ABSTRACT
Before the Irish events from 1916-23, the only open revolt against Britain had been over a century before in America. But after the Second World War, an era of imperial dissolution opened, and there were a flurry of examples within a generation, culminating with the collapse of Ulster into insurrection. In January 1944, an illicit proclamation began circulating in the British Mandate of Palestine. This declaration of a Jewish revolt by Irgun Zvai Leumi was to be a harbinger of a generation of imperial insurrection, the first scene in the final act of the Empire. British political tactics in pursuing a strategy of devolution, even in the midst of open revolt, varied vastly and could be quite flexible. Within the process of devolution the basic British response to revolt, honed by experience, not always properly absorbed, remained largely the same.
