Madam, - Your edition of September 20th contains a report on an address by the former taoiseach John Bruton at a conference held by the Reform Movement, in which he questioned the need for a rising in 1916, and suggested that independence could have been achieved without a shot being fired.
The Home Rule Party, of whom John Bruton is so proud, failed over a 40-year period to gain anything resembling home rule. The Home Rule Bill which was placed on the statute books at Westminster would have given "Southern Ireland" - i.e. the 26 counties - a home rule parliament. The partition of Ireland was reluctantly agreed by John Redmond's party in 1914, under pressure from Asquith's Liberal government, which would not face down the Ulster Volunteer Force - which had illegally imported arms at Larne in April 1914. In contrast, when Irish volunteers landed arms at Howth in July, attempts were made by the RIC to seize the Volunteers' rifles and later that day, troops sent to assist the police opened fire on a Dublin crowd who taunted them at Bachelors Walk, killing four and wounding 40.
John Bruton's view that Irish independence could have been achieved without the 1916 Rising and subsequent War of Independence is erroneous. Without an armed struggle, "Southern Ireland" would have remained an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which in truth, is what some in the Reform Movement would actually like. As this is extremely unlikely, the Republic of Ireland as a member of the British Commonwealth is the next best thing!
The Treaty of 1921 achieved a half-way house towards complete Irish independence, an independence that Home Rulers never contemplated. Most, including John Redmond and John Dillon, never wanted Ireland to be independent of Britain; they regarded Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire. It was Sinn Féin and those within the Irish labour movement who sought and ultimately achieved a free and independent Ireland.
The belief that the position of Catholics would have been better in a "Northern Ireland" excluded from Irish Home Rule seems unlikely. Discrimination and violence towards Catholics in the north-east of Ireland did not begin in 1921; it was common throughout the 19th century. John Redmond's Irish MPs at Westminster, when approached to amend the Home Rule Bill, agreed to allow first four, then five-and-a-half, and finally six counties to opt out of Home Rule.
One old Home Ruler, when made aware of the Anglo-Irish Treaty's terms in December 1921, remarked that the young men of Sinn Féin had achieved more in five years of fighting than others had done in 40 years of negotiating". - Yours, etc.,
PAT BURKE, Goldsmith Terrace, Bray, Co Wicklow.