Originally posted by Bosse de NageI'd prefer to keep his thread on topic; it would help if you actually made the tiniest effort to respond to my points.
Are we playing a guessing game? I didn't realise. Please, tell me the answer, Father Time.
You asserted that it was "primarily" the British response to the Rising plus the possibility of conscription that altered Irish public opinion in favor of immediate independence. I gave you reasons why that seems highly unlikely. It also appears from the citation I gave regarding Irish participation in the British armed forces during WWI that the people of Ireland did not regard themselves a part of the Empire in the same way as other parts of the UK did. This suggests to me that there was no fundamental change in overall Irish feeling toward the desirability of separation from the Empire; that was always majority sentiment in Ireland.
So the Rising by showing that Irishman could fight effectively for freedom raised the expectations of the majority of Irish that true independence could be obtained if they desired it. Once that realization sank in, half measures like "Home Rule" were no longer acceptable.
Pearse and the rest were certainly heroes but your sarcasm regarding their supposed treatment as "Supermen" just shows a profound ignorance and prejudice against Irish nationalist sentiment.
Originally posted by FMFI gather the Evening Standard has begun a quite bizarre advertising campaign. Apparently there are, I kid you not, posters around London, on buses and tubes, saying 'sorry' - for losing touch, taking readers for granted, and being negative, complacent and predictable!
I recommend Expatria applied liberally to the entire body.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/gallery/2009/may/05/london-evening-standard-sorry-ads?picture=346882448
It's a start, I suppose, but probably not the place I'd have started with apologies were I the editor...
Originally posted by no1marauderWhatever, you old coot.
I'd prefer to keep his thread on topic; it would help if you actually made the tiniest effort to respond to my points.
You asserted that it was "primarily" the British response to the Rising plus the possibility of conscription that altered Irish public opinion in favor of immediate independence. I gave you reasons why that seems ...[text shortened]... ermen" just shows a profound ignorance and prejudice against Irish nationalist sentiment.
Originally posted by DrKFYour facts are wrong and your conclusion dubious. As the citation from the BBC shows, Irish enlistment was never particularly "enthusiastic" and by the time of the Rising was tepid at best. That is why conscription of the Irish, which they knew would be bitterly opposed, was even considered by the Brits.
That's a good question.
As I gather it, though, the Irish had been signing up enthusiastically to serve in the British army. The Irish Volunteers probably best represented mainstream Nationalism, and were split with the vast majority siding with Britain.
I think to look back at the response as 'disproportionate' is anachronistic; it was, rather, inevitab ...[text shortened]... our of militancy. If so, the tactic worked, based on fairly rapid shifts in public opinion.
"Mainstream nationalism" is a meaningless concept. The "vast majority" of Irish Nationalists never "sided with Britain"; it was decided by Redmond's party to support the war effort in the hope that it would help support for "Home Rule" which is all that Redmond thought could be got in the near term. As time went on, it became clear that even that wasn't going to be granted by the Brits absent partition as demanded by the Ulsterites like Carson who were high ranking officials in the Brit government. So support for Redmond was melting away well before the Rising.
The idea that Pearse and rest staged the Rising with the "intent" to trigger a "vicious" response is ridiculous. It was the Rising itself which was important, not what the British did in response to those who participated. It showed that Irishmen were willing to fight to achieve freedom. Certainly the leaders expected to be executed as the leaders of other Irish rebellions had been. But what of it? Pearse wasn't relying on the British when he wrote this:
We have done right. People will say hard things about us now, but later they will praise us.
AND:
If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.
Where is the evidence, anywhere, that in their minds was the thought that the main purpose of the Rising was to trigger a "vicious" response? This is nothing more than revisionist, Brit "history".
The post that was quoted here has been removedDid you actually read the piece? The "hearing" and "response" he's referring to has nothing to do with the British Empire.
They were willing to give up their greatest possession, their lives, so that the spark of freedom and nationhood would be kept alive in the hearts and minds of the Irish people. May they rest in peace.
I'm sure they expected the British Empire to respond exactly as they did (though Connolly was surprised that the Brits would use artillery in Dublin; he didn't think they'd wreck so much good capitalist property). But the British Empire was not their primary target audience.
Originally posted by phil3000Good grief.
I think you are obviously anti british having read your other posts,
However, you fail to mention that britain had sent its finest men to fight in france against an enemy easily recognised by their uniforms !!!!
Do you think 2 years fighting a formidable foe draining men and resources that Britain would treat a gorrilla terrorist up rising with kid ...[text shortened]... along with your other I.R,A posts ?
If you are so pro irish what are you doing sat in the U.S ?
You really are from a council estate, aren't you?
(That, by the way; for our American cousins, is the English equivellent of a trailer park).
I think 300 years of vicious oppression is enough to make any group rise when the oppertunity comes along.
Originally posted by no1marauderThanks for the link - it's a really good microsite, and anyone wishing to find out more could do a lot worse than having a look there first.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/aftermath/af02.shtml
I was quite taken with the interview with Garret FitzGerald:
"I am helped in this [writing his account] by the fact that my father wrote some years later about his experiences in the years 1913 to 1916, explaining both why he and others were motivated to contemplate such a Rising, and also why he and several of his friends, such as The O’Rahilly, were opposed to it taking place at the time it did: because in their view by Easter Monday 1916 it had lost any chance of success. As my father recorded, this raised doubts about its morality in the minds even of Pearse and Plunkett — doubts they sought to quell.
It was the massive rush by Irish men to join the British Army in 1914 that seemed to him and to like-minded others to portend an imminent demise of Irish nationalism. In their view, this made an early attempt to end British rule necessary. Unfortunately, a subsequent misguided attempt by myth-makers to portray the Rising as an outcome of the abiding strength of Irish nationalism came to obscure the fact that it was in fact an act of desperation, undertaken by people who believed that nationalism was dying on its feet."
As I said earlier, I condone the Easter Rising (think it was justified). I also said I had some caveats, and those remain. It's not wholly anachronistic to think that the minority of militant nationalists at the time were subject to the same hegemonic politics of blood and violence that had led to WWI - there were plenty of nationalists who felt the same at the time and opposed militancy while remaining nationalists. When you dismiss my arguments here, you partake of the very factionalism that was present at the time; just as then, I would contend, it takes a lot of balls to claim the mantle of spokesman for all acceptable nationalist thought, essentially by virtue of militancy. I certainly think that buying wholesale in to those myths of blood, nation and violence *now* shows a lamentable immaturity of political thinking.
I am most emphatically not a 'revisionist Brit historian' (I think you'll find that, strictly speaking it's you who is 'revisionist' in the correct sense of the term, but then there's nothing so wrong with revisionism) - I just think the questions and issue involved were somewhat more finely nuanced than you give credit for at the time and that, if anything, our moral judgements of the time should therefore themselves be, if anything, less strident and more nuanced now.
Originally posted by phil3000http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_neutrality_during_World_War_II
I think you are obviously anti british having read your other posts,
However, you fail to mention that britain had sent its finest men to fight in france against an enemy easily recognised by their uniforms !!!!
Do you think 2 years fighting a formidable foe draining men and resources that Britain would treat a gorrilla terrorist up rising with kid ...[text shortened]... along with your other I.R,A posts ?
If you are so pro irish what are you doing sat in the U.S ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Neutral_states_in_World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category😕weden_during_World_War_II
Originally posted by DrKFDont get your apparent obsession with the Standard, its been on its last legs for ages because of all of the freebie commuter papers. Hardly anyone reads it. Its pretty sad to see their ever more desperate advert board headlines trying to create a sensation out of every little thing. Only time I bougt it in the last couple of years, they were giving a free umbrella with every issue, and it was raining 😉
I gather the Evening Standard has begun a quite bizarre advertising campaign. Apparently there are, I kid you not, posters around London, on buses and tubes, saying 'sorry' - for losing touch, taking readers for granted, and being negative, complacent and predictable!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/gallery/2009/may/05/london-evening-standard-sorry-ads?pictu ...[text shortened]... , I suppose, but probably not the place I'd have started with apologies were I the editor...
The post that was quoted here has been removed"Murderers" describes the British Army, not the Rebels. Indiscriminate use of artillery in a populated area, the execution of Skeffington and several others, the fifteen people killed on North King Street, etc. etc. were just a continuation of 700 years of British brutality towards the Irish people.
The Rebels fought a fair fight against overwhelming odds. Your pejoratives are at odds with the established facts. But that's never unduly troubled you before, so I suppose it's too much to ask that it trouble you now.
Originally posted by DrKFWith all due respect to Mr. FitzGerald, his impressions are at variance with the facts. The "massive rush" to join the British Army was considerably less in Ireland than in the rest of the UK and had dropped to a relative trickle long before the Rising. I see no evidence that Irish nationalism was "dying" before the Rising; could you quote some?
Thanks for the link - it's a really good microsite, and anyone wishing to find out more could do a lot worse than having a look there first.
I was quite taken with the interview with Garret FitzGerald:
"I am helped in this [writing his account] by the fact that my father wrote some years later about his experiences in the years 1913 to 1916, explaining bo ...[text shortened]... time should therefore themselves be, if anything, less strident and more nuanced now.
Personalizing the matter yet again is unfortunate. I haven't claimed anything but what the evidence suggests. If you have contrary evidence, present it. Ranting about someone else's supposed stridency while failing to present anything to support your supposedly more reasonable position is intellectually dishonest.
Originally posted by no1marauderUm, OK. You'll forgive me if I tend, not knowing you beyond these discussions, to attach considerably more weight than do you to the twice-served Taoiseach.
With all due respect to Mr. FitzGerald, his impressions are at variance with the facts. The "massive rush" to join the British Army was considerably less in Ireland than in the rest of the UK and had dropped to a relative trickle long before the Rising. I see no evidence that Irish nationalism was "dying" before the Rising; could you quote some?
...[text shortened]... anything to support your supposedly more reasonable position is intellectually dishonest.
I personally think he's a perfectly reasonable authority, and quite probably in possession of considerably more facts than either of us have now or will ever have on this matter:
"up to 1914 there was little public support for Irish independence: as I have just said it was despair at the absence of such a spirit that provoked the Rising. It is a failure of imagination on our part, together with a mythic view of history, that make us think otherwise. The truth is that without 1916 our people might well have settled down for a time at least within a Home Rule system."
I mean, the man's father took part in the Easter Rising and served as first Minister for External Affairs of the nascent Irish state. The man himself served as prime minister. Twice.