Judging Redmond and Carson was published by the Royal Irish Academy in February 2018. You can purchase the book on the RIA website here.

One of the problems with the historiography of Irish home rule, and indeed most of modern Irish history, is that it’s often narrated as the history of one political tradition. In this decade of centenaries in Ireland, as author Professor Alvin Jackson himself pointed out at the RIA’s launch of this book at the Irish Embassy in London, having respect for multiple narratives has helped us move through each year. The release of Judging Redmond and Carson is timely indeed.

What’s important about this book is that it’s not simply a rehearsal of broadly familiar stories of nationalism and unionism’s duel over home rule. It’s a joint biography of John Redmond and Edward Carson which seeks to isolate some of the central themes of this historical episode, to examine them in terms of both the comparison of the two lives, each man’s histories and behaviours.

We see this, for instance, in their respective relationships with the British parliament and its political parties, responses to the outbreak of the First World War, and evolving attitudes towards partition.

Given the re-emerging debate around Northern Ireland’s constitutional position after Brexit, last June’s Conservative Party-DUP confidence-and-supply pact at Westminster, and the relatively new leaderships of nationalism and unionism (Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill), this book provokes as many questions for us today as it explores about the past, in addition to the many lessons it provides.

 

‘Constructive unionism’ and the appeal of Carson

‘Siege’ is a term more commonly associated with unionism than ‘constructive’ these days; here, we learn that when Westminster was constructive, such as with land reform, it presented Redmond and nationalism with challenges which threatened to take some of the steam out of the Home Rule cause.

Does constructive unionism exist today? Persistent antagonism of the DUP towards the Irish language lobby and description of Sinn Féin as crocodiles which preceded the ‘nationalist surge’ at last year’s Assembly election would suggest not. Time for a change in tact, then?

There are lessons for unionists too in Jackson’s assessment of “the appeal of Carson”. The diehard unionist, even to some contemporary nationalists, was recognised as being emphatically Irish. We’re told how early biographers portrayed Carson in terms of Celtic romanticism, for instance with his supposed enthusiasm for hurling while at Trinity College Dublin. How better would our politics be today if leaders were more prepared to expand their respective cultural comfort zones?

 

Nationalism’s need to appeal to Northerners. And justification of abstentionism?

We learn lessons from failures of nationalism too, in their case to persuade unionists of the North to join their cause. Jackson describes Redmond’s national movement as an umbrella enterprise, but he could never translate his inclusivist national ideals into an effective pitch to the North.

Reasons for this, the author continues, may well have said as much about the North as about Redmond, nevertheless it fatally undermined his influence within British politics (and beyond) in 1913-14 and after.

Given that seven Sinn Féin MPs of Northern Ireland’s 18 today don’t take their seats at Westminster, and Theresa May’s Tories rely on 10 DUP MPs to keep them in government, debate around abstentionism is alive as ever. Redmond’s nationalists, of course, took their seats. In Judging we learn tough talking in public together with business-like, private conversations was how Redmond came to see Westminster politics working for Ireland.

Does his woeful experience of relying on Westminster more than Westminster relied on him justify the Sinn Féin’s continued position of abstentionism even this day? A LucidTalk poll published in June 2017 among party members overwhelmingly vindicated the policy. 100 years on, don’t expect this stance to change any time soon.

 

Violence, war and legacy

Both Carson and Redmond were effectively constitutional politicians, writes Jackson, who accepted the reality of violence within Irish history and politics. This week we commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement; clearly, thankfully, we and our political leaders are in a much different place.

Just on Monday Northern Ireland’s three loyalist paramilitary groups declared, jointly, they will “fully support the rule of law.” Carson may not have introduced ‘the gun’ into Irish politics, as some have contended. Instead, Jackson analyses he was “the first who deliberately wanted to be seen introducing guns into Irish politics.”

The First World War destroyed Redmond and it permanently damaged the Carson mystique, writes Jackson. Until then, each man “had been accustomed to operating within a well-defined set of political parameters… The war ruthlessly exposed political weaknesses; the pace of wartime politics was equally unforgiving.”

The lives, approaches to politics and the legacies of both men, we find, varied greatly with many paradoxes along the way to challenge our traditional way of thinking of these two men and their respective blocs during the home rule struggle.

The closing of the 1990s coincided with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and hope for a better Irish century. Political dialogue and peace have shown we have more in common in Northern Ireland than we think. And so did these men. On the twentieth anniversary of the Agreement, this reassessment of the two men and their legacies is both original and much needed.

Also published on Medium.