I tend to agree with Steve Shaw, although I might have a more moderate tone....

Teribus asks for my solid opinion about the Thomas Kent arrest and execution. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) raided the Kent home on 22 April 1916, after the Easter Rising. I think it's clear that Thomas Kent had good reason to believe that he would be apprehended and executed. In the course of this event, Kent killed an officer of the RIC; and he was subsequently charged with murder and executed.

Teribus, if the RIC had not raided Kent's home, no RIC officers would have been killed. One the raid happened, Kent had every reason to believe that his own death was inevitable...and history proved that to be correct. Sorry, but I can't place any blame on Thomas Kent.

On the other hand, I'm not at all sure that by 1916, the English were the "bad guys." In many ways, it seems that they got stuck between a rock and a hard place, and would much rather not have been involved in this situation at all. However, it appears to me that the local British commanders tended toward extremism, and they got the British into a situation where the British didn't really want to be.

And thus the tragedy.

Raggytash complained above about "pertinent posts" being deleted. I have a link that allows me to look at all the messages in a thread, including the deleted ones. I did that, and spent half an hour reviewing every deleted message. The only messages that were deleted, were the one that made no mention of the Easter Rising (posts like the ones from Steve Shaw and Greg F and HiLo and Dave the Gnome that were only meant to goad on the nastiness, without saying anything about the subject at hand). I did undelete one post from ollaimh. It was a little crazy, but it was on topic. Otherwise, the only messages in this thread that were deleted, were ones that had nothing at all to do with the Easter Rising.

-Joe-