Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown

The passing tales and glories […]

—‘Dublin in the Rare Ould Times’

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

—Stephen Dedalus

Every generation must reconsider its predecessors in the light of new experiences.

—Judith Shklar

How Did We Get Here? The decade of Irish history that opened with the passage of the British Parliament's 1912 Home Rule bill, devolving limited government powers to an Irish assembly in Dublin, was transformative. It closed in 1923 with the end of the civil war in the south, the new Irish Free State with dominion status within the British Empire (Commonwealth). It was so transformative that it is now common to refer to the events of that period as the Irish Revolution.

The drama arose from the crisis over Home Rule for the whole of Ireland, the formation in reaction to it of a unionist anti-Home Rule militia in Northern Ireland (Ulster) in 1913, and in reaction to that militia the forma-tion of a nationalist militia in the south, the illegal arming of each militia in 1914 and the threat of civil war between them. That fear was realised in the commencement of fighting in the 1916 Rising against British rule, and its continuation in the 1919–21 War of Independence, the Protestant vs. Catholic violence that overlapped with it and the 1922–23 civil war in the south.

The transformation was constitutional and political. From being a united Ireland in the UK ruled from Westminster, Ireland was partitioned, with the south achieving dominion status (de facto independence) within the British Empire, and the north-east receiving a devolved Home Rule form of government.

The goal of this book is to reflect on the events of that decade and their significance in relation to the 1968–98 violence in Northern Ireland, its impact on the Republic and future relations between unionists and nationalists.

In any state, its contemporary political identity depends on a certain interpretation of its history and in consequence is resistant to reinterpretation. Where the history in question involved significant violence, had major traumatic aspects, and its memory is coloured by group loyalties, resistance is greater.