Peter Cottrell’s The Anglo-Irish War places these events in a broader perspective. For all the retrospective legitimation subsequently conferred on the Rising —Sinn Fein decisively won the election of 1918 — it nonetheless opened up the road to a massive onslaught of Irishman on Irishman in Ireland between 1916 and 1923. It is this dimension — occluded by the phrase ‘Anglo-Irish war’ — which explains why the legacy of the Easter Rising was such a tricky one. Cottrell claims that of the 122 people executed by the IRA in Cork as British spies, only 38 actively were: most were executed because of what they represented (the small Protestant community), for example, rather than what they had actually done. This is still a bitterly contested claim, and many in Ireland prefer to remain in denial about the whole issue.
Cottrell’s book — which tends to be good on the military side of things and less strong on the political complexities — contains many dramatic photographs, including the Union Jack-draped coffin at the funeral in Glasnevin of District Inspector James Brady in Dublin, 1920. He might usefully have discussed the significance of Brady’s assassination by the IRA. Brady, a 22-year-old former Irish Guards officer, was killed by expanding ‘dum-dum’ bullets: infuriated, his police colleagues went on a rampage of reprisals against property in Tubercurry, which further alienated the local population from the British forces. The Chief Secretary, Hamar Greenwood, declared impotently:
I have a right to complain of reprisals, because I am responsible for the discipline of the Irish constabulary — but those men who supported the murder of DI Brady have no right to complain of reprisals.
But the interesting symbolic point is that Brady was the nephew of a Redmondite nationalist MP, P. J. Brady, who lost his Dublin seat to Sinn Fein in 1918. The Brady family, excellent Catholic nationalists of the old school, were politically and physically annihilated by Sinn Fein and the IRA, utilising a more militant variant in what in broad terms is the same Irish national story. It is the unease caused by these memories which explains the tetchy tone of the anniversary commemorations in Dublin.
The Redmondites by 1916 believed the northern problem should be solved by the principle of consent. They believed that once home rule was granted, the debt owed to history by Britain had been paid and could be replaced by a close, friendly relationship of equals. These are the policies of modern Ireland. That is why the British ambassador will be the honoured guest at this year’s commemoration. By what right does Ireland celebrate the destruction of the Redmondites — the British empire long survived 1916, as did the Ulster Unionists — while we practise the triumph of their political values?
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