion, organised by the Society of Former Members of the Dail and Senate,  in the Senate Chamber in  Leinster House Dublin at 2.15 pm on Friday 22 January.

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