(2429 Apr 1916) A rebellion in Dublin of Irish nationalists, whose aims were to establish an Irish Republic. It was organized by two revolutionary groups: the Irish Republican Brotherhood led by Patrick Pearse, and the socialist citizen armies organized by James Connolly. It was preceded by centuries of discontent under British rule, marked by a number of unsuccessful, sporadic revolts. Immediately preceding it was the suspension by the British government of the Home Rule Bill (1914), which had promised some political autonomy. The focal point of the rebellion was the seizing of the General Post Office. The rising was put down and several leaders, including Pearse, Connolly, and MacDonagh, were executed. De Valera, who later became prime minister and president of Ireland, was sentenced to death, but he was jailed until his release in 1920. The extent of the reprisals, rather than the uprising itself, increased support for the nationalist cause in Ireland. Events following the uprising led to the establishment of dominion status for the Free State in 1921. On Easter Monday, 1949, the Irish Republic was established.
| Easter Rising | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the movement for Irish independence | |||||||||
|
Proclamation of the Republic, Easter 1916 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
| Combatants | |||||||||
|
Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Irish Republican Brotherhood |
British Army Royal Irish Constabulary |
||||||||
| Commanders | |||||||||
|
Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly |
General Sir John Maxwell | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 1250 in Dublin, c. 2-3000 elsewhere, but they took little or no part in fighting | 16,000 troops and 1000 armed police in Dublin by end of the week | ||||||||
| Casualties | |||||||||
| 64 killed, 16 executed | 157 killed, 318 wounded | ||||||||
| 220 civilians killed, 600 wounded | |||||||||
The Easter Rising (Irish: 'Éirí Amach na Cásca') was a rebellion staged in Ireland in Easter Week, 1916.
The rising was an attempt by militant Irish republicans to win independence from the United Kingdom by force of arms. The Rising, which was largely organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, lasted from April 24 to April 30, 1916. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by school teacher and barrister Pádraig Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly, seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic independent of Britain.
Background: Parliamentary Politics v Physical Force
The event is seen as a key turning-point on the road to Irish independence, as it marked a split between physical force Irish republicanism and mainstream non-violent nationalism represented by the Irish Parliamentary Party under John Redmond. Redmond, through democratic parliamentary politics, had won an initial stage of Irish self-government within the United Kingdom, granted through the Third Home Rule Act 1914.
Planning the Rising
| Irish Political History series |
| REPUBLICANISM |
|
Republicanism
Key documents
Publications
Cultural
Songs
Strategies
Symbols
Other movements & links |
| This box: view • talk • edit |
While the Easter Rising was for the most part carried out by the Irish Volunteers, it was planned by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). All of these were members of both the IRB, and (with the exception of Clarke) the Irish Volunteers. MacNeill approved of a rebellion only if the British attempted to impose conscription on Ireland for the World War or if they launched a campaign of repression against Irish nationalist movements.
The plan encountered its first major hurdle when James Connolly, head of the Irish Citizen Army, a group of armed socialist trade union men and women, completely unaware of the IRB's plans, threatened to initiate a rebellion on their own if other parties refused to act.
In an effort to thwart informers, and, indeed, the Volunteers' own leadership, early in April Pearse issued orders for 3 days of "parades and manoeuvres" by the Volunteers for Easter Sunday (which he had the authority to do, as Director of Organization). Although he was briefly convinced to go along with some sort of action when MacDermott revealed to him that a shipment of German arms was about to land in County Kerry, planned by the IRB in conjunction with Sir Roger Casement (who ironically had just landed in Ireland in an effort to stop the rising), the following day MacNeill reverted to his original position when he found out that the ship carrying the arms had been scuttled.
The Rising
The outbreak of the Rising
The original plan, largely devised by Plunkett (and apparently very similar to a plan worked out independently by Connolly), was to seize strategic buildings throughout Dublin in order to cordon off the city, and resist the inevitable attack by the British army. Overall, the rebel's hope was that the British would concede Irish self-government rather than divert resources from the Western Front to try to contain a rebellion in their rear.
The Volunteers' Dublin division had been organized into 4 battalions, each under a commandant who the IRB made sure were loyal to them.
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.
As Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order prevented nearly all areas outside of Dublin from rising, the command of the great majority of active rebels fell under Connolly, who some say had the best tactical mind of the group. (The first building shelled was Liberty Hall, which ironically had been abandoned since the beginning of the Rising.) Interestingly the "Helga"'s guns had to stop firing as the elevation necessary to fire over the railway bridge meant that her shells were endangering the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, (Helga was later bought by the Government of the Irish Free State, and was the first ship in its Navy ).
British reinforcements arrive
Reinforcements were rushed to Dublin from England, along with a new commander, General John Maxwell.
Many of the insurgents, who could have been deployed along the canals or elsewhere where British troops were vulnerable to ambush, were instead ensconced in large buildings such as the GPO, the Four Courts and Boland's Mill, where they could achieve little.
The Rising outside Dublin
Irish Volunteer units turned out for the Rising in several places outside of Dublin, but due to Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order, most of them returned home without fighting.
In the west Liam Mellows led 600-700 Volunteers in an abortive attacks on several Police stations, at Oranmore and Clarinbridge in County Galway.
In the east, Sean 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 MacCurtain on Easter Sunday, but they dispersed after receiving several contradictory orders from the Volunteer leadership in Dublin. 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.
Some 3,430 suspects were arrested and 16 leaders (including all seven signatories of the independence proclamation) were executed (May 3–12).
Reactions to the Rising
The rebels had little public support at the time, and were largely blamed for hundreds of people being killed and wounded, (mostly civilians caught in the crossfire). At the time the executions were demanded in motions passed in some Irish local authorities and by many newspapers, including the Irish Independent and The Irish Times.
However, the reaction of some Irish people was more favourable to the Rising. Moreover, Irish nationalist opinion was appalled by the executions and wholesale arrests of political activists (most of whom had no connection with the rebellion) that took place after the Rising. This indignation led to a radical shift in public perception of the Rising and within three years of its failure, the separatist Sinn Féin party won an overwhelming majority in a general election, supporting the creation of an Irish Republic and endorsing the actions of the 1916 rebels.
Infiltrating Sinn Féin
The executions marked the beginning of a change in Irish opinion, much of which had until now seen the rebels as irresponsible adventurists whose actions were likely to harm the nationalist cause. As freed detainees reorganised the Republican forces, nationalist sentiment slowly began to swing behind the hitherto small advanced nationalist Sinn Féin party, ironically not itself involved in the uprising, but which the British government and Irish media wrongly blamed for being behind the Rising. Sinn Féin and the Irish Parliamentary Party under John Redmond fought a series of inconclusive battles, with each winning by-elections, until the Conscription Crisis of 1918 (when Britain tried to force conscription on Ireland) swung public opinion decisively behind Sinn Féin.
"What if the British had been lenient to the Irish rebel leaders?"
1918 General Election
The general elections to the British Parliament in December 1918 resulted in a Sinn Féin landslide in Ireland (many seats were uncontested), whose MPs gathered in Dublin to proclaim the Irish Republic (January 21, 1919) under the President of Dáil Éireann, Eamon de Valera, who had escaped execution in 1916 through luck. By the time a decision was taken to execute him, and his name had risen to the top of the executions list, all executions had been halted.)
Surviving officers of the rising (including de Valera, Cathal Brugha, and Michael Collins) went on to organise the Irish War of Independence from 1919-1921 which resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and independence for 26 of Ireland's 32 counties. The executed leaders of the Easter Rising are venerated in the Irish Republican tradition as martyrs and as founders of the Irish Republic.
Legacy of the Rising
Critics of the Rising have pointed to the fact that the Rising is generally 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. Though the violent precursor to Irish statehood, it did nothing to reassure Irish unionists nor alleviate the demand to partition Ulster. Britain was fighting a war for national survival, a war in which many thousands of Irish volunteers had already lost their lives.
Nationalist views of the Rising have stressed the role of the Rising in stimulating latent sentiment towards Irish independence.
The theory has also been mooted that the Rising would have given the Irish Republic a role in a peace conference following an anticipated German victory in the First World War.
Historians generally date Irish independence (for the 26 counties) from 1 April 1922 (transfer of executive power under the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed between Irish delegates and the British government after the Anglo-Irish War, forming the Irish Free State) and 6 December 1922 (transfer of legislative power) rather than from the 1916 Rising. The Irish Free State existed until 1937 when Bunreacht na hÉireann (the Irish constitution) was introduced, renaming the country "Ireland".
Socialism and the Easter Rising
The Easter Rising has sometimes been described as the first socialist revolution in Europe. Of the leaders, only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause (he was a former official of the American IWW and General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union at the time of his execution). Furthermore, Eamon de Valera, the most prominent surviving leader of the rising and a dominant figure in Irish politics for nearly half a century, could hardly be described as Socialist. Four years later, the Soviet Union would be the first and only country to recognise the Irish Republic, later abolished under the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
User Comments Add a comment…