After 1916 relations between Carson and Redmond improved

Delivering the John Redmond Lecture in April 2012 in Waterford the Minister of State for Northern Ireland the Rt Hon Hugo Swire MP reminded us that if you walk out of the Members’ Dining Room in the House of Commons and turn right you will pass a bust of John Redmond, continue towards the Members’ Library and you will face a bust of Sir Edward Carson.

Nationalism's failure to allay Unionism's fear of Rome Rule

Rev. Joseph Hocking

In a previous post I wrote that Edwardian Ireland was an apartheid state. I also wrote about the conciliation-omission of nationalism prior to the frustration of Home Rule, and I also wrote about the culpable neglect of republicanism post-partition to understand unionism or communicate to unionism the merits of unity.

The Redmondisation of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness

   

We're all Redmondites now. We live in an age of gradualism and evolution, not revolution; an age of realism, not radicalism. The Provisionals, once terrorists wedded to British withdrawal, have entered a new phase that we should call The New Departure, with an alliance of separatists and constitutionalists. 

'Six Days of the Irish Republic' - By L.G. Redmond-Howard

The front cover - the great Greek portico of the GPO circled in flames like "a prairie fire"

L.G. Redmond-Howard, nephew and biographer of John Redmond, wrote 'Six Days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative And Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics', published in 1916.

The book was an account of the Rising at its aftermath. On Monday when the fighting broke out Redmond-Howard was installed at the “Metropole” hotel, situated alongside the Post Office. From here he could not get any direct view of what was the centre of the battle, so he moved across to the “Imperial,” which, situated vis-à-vis the Post Office on the top of Clery’s Stores, commanded the fullest view of the rebel headquarters.

Partition in Ireland is strengthened by violence

Cartoon by Ian Knox

George Bernard Shaw portended that partition in the north would lead to "an autonomous political lunatic asylum." J.B. Armour, liberal presbyterian and Home Ruler, said:

"For years they have been yelling against Home Rule, and now they have got a form of Home Rule which the Devil himself could not have devised."

Home Rule was loyalty?

John Dillon by Carlo Pellegrini ('APE') 

John Redmond said:

"Let us have national freedom and imperial unity and strength."

James Joyce on Home Rule

James Joyce by Ronald Searle

In an earlier post I looked at a 25 year old Joyce who wrote about 'The Last Fenian' John O'Leary. In the same year, 1907, he wrote, ‘Home Rule Comes of Age’. "From a hasty study of the history of Home Rule," Joyce made two deductions, one:

"The first is this: the most powerful weapons that England can use against Ireland are no longer those of Conservatism, but those of Liberalism and Vaticanism. Conservatism, though it may be tyrannical, is a frankly and openly inimical doctrine. Its position is logical; it does not want a rival island to arise near Great Britain, or Irish factories to create competition for those in England, or tobacco and wine again to be exported from Ireland, or the great ports along the Irish coast to become enemy naval bases under a native government or a foreign protectorate. Its position is logical, as is that of the Irish separatists which contradicts it point by point. It takes little intelligence to understand that Gladstone has done Ireland greater damage than Disraeli did, and that the most fervid enemy of the Irish Catholics is the head of English Vaticanism, the Duke of Norfolk."

#WhitePaper - Salmondite as Redmondite politics

Newton Emerson wrote in the Sunday Times of February 16 2014:

"The parallels between Redmond and SNP leader Alex Salmond are remarkable, as the Scottish press has noted. In his long, democratic fight for Home Rule, Redmond played down identity politics, spurned cultural nationalism and focused on debating the practicalities, until he could portray the debate as negotiating the inevitable. Salmond has done the same and the results are transformative. Meanwhile, Adams remains an anti-Redmondite two decades after the IRA-ceasefire. His vision of a United Ireland is high on symbolism and low on detail, invoking all the alarm of change with none of the assurance of fact."