No great triumph: Redmond’s Home Rule

Caught Michael McDowell’s column at the weekend in the SBP, and… difficult as it may be to believe, was pretty impressed by parts of it. In it he discusses a presentation he gave on Irish independence. He argues that ‘independence has been goof for the Republic’ despite the obvious problems. And he notes that lack of independence has not been consciously good for Scotland or Northern Ireland or Wales.

Indeed he argues that:

Arch-revisionists argue that the political separation of the Republic from Britain was an unnecessary and unjustified act of political violence that lies at the bottom of many of our woes – political, economic and social. Redmond’s Home Rule , they say, was sufficient for Irish needs.
One perusal of the Home Rule Act discredits that view. Devolved government as agreed by Redmond was no great triumph. The very limited autonomy envisaged for the parliament to be recreated in College Green could never have reversed the decline in Ireland’s economic prospects. A HR parliament in Dublin was fated to fall.

And he continues:

My point is this: even with limited devolution to Scotland, Wales and the North, the union has failed them badly. And it is hard to believe that this failure will be reversed by anything that will happen at Westminster in the short, medium or long term.

And he notes that this won’t stop unionists being unionists since it is more than ‘an economic frame of mind’. He offers the prospect of thoughts on how to achieve unity (which he is in favour of) in the near future which he is at pains to argue are different from those of SF who he suggests are ill-positioned to contribute to the debate. We’ll see.