Originally Posted by
EIFII
One British army commander in the Curragh did not constitute overall British policy on the issue of dealing with a potential Unionist insurrection against Irish Home Rule.
What the Irish, to their detriment, can never get their head around is the extreme constitutional crisis that would have arisen out of the failure to put Home Rule into effect in all 32 Irish counties had they only been given the chance in 1920-21.
The British army, in choosing to disobey the orders of Westminster, would have set Britain on an entirely different path that few in Britain would have have countenanced or permitted. This would essentially have effected a military coup d'état and over throw of the monarchy as the Crown-in-Parliament. As the oldest democracy, the mother parliament and the home of the Magna Carta, I just cannot see that ever having happened.
Therefore Ireland subjected itself by choice, may be through impatience, to 50 years of effective rule by the Catholic Church. And you don't need me to rehearse the glorious list of achievements achieved in that time by that institution.