The 1916 Rising

A question I would like to discuss, was 1916 Rising justified?
I would say it was immoral, unjustified, had no public support and treason.

It was defiantly not morally justified under just war theory. “There is no doubt that the majority of Irish people considered the British army to be an occupying force”. Maybe so, that does not mean the people wanted a few hundred militants to take over a Post Office, biscuit factory and few other places. Home Rule was on the way without a doubt and that is what the people wanted/voted for.

Treason is the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill or overthrow the sovereign or government.
The 1916 Militants were radicals that should have been imprisoned.

Fr Walter Mc Donald of Maynooth wrote a book after the rising arguing using catholic moral theology that the rising didn't fulfill the conditions of a just war. He also condemned the War of Independence which was mainly aimed at killing Irish police men (mostly catholic) in cold blood.

In peace time a quarter of the British Army were Irish mainly catholic and a large percentage of the officer corps were Irish (protestant) so the simplistic notion of a totally foreign occupying army is misleading.

Had Home Rule gone through we would probably have eventually had a democratic scottish style peaceful independence referendum. Not one shot was fired nor one person killed in the campaign to gain scottish independence. The violent revolution was a ghastly mistake which totally ignored the wishes of a quarter of the Irish people.

Of course we all know that " cherishing the children of the nation equally" refers to the Unionist population and not our adorable red haired freckled kiddies. Using that phrase in the context of anti British pro German putsch was quite ironic.

interesting saying "to the victor go the spoils" in an Irish context. 

All I am saying is the action was morally wrong. We should remember it as such. 

I am really confused about comparing the British army to the Nazis . If it wasn't for the British army in 1940 or rather the RAF and Royal Navy we would have experienced a real genocidal evil tyranny in Ireland. Britain in 1940 really was on the side of freedom in a cosmic battle with darkness. For our own understandable reasons we stood by but had Britain fell we would not have been spared the all embracing horrors of Nazism.

Maolsheachlann the Irish people never ever rebelled against Britain. Small groups of non elected patriots did. Ireland in 1916 was a wartime liberal democracy. British rule could have been removed with solely constitutional democratic methods. British rule was so "tyrannical" it incredibly allowed 3 seperate competing Irish armed militias to legally exist! The state was lax and uncertain not the oppressive tyranny it was retrospectively protrayed as. No democratic state would permit that situation to exist today.

Canada New Zealand and Australia had home rule too and didn't require an active republican movement, let alone violence to deliver what they now have - full independence and sovereignty. The recent Scottish experience shows we too could have trodden a similar path .

I do think on the negative side a Home Rule Ireland would most likely have been active in World War ii. Our bases may have marginally shortened the war. Yes people would have died but we forget sometimes forget Irish people did die in Northern Ireland and in serving with the British forces in fighting Nazism.

On the positive side a home rule Ireland would not have seen the sectarian divisions we now have or least to the same intensity .Republicans ignore the fact their anti British violence is often mainly directed in reality at
Irish people protestant and catholic ,people they seek to unite! I love you so much I will kill you to prove it?

Morally if you want to achieve freedom and unity you must persuade those who object to your agenda not with violence, but in a solely peaceful manner. This is the tradition of Butt , O Connell ,Parnell and Redmond. In our own time John Hume bravely argued for peace and pointed out the futility of violence. If you want unity you can't compel unionists by force. Seamus Mallon once referred to the 1990s peace process as "Sunningdale (1973) for dummies". This is now the official policy of militant republicanism. It was a very big slow and blood soaked learning curve and sadly largely if not totally unnecessary.

I don't query your bona fides regarding the provo campaign.

India largely freed herself due to a campaign of disobedience and passive resistence and a growing British awareness in the 1930s that Indian nationalism could not be resisted in the long term. Britian had lost the will to impose its'
will on India when it became clear educated Indians wanted them out.
That same crisis in British self belief benefited any colony that wanted out in the long term. The British put up no determined attempt to hold onto their empire by sheer force unlike France in Vietnam and Algeria.

There is a Republican claim our revolution caused the Empire to crumble by inspiring oppressed nations . Its a point of view.

In 1918 Britain was in the flush of Imperial victory. The empire was at its zenith historically. Ireland was an integral part of the Uk and was internally divided about its' own future. Remember Sinn Fein wanted seperation in 1918 not for the present Irish state but all Ireland including those who wanted to be British! Why should Britain force a million of its'
citizens into a state they had no wish to belong to? No foreign state bar the Soviet Union I think recognised Irish independence either. A legally recognised Irish state did not exist. An attempt to rectify this at the Versailles Peace conference failed.

Britian quite quickly decided to cut its losses in Ireland when it emerged that things had changed radically in southern Ireland and because of outraged liberal opinion reacting to "frightfulness in Ireland".Violence didn't work in the sense we defeated the Empire. It "worked" because of British guilt and public unease at conducting a war within the United Kingdom. IRA accounts of the truce indicate the organisation was exhausted , had few arms left and was close to military defeat.

You clearly have an abhorrence for violence, which is admirable, but there's a strange paradox in this in that, taken beyond a certain point, it favours the people who have the upper hand of physical force at any given time-- because violence against them will cause more trouble than otherwise. In this way, it actually ratifies the use of force once it is a fait accompli. It reminds me of Gandhi's notorious assertion that the Jews should have let themselves be slaughtered in the Holocaust. (I'm not suggesting you agree with this, I'm sure you would not.)

The argument that Britain cannot be blamed for the horrors of the Great Famine has been fashionable recently, and perhaps you would offer this, but there is at least a strong argument to be made that British misrule was to a large extent responsible for the deaths of a million people-- and, as you know, this perception (on the part of those who lived through it) led to tremendous radicalization in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was in living memory at the time of the 1916 Rising.

We can speak now of a greater regard for international law and democracy in the twentieth century, apart from the totalitarian regimes, but there was nothing inevitable about this. There is nothing inevitable about it now, if you don't subscribe to the Whig view of history. It's not like the Irish people of 1914 could say, "If we just hang on, we will soon be in the era of decolonization". And yes, I do believe there is a great deal to be said for the argument that Irish secession actually initiated this process-- and Ireland was always of greater military and strategic importance to Britain than Canada or Australia or such countries. Also remember that public opinion in America had as much to do with Britain's reluctance to engage in total war as public opinion in Britain (and I don't want to discount this latter-- I do think there was an element of nobility in the British people's attitude to Ireland, not always given credit in Irish discourse).

And having said all this, I'm not even someone who argues that 1916 or the War of Independence (or 1798, or any other violent rebellion) were morally justified. I think they may have been, I'm in two minds. I do think nations are entitled to self-determination, even at the cost of violence. My reference to the Nazis was not to compare Britain to the Third Reich, which would be unfair, but to ask why violent conquest should somehow become more acceptable after a period of time has elapsed. We're not talking about something like the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England or the influx of the Celts to Ireland-- historical events so distant that the factions involved had really ceased to have separate existences. I doubt you would argue that the Irish people were not acutely conscious of being a conquered people all through this time. Even our folklore bears witness to this.