Friday, February 13, 2009
p. 837-844
Ireland is a perfect case study of what I wrote about in an earlier post, the tug of war between reformers and radicals in trying to achieve common goals, here independent from Britain. The better organized militant groups were more appealing because they promised immediate action. They proposed fighting the battle on their own terms, a nationalistic point of view that many believed could accomplish what they wanted without compromise. The slow pace legislative reform did not endear it to angry people who were suffering under British occupation. Radicalism promised speed and a movement that was truly Irish, directed by Irish people towards Irish goals. They would not have to work through another country's legal processes, waiting on Britain to bestow something that they saw as a right. The militant nature of groups such as Sinn Fein, however, only served to frighten the British more as the two countries struggled to come to a deal about home rule. By combining militancy and politics, this party had strong support in Ireland itself for presenting a forceful front , but made outsiders wary and made the British even more unwilling to negotiate. But if the reformers had won out, would the war in Ireland have continued for as long and bloodily as it did? The British may have been able to hammer out a deal with reformers that they saw had similar values, and Ireland would have been able to break away as a country in its own right while still maintaining a powerful ally.
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