Irish Home Rule

When Britain had imprisoned hundreds (?) of rebels who had battled without quarter against their own troops, and when republican feeling was plainly simmering again (what does WBY say: those dead men to stir the boiling pot) all over the south -- why on earth did the Brits just *release all the prisoners* and send them back to Dublin??

Truly, I still don't get it.

(I still don't, 15 minutes later; and I never have yet.)

I understand what you're saying, I think, but I can't finally see the strategic sense in it.

But I STILL can't see the strategic sense in releasing Collins and de Valera to go and start running guns all over again.

'Minor player': but I think he did a lot of damage to the enemy. And he did a lot more once they let him out again.

In 1913 he also joined the Irish Volunteers and actively participated in the preparations for the Easter Rising of 1916. After a week of fighting against the British troops he was captured. De Valera was court-martialled, convicted, and sentenced to death, but the sentence was immediately commuted to penal servitude for life. He served 14 months in jail and was released in June 1917. Shortly after, he won a by-election in East Clare to the House of Commons. At a convention in October 1917 he was elected president of the Sinn Féin party. In May 1918 he was arrested again and put in a jail for agitation against extending conscription to Ireland. In the General Election of December 1918 de Valera was returned for East Mayo. De Valera escaped from Lincoln Jail on 3 Feb 1919 and returned to Ireland to be elected President of the Ministry ("Príomh-aire") by Dáil Éireann on 1 Apr 1919.

The only logic I can find is that there was a belief in repressive measures, and that the republican sentiment was a much over-exaggerated minority tendency. Releasing them to Dublin would put them in front of the people who's lives the british had been inconvenienced and brutalised in the cause of pursuing the rebels. It's the same strategy that seeks to humiliate a group of schoolkids as a group, in the hope that they move away from support for the one who's been the naughty kid, and that the naughty kids receives a justice from the people in who's name they purport to act.

Finally, traditional colonial superiority would tend to suggest that the danger areas were the country; the city was British territory and remain so; there was little damage to be done, as 1916 had proved the british could defeat the rebels in urban guerilla situations, and ultimately, yer Irishman was a bit of a thicky really.

Collins was a minor figure before and during the Rising - he only took part in it because he had promised to protect his nephew. his time in Frongoch Prison was when he came to prominence - the British could not have predicted how dangerous to them he would prove to be.

(x-post: Dave B said it better than i could)

just read R.F. Foster's VIVID FACES and my views are the same as 11 years ago! namely
1. not sure that Home Rule (with partition) should have been so devalued; it was good enough for Parnell!
2. still puzzled by the same old question about why the British released all those people who came back and fought them again! (but at least I see that D Boyle and others tried to answer it.)