Sir, – Let us invent the game of Centenary Monopoly. Go straight to 2017, don’t pass GPO, and don’t collect misty-eyed accounts of exalted rebellion. John Bruton can roll the first dice. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’BYRNE,
Mount Argus Court,
Harold’s Cross,
Dublin 6W.
Sir, – Tim O'Halloran (September 24th) refers twice to "Sinn Féin's defeat of conscription" and describes it as "perhaps that party's greatest gift to the people of Ireland". Does Mr O'Halloran have any evidence for his contention that it was Sinn Féin alone that prevented the introduction of conscription? He ignores the fact that the Irish Party and Mr Redmond opposed conscription in Ireland throughout the war and were instrumental in defeating each attempt to introduce it through legislation at Westminster.
In November 1915, when it first arose as a serious prospect, John Redmond wrote to Herbert Asquith, the British prime minister, to say that “the enforcement of conscription in Ireland is an impossibility . . . [and] if a Conscription Bill be introduced, the Irish Party will be forced to oppose it as vigorously as possible at every stage”.
John Dillon, his deputy leader, on the floor of the House of Commons went so far as to describe compulsory military service as “Prussianism” and the selling out of the very principles of democratic freedom which Britain was fighting the war to protect. Through their parliamentary efforts in December of that year they secured a personal pledge from Asquith that conscription would not be extended to Ireland.
Throughout 1916 Edward Carson, an ardent supporter of Irish conscription, gained increasing influence over a divided British cabinet, threatening to put the issue back on the agenda. This prompted further manoeuvring by Redmond, culminating in a motion of censure against the government which he proposed in October. His Commons speech on the motion included a sustained and detailed attack on the conduct of the War Office and was credited with once again forestalling any attempt to extend conscription. And again in May 1917, the new prime minster David Lloyd George baulked at attempting to force conscription on Ireland because he feared defeat in the Commons at the hands of a combination of the Irish Party, the Conservatives, Labour, and many in his own Liberal party.
As the latter incident shows, Redmond’s parliamentary successes on this issue were made possible by the Irish Party’s assiduous courting of Liberal and Labour support throughout England over the previous decade in the name of home rule, which gave them leverage over the government which extended far beyond their own ranks.
So I suppose the question is, who is more likely to have prevented the introduction of conscription in Ireland? Was it the Irish Party, which had 73 MPs at Westminster, the ear of the British government, and a network of supportive English and Scottish MPs from other parties when the issue arose in the House of Commons? Or was it Sinn Féin, which throughout this period was a small isolationist party with no elected representation?
While Sinn Féin was very successful at fomenting public opposition to conscription at home in Ireland, it is fanciful in the extreme to suggest that this had anything but a residual impact on those in London who were attempting to introduce the policy.
As if denying all of this wasn’t enough, Mr O’Halloran seems to go further by implying that Redmond’s support for voluntary recruitment meant that, by extension, he actually supported conscription. In fact, as all of the available evidence shows, he saw continued voluntary recruitment in Ireland as a vital means of staving off conscription, since the dramatic fall-off in volunteers from late 1915 onwards was being used by Carson and others as a justification for its introduction. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Brooklawn,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.