Chapter Preface.
Anybody, who has studied or who has an interest in Irish history, and in particular the years from 1913 to 1923, will wholly appreciate that what occurred in 1916 was the catalyst for what was to follow, namely the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and the Irish Civil War (1922-1923).
The Irish Volunteers (Óglaigh Na hÉireann), had been formed in Wynn’s Hotel, on Abbey Street in Dublin, on Tuesday, November 11th, 1913. The organisation was apparently formed in a direct response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912. The primary aim of the newly formed Óglaigh Na hÉireann was to ‘secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland’.
Home Rule for Ireland had dominated the political debate between Ireland and Britain since British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone had introduced the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. This was rejected by the House of Commons. The second Home Rule Bill, seven years later, having passed the House of Commons, was vetoed by the House of Lords. It would be the third Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, which would lead to the crisis in Ireland between the majority Nationalist population and the Unionists in Ulster.
When the Great War began on August 4th, 1914, the Irish Volunteers realised that the British Government could be kept occupied with the war in Europe. It was thought that the time was now right for a rebellion that could finally end the British occupation of Ireland. Britain’s decision to enter the Great War was in their view, the perfect opportunity to do so.
At the beginning of the Great War, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and most Irish people, regardless of their political affiliations, supported the war in much the same way as their British counterparts. Some two hundred-thousand Irishmen fought in the Great War, with thirty-thousand been killed in action on all fronts.
The rebellion of 1916 was born out of the Conservative and Unionist parties’ defiance of the democratically expressed wish of the Irish electorate for Home Rule. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, had urged Irishmen to enlist in the British Army, believing this would secure Home Rule at a later stage.Some 175,000 members of the National Volunteers agreed with Redmond and joined the British Army. This left the Irish Volunteers with a maximum of 13,500 members in Ireland for the planned rebellion.
Thomas Clarke was the main instigator for the proposed rising that was been planned for 1916. He was supported by Pádraig Pearse, Séan MacDermott and Éamonn Ceannt, Thomas McDonagh, Joseph Plunket and James Connolly, who was later brought onto the IRB Supreme Council to plan the rising. With the co-operation of James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army a secret Army Council of IRB officials planned a general rebellion throughout Ireland for Easter 1916.
The Easter Rising of 1916 is probably the most talked about rebellion that has ever occurred in Ireland against the obstinate British occupiers, given that sixteen men (which included Roger Casement) were executed in the weeks to follow it. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798.The fighting in 1916 occurred mainly in Dublin City centre from Easter Monday, April 24th, to Sunday, April 30th.
The date for the proposed rising was initially set for April 23rd, 1916, which was Easter Sunday. The Irish Volunteers were already on high alert and they had been holding recruitment meetings throughout Ireland and training in preparation for the call to rebel.
The Easter Rising of 1916 was intended to be a country wide rebellion against British occupation. Eoin MacNeill, a Belfast Republican, was the Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Volunteers at this time. He was totally against the idea of an armed rebellion, seeing little hope of success in an open battle against the occupying British forces.
On the Wednesday before the planned date for the rebellion, April 19th, they, the Supreme Council of the IRB presented MacNeill with a letter, allegedly stolen from a high-ranking British staff member inside Dublin Castle, indicating that the British were going to arrest him and all the other nationalist leaders.
Unknown to MacNeill, the letter, called the Castle Document, was a forgery. When MacNeill learned about the IRB’s plans for rebellion, and when he was informed that Roger Casement was about to land a shipment of German arms on Banna Strand in County Kerry on April 21st, he was reluctantly persuaded to go along with them, believing that British action was now imminent and that the mobilisation of the Volunteers would, at this stage, be a defensive act.
However, on learning of the arrest of Roger Casement, and the loss of the promised German arms, MacNeill countermanded the order for the rising in print to all the brigades intending to take part. Michael Joseph O’Rahilly (The O’Rahilly) was a founder member of Óglaigh Na hÉireann in 1913, and was also its Director of Arms. The O’Rahilly travelled south, informing all the brigade leaders in Tipperary, Cork, Kerry and Limerick of the order from his Chief-of-Staff for all volunteers to lay down their arms.
This was a major setback to the plans of the IRB Supreme Council. The arrest of Casement and the loss of the arms were followed by the capture of Austin Stack who was the commandant of the Kerry Brigade. This was quickly followed by the discovery of the plans for the rising, following a raid on German officials in New York.
The IRB Supreme Council now feared that MacNeill’s decision in countermanding the rising was going to severely reduce the number of volunteers who could potentially report for duty on the day of the proposed rising. In the end, the plan for the Easter Sunday insurrection went awry. Irish Volunteers who had deployed throughout Ireland received conflicting orders and failed to mobilise, leaving Dublin isolated. After postponing the insurrection for a day due to the confusion, the Dublin leadership decided to press on regardless.
Eoin MacNeill was completely unaware of the existence of a secret body (the IRB Supreme Council), that was organising the rebellion. Few penetrated the Supreme Council as they prepared for the rising. Pádraig Pearse, along with James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Séan MacDermott, Joseph Plunkett, Éamonn Ceannt, and Thomas MacDonagh agreed that the rising should and would go ahead anyway. The Supreme Council unanimously decided to proceed with the uprising despite the fact that they knew it had little chance of success. It was decided to strike on Easter Monday, April 24th.
In spite of the order from MacNeill not to revolt, over two thousand men and women answered the call for freedom. On Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, the General Post Office on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) was occupied by the rebel forces. Pádraig Pearse read the ‘Proclamation of the Irish Republic’ to a bemused Dublin public outside the building.
After some fierce fighting throughout the city, Dublin city centre was in a shambles and many civilians were dead. The five members of the Provisional Government who had retreated from the General Post Office on Sackville Street to 16 Moore Street, (Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Séan MacDermott and Joseph Plunkett) held tight to consider their options. With James Connolly lying in agony on a stretcher on the floor, with a badly injured foot from fighting in the GPO and much civilian causality, they decided to surrender in order to prevent any further loss of civilian life.
They had very little support from the people of Dublin, given that almost every family in the city had a family member or relative fighting in the Great War. When the rebellion did occur and with the destruction of the GPO, the wives of those fighting overseas had nowhere to collect their husband’s wages.
On Saturday, April 29th, at a quarter-to-one in the afternoon, Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell, a member of Cumann Na mBan was sent with a Red Cross flag to inform Brigadier-General William Henry Muir Lowe, who commanded the British forces in Dublin during 1916 that Pádraig Pearse wished to negotiate terms of surrender.
Brigadier-General William Lowe offered only an unconditional surrender (in which no guarantees are given to the surrendering party), and at half-past-three on Saturday, April 29th, 1916, Pádraig Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender. At a quarter- to- four he issued the order for all companies to surrender. The surrender document was as follows:
“In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at headquarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the commandants of the various districts in the City and County will order their commands to lay down arms.”
P.H. Pearse
April 29th, 1916.
The order for surrender however, did not reach some of the outmost posts of the fighting until Sunday, April 30th. The rising was over at this stage. The rebellion had failed and fifteen of the leaders were court-martialed, and subsequently executed by a firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol.
At first, the rebellion of 1916 was viewed as unpopular by the population of Dublin, and indeed throughout the rest of Ireland. However, opinion dramatically changed in the aftermath of the rising with the executions and even more so by that of James Connolly on May 12th, 1916.
James Connolly was the leader of the Irish Citizen Army and he had received gunshot wounds to his chest and ankle while fighting in the General Post Office. After the surrender, he was taken to Dublin Castle where he was seen by a doctor, who reckoned he had only days to live. Despite, the doctor’s views, James Connolly was saved for the last execution. The severity of his wounds failed to deter the British from taking their revenge as they tied him to a chair in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol, where he was executed by a firing squad. At his court-martial, a few days prior to his execution, he was not concerned by his injuries and made the following statement from his sick bed in Dublin Castle:
“Believing that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence, in any one generation of Irishmen, of even a respectable minority, ready to die to affirm that truth, makes the Government forever a usurpation and a crime against human progress. I personally thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irishmen and boys, and hundreds of women and girls, were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest to it with their lives if need be.”
The fifteen brave men that had been executed in Kilmainham Gaol were now regarded by the people of Ireland as heroes, having bravely faced the firing squad for the spirit of Irish freedom. The rebellion may have catastrophically failed but what it did succeed in achieving was that it brought the physical force of Irish Republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics. Support for Republicanism continued to rise throughout Ireland at this time as a result of Great War in Europe.
The rising of 1916 lasted less than a week, and after the unconditional surrender of the rebels, Eoin MacNeill was arrested and he faced a court-martial where he was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Roger Casement was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London on August 3rd, 1916. He was aged fifty-one and his crime was high treason against the crown.
When Pádraig Pearse read the ‘Proclamation of the Irish Republic’ in front of the General Post Office on Sackville Street on Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, and as the flag of The Irish Republic flew from the roof behind him, he already knew that they were destined for failure.
They had decided to go ahead with their plans for rebellion, even though they knew that they were destined for failure.
But, what if Eoin MacNeill, their Chief-of-Staff, had not countermanded the order for rebellion? Could things have been different in Ireland today?
Surely scholars and historians must have debated this over the years, as I have done. The Easter Rising of 1916 did occur and it is now part of our glorious Irish history. They must also agree with me when I reluctantly concede that major mistakes were made on that fateful morning of April 24th, 1916 and in the lead, up to it.
Hindsight, I suppose is a wonderful thing when thinking of a way that something could have been done differently.
The times of a country wide rebellion are long gone, but one can dream, and think that when they had a chance back in the day, things may have been done differently. 1916 happened and after that, another rebellion took place with the Irish War of Independence between January 21st, 1919, and July 11th, 1921. Ireland was divided as we see it today, which culminated in a Civil War from June 28th, 1922, until May 24th, 1923.
Those brave Irish men and women, the same people who had previously stood firm and fought side by side fighting with the Irish Volunteers against British rule were now divided. The British must have been laughing us! We now fought each other!
This in my opinion, and I feel as a proud Irish man that I am entitled to my opinion. The Civil War in Ireland was the worst part in Ireland’s proud history of fighting against British rule. Ireland was divided and brother fought brother and families were divided, even to this day.
But, what if, in the aftermath of 1916, and prior to everything else that followed in our history, Ireland had decided to rise up again in 1917. Britain would have had never expected it. David Lloyd George would have been too concerned with his country’s exploits in the Great War.
They would have been expecting us to be still licking our wounds after 1916.
Ireland, in my opinion had no intention of lying down. They were still too many Irish men and women out there that still yearned for complete freedom. But, sadly the opportunity was never taken. They just needed someone or something to make them realise that complete freedom was not a forgotten dream. It could have been a reality!
This is my theory for writing this fictional story. I am a very proud Irish man and an avid reader of Irish history, and believe me when I say this; I am in no way been disrespectful to the brave Irish men and women who faced the aggressor in 1916, or to the other great Irish men and women who have died trying to free Ireland throughout the centuries of British occupation.
This fictional book is predominantly set in 1917, when Ireland is still yearning for her freedom. Eoin MacNeill is in jail in England and we have licked our wounds and accepted the defeat of 1916. Britain is at war in Europe. Ireland needs to take her final chance for freedom.
Scholars and historians, I am sure will agree with me that mistakes were made in 1916. It was maybe a rushed rebellion when Eoin MacNeill attempted to call it off and maybe, just maybe, they knew that they were destined for failure, and that it was in actual fact a rebellion to show the future generations that Ireland could indeed rebel again.
That’s my opinion, and as an Irish man I think I can ask these questions. What if, we had taken the chance once again in 1917?
Ireland could be so much very different now, she could be united!
This is a subject that I know about very well. I have thoroughly researched my subject matter and I have corrected the mistakes that I personally feel that were made in 1916.
There would have been no need for the War of Independence and no Civil War. Ireland could now be liberated. Families could still be intact.
Enjoy the read, and enjoy the debate that it may consequently cause............
