…from Brian Hanley, and many thanks to him for allowing us to post this, the text of a very thought-provoking paper he gave at Listowel/Newcastlewest on 28th August 2015.
‘When we were little children Johnny Redmond was a fool,
He bade us to be satisfied with something called Home Rule,
But we have learned a thing or two since we went to school
and we’ll crown de Valera King of Ireland’
(Popular rhyme, c. 1918)
It is fairly certain that when those charged with developing a programme of commemoration for the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ first met it was how to remember Easter 1916 which above all else caused the most angst. It is unlikely, to say the least, that anyone thought that commemorating the Dublin Lockout would lead to a surge in trade union membership or a wave of sympathetic strikes. But in the buildup to 2016 there is a real sense, among some commentators at least, that in one historian’s words, we are ‘entering dangerous territory.’ Much of the discussion about how the events should be remembered seems predicated on the idea that too much commemoration, let alone (God forbid) celebration, could lead directly to a popular revival of militant armed republicanism. Journalists such as Stephen Collins of the Irish Times for example, have warned about the centenary being used ‘as a cover for those still wedded to violence’ and claimed that previous commemorations (especially 1966) were a ‘simplistic glorification of violence.’ Partly this is a result of a misreading of how the 1966 50th anniversary events resonated north of the border. It also reflects a curious pessimism about the ability of post-Agreement Northern Ireland to withstand debates about an event that took place 100 years ago. This sense of fear seems to have inspired the at times vaguely ridiculous attempts at ‘branding’ Easter 2016 as some sort of tourist marketing opportunity. The fearful approach encourages the bland, as the assumption seems to be that too much politics will frighten people off. This is ironic, since central to the current idea of commemoration is the very politically driven view that it must reflect the existence of ‘two traditions’ in Ireland and our ‘shared history’ with Britain. However this approach actually patronizes the people who lived on this island one hundred years ago, who were after all prepared to fight over their real and deeply held political beliefs. It is an idea embedded in the politics of commemorative trade-off, whereby nationalists get to celebrate Easter Week, Unionists to remember the Somme, and politicians, historians and civil servants congratulate each other on their maturity. The issues that deeply divided Irish people a century ago are simplified or glossed over and the role of Britain virtually ignored. That Ireland and Britain share a history is a historical fact but they did not share an equal history: only one was conquered by the other and only one became a global empire. Ultimately, and allowing for all the complexities and nuances that British rule in Ireland involved, in the last resort the Crown depended on force to hold this country. Attempting to commemorate 1916 and avoiding mentioning this lest it give offence will ultimately satisfy nobody.
Indeed some of the commentary about the danger of commemoration reminds me of the opinions of a man named John Joly. Joly was professor of civil engineering at Trinity College Dublin in 1916 and during the Rising was one of the staff and students who successfully secured the College for the British. A 20-year old member of the Irish Volunteers, Gerald Keogh, was shot dead at the bottom of Grafton Street by snipers from Trinity’s roof; New Zealanders as it happens. Keogh’s body was brought into Trinity and on seeing it, and Keogh’s youth, Joly pondered what had motivated Keogh; he concluded that it was ‘listening to the insane wickedness and folly preached by those older and who ought to be wiser than he’ that had led to the young man’s death. He speculated that Keogh was only carrying to its ‘logical conclusion the long crusade against English rule which for generations has kept peace from Irish hearts’ and concluded by asking ‘When will England appreciate the Irish temperament? When will our rulers learn that these rash and foolish sons of the Empire require quiet and resolute government, sane education, and protection from the fanatic and agitator, to whose poison they are at present exposed from their earliest years?’ The assertion of course was that it was rhetoric and propaganda (including that of Home Rulers) rather than any material reality that led people to take up arms. Much of the critical commentary today still seems to be predicated on the idea of saving people from themselves.
I want to suggest that we can have an intelligent and mature discussion on events 100 years ago; that we can and indeed should disagree with each other and that to gloss over these differences is actually unhistorical. After all our ancestors disagreed with each other profoundly 100 years ago and not just those who were on opposite sides. As it happens people who fought together in the Rising often disliked each other personably, while others who disagreed politically could remain on friendly terms; there were political and personal rivalries that were sometimes overcome but sometimes festered. We often forget that our ancestors were human and capable of changing their minds.
Tonight I’m also going to suggest a few areas where I think we might usefully discuss and possibly disagree about.
At the moment I’m working with a local group where I live, Cabra-Phibsborough, in Dublin on the Rising in that area. A couple of things have struck about what we have found out. (In the general histories what happened there gets a few lines at most, but of course once you start researching you find out much more).
The Volunteers had taken over two bridges around the North Circular Road on Easter Monday; these were retaken by the British Army on Tuesday 24th April- artillery was deployed (its first use) and several people killed. A couple more civilians were killed in Phibsborough by British troops over the next week, one a deaf man who was challenged to stop by a soldier, didn’t hear him, walked on and was shot dead. Now what’s interesting for me is that the regiment that re-took Phibsborough and occupied the area was the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and in the early stages of Easter Week most of the British troops engaged in fighting in Dublin seem to have been from Irish regiments.
Now of course there are two ways of looking at that. One is to take the shared history view; Irishmen on opposite sides again, the tragedy, the complexity etc…
But I think it also reflects a reality about Irish service in the British Empire’s forces that was summed up well by a man who was actually one of Sinn Féin’s few local representatives in Dublin in 1916, Sean T. O’Kelly. In 1924 O’Kelly addressed a meeting of Indian nationalists in New York and asserted that Irish people were ‘under deep obligation to work for India and for Egypt until both are free…we owe a deep debt to these countries, for has it not been largely by the work of Irish brains and Irish brawn and muscle that these two ancient peoples have been beaten into subjection and have been so long oppressed…Our Indian friends, could, if they wished, tell us many heart-rending stories of the brutalities practiced upon their peoples by English regiments bearing names such as Connaught Rangers, Munster Fusiliers, Dublin Fusiliers…Egypt has the same sad stories to tell to our disgrace. Until we Irish do something practical to make amends for the wrong doing … that shame will rest with us.’ But not only did Irish service in the Empire mean helping oppress India or Egypt, it ultimately as in 1916, meant holding Ireland itself.
This also reminds us however of a very positive effect of the Easter Rising; to subject peoples across the globe Ireland was a beacon, an example of resistance; (perhaps an anti-colonial tourist marketing opportunity there).
Something else struck me when doing this research however. The commander of the Volunteers in the area was a man called James (Seamus) O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan was a grocers assistant, originally from Cork but living in Phibsborough who joined the Volunteers in 1913. He organized across Ireland and in England. During 1916 he fought in GPO and took part in the final engagements in Moore St. He was sentenced to death, which was commuted to eight years in prison and served time in Dartmoor, Lewes and Portland Jails. He was released in June 1917. O’Sullivan was active in the IRA afterwards but was constrained by ill-health and though anti-Treaty took no active part in the Civil War. He married one of the Daly sisters from the Fenian family, moved to Limerick and became manager of Daly’s Bakery. He died in 1974.
Now what strikes me is that had O’Sullivan had been executed we would think about him in a completely different way; we would be poring every word written by or about him and ascribing all sorts of importance to him. There were 93 people sentenced to death after all, among them W.T. Cosgrave and Eamon de Valera.
It is perhaps impossible to think about these personalities or others without being influenced by their later careers but I think we should try; and also try not judge to 1916 through the lens of the Civil War (easier said than done of course). Try not to look for original sin; those involved in the Rising could not have predicted their future careers.
When it comes to the Rising itself I think an appraisal of how Easter Week fits into how we view republicanism and the way in which this state gained independence is overdue. Why is the Rising given far greater prominence than the general strike against conscription of April 1918 or that year’s December general election? Both of them involved far more people, and undermined British rule in ways that the Rising did not. As Brigid Foley of Cumman na mBan (one of the few women jailed in England after the Rising) asserted ‘it was really the anti-conscription movement that revived national feeling in the country and made the subsequent fight in ’19, 20, and ’21 possible. This solidarity brought about by the threat of conscription, to my mind, led to the success of the general election at the end of the year.’
But compare the number of books about 1916 to those on the 1918 general election or indeed about the conscription crisis.
Nothing, not even any engagement of the War of Independence, has attained anything like the glamour and romanticism of Easter Week. There are good and obvious reasons why that is the case. But I think an uncritical celebration of the Rising can lend itself to an elitist view of history, in which visionaries got the ball rolling and the masses, cowed and passive until that point, eventually awoke and fell in behind them. The reality was surely more complicated.
It is strange that variations of this view are often shared by both critics of the Rising and some republicans. Neo-Redmondites, nostalgic for an Ireland that never really existed suggest that the majority of nationalists were content to wait for the conclusion of the war and self-government; that it was only the Rising and the British reaction to it that produced support for republicanism. But some republicans also think that the mass of the Irish people were passive until awakened by the sacrifice of 1916. But as Joe Cahill asserted in Derry in 1976; ‘It didn’t matter that the vast majority of people opposed them and cursed them. They knew that the rightness of their cause would prevail, that people would change and one day praise and bless their deeds…indeed was this not just what happened?-the great resurgence which followed 1916; what is now called the four glorious years.’ For some this is a reassuring belief.
I think the story is more complicated. Was it the case that nationalist Ireland was content with Home Rule? And what did Home Rule mean to ordinary people? What was the Home Rule party promising?
Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, asserted at the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in May 1916 that ‘The spirit of what today is called Sinn Feinism is mainly composed of the old hatred and distrust of the British connection, always noticeable in all classes and in all places, varying in degree and finding different ways of expression, but always there, as the background of Irish politics and character.’ Indeed hostility to Britain was shared by most strands of Irish nationalism, including the Home Rule party.
In March 1912 over 100,000 people gathered in Dublin to welcome a new Home Rule bill. The Irish Independent described the ‘sea of faces extending away down the street below the Pillar’ as a band played ‘A Nation Once Again’ and how this was ‘taken up and sung with great enthusiasm by the occupants of the platform, the crowds in the street, and the people looking down from the windows, most of the men uncovering. It was followed by vociferous cheering.’ The deputy leader of the Home Rule party, John Dillon, then told the crowd that ‘we have undone, and are undoing the work of three centuries of confiscation and persecution…the holy soil of Ireland is passing back rapidly into the possession of the children of our race…and the work of Oliver Cromwell is nearly undone’ (Cheers and groans). Dillion concluded that they had finally ‘overthrown the most accursed and withering blight that ever cursed any country in the world.’
What does this say about nationalist expectations and the promise of Home Rule?
But by 1916, with Home Rule looking increasingly distant, the context of the war was crucial. Well before that conflict was over, most Irish people regretted that John Redmond had promised nationalist support for the war effort. As a song from 1915 first sung in Cork put it:
“Full steam ahead, John Redmond said and everything is well, chum
Home Rule will come when you are dead and buried out in Belgium.”
It was support for the war that fatally wounded Redmondism, not just the reaction to Easter 1916.
Anti-war sentiment was growing in Ireland well before then. As historian Keith Jeffrey suggests, there was a ‘progressive disenchantment with the war itself, and the growing feeling that the continued prosecution of England’s- or the Empire’s – war had little specific to offer Ireland.’ It is significant that most Home Rule MPs were clear from the beginning that conscription would not be tolerated in Ireland and many of them were far less enthusiastic recruiters than John Redmond. By 1915 the Catholic hierarchy, whose ability to monitor their flock’s feelings should not be underestimated, were also critical of the war.
In July 1915 Cardinal Logue had told an industrial exhibition in Dundalk that ‘the (British) government that killed their Irish industries, and forced the people to emigrate, were looking out for men to fight for them, and the men were not there to be got.’
In November 1915 Bishop O’Dwyer of Limerick famously denounced the treatment of Irish emigrants in Liverpool; ‘their crime is that they are not ready to die for England. Why should they? What have they or their forebears ever got from England that they should die for her?’
Ginger O’Connell of the Irish Volunteers recounted how the Bishop’s words were printed as a pamphlet and distributed nationwide; ‘a convenient length and in the Bishop’s customary manly and vigorous fashion…it had a terrific demand.’
So how isolated were separatists from mainstream nationalist opinion before 1916?
Indeed there is an intriguing account of and episode during the Rising which points the fluid nature of nationalist attitudes. Eamon Broy was a young policeman at Great Brunswick station in Dublin and during Easter Week he described how ‘several loyal citizens of the old Unionist type called to enquire why the British Army and the police had not already ejected the Sinn Féiners from the occupied buildings. Whilst a number of that type were present a big uniformed D.M.P. man, a Clare man, came in. He told us of having gone to his home in Donnybrook to assure himself of the safety of his family. He saw the British Army column which had landed at Kingstown marching through Donnybrook. “They were singing”, he said, “but the soldiers that came in by Ballsbridge didn’t do much singing. They ran into a few Irishmen who soon took the singing out of them”. We laughed at the loud way he said it and the effect on the loyalists present.’ (The policeman was referring to the devastating British losses at Mount Street Bridge). Here we have the police, agents of the crown, laughing at British losses and enjoying Unionist discomfort. What does that tell us?
So the post-Rising mood does not spring entirely from nowhere and this raises the question of what if the rebels had waited for wider radicalization to occur (as it surely would have). Because one thing the Rising did was kill off much of the republican leadership and many potential leaders.
There are those who will immediately label any criticism of the Rising as ‘revisionist.’ But there were no shortage of iconoclasts among the revolutionary generation. Kathleen Clarke could suggest that Padraig Pearse knew as much about commanding as her pet dog and Michael Collins would remember the rebellion as having an air of ‘Greek tragedy’ about it. It is actually possible to agree with the principle of armed resistance to British rule without thinking that the Rising was the only way to go about it.
The Easter Rising was the product of a conspiracy; most ordinary people could not take part, even if they had wanted to.
It was based on deceiving not only the authorities, but also the majority of the Irish Volunteers and quite a few members of the IRB. In contrast the plans for popular mobilization and guerilla war developed by Bulmer Hobson (in his pamphlet Defensive Warfare for example) were far closer to the tactics which between 1919-21 actually broke Britain’s will to remain in southern Ireland. But Hobson, regarded by British Intelligence as the ‘most dangerous man in Ireland’ spent the first days of the Rising under armed guard- not by British soldiers but by members of the IRB.
We might also, 100 years on, actually start to discuss what the Proclamation meant, instead of seeing it as a sacred document offering us readymade solutions to our contemporary ills. Seven men wrote the Proclamation. It was never discussed by the IRB, the Volunteers, the Citizen Army or any other group, and the first that most of those who took part in the Rising knew about it was when it was presented to them on Easter Monday. The Proclamation is in many ways a progressive document, (particularly in how it includes women as part of the nation) but it is less radical than a previous declaration of a republic, the IRB Proclamation of 1867. And this brings me onto the question of what we mean by republicanism in the context of 1916.
In 1867 the Fenians promised a republic with ‘absolute liberty of conscience, and the complete separation of Church and State.’ (Perhaps why Bishop Moriarty was so upset). This reflected a secular ethos than was often absent among republicans of the 1916 era, many of whom embraced Catholicism as part of their national identity. This is surely relevant to the type of society that developed after independence. Irish republican ideology was not static. The Fenian James Stephens could assert that ‘were England a republic battling for human freedom (and) Ireland leagued with despots … I should, unhesitatingly, take up arms against my native land.’ The Fenian manifestor proclaimed that they intended ‘no war against the people of England; our war is against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish…Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause. Our enemy is your enemy…as for the workmen of England, it is not only your hearts we wish, but your arms.’
But during 1913, in the context of the Lockout, Sean MacDiarmada would write to Joe McGarrity, 1913 that ‘socialism and the sympathetic strike are dangerous ruinous weapons in Ireland at the present time…all the talk about the friendliness of the English working man and the Brotherhood of man, the English food ships etc. have a very bad unnational influence…before the present trouble is ended the bogy (sic) of the “English working man” will have spent itself and all will have learned a lesson not to place their faith in the English working man anymore than in the English Lord.’
We can discuss the rights and wrongs of this but we must recognize that there is clearly a difference among what is being said in the 1860s and in the 1910s.
What did republicanism mean in 1916?
Michael Staines recalled a ‘meeting of the General Council of the Volunteers at Dawson St. shortly before the Rising, there was a discussion as to the reason we were declaring a Republic. I think it was Sean McDermott who pointed out that France, which had helped us in the past, was a Republic, and that America, where many of our kin were also a Republic. Those present at the meeting had an open mind-they desired freedom for the country and they considered the simplest way to let the outside world know of that desire was to declare a Republic. It was generally agreed that when we got our freedom it was solely a matter for the people themselves to decide their form of government.’
From another perspective J.J. O’Kelly, (Scelig) editor of the Catholic Bulletin and later a Sinn Féin TD recounted that he had ‘been reading from boyhood the history of the French Revolution and of the French Republic. I loathed it, and that was the feeling in my home. That was the feeling my father and mother and relatives had about Robespierre and the anti-Christian, inhuman excesses of the Revolution. Fortunately I formed a different opinion about the Republic of the United States that dethroned England-and in due course-influenced largely I may admit, by Cathal Brugha-I had no difficulty in swearing allegiance to the Irish Republic.’
In August 1917, Tom Ashe, president of the IRB and one of the heroes of the Rising (and soon to be republican martyr himself), spoke at Casement’s Fort at Ardfert, Co. Kerry. Ashe told the crowd that “we look away in the distant ages of the past to the figure of the King who died in the battle of Clontarf, and we think of the Ireland which he ruled; and the Ireland of our ideals is a similar one. We go down the paths of history from the days of the great Brian, and we meet the O’Neills of Ulster; we meet with the Chieftains of Munster; we go through the period of Shane O’Neill down to the days of the sacrifices of Wolfe Tone and of Robert Emmet…We had an honour from God-it was a Godly honour, and could not be called by any other name…. a few minutes ago when Captain Lynch recited the Rosary here before us…I was glad our meeting took place on a Sunday and you might merge your prayers in his. He read out the five Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary; the Mystery of the Resurrection and the Ascension, and it was meet and fitting that these should be the Mysteries of the Rosary that we prayed before Heaven today, because you will agree and everyone will agree, that the Resurrection has taken place in the life of Ireland; and let us pray that the Resurrection that has taken place in Ireland will never die.’
So for a popular audience separatism is presented as something going back to Brian Boru and is clearly infused with religious meaning.
Ashe then spoke of Roger Casement’s work in America prior to 1916 and asserted that ‘the Irish in America understanding what freedom means, and understanding that the only means of acquiring and protecting liberty and freedom, shoveled their dollars to Casement in order THAT IRELAND MIGHT BE PRESERVED FROM THE TYRANNY OF THE JEWS AND MONEYLENDERS OF LONDON WHO ARE AT PRESENT RUNNING THE WORLD WAR.’ (Capital letters in original).
Now this was the president of the IRB speaking; a brave man, certainly, a significant figure definitely, an Irish nationalist, yes of course, but a republican? Well it depends on your definition I suppose. And for many Ashe’s legacy was the hugely popular poem
‘Let me carry your cross for Ireland Lord’ which again presents Ireland’s cause as a religious one.
It is surely significant that during 1917 and 1918 ‘Faith and Fatherland’, which before 1916 was the slogan of the Hibernians- was now being used in representations of the 1916 leaders. And of course people sang about crowning ‘de Valera king of Ireland’….
At Ardfert Ashe also spoke about the importance of international recognition for the Republic. He stated that Casement’s work in Germany had ensured that ‘the Central Powers, publicly, are pledged to see, that, before peace is declared, and the peace conference is settled, in the new world that will exist after the present war, that Ireland will be one of the free nations of Europe.’ This was a key part of the republican message in 1917 and 1918 but often neglected today. Republicans asserted again and again that Ireland had to be given a place at the post-war peace conference and until the summer of 1918 at least, most believed that this would be after a German victory.
The Proclamation’s lines about ‘gallant allies in Europe’ are often casually dismissed as unimportant. Yet the Rising was taking place because it had been guaranteed aid from Britain’s enemies; and in return for that aid, Imperial Germany (or the ‘race at the head of Christian civilization’ as James Connolly once put it) would surely have wanted favours in return. The Rising’s leaders were pragmatic enough to know this. It is clear from reading the accounts of many who took part in the Rising that the promise or hope of German aid was crucial to their participation and to their morale.
Dublin Volunteer Joseph O’Connor reflected that ‘I knew that there would be a rising, and with outside help I thought it could be successful; I thought that every man would rush in to help… Our constant endeavour was to keep reminding our men what to do if, and when attacked, to continue our preparations to resist conscription and talk about what changes would happen when Germany won the war.’ William Christian, a young member of the Irish Volunteers at Mount Street Bridge in Dublin recalled speaking to one of his officers, Denis O’Donoghue about the latest news, and being informed that there ‘were 20,000 Germans marching to Dublin to help us and were due to arrive at any time. He did not know where they were marching from.’ Peig Conlon was at the GPO ‘on Wednesday morning (and) saw Connolly and Pearse sitting on mattresses in the main hall. We were talking to Connolly and told him we heard the Germans were coming up the Naas Road. He said no, and gave us to understand that we were beaten. We were heartbroken.’ And there are many examples of this during Easter Week. Most ordinary Volunteers did not believe they were going out to die- and they based their hopes of success, at least partially, on aid from Germany.
There is another feature of the Rising with which you will be familiar.
With Dublin in chaos on Easter Monday and the police off the streets, there was widespread looting. On Tuesday 25th April the republican asserted that ‘The Provisional Government hopes that its supporters-which means the vast bulk of the people of Dublin-will preserve order and self-restraint. Such looting as has already occurred has been done by hangers-on of the British Army. Ireland must keep her honour unsmirched.’ (Ironically General Maxwell claimed that the looting was done by supporters of the rebels). From the start of Easter Week until the surrender, rank and file rebels faced hostility, not just from looters, but from residents of inner-city Dublin.
And in the aftermath of the Rising there were numerous accounts like that of prisoner Garry Holohan; ‘we were again paraded out of the barracks towards the city. We got a rather coarse reception from the soldiers’ wives and the lower classes. It was very depressing.’ (There are examples of sympathy as well of course, but these seem fewer than the hostile ones).
Many of the descriptions of these clashes talk about the ‘rabble’ or the ‘mob.’ This should not surprise us in one sense, because class was a major dividing line in Irish society and obviously did not disappear during the Rising.
As Virginia Crossman explains of the 19th Century:
‘Irish people had a very clear idea of their place in society relative to other people, and the importance of maintaining this. If landowners tended to see all tenants as members of the lower classes broadly defined, middling and large tenant farmers regarded themselves as belonging to a very different social category from small tenants and labourers, and were anxious to enforce this sense of difference through adherence to concepts such as respectability. The poor, and more particularly the destitute, were regarded by the better off as almost beyond class…’
In the early 1900s the Irish-Irelander D.P. Moran complained that class distinction in Ireland was ‘ridiculously minute and acute.’
Republican Ernie O’Malley described how ‘In the towns tuppence-ha’penny looked down on tuppence, and throughout the country the grades in social difference were as numerous as the layers of an onion.’ A society very aware of where people belonged.
A feature of the years before and after the Rising were the number of clashes between urban crowds and supporters of the separatist movement. In general, republicans blamed these conflicts on those with relatives in the British army, the so-called ‘separation women.’ This helps contextualize the well-known examples of hostility encountered by the 1916 rebels in inner-city Dublin. In 1915 a Volunteer parade, made up of men from across Munster, was assailed as it paraded through Limerick’s lanes. Mick Quirke recounted how ‘we got an awful hiding … from the mob of the city, who used bottles, bricks and stones, and pots full of urine.’ Tom Clarke reputedly remarked that he had ‘always wondered why King William couldn’t take Limerick. I know now.’ Republican descriptions of their opponents emphasized their heavy drinking and unrespectable behaviour. Denis F. Madden claimed that in Waterford during 1918, ‘drink was flowing … to see that fanatical, separation-money mob, one could not help thinking what Daniel O’Connell thought when he said: “You should know the animals I was supposed to make a nation out of.”’ John Flanagan recalled of Ennis during the Clare by-election in 1917 that ‘the women were kept well plied with drink by a number of the publicans who were supporters of the Irish party and in their drunken condition they were a frenzied and ferocious crowd to deal with. On a couple of occasions the volunteers were obliged to use the ash plant in order to protect Sinn Féin supporters from being mauled by these infuriated females.’ Michael S. O’Mahony described those who clashed with republicans in Tullamore as ‘the rabble of the town- wives whose husbands were in the British army and people like that.’ Laurence Nugent explained how ‘the women and children in two districts of the town of Longford were very rough. There were also a goodly number of young men (roughs) who had not yet joined the British Army. The people here mentioned were in receipt of Separation Allowances. Their husbands (mostly tinkers or militia men) were in the British Army. These people were violent supporters of the I.P.P….’
Of course the problem is we have no account from ‘the rabble’ themselves; separation-women and ‘roughs’ did not leave diaries. They were written about by others but had no voice of their own. (In Britain at the same there were also many moral scares about these women). Republicans, in general, did not come from the same class as these people. Does the conflict tell us anything about attitudes to the urban working class in independent Ireland? It is interesting that commentary (often on social media) about contemporary republicans or protesters is sometimes couched in similar terms of contempt; John Drennan of the Sunday Independent writing about how Sinn Féin voters favour a diet of ‘Dutch Gold, batter burgers and chips’ for example. But this also tells us something about how the social base of republicanism in Ireland has changed over the last century.
Finally I would suggest that the men and women of 1916 can be honoured without being invoked to justify every cause we may ourselves endorse today. What do we know about the views of most of those who were ‘out’ in Easter Week? The majority of them were not poets or playwrights and left no manifestos outlining the type of society they envisaged. Significant numbers of those who took part in the Rising later supported either Cumann na nGaedheal or Fianna Fáil in independent Ireland. The two men who shaped the Free State in its first decades, W.T. Cosgrave and Eamon de Valera, were both 1916 veterans as indeed was Seán Lemass. Is it really credible to claim that all these people betrayed what they fought for? Certainly a minority of veterans thought so, but examining what the rank and file of the rebellion believed in 1916 and why they took up arms might provide different answers. Finding out who they were and where they came from could also enlighten us as to what they perceived ‘the Republic’ to mean. We may not agree with aspects of the Ireland that emerged after 1921 but we should not use the 1916 rebels as vessels into which to pour our own dreams.