Easter Rising 1916 - Ireland's New Beginning

It was Monday morning the 24^th April 1916, when Patrick Pearse stood outside the General Post Office on Dublin’s Sackville Street, and read a proclamation announcing the establishment of an Irish Republic under a provisional government. Few passersby paid attention to this announcement, little knowing that this was the beginning of a week of carnage in Dublin.

Many people in Ireland in the early 20^th century had employment and self preservation issues at the top of their priority list, with little time for ideological matters of Irish Freedom. In fact, thousands of Irishmen were already wearing the British Army uniform as they fought in the continental trenches of The Great War, simply to earn a salary for their families back home.

Among the seven signatories of Pearse’s Proclamation of Independence was James Connolly, head of the para-military Irish Citizen Army. On this Easter Monday across Dublin, armed men had taken over key points such as the Four Courts, the College of Surgeons overlooking St Stephen's Green, and Boland's Mills. It was Easter Monday, and there were few people in the centre of Dublin to witness the rising. Many British Army officers had gone to the Fairyhouse races.

Almost all the revolutionary leaders were members of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood. The outbreak of The Great War in Europe had persuaded them that in England's difficulties lay Ireland's opportunity. As earlier rebels had looked to France for help, they now turned to Germany, which promised to send arms. In addition to the small Irish Citizen Army, formed in 1913 to defend workers against police harassment, there were thousands of Irish Volunteers, a body formed in response to the Ulster Volunteer Force. Like the UVF, the Volunteers carried out a successful gun-running exploit, landing arms at Howth, in north county Dublin, a few days before war was declared.

The Volunteers had been infiltrated by members of the IRB, which had secretly fixed Easter Sunday as the date for the rising. The Volunteers' leader, Eoin MacNeill, only discovered the plan on 20 April. Two days later, he learned that a German ship bringing arms had been scuttled. Realising that a rising was doomed to failure, he cancelled all Volunteer manoeuvres. Despite this setback, and knowing that their forces would be limited to a modest number of Dublin Volunteers as well as the ICA, Pearse and Connolly decided that a rising must take place, if only as a 'blood sacrifice' to arouse the Irish people. 

And arouse the people, it most certainly did. When the rising efforts came to a close the following Saturday with the surrender of Pearse and his comrades, the people of Dublin were furious with the Irish volunteers and the destruction and disorder they brought to the city. However things changed dramatically on the 3^rd May, when the executions of the volunteers commenced in Kilmainham Gaol, west of the city.

There was a huge swing in favour of the Irish fighters who had now been martyred by the British government. Unrest in Ireland continued for many years, with people like Eamon DeValera and Michael Collins rising from the ashes of the Rising to lead Ireland to eventual freedom (in part) from British occupation in 1922. The fact that this was a partial victory brought with it a vicious Civil War as Ireland struggled to find it’s identity and maturity in the ever-changing face of the 20^thcentury.

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