Easter Rising
From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium
The Easter Rising was an insurrection by Irish Republicans against British rule, which took place over the Easter weekend of 1916. The goal of the rebel forces was to take over the city of Dublin using the element of surprise. They hoped to instigate a national uprising in Ireland, which would replace the British government with an independent Irish one. The uprising was badly mismanaged and quickly suppressed. But the United Kingdom was at war with Germany and had no tolerance for insurrection. The severe British reprisals had the major impact of undercutting the moderate "home rule" position and moving most Irish nationalists into demands for an independent republic.
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Background to the Rising
Ireland had moved on from the tradition of violent political activism which was prevalent during the 1798 rebellion and the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion. Charles Stewart Parnell and his Home Rule Party (later known as the Irish Parliamentary Party) had changed the political battlefield drastically, ushering in a new era of parliamentary politics with the emphasis on an evolutionary based roadmap to home rule in all of Ireland, as part of the British Empire.
John Redmond led the Home Rule party after 1912 and promoted the third Home Rule Bill. Reforms to the House of Lords had ensured that the Conservative dominated chamber could only delay a bill for three years. It was passed in 1914 but put on hold during World War I (which was expected to be a brief war).
Radical separatists such as Padraig Pearse and James Connolly had been indifferent towards Home Rule and many more like them were now making plans to exploit England's weakness while they were embroiled in the war.
Redmond, as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, advocated the participation of Irishmen in World War I. Many thousands answered the call and it led to a split in the Irish Volunteer Force (IVF) between the pro-war majority, the National Volunteers, and the anti-war minority, the Irish Volunteers. The Defence of the Realm Act was circumvented by men such as Arthur Griffith who continued to speak out about Irishmen involved in World War I. The small band of revolutionaries slowly began to grow.
The Plot
| “ | England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity | ” |
The quote above was used more and more by extreme separatists at this stage[1]. With the UK at war with Germany, a key separatist, Sir Roger Casement--an Irishman who had been a British diplomat --went to Germany to obtain arms and ammunition, and enlist Irish held by the Germans as prisoners of war to join the Irish Volunteers. He obtained the munitions but the prisoners refused to join the cause.
Key Rebels
In planning the rising, the IRB recruited two talented but vastly different men, Padraig Pearse and James Connolly. They also had the Chief of the Volunteers involved, Eoin Mc Neill. Other significant leaders and participants were Sean Mc Diarmada, Thomas Clarke, Countess Markievicz, Joseph Plunkett, Eamon Ceannt, John Mc Bride, Thomas Mc Donagh, Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.
Padraig Pearse
Pearse was the son of an Irish woman and an English stonemason. He was originally a supporter of Home Rule but became disillusioned with it after the delay in passing a Home Rule Bill and the mobilisation of Unionist resistance to its implementation. He also became heavily involved with the Gaelic League and was greatly influenced by the Irish literary revival, having written some exceptional books and plays. He also edited the Gaelic League newspaper, An Claidheamh Solúis. His deep interest in education led to him founding his own school in Rathfarnham, County Dublin called St. Enda’s. The curriculum here was based around Gaelic and on Irish history and culture. Pearse was a believer in blood sacrifice and even compared a hero dying for his country to Christ dying on the cross to save humanity. He joined the Irish Volunteers enthusiastically in November 1913 and was sworn into the IRB at the same time. He reached the attention of most Republicans at the funeral of O Donovan Rossa where he made his famous impassioned speech; They think they have forseen everything, but the fools! the fools! the fools! they have left us our Fenian dead; and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace. [2] Although Pearse regularly expressed romantic and idealistic notions of Irish freedom, James Connolly was also committed to armed rebellion, but for much more practical reasons.
James Connolly
As a socialist James Connolly had hoped that the workers of Europe would refuse to fight each other. As this hope failed to materialize he concentrated on the notion that Irish workers could never be properly treated under British rule. In his view, a successful rising against Britain would be a prelude to a more equal society in Ireland. When James Larkin went to America in 1914, Connolly came to control the Irish Transport and General Workers Union as well as the Irish Citizen Army. By 1915, the Irish Citizen Army had about 200 members and Connolly grew more anxious and appeared willing to lead them on his own in a rebellion. To prevent Connolly from leading the Citizens army in an independent rebellion, he was recruited to the military council in charge of planning for the rising. In this way the plotters hope to include both the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army in the rising.
Eoin Mc Neill
Eoin Mc Neill was a serious obstacle to the IRB's plan for a rising. Mc Neill only supported rebellion if it had a chance of success. This depended on significant assistance from Germany, including the landing of troops in Ireland. As such, information was kept from Mc Neill by the IRB. The military council was successful in keeping their plans secret and even managed to deceive the Dublin authorities. On Wednesday 19 April 1916, the military council published a forged note known as the Castle document. It was written on official Dublin Castle paper and contained a list of people the British authorities were supposedly trying to imprison. As the names included leading members of the Irish Volunteers, Mc Neill at once gave orders to resist arrest. On Thursday 20 April, Pearse admitted to Mc Neill that a rising was being planned. On the following day, Good Friday 21 April, Pearse, Thomas Mc Donagh and Sean Mc Diarmada visited Mc Neill to inform him of the imminent arrival of the German vessel, the Aud that was carrying arms and ammunition. Mc Neill now realised that a conflict could not be avoided and repeated his orders that the Volunteers needed to resist imprisonment. On the same day, the German ship, the Aud, arrived in Tralee Bay in County Kerry. When it failed to rendezvous with the Irish Volunteers, the captain sailed to Cork Harbor and sank the ship with the armaments on board. On learning the fate of the Aud, Mc Neill tried to prevent a rising. On Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916, he published a notice on the Sunday independent cancelling all Volunteer maneuvers planned for that day. On Sunday evening, the IRB leaders met in Liberty Hall in Dublin. Despite the loss of the German arms, they were determined that the rising go ahead for April 24, Easter Monday.
Thomas Mc Donagh
Thomas Mc Donagh was a playwright from Tipperary man who helped Pearse in the foundation of St. Enda's in Rathfarnham. He was also a lecturer in University College Dublin as well as being a founder member of the Irish Volunteers and its director of training. Mc Donagh met Padraig Pearse in the Aran Islands as both men were involved in the Gaelic League. Thomas MacDonagh commanded the garrison at Jacob's Biscuit Factory and all the forces in Stephens Green, the College of Surgeon's and Harcourt Street Station. His second in command was Michael Mallin, and one of his chief operation officers was the Countess Markievicz, who operated from the College of Surgeons with Mallin.
Sean Mc Diarmada
Sean Mc Diarmada was a friend of Thomas Clarke who left his home and went to Glasgow when he was fifteen in search of work. Then he returned to Ireland and went to Belfast, where he worked for a time as a tram conductor, and later as a barman. In Belfast he joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians closely associated with the Irish Parliamentary Party. Soon after settling in Belfast he joined the local branch of the Gaelic League and became a fluent Irish speaker. It was in the Gaelic League that he came into contact with such men as Denis Mac Cullagh, Sean Mac Garry and Bulmer Hobson, who were then leading the secret Republican organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and working through an open political organisation called Cumann na nGael, an advanced policial movement which advocated Republicanism. Sean Mac Diarmada fought in the General Post Office along with many other key rebels. It was Sean Mac Diarmada that read Padraig Pearse's letter of surrender to those in the GPO.
Constance Markievicz
Constance Markievicz was educated privately and born in London, perhaps being one of the most intellectual of the Rebels and being one of the most revered women in Irish history. She married Count Casimir Markievicz, a Polish nobleman and joined Sinn Fein in 1900 but grew weary of Arthur Griffiths pacifism. She launched Fianna Eireann in 1909. She became an officer in the Citizen's army, prompting the resignation of the Socialist playwright Sean O Casey. She was a prominent rebel in the Easter Rising but her death sentance was commutted on account of her sex. She became President of Cumann na mBan in 1917 and converted to Catholicism. She was elected Sinn Féin MP for St Patrick’s Dublin, 1918, thereby being the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons, but did not take her seat due to the Sinn Féin policy of abstention. She became Minister for Labour in the Cabinet of the first Dáil Éireann while imprisoned between 1919-21 and became Minister for Labor in the second Dáil. She denounced the Treaty as a capitalist ploy and thus supported the republicans in the Irish Civil War, 1923-4. She then became Sinn Féin abstentionist TD for South Dublin, 1923-7.
Thomas Clarke
Thomas James Clarke was the eldest to be executed. He was born in Hurst Castle, on the Isle of Wight to Irish parents. The family lived briefly in South Africa then settled in Dungannon, County Tyrone. He went to the United States at 21 where he joined the Clan na Gael, the American wing of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. After being sent to England on a dynamiting mission in 1883, he was arrested and sentenced to penal servitude for life but was released in 1898. He returned to Ireland and was made a freeman of the city of Limerick. Unable to get work in Ireland, he emigrated to the US again in 1899 and became an American citizen. He returned to Ireland in 1907 and opened a tobacconist’s and newsagent's shop at 75A Great Britain Street that was a center of the IRB organization for the next decade. He published Irish Freedom, a militant anti-English journal in 1910 with Sean Mac Diarmada as manager. He organized a pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave at Bodenstown, Co. Kildare, as a counter to a royal visit of the new king of England, George V in 1912. He was elected to the IRB Supreme Council and urged the setting up of a Military Council in 1915 to plan a rising. He served in the General Post Office and, at the request of the other leaders, was the first to sign the Proclamation of the Republic. He was executed 3 May 1916.
Eamon Ceannt
Eamon Ceannt was born in County Galway, the son of a Royal Irish Constabulary officer. He became a Clerk of the Dublin Corporation and joined the Gaelic League in 1900, becoming a member of its governing body. He joined Sinn Féin in 1908, joined the IRB and became a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. Ceannt was involved in the Howth gun running in 1914. He was a member of the IRB Supreme Council and its Military Committee in 1915. Eamonn Ceant was one of the many signatories to the Proclamation and was executed in Kilmainham on 8 May 1916.
Michael Collins
Michael Collins was an Irish leader, rebel and soldier. Born a farmer's son in County Cork, he was recruited into the IRB at the age of 19. He became aide-de-camp to one of the leaders, Joseph Plunkett.
During the Rising, he was one of the occupiers of the GPO. Following the surrender, he was imprisoned and narrowly escaped execution. During his internment in Wales, his leadership abilities became apparent and he soon became a member of the executive of Sinn Féin and a leader within the Irish Volunteers.
By the start of the Irish War of Independence, Collins had become a crucial and effective leader of the Irish Republican Army. In 1921, at Éamon de Valera's behest, he led the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in London. The resulting treaty was unacceptable to de Valera (according Ireland only dominion status rather than full independence), Collins, however, secured narrow approval by the Dail and a large majority in the elections of 1922; De Valera then began the Irish Civil War. Collins led the Irish Army, fighting for the pro-Treaty side (the Irish Free State, as its Commander-in-Chief. He was killed in an ambush in Cork, on 22nd August, 1922, but the pro-treaty forces easily defeated De Valera's insurgents.
Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera was born in New York City in 1882. Following the death of his father, he was sent back to Ireland, at the age of two, to be reared by his maternal family. A teacher by profession, he became involved in the Gaelic League. In November 1913, he joined the Irish Volunteers and quickly rose through the ranks. He was then invited to join the IRB. During the Rising, he commanded the forces controlling Boland's Mills. Imprisoned and sentenced to death after the surrender, he escaped execution, at least in part because of his American citizenship. De Valera went on to play a leading role in the Irish War of Independence and, rejecting the vote of the Dail and the people, he led the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. Eventually he served three times as head of Irish government (as Príomh Aire (prime minister). .
Joseph Plunkett
Joseph Plunkett was a poet and journalist who co-founded The Irish Review with Thomas Mc Donagh. He joined the Irish Volunteers and as director of IRB operations Plunkett went with Casement to Germany to secure Irish arms and to attempt to enlist Irish prisoners of War to assist in the Rising in 1915. Later that year he went to America to consult with Clan na Gael and Irish-Americans who had funded the purchase of armaments. Plunkett was a signatore of the Proclomation of the Irish Republic and carried a sword that belonged to Robert Emmet into the GPO where he fought until the rebels surrender. He was imprisoned in Kilmainham where he married Grace Clifford the night before his execution.
John Mc Bride
John Mc Bride was from County Mayo and son to the local shopkeeper in Westport. Originally he studied Medicine but later became a Chemist. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and later became involved with Michael Cusack in the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). He joined the Celtic Literary Association (CLA) where he befriended Arthur Griffith and who influenced him for the rest of his life.
In 1896 he went to the United States of America on behalf of the IRB and later emigrated to South Africa where he fought on behalf of the Boers in the Second Boer War, even raising with the help of an Irish-American an Irish brigade. He was commissioned as a major in the army and given Boer citizenship.
Mc Bride was actually not involved in the Irish Volunteers like many other rebels and was made second in command of Jacob's biscuit factory to Thomas Mc Donagh. He was executed in Kilmainham, like many of his fellow rebels on May 5, 1916.
The Rising
As groups of Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army moved to various positions throughout Dublin, few eyebrows were raised. The locals were used to such marches and drills. However this time they were looking for a fight and key strategic points were taken, including the General Post Office on Sackville street, the Four Courts, the South Dublin Union, the Royal College of Surgeons, Jacob's Factory and Boland’s Mill. An attempt to capture Dublin Castle failed, although unknown to the rebels it was very poorly defended at the time.
From the steps of the GPO, Padraig Pearse read aloud the Proclamation of the Irish Republic (pictured below left). It was a document which acted in many ways as an announcement of a provisional Irish government, led by its seven signatories. The document guaranteed many of the Civil Liberties guaranteed in the American Declaration of Independance and had high utilitarian aspirations. Perhaps most imporantly, the document stated:
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a sovereign independent state, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. [3]
It is unknown whether the rebels genuinely believed that they had a chance of victory, but Pearse's advocacy of blood sacrifice is prevalent in the section bolded above.
The breakdown of law and order that accompanied the rebellion was marked by widespread looting, as Dublin's slum population ransacked the city's shops. Ideological tensions came to the fore when a Volunteer officer gave an order to shoot looters, only to be angrily reprimanded by the socialist James Connolly.
The British rushed in reinforcements from Athlone, the Curragh Camp and Great Britain. General Maxwell was sent to take control and use whatever means necessary to put down the rising. Gradually, British forces encircled the city centre and moved on the rebel positions. Part of their success was that the rebels had left several strategically sound high areas to the British, such as that surrounding St. Stephens Green where the rebels were simply shot at from British machine gun fire from above. A gunboat, called the Helga, sailed up the River Liffey to shell the GPO and Liberty Hall. There was massive loss of life, injury and damage to property, especially in the O Connell Street (Sackville Street) area. Over 450 people, including nearly 300 civilians, were killed. Appalled at the suffering of the civilians, Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Friday 28 April. His instructions were then carried to the other garrisons, ordering them to surrender as well.
The rising outside Dublin
Irish Volunteer units turned out for the Rising in several places outside of Dublin, but due to Eoin Mc Neill's countermanding order, most of them returned home without fighting. In addition, due to the interception of the German arms aboard the Aud, the provincial Volunteer units were very poorly armed.
In the north, several Volunteer companies were mobilised in County Tyrone and 132 men on the Falls Road in Belfast.
In the west Liam Mellows led 600-700 Volunteers in abortive attacks on several Police stations, at Oranmore and Clarinbridge in County Galway. There was also a skirmish at Carnmore in which two RIC men were killed. However his men were very badly armed, with only 25 rifles and 300 shotguns, many of them being equipped only with pikes. Towards the end of the week, Mellows' followers were increasingly poorly-fed and heard that large British reinforcements were being sent westwards. In addition, the British warship, the HMS Gloucester arrived in Galway Bay and shelled the fields around Athenry where the rebels were based. On April 29, the Volunteers, judging the situation to be hopeless, dispersed from the town of Athenry. Many of these Volunteers were arrested in the period following the rising, while others, including Mellows had to go "on the run" to escape. By the time British reinforcements arrived in the west, the rising there had already disintegrated.
In the east, Seán MacEntee and County Louth Volunteers killed a policeman and a prison guard. In County Wexford, the Volunteers took over Enniscorthy from Tuesday until Friday, before symbolically surrendering to the British Army at Vinegar Hill – site of a famous battle during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Around 1,000 Volunteers mustered in Cork, under Thomas Mc Curtain on Easter Sunday, but they dispersed after receiving several contradictory orders from the Volunteer leadership in Dublin. Only at Ashbourne, County Meath was there real fighting. There, the North County Dublin Volunteers under Thomas Ashe ambushed an RIC police patrol, killing 8 and wounding 15, in an action that pre-figured the guerrilla tactics of the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence 1919-1921.
Political and popular fallout
The initial reaction of the public was that of anger (save for the admiration of a handful of nationalists) at the death and destruction wrought. Unionists looked on it as a stab in the back while the United Kingdom was fighting in the war. The British government condemned the rising and it came to Redmond as a shock. It flew in the face of his efforts to achieve Home Rule by supporting the British war effort, and he condemned their actions in parliament as a German plot. However, another leading member of the Irish Home Rule party, John Dillon, had been trapped in Dublin in Easter week. He wrote to Redmond to advise against a wholesale shooting of rebels in retribution. In Dillon’s view, public opinion was against the rebels but that could change if the British reaction was excessive.
British reaction
General Maxwell, once the rising was crushed, immediately set about punishing those involved. About 1800 rank and file volunteers and citizen army members were sent to prisons in England and Wales. The leading 170 were tried by court martial and 90 were sentenced to death. The executions began on May 3rd with the shooting of Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas Mac Donagh. Eamon de Valera, another leader, escaped execution by virtue of his American citizenship. Executions continued over the next week in groups of two and three. Dillon rushed to London and praised the bravery of the rebels in the House of Commons. He called on Herbert Asquith to stop the executions, warning him, You are washing our whole life's work away in a sea of blood[4]
Legacy
As a result of the executions public opinion began to swing around in favour of the rebels. The 1916 Easter Rising is undoubtedly one of the most controversial events of Irish history. Unionists and many supporters of Home Rule condemned it. The defence of the Home Rulers was that parliamentary politics would achieve success in the end. Later revisions of the rising have criticized it, but undoubtedly it sparked the events that brought about the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Free State, and eventually a full Republic.
With the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, government, academics and the media began to reassess the country’s militant past, and particularly the Easter Rising. The Easter parade was discontinued after 1970. The coalition government of 1973 – 1977, in particular the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Conor Cruise O'Brien, began to promote the view that the violence of 1916 was essentially no different to the violence then taking place in the streets of Belfast and Derry. Critics of the Rising pointed to the fact that the Rising was seen as having been doomed to military defeat from the outset, and to have been understood as such by at least some of its leaders. Such critics saw in it elements of a blood sacrifice in line with some of Pearse's writings. Though the violent precursor to Irish statehood, it had done nothing to reassure Irish unionists nor alleviate the demand to partition Ulster. Others, however, pointed out that the Rising had not originally been planned with failure in mind, and that the outcome in military terms might have been very different if the weapons from the Aud had arrived safely and if Mc Neill's countermanding order had not been issued. Supporters also contended that Ireland had been left with no other way of attaining a greater independence beyond the home rule provisions of 1914 other than by an armed rebellion.
On 21 October 2005 the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, announced the government’s intention to resume the military parade past the GPO from Easter 2006, and to form a committee to plan centenary celebrations in 2016
References
- ↑ Churchill, Sir Winston; Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963. - Page 1953
- ↑ Johnson, Nuala Christina; Ireland, the Great War and the Geography of Remembrance - Page 155
- ↑ The Proclamation of the Provisional government Online edition
- ↑ Simpson, William; Twentieth Century British History: A Teaching Resource Book - Page 131
