Sir, – Stephen Collins (“McGuigan killing raises questions about Rising commemorations”, Opinion & Analysis, August 22nd) raises critical questions about the recent commemoration of O’Donovan Rossa and, at the same time, calls for more prominence to be given to the events surrounding the campaign for Home Rule.

It is significant that, in fact, there was a connection between the two events in the summer of 1915. On May 19th, Prime Minister Asquith announced plans for a coalition cabinet of Liberals and Tory Unionists and announced their names a week later. The accession of Bonar Law, Arthur Balfour, Walter Long and Sir Edward Carson to the cabinet effectively marked the end of the Home Rule Act. From the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in 1912, Carson and his followers had pledged themselves to resist Home Rule and, on September 28th, 1914, he had declared that “when the war is over we will call our Provisional Government together and we will repeal the Home Rule Act so far as it concerns us in ten minutes . . . we will also have our guns”. This pledge was publicly endorsed by Bonar Law, leader of the Conservatives.

When, less than a year later, these men and their colleagues were appointed to the cabinet, it was generally recognised that Home Rule was dead and buried. This impression was confirmed by the measured opinion of Augustine Birrell, chief secretary of Ireland, who informed the Royal Commission on the Rising that the appointment of the coalition cabinet “seemed to mark the end of Home Rule, and strengthen the Sinn Feiners enormously all over the country”. It was in this context that the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa took place two months later, on August 1st, 1915, and the large attendance was, in part, occasioned by the failure of the policy of Home Rule.

Contrary to the impression given by Stephen Collins and Carla King (August 4th), there was no attempt to endorse the indiscriminate bombing campaign of Rossa in his younger days. Patrick Pearse had made it quite clear to Joe McGarrity, on August 12th, 1914, when informing him of the weapons landed at Howth, that “the ammunition landed is useless. It consists of explosive, which are against the rules of civilised war and which, therefore, we are not serving out to the men”.

It was in this spirit that Pearse spoke of Rossa’a dream of Irish national independence as expressed in a free and independent Irish republican government. Significantly, several companies of Redmond’s National Volunteers and many public bodies joined the IRB and the Irish Volunteers in the procession to Glasnevin – a clear indication that the creation of an English coalition cabinet, allied to the tragedies of war, had combined to expose the true character of English rule in Ireland and to create a new dynamic in Irish life.

For these reasons, it was fitting to commemorate the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa and it will be appropriate to commemorate the Easter Rising in the same spirit. – Yours, etc,

Dr BRIAN P MURPHY, OSB

Glenstal Abbey,

Murroe,

Co Limerick.