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"The Ulster Unionist campaign against the 1912 Home Rule Bill… served the interests of violent republicanism when its prospects appeared grim and hopeless… Unionists unintentionally radicalised the politics of the whole island, he said in a lecture as part of the series 'A Decade of Anniversaries'… The UCD historian said reforms, especially the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, ensured most Irish nationalists were becoming increasingly willing to operate within the Union framework. 'Ireland was clearly not in a pre-revolutionary situation. But when Carson… threatened and planned rebellion, and when marching and drilling and importation of arms were met not with punishment and retaliation, but with concessions from the government, Irish revolutionaries believed their time had come', added Prof. Laffan. 'At last, after decades of patient waiting, hoping for favourable circumstances, these had arrived—and from their point of view, just in time…'

"Prof. Laffan said in effect that the two extremes in Irish public life had developed an informal alliance against 'the centre'—as represented by John Redmond's Home Rule Party—and 'one had given the kiss of life to the other. Such a development appalled Ulster unionists; but it is a commonplace that people cannot determine the indirect consequences of their actions', he said. Prof. Laffan said radical nationalists, many of whom did not belong to the revolutionary IRB, followed Carson's example… After a long absence, militarism had returned to Ireland. The Easter Rising, a resort to arms of precisely the sort that Redmond had always wished to avoid, accelerated the destruction of moderate nationalism. It could be seen as a paradoxical implementation of the plans made by Carson… by republican revolutionaries who followed Carson's example' added Laffan" (Irish News 23 April).