tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/easter-rising-26256/articlesEaster Rising – The Conversation2019-12-02T14:28:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1280832019-12-02T14:28:45Z2019-12-02T14:28:45ZNancy Astor wasn’t the real first female MP – this woman was<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304690/original/file-20191202-66990-sqkk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C1997%2C1407&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Abstentionist Irish rebel MP Countess Markievicz, centre, on the night she was released from prison in 1919</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Ireland on The Commons </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/28/theresa-may-unveils-statue-of-pioneering-mp-nancy-astor">bronze statue was unveiled</a> outside of the former family home of Lady Nancy Astor in Plymouth in November, marking 100 years since she took her seat in parliament, many – <a href="https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1199958637134958592">including health secretary Matt Hancock</a> – were criticised for calling Astor Britain’s first female MP. This accolade, in fact, goes to Constance Markievicz, a Sinn Féin MP.</p>
<p>While Markievicz was certainly elected as a MP, she did not recognise the sovereignty of the British parliament in Ireland. As a result, she never took her seat in the House of Commons. From her own point of view, she would have been elected, not as a Member of Parliament to the House Commons, but instead as a Teachta Dála (Deputy) to Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Irish parliament). The <a href="https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/explainer-establishing-the-first-dail">Dáil was set up by Sinn Féin</a> after the 1918 general election as an Irish parliament that rejected British rule in Ireland, and instead presented itself as the legitimate governing body of the nation of Ireland. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304689/original/file-20191202-66982-kixfkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Countess Markievicz was born into the Anglo-Irish gentry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
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<p>In many ways, Markievicz was an unlikely revolutionary. She was born Constance Gore-Booth in London in 1868, to an Anglo-Irish gentry family. Her father, <a href="http://lissadellhouse.com/countess-markievicz/gore-booth-family/henry-gore-booth/">Sir Henry Gore Booth</a> was a baronet, a landowner and a famous arctic explorer. Markievicz grew up under the shadow of Benbulbin mountain in Lissadell House, in County Sligo in Ireland. The poet, William Butler Yeats, recalled meeting her and her sister Eva in a poem, describing them as: “Two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle.” </p>
<p>Markievicz yearned for a life outside the grand estates of Anglo-Ireland. She moved to Paris in 1893 and studied art at the Académie Julian. It was there, she met her husband Casimir Markievicz who she married in 1900 and moved to Dublin with. </p>
<h2>Irish revolutionary</h2>
<p>As historian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/10/vivid-faces-easter-rising-rf-foster-review">Roy Foster</a> noted, Dublin in the Edwardian era was an extraordinarily exciting place to live in. A variety of political, social and cultural movements were sweeping both the city and the wider Irish nation. Supporters of causes as diverse as socialism, feminism, republicanism, cultural revival, esoteric religion and vegetarianism all mixed and met in this time. </p>
<p>It was in this period that many of the networks that would be vital in the forthcoming Irish Revolution were formed. Markievicz herself struggled for female suffrage and Dublin’s trade unionists, culminating in her role in the bitter Dublin <a href="https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-dublin-1913-lockout/">Lock-out of 1913</a>, which saw 20,000 workers without work. Along with <a href="https://www.ictu.ie/equality/postcardsofpion/delialarkin.html">Delia Larkin</a>, the founding secretary of Irish Women Workers’ Union, Markievicz set up soup kitchens to help struggling families. </p>
<p>With the advent of war, Markievicz took up a post in the Irish Citizen Army, (an Irish socialist militia that unusually welcomed both men and women into its ranks) and prepared to take part in the Easter Rising in 1916. The rising proclaimed an Irish republic and saw fighting on the streets of Dublin for about a week, before being suppressed brutally by British forces. During the Easter Rising, it is believed that she <a href="http://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=aaschmedart">shot a policeman dead and wounded a British Army officer</a>.</p>
<p>The events of Easter week were a tremendous short-term failure for Ireland’s rebels. Markievicz was sentenced to death. However, on account of her gender, her sentence was commuted to life in prison. She was subsequently released in June 1917 as part of an amnesty. </p>
<p>After fighting for suffrage, in February 1918 she celebrated women winning the vote and put herself forward as a Sinn Féin candidate at the forthcoming general election. However, she was detained again as fears of a second Easter Rising grew. She subsequently ran her election campaign from HM Prison Holloway in London.</p>
<p>In spite of her incarceration, in December 1918 she was <a href="https://electionsireland.org/result.cfm?election=1918&cons=108">elected as a Sinn Féin MP</a> and was the first woman in Britain and Ireland to do so. She received her letter inviting her to parliament from Downing Street when she was still in prison but refused to take her seat along with 72 other Sinn Féin MPs – a practice that continues today.</p>
<h2>Second female minister</h2>
<p>Another historic distinction belongs to Markievicz: in 1919 she became the Government of Dáil Éireann’s minister for labour. This makes her the second female government minister in history (the first was <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/alexandra-kollontai">Alexandra Kollontai</a>, who was appointed a Commissar in the Russian Bolshevik government only two years previously). Her time as a government minister, however, did not last long.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304684/original/file-20191202-66982-s6lzd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Countess Markiewicz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Constance_Markiewicz#/media/File:Countess_Markiewicz.jpg">Getty / Hulton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Under the terms of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, Ireland would technically leave the United Kingdom but remain in the Empire, existing as the “Irish Free State” with the British monarch remaining head of state. Markievicz opposed this settlement as both a republican and committed anti-imperialist. </p>
<p>In the debates on the treaty in the Dáil, she expressed exasperation that one-time Irish republicans were entering willingly into a relationship that was similar to that repressing both India and Egypt. During the Irish Civil War between 1922 and 1923, fought between supporters and opponents of the treaty, Markievicz was a committed anti-treatyite. At the time, she published a series of extremely witty and acerbic cartoons of pro-treaty politicians entitled <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yournlireland/8740957924">Free State freaks</a>. </p>
<p>While she found herself on the losing side in the conflict, her political career continued right until she died. She devoted much of her final years to helping the poor of Dublin. In 1926, alongside her political ally, Éamon de Valera, she left Sinn Féin to found a new political party, Fianna Fáil. This party would go on to be one of the most successful political parties in the 20th century, coming first in every Irish election between 1932 and 2011. </p>
<p>Markievicz died in 1927, surrounded by her political allies and family. In Ireland, she is rightly remembered as one of the principal players of the Irish Revolution and one of the founders of the Irish state. She is much less well-known in Great Britain. In 2018, however, the Irish government <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43176232">donated a portrait of her</a> to the House of Commons, in recognition of her status as the true first female MP.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128083/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Ellis has received research funding from Queen's University Belfast, Teesside University, the British Association of Irish Studies and the Royal Historical Society.
He is a member of the Liberal Democrats and Amnesty International. </span></em></p>Irish Republican, socialist, suffragette and revolutionary, Countess Constance Markievicz was a fearsome politician who was the true first female member of the British parliament.Tim Ellis-Dale, Graduate Tutor and PhD Candidate in Irish History, Teesside UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/584482016-07-22T08:25:32Z2016-07-22T08:25:32ZWhat would a British revolution look like – and how would it happen?<p>In the days after Britain voted to leave the EU, a febrile, volatile atmosphere took hold. Prime Minister David Cameron <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-resignation-why-british-pm-david-cameron-had-to-go-61594">resigned</a>, the Parliamentary Labour Party <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-may-be-the-week-that-finally-breaks-the-labour-party-61693">began an attempt to unseat its left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn</a>, and the pound <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-shock-has-caused-a-sterling-crash-of-historic-proportions-heres-just-how-bad-it-is-for-the-pound-62191">hit an all-time low</a>. For a moment, it seemed that fundamental change was on the agenda – but as has happened so many times in Britain, the country stopped well short of a truly transformative moment. A British revolution, it seems, is not yet on the cards.</p>
<p>This is not all that surprising. Revolutions don’t come about on the back of raw anger or sheer will: all the necessary forces must come together, and certain conditions have to be in place. The crucial thing is for would-be revolutionaries to recognise them. So if we want to imagine a British revolution, we should look at what created the country’s last two near-revolutionary eras. </p>
<p>The first one began brewing in 1910, went through a brief intermission for the first two years of World War I, then picked up again from 1916, and came to a head in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/1919-BRITAIN-REVOLUTION-Chanie-Rosenberg/dp/0906224349">1919</a> as various crises and campaigns converged. The other ran from 1968 through to 1975 or so; it peaked in around <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Glorious_summer.html?id=0InVAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">1972</a>, with the Fisher-Bendix <a href="http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/07/20/british-factory-occupations-1970s">factory occupation</a>, a national <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/16/newsid_2757000/2757099.stm">miners’ strike</a>, a national <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/28/newsid_2496000/2496609.stm">dockers’ strike</a> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11985886/Bloody-Sunday-British-soldier-arrested-by-detectives-investigating-shootings.html">Bloody Sunday</a> all beginning or taking place in one month alone.</p>
<p>Both these restive periods came at moments of global upheaval that swept Britain up in a wider revolutionary wave. After World War I it <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pnLI8ooHHPgC&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=revolutions+of+1917-23&source=bl&ots=3tb8E_H15E&sig=91Ktgb2lpJQghAsaTQuLVqvg6eo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS8uLQu8jNAhUlDsAKHTuYBaMQ6AEIRTAG#v=onepage&q=revolutions%20of%201917-23&f=false">seemed briefly</a> as if Europe might follow Russia’s lead and embrace revolutionary socialist and anti-colonial politics; 1972, meanwhile, came halfway through the era bracketed by the French <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">“evenements” of May 1968</a> and the end of the <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/europe/portugal-honors-april-25-revolution-worlds-coolest-coup-n89666">Portuguese Revolution</a> in 1975.</p>
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<span class="caption">The Easter Proclamation of 1916.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEaster_Proclamation_of_1916.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>In Britain, these times drew together a range of different movements. George Dangerfield famously described the combined Home Rule crisis in Ireland, revolts of workers and the campaign for women’s suffrage before 1914 as signalling “<a href="http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/prospective-undergrads/virtual-classroom/secondary-source-exercises/sources-prime-ministers/sources-prime-ministers-dangerfield">the strange death of liberal England</a>”. After receding at the start of World War I, all three factors soon resurged, starting in 1916 with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-caused-irelands-easter-rising-57159">Easter Rising</a> in Dublin, the engineers’ <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/1919-BRITAIN-REVOLUTION-Chanie-Rosenberg/dp/0906224349">struggle against dilution</a> and the <a href="http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/higherscottishhistory/impactofthegreatwar/war_societyandculture/rentstrikes.asp">Glasgow rent strikes</a>.</p>
<p>In the late 1960s and early 1970s, meanwhile, Irish Republicanism, militant trade unionism and what was by then called radical women’s liberation were all in play, but accompanied by the anti-Vietnam War movement, new student and gay rights movements, and Britain’s first genuine revolutionary leftist movements since the Stalinist darkness fell in the late 1920s.</p>
<p>Finally, the events of both 1919 and 1972 were coloured by the struggles of trade unionists, whose mass strikes and occupations posed the biggest threat to the capitalist system. Even combined, the other forces involved did not amount to a comparable threat. </p>
<p>But with the assembled forces unable to seize state power – something that distinguishes all true revolutions – our rulers were able to restore control and secure lasting victories. The order established endures to this day.</p>
<p>So what prospect is there, really, for another revolutionary crisis in Britain?</p>
<h2>The stars align</h2>
<p>Some of the global conditions are clearly in place. As in 1968, we live in a faltering world economy; as in 1914, the UK is being battered by growing geopolitical instability and great power rivalry, with assorted conflicts and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/after-years-of-proxy-war-saudi-arabia-and-iran-are-finally-squaring-up-in-the-open-a6797001.html">proxy wars</a> underway – especially in the Middle East and North Africa. </p>
<p>There’s also a new factor: the existential threat of catastrophic man-made climate change, which many political theorists describe as <a href="http://thischangeseverything.org/">inevitable while capitalism continues</a>. Together, these three factors have produced another: mass migration and resulting human misery on a scale unseen since the end of World War II.</p>
<p>The next question, then, is whether Britain is actually primed for an epochal change. </p>
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<p>The shattering result of the EU referendum and its chaotic aftermath show that the British ruling class is deeply divided in a way that it wasn’t in 1919, or in even in 1972. And while the reign of neoliberalism has weakened the labour movement and enriched the wealth of the ruling elite and its hangers-on, it hasn’t restored profit rates on any consistent basis – and there’s no obvious alternative form of capitalist organisation to propose as a way of answering the mass discontent.</p>
<p>But if another revolutionary situation arises, it won’t be because everyone wakes up one morning with the intention of overthrowing the system; it’ll be because a significant minority of the population responds to a much more localised and specific attack on its interests.</p>
<h2>The spark</h2>
<p>The Leave vote confronts the political representatives of the British establishment with dire uncertainty. If they put a foot wrong or overplay their hand, they could overreach themselves beyond the point of retreat. </p>
<p>For the moment, it seems reasonable to assume that the Conservative party will hold the reins throughout the post-referendum chaos – but we can imagine the sort of miscalculation that might provide the spark. Perhaps restrictions on in-work benefits or healthcare could be extended not just to migrants but to “native” Britons who haven’t paid into the system for whatever reason. The NHS could face full privatisation. Britain could get involved in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/west-could-sleepwalk-into-a-doomsday-war-with-russia-its-time-to-wake-up-59936">war between Russia and the NATO states</a>.</p>
<p>The forces involved, though, might be very different from the UK’s last two revolutionary moments. Today, not just <a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-ireland-prepares-to-enter-a-post-brexit-quagmire-61590">Ireland</a> but also <a href="https://theconversation.com/scottish-independence-back-in-play-after-brexit-shock-with-a-note-of-caution-61457">Scotland</a> threatens the integrity of the union; among the oppressed, migrants are likely to be at the forefront of the struggle for rights. </p>
<p>The working class remains essential to any revolutionary project – not the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/14/brexit-farage-racist-backlash-immigration-eu-debate-racism-threat-minorities">caricatured “white working class”</a> supposedly in thrall to racism and xenophobia, but the actual multi-ethnic working class employed in call centres, shopping malls and transportation hubs across the country. This potentially revolutionary class is very different to the industrial proletariat of old; it incorporates a vast mass of private sector workers who aren’t currently in trade unions. </p>
<p>That rather changes the mechanics of what revolutionary mobilisation would mean. Mass unionisation is obviously one component, and also relevant here are the three sustained community-based mass mobilisations that have rocked Britain since the defeat of the miners in 1985: the campaign against the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/31/poll-tax-riots-25-years-ago-political-awakening-carnage-trafalgar-square">poll tax</a>” (1987-90), the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm">Iraq War</a> (2002-04), and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34256873">grassroots independence campaigns</a> “from below” in the Scottish Referendum (2014). </p>
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<p>But while the sort of self-organisation that arose at these moments is likely to re-emerge, we might also expect the process to involve such random explosive and damaging episodes as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/london-rioters-2011-anger-inequality-distrust-police">riots of 2011</a> – for which there are a great many competing explanations. </p>
<p>One thing is certain: the British capitalist state has entered a deep crisis, one that’s territorial, political and economic all at once. Revolution may not be a utopian solution – but it’s not hard to imagine a group or groups of dissenters deciding it’s the only way out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Davidson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK is in for a volatile few years, with no obvious calming measures in sight. But for a true revolution to happen, a great many stars would have to align.Neil Davidson, Lecturer in Sociology, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/593282016-05-12T13:12:49Z2016-05-12T13:12:49ZWhy has the British government raised the Irish terror threat level?<p>It has been 21 years since Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, voiced the famous soundbite that the IRA “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ira-has-not-gone-away-adams-warns-ministers-ira-has-not-gone-away-1596152.html">haven’t gone away, you know</a>”.</p>
<p>During two decades of relative peace in Northern Ireland, Irish republican violence has almost entirely fallen off the radar for the British public. Organisations such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have long since been seen to pose a far greater security risk.</p>
<p>Yet the UK home secretary, Theresa May, announced that the official <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/threat-levels">Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat</a> has been raised from moderate to substantial in Britain. In Northern Ireland, the threat is rated as “severe”. This means that an attack in Britain is seen as a “strong possibility” and in Northern Ireland, an attack is “highly likely”.</p>
<p>All this evokes memories of the dark days between the 1970s and 1990s when a ring of steel was erected around London and the IRA brought the battle across the water. However this throwback to past decades has not just appeared out of the blue. It has been shaped by a number of factors, both historical and contemporary.</p>
<p>The threat has been building up in Northern Ireland for a number of years. There have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-10866072">attacks on police and prison officers</a> and the security forces fear the emergence of a new dissident super-group that brings together the various republican factions. If such a group emerged it would then lay claim to being the authentic face of the Irish republican tradition rather than the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/northern_ireland/2001/provisional_ira/default.stm">Provisional IRA</a>. </p>
<p>Concern about this is particularly high in 2016. This year marks the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin – the armed insurrection against British rule that eventually paved the way for independence in 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties.</p>
<p>But it is also the date sold by Sinn Fein as the critical point in its <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/well-have-a-united-ireland-by-2016-says-mcguinness-25922555.html">contemporary ambitions for Irish reunification</a>. And through much of the 1990s and early 2000s this goal appeared to be semi-realistic, if ambitious. Sinn Fein, the main voice of Irish republicanism, was on the rise at a time when the Catholic population was increasing too. </p>
<p>At the very least Sinn Fein and many political commentators anticipated that by 2016 close to 50% of the vote would be republican/nationalist. However, this vote began to stall at around the 42% mark in the mid 2000s. In the recent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2016/northern_ireland/results">Northern Ireland Assembly</a> elections, held on May 5, it fell back to 36%. That’s the worst combined share of the vote for these parties since the early 1990s.</p>
<p>The slide is partly due to voter apathy, but there also appears to have been an increase in Catholics voting for the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2016-northern-ireland-36252478">Alliance Party</a>, which now has eight seats in parliament. This group deems itself to be neither unionist or nationalist and has never been hostile to the idea of Irish unification by consent. There has also been an increase in people voting for parties such as the Greens and the <a href="http://www.peoplebeforeprofit.ie/">People Before Profit Alliance</a>.</p>
<p>The main reason for the drift away from nationalism and republicanism, however, appears to be the failure of Sinn Fein and the SDLP (the other main nationalist party in NI) to present a clear vision that reflects the aspirations of voters. They have not offered much on either bread-and-butter issues or a realistic approach to unification.</p>
<p>This has possibly also acted as a spark for the dissidents whose vision has always been clear and brutal. They want an end to British government involvement in Ireland, and the right of self-determination for their people. They do not believe Sinn Fein’s strategy is working and are prepared to resort to violence to achieve reunification. They know very well that attacks in Britain will generate hysteria and division. Such attacks might also generate forms of repression that will harden attitudes among Northern Ireland’s Catholics, as happened in the 1970s after such events as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_pub_bombings">Guildford pub bombings</a>. </p>
<h2>Loss of support</h2>
<p>Times are different though. My own research due to be published later this year suggests relative happiness with the status quo of power sharing among today’s Northern Irish Catholics. It seems that although 80% of them, including some Alliance Party voters, still aspire to a united Ireland, they don’t want to see it happen through violence. There simply isn’t an appetite for violence or any immediate demand for unification among the Irish nationalist population, north or south of the border.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that within the tradition of physical force republicanism there is a belief that a mandate for violence is not required. They cling to those events of 1916, where an apathetic Irish population was roused into calling for independence after the British overreacted to the insurrection in Dublin. Maybe it is important, then, for the rest of Britain to heed the lessons of history too – and not overreact to the decision to raise the terror threat. </p>
<p>The solution will not be found in any ring of steel around London. It will have to be found in the long term by the political parties and the people of Northern Ireland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The home secretary has announced that the threat of terrorism related to Northern Ireland is now highly likely in Britain.Paul Breen, Senior lecturer, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/585862016-05-06T21:43:52Z2016-05-06T21:43:52ZThe Easter Rising 100 years on: how the Irish revolution fired up American politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121583/original/image-20160506-32047-etdljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dublin's General Post Office on fire after the 1916 Easter Rising. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kman999/159727615/in/photolist-bGM5fa-22j2ZU-f7Dsp-4rhbnF-edYKAK-ecDTJ9-o1CHuK-psS58u-dibRLV-Gmp1Cc-oqgJUU-otG2yb-9MYVE5-otFKRG-edYB94-FBsiRZ-5qjCvi-nUjqHP-nUfJyQ-edYyYV-5zt45o-edYyTc-4xQyP2-ee5g5W-5ogP5X-76xoxd-8NM9kq-FGMwyB-2jsj4v-psQ5Q2-pKgnXv-EK8anK-FJ6hP2-GwnTrB-gQrWg-gQrnX-6eCGo9-ee5e5y-7TvHBB-edYxxk-edYxAz-5zt4Yw-ee5mNq-edYziV-edYzyv-dodrLi-rn4kNK-ee5ebd-6fcVPd-ee5oNb">Kmann999</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 27, 1919, Marcus Garvey, the African-American nationalist then nearing the height of his influence, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520044562">rose to address a crowd</a> of almost 6,000 people who had come to dedicate Liberty Hall, on Harlem’s 138th Street, as the new headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). </p>
<p>The UNIA, which Garvey had originally founded five years earlier in his native Jamaica, had grown rapidly since its relocation to the United States. By the early 1920s, it had chapters in more than 30 American cities and African-American supporters that historians believe numbered in the millions. </p>
<p>Yet the major focus of Garvey’s speech on this particular occasion was not the African-American freedom struggle but the Irish one: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The time has come for the Negro race to offer up its martyrs upon the altar of liberty even as the Irish has given a long list from Robert Emmet to Roger Casement.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marcus Garvey (1887-1940).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a03567/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, the very name of the building that Garvey dedicated, “Liberty Hall,” reflected his admiration of this struggle. It was named after Dublin’s Liberty Hall, the site from which the 1916 Easter Rising had been launched. </p>
<p>How did this veneration of Ireland’s revolution in the U.S. come about?</p>
<h2>The American connection</h2>
<p>Over the last few months, the United States has been marking its connection to the Easter Rising of 100 years ago. </p>
<p>In a series of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/nyregion/a-celebration-in-song-and-dance-of-irelands-independence-and-culture.html">public celebrations</a>, <a href="http://1916.nd.edu/1916-the-irish-rebellion/">film screenings</a> and <a href="http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/object/ne.independentspiritsymposium">academic symposia</a>, we have learned about the many ways in which America influenced <a href="https://theconversation.com/ireland-in-1916-the-rising-the-war-and-controversial-commemorations-58121">the events</a> that took place in Dublin in Easter Week 1916.</p>
<p>Irish immigrants and their descendants (our “exiled children in America,” in the words of the <a href="https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/20century/topic_3_05/easter1916.htm">Proclamation of the Irish Republic</a>) played a leading part. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/1916_the_long_revolution/">supported revolutionary organizations and sent money</a> back to those who were planning the rebellion. At a deeper level, the United States – with its own revolution against the British Empire and a Declaration of Independence that the Irish Proclamation resembled in striking ways – provided a source of inspiration for many of the Rising’s leaders. </p>
<p>“No America. No Easter Rising,” the distinguished Irish historian <a href="http://www.irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/object/americaandeaster1916.html">Joe Lee</a> has stated. “Simple as that.”</p>
<p>But the influences and inspiration worked in the other direction as well, especially in the tumultuous years following the Easter Rising.</p>
<h2>How Irish republicanism inspired Americans</h2>
<p>As I have documented in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/irish-nationalists-in-america-9780195331776?cc=us&lang=en&">a recent book</a>, in the five short years between 1916 and 1921, revolutionary Irish republicanism became a mass movement of breathtaking proportions in the United States. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/archives/irish-american-diaspora-nationalism/">Friends of Irish Freedom</a>, formed in 1916 with the composer <a href="http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/bio/C290">Victor Herbert</a> at its helm, claimed nearly 300,000 members by 1919. Its later rival, the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, counted 700,000 members and had raised over US$10 million for the Irish republican movement by 1921.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leaders of the Friends of Irish Freedom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.29023/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/s/sclead/umich-scl-finerty?subview=standard;view=reslist">one veteran of the cause recalled</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sentiment in favor of the Irish Republic swept over this country so strongly that it was felt in every city and town in the nation. It permeated all walks of life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what were these “walks of life”? </p>
<p>One was the world of labor. This was hardly surprising given the concentration of Irish-Americans in working-class occupations and their prominent place in the leadership of many US trade unions – in fact, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Biographical_Dictionary_of_American_Labo.html?id=2WZmAAAAMAAJ">no less than a quarter</a> of all prominent labor leaders between 1830 and 1970 were Irish immigrants or their descendants. </p>
<p>The Irish-American-dominated <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Labor-Democratic-Diplomacy-1914-1924/dp/0801429056">Chicago Federation of Labor</a> was typical in denouncing “the domination of the Celtic people of Ireland by alien people and powers.” </p>
<p>Labor leaders were already suspicious of the growing drumbeat of U.S. opinion favoring entry into World War I. </p>
<p>Many of them believed that the so-called preparedness campaign was a smokescreen for a campaign against unions. The Easter Rising and its suppression only intensified their opposition to military intervention in support of Britain. </p>
<p>More surprising was the Easter Rising’s impact on American feminism.</p>
<h2>Impact on suffragists and African-Americans</h2>
<p>Inspired by the Irish Proclamation’s call for “equal rights and equal opportunities” and its endorsement of the principle of women’s suffrage – a full four years before American women obtained the vote – American suffragists and feminists like <a href="http://www.alicepaul.org/who-was-alice-paul/">Alice Paul</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-facts.html">Jane Addams</a> rallied to the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/irish-nationalists-in-america-9780195331776?cc=us&lang=en&">Irish cause</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pro-Irish independence demonstration in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b13575/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Irish-American women filled halls across the country for the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Irish_Republican_Women_in_America.html?id=ZLJnAAAAMAAJ">lecture tours</a> of high-profile Irish republican activists like <a href="http://womensmuseumofireland.ie/articles/hanna-sheehy-skeffington">Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/profiles/po10.shtml">Countess Constance Markievicz</a>. </p>
<p>Though the Irish Free State government that emerged in 1922 <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-got-involved-in-the-easter-rising-and-why-it-failed-them-55771">retreated</a> from the promise of gender equality announced in the Proclamation, that promise had a significant impact in encouraging American women’s support of the Irish revolution.</p>
<p>Most surprising of all in light of the deep currents of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Irish-History-Studies-Modern/dp/058227818X">anti-black racism</a> that ran through the history of the Irish in America was the enthusiasm of Marcus Garvey and other African-American protest leaders for the Irish cause. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marcus Garvey commemorated in New Orleans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/howieluvzus/1599511297/in/photolist-3rkUYZ-5CT2Ki-8z6psq-ecdrGH-ecj64U-62ZWbd-ecdrE2-5YZiT8-n9WNJ-A4mQLY-n9Sn3-n9UNe-n9Tiz-n9U9V-n9VTA-n9WNB-oEfC1h-oG3bk2-oG3bua-oG3bJD-oE1DJK-onMKdk-onMSMh-oG3bqT-oG3bn6-onMRNJ-onMJN2-onNner-oE4H7d-oEhiZX-oG3bMp-oEhiiX-oEfCVJ-oG3byi-wiNBtG-oG3brK-oCfwLA-oE1DFD-onMKhD-oCfwHj-onMxmq-oG3aBD-onMSNu-oEhixK-oG3bti-onMKht-oCfwSY-onMxJj-oCfwy1-oEhipD">Mark Gsthohl</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.upne.com/0819564699.html">Hubert Harrison</a>, the intellectual and activist sometimes described as “the father of Harlem radicalism,” built on the work of the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, in his 1917 campaign to increase black electoral representation. </p>
<p>When he organized the secret African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption two years later, <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-8827.html">Cyril Briggs</a> drew explicitly on the model of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, which had been at the center of the Easter Rising. </p>
<p>In February 1921, Briggs hailed “the Irish fight for liberty” as “the greatest epic of modern times and a sight to inspire to emulation all oppressed groups.” </p>
<p>Briggs’ words, like those of Marcus Garvey, point to the most far-reaching significance of the Easter Rising. It provided a deep source of inspiration to a range of other “oppressed groups,” in America <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719081712/">and beyond</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58586/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brundage has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Irish American Cultural Institute.</span></em></p>Irish immigrants and their descendants played a leading part in the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland’s subsequent rebellion. But the inspiration worked in the other direction as well.David Brundage, Professor and Graduate Program Director, History Department , University of California, Santa CruzLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/581212016-04-26T10:01:34Z2016-04-26T10:01:34ZIreland in 1916: the Rising, the War and controversial commemorations<p>This week marks the centennial of the Easter Rising – the armed insurrection that would trigger nationalist Ireland’s final battle for independence from Great Britain.</p>
<p>The first of July will mark another centennial, that of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in human history, in which over <a href="http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Historical_Information/1916_Commemorations/Irish_Soldiers_in_the_Battle_of_the_Somme.html">3,500 Irish soldiers</a> were killed. </p>
<p>For 100 years, the Rising has occupied center stage in the historical memory making of republican Ireland and the global Irish diaspora. But the role of Irish soldiers in World War I had been all but forgotten – until now. </p>
<p>As a historian of Ireland and the British Empire, I seek to understand not only these events themselves, but also the discrepancies in the ways they have been studied and remembered. </p>
<p>Why has it taken so long to see their interconnections?</p>
<h2>The Rising that shook the empire</h2>
<p><a href="https://profilebooks.com/a-nation-and-not-a-rabble.html">On April 24, 1916,</a> a band of radical republicans forcibly seized and held key positions in Dublin. </p>
<p>Frustrated by the failure of Britain to implement Home Rule – a form of devolved self-government, not unlike what Scottish “Yes” voters <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/world/europe/scotland-independence-vote.html?_r=0">sought </a> in 2014 – as well as by the Irish majority’s seeming contentment to remain within the United Kingdom, the rebels sought to awaken the Irish nation and wrest the country from Britain’s imperial grasp.</p>
<p>It was an opportune moment, the rebels reasoned. Britain was otherwise engaged – in fighting World War I, or what would become known as the “Great War” because it was quickly becoming the biggest and most horrendous war the world had ever seen. </p>
<p>The rebellion, at least in the immediate term, was a failure. </p>
<p>Inadequately armed with outdated weapons and vastly outnumbered, the rebels were no match for the British Goliath. They held out against the British counterassault for only six days. The leaders were quickly executed. Approximately, 1,800 Irish men and women were detained in prison camps in Britain. The Irish public failed to lend the rebels their support. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120101/original/image-20160425-22360-13s2os6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dublin’s General Post Office after the Rising.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Life_goes_on..._(6937669789).jpg">National Library of Ireland</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, the Easter Rising became the catalyst for Ireland’s final, successful struggle to extract itself from the union and the empire. </p>
<p>Due in large part to Britain’s heavy-handed response, the Rising helped spark the Irish War of Independence, which culminated in the partition of the island of Ireland and, ultimately, in the establishment of <a href="http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1948/act/22/enacted/en/html">the Republic in 1948</a>.</p>
<h2>Remembering the Rising</h2>
<p>For the last century, the Rising has been the subject of countless acts of remembering. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials?warId=8">Memorials</a> to those who sacrificed themselves for national independence pepper the cities and counties of Ireland. </p>
<p>Creative artists working in wide-ranging media have found fertile ground in its tragic heroism. </p>
<p>Poets, including those among the rebels themselves, have memorialized its events and protagonists in verse, the most famous of which was penned at the time by <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/soundings/easter.htm">W.B. Yeats:</a> </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> I write it out in a verse
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
</code></pre>
<p>This year, extravagant productions combining song, verse, image and dance are celebrating the Irish “Spirit of Freedom” at home and abroad, performing, for example, at <a href="http://www.celticnights.ie/tour-dates/">56 venues</a> across North America. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PHImMYutwCo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.sundance.tv/series/rebellion/blog/2015/10/sundancetv-to-co-produce-five-part-series-rebellion">Rebellion</a>, a new TV miniseries, a three part <a href="https://1916.nd.edu/">Irish-American documentary</a> and a feature film, <a href="http://www.therising.ie">“The Rising,”</a> all portray the Easter Rising on screen. </p>
<p>In terms of official commemoration, the Easter Rising stands as the <a href="http://www.ireland.ie">centerpiece</a> of the Irish Republic’s ongoing <a href="http://www.decadeofcentenaries.com">“Decade of Centenaries,”</a> an extensive program of public and private commemorations of the landmark events that occurred between 1912 and 1922. </p>
<p>In many ways, the emphasis on the Easter Rising is appropriate. As the nonpartisan <a href="http://www.decadeofcentenaries.com/initial-statement-by-advisory-group-on-centenary-commemorations/">Advisory Group on Centenary Commemorations</a> acknowledges, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the State should not be expected to be neutral about its own existence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But with so much focus on the dramatic events of the Rebellion, it is easy to lose sight of some of the fundamental complexities of Irish history, in particular the fact that hundreds of thousands of Irish were fighting on behalf of the very empire against which the Easter Rebels took their stand. </p>
<h2>Forgetting the war</h2>
<p>Historian David Fitzpatrick <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/bo/academic/subjects/history/british-history-general-interest/military-history-ireland">estimates</a> that there were 58,000 Irish soldiers, officers and reservists already serving in the British Army and Royal Navy when the war broke out in 1914. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120079/original/image-20160425-22364-tb6go3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A World War I recruiting poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWI_Irish_recruiting_poster_LOC_cph.3g10979.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A further 148,000 Irish recruits joined up during the war. British Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener created three “Irish Divisions” – the 36th (Ulster) Division for unionists and the 10th (Irish) and 16th (Irish) Division for nationalists. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.historytoday.com/richard-s-grayson/first-world-war-when-enemies-united">Irish soldiers</a> fought, suffered injuries and died in all the theaters of the war, from Gallipoli to Nablus. By the end of the war, unionists and nationalists, Protestants and Catholics, were fighting side by side. </p>
<p>However, for most of the 20th century, Irish participation in the Great War was an unapproachable topic within the Republic of Ireland. </p>
<p>Memorials in Dublin’s Catholic churches were hidden away. The <a href="http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/dublin/warmemorialgardens/">Irish National War Memorial Gardens</a> were established only in 1948. They were the target of Republican bombs and allowed to fall into a dilapidated state. </p>
<p>Even among professional historians – both Irish and British – the subject of the involvement of Irish men and women in the First World War received scant attention, especially when compared to the extensive scholarship concerning the Easter Rising.</p>
<p>As Irish President Michael Higgins <a href="http://www.president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/keynote-address-by-president-michael-d.-higgins-at-the-theatre-of-memory-sy">recently observed</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For years the First World War has stood as a blank space in memory for many Irish people – an unspoken gap in the official narratives of this state. Thousands of Irish war dead were erased from official history, denied recognition, because they did not fit the nationalist myth and its “canonical” lines of memory.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Intertwined history’ and ‘ethical remembering’</h2>
<p>This state of affairs is finally starting to change although, of course, exactly what to remember and how to remember it have generated controversy. </p>
<p>This state of affairs has finally started to change. Of course, given that grappling with Irish participation in the war presents “difficult truths”, exactly what to remember and how to remember it have generated controversy.</p>
<p>In 2010, then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen delivered <a href="http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/News/Archives/2010/Taoiseach's_Speeches_2010/%22A_Decade_of_Commemorations_Commemorating_Our_Shared_History%22_Speech_by_An_Taoiseach,_Mr_Brian_Cowen_TD_Institute_for_British_Irish_Studies_UCD,_20_May_2010_at_11_00am.html">a speech</a> in which he expressed deep sadness over</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the two parts of the island losing touch with each other and with our shared heritage. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cowen urged the recovery of shared interests, perspectives, and history – not only between the Republic and Northern Ireland but also, more widely, between the peoples of Ireland and Great Britain. </p>
<p>Queen Elizabeth’s <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/galleries/2014/0408/607419-queen-elizabeth-in-ireland/">2011 state visit </a>to Ireland and President Higgins’ <a href="https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/great-britain/news-and-events/2014/historic-first-state-visit-to-the-uk/">visit to Britain</a> in 2014 – the first ever by an Irish head of state – were seen as promoting this way of remembering. </p>
<p>The notion of “shared history,” however, generated <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/many-are-annoyed-at-idea-of-a-royal-presence-in-dublin-2016-in-context-of-a-shared-history-1.1788712">understandable criticism</a>. It appeared to gloss over centuries of Irish oppression at the hands of the British as well as the extreme enmity and violence between nationalists and unionists for most of the 20th century. The Troubles alone <a href="http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html">cost</a> 3,489 lives between 1969 and 1998. </p>
<p>What offers more promise are alternative ways of remembering such as “intertwined histories” and “ethical remembering.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.historytoday.com/john-gibney/ireland-easter-rising-or-great-war">“Intertwined history”</a> maintains the distinctions between unionist and nationalist, North and South, British and Irish but it acknowledges their histories as inextricably linked.</p>
<p>In a 2012 editorial remembering the Ulstermen’s 1912 rebellion in the cause of union with Great Britain, the <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/by-all-means-necessary-1.540996">Irish Times asked:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can we find with the passage of time, in our growing understanding of the interconnectedness of our stories, in the sense that each plays into the other, transforming it in turn, a means of celebrating our different narratives?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Ethical remembering” is President Higgins’ term for how the Irish should be approaching their histories. <a href="http://www.president.ie/en/the-president/michael-d-higgins">Higgins</a>, who is not only a politician but also a scholar and a poet, has become a tireless advocate for more sensitive, accurate and inclusive ways of remembering.</p>
<p>At the Abbey Theatre’s <a href="https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/behind-the-scenes/backstage-blogs/the-theatre-of-memory-symposium-review/president-michael-d-higgins-opens-the-theatre-of-memory-symposium/">Theatre of Memory Symposium</a>, he proposed the occasion of the centenaries as an opportunity “to re-appropriate the repressed parts of our history, to include in our narratives the forgotten voices and lost stories of the past.” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such a project must involve, he argues, a reliance on the work of professional historians as well as an appreciation for historical complexity and a willingness </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to examine more closely the entanglements between the Easter Rising and the Somme and the great dilemmas of those who were involved in these respective events. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>First steps</h2>
<p>There is, in fact, already evidence of the Republic’s commitment to these alternative strategies for remembering. </p>
<p>In 1998, the Irish government helped sponsor the building of the <a href="http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/memorial-island-of-ireland-peace-park.htm">Island of Ireland Peace Park</a> in Messines, Belgium to commemorate the soldiers of Ireland who died, were injured, or went missing during the Great War.</p>
<p>In 2006, the government finally held <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1522946/Ceremony-remembers-Great-Wars-Irish-dead-of-WW1.html">an official commemoration ceremony</a> for Ireland’s Great War dead. </p>
<p>The official <a href="http://www.decadeofcentenaries.com">Decade of Centenaries Programme</a> includes many events exploring and commemorating all aspects of the war. Perhaps most significantly, many of Ireland’s prominent cultural institutions, such as the national broadcaster <a href="http://www.rte.ie/worldwar1/">RTE</a> and the <a href="http://www.nli.ie/WWI/">National Library of Ireland</a>, have embraced their role as custodians of Great War documents and memories and developed impressive websites devoted to providing public access to a wide range of primary sources.</p>
<p>It is a hopeful sign for Ireland’s future that it now seems possible thanks in large part to the peace process of the 1990s, recent scholarship and Irish leaders like President Higgins – to appreciate the intertwined histories of Irish republicanism and of Irish association with the British Empire. </p>
<p>The true test of Ireland’s commitment to “ethical remembering”, however, is on the horizon, when the centennial of the Irish Civil War arrives in 2022.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Harland-Jacobs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For 100 years, the Easter Rising has occupied center stage in the memory making of republican Ireland. But the role of Irish soldiers in World War I had been all but forgotten – until now.Jessica Harland-Jacobs, Associate Professor, History , University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577232016-04-22T03:53:20Z2016-04-22T03:53:20ZBetrayal and guilt: past and future collide in Easter Rising commemorations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118646/original/image-20160414-4670-w8paqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Irish government is presented with a difficult task of how to commemorate the Easter Rising, 100 years on.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. A schoolteacher (also sometime poet and short-story writer) in improvised military uniform stands on the steps of Dublin’s GPO and reads aloud a <a href="http://www.firstdail.com/?page_id=75">single-page document</a>. Addressed to “Irishmen and Irishwomen”, the document proclaims the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Irish republic as a sovereign independent state. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The proclamation’s audacious present tense claims its authority from a deep past:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the name of God and the dead generations. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Betrayed rebels of the past would be vindicated. Ireland’s potential would be realised – finally. </p>
<p>The teacher, Patrick Pearse, then steps inside the post office accompanied by other leaders of what comes to be known as the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/british-history/easter-rising">Easter Rising</a>. Together with about 1,200 nationalists and republican trade unionists they barricade the doors and wait for the outbreak of the future. </p>
<p>By mid-May the seven men who had signed the proclamation are dead, executed along with eight other rebel leaders. Also among the dead are 132 police and soldiers, 64 insurgents and about 230 ordinary citizens of Dublin. </p>
<p>The future that unfolded was more violence, extending to the various betrayals that followed in the war of independence and the subsequent civil war.</p>
<h2>A new Ireland?</h2>
<p>In this centenary year, the Irish government is presented with a difficult task of commemoration: blending pride in the modern nation-state with uneasy feelings about the legacy of foundational violence and political hope. </p>
<p>The government <a href="http://www.decadeofcentenaries.com/initial-statement-by-advisory-group-on-centenary-commemorations/">claims</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The commemoration will be measured and reflective, and will be informed by a full acknowledgement of the complexity of historical events and their legacy, of the multiple readings of history, and of the multiple identities and traditions that are part of the Irish historical experience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This even-handed and pluralistic tone reflects the liberal-minded modern Ireland that <a href="https://theconversation.com/another-ireland-is-born-its-a-big-yes-to-marriage-equality-42298">endorsed same-sex marriage</a> by plebiscite. It is a language that also accommodates Ireland’s own history wars of the 1990s, in which the legacy of nationalism was critically re-evaluated by public intellectuals such as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/easter-rising-century-ireland-1916">Fintan O’Toole</a> and “revisionist” historians such as <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/pitfalls-on-the-road-to-the-rising/">Roy Foster</a>. </p>
<p>This critique was not merely the concern of Irish Times journalists or Oxford dons. It was part of a popular change running through Irish culture. Remember The Cranberries song from 1994 that transposed Pearse’s “dead generations” to “zombies”? It spoke of “the same old theme since 1916”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Cranberries’ Zombie.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Betrayal and guilt called out</h2>
<p>Often it has been Ireland’s writers and artists who have called out the hopes and failures of national politics, holding the polity to account in the culture.</p>
<p>The critique of nationalism gained particular momentum in the 1990s, largely in response to the seemingly intractable violence in Northern Ireland. But the cultural response directly after 1916 started a process of reappraisal even at the point of origin.</p>
<p>Mythologising the revolution was always accompanied by a vigorous de-mythologising. Through the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, writers like Sean O’Casey, Frank O’Connor and Francis Stuart kept a critical eye on 1916’s legacy. </p>
<p>O’Connor, who fought in the Irish war of independence, presents the terrible ambivalence of national identity, hospitality and violence in his 1931 short story <a href="http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/maddendw/The-Oxford-Book-of-Short-Stories_29GuestsoftheNation.pdf">Guests of the Nation</a>. The story provides such a rich exploration of betrayal that it was able to be reinterpreted to include questions of sexual secrecy and gender identity in Neil Jordan’s film adaptation, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104036/">The Crying Game</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Crying Game was in part based on a short story by Frank O'Connor.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The motif of betrayal that runs between the writers of the early 20th century and those of the 1990s continues into the present. Gerry Smyth <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719088537/">argues</a> that by the second decade of the 21st century:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the words ‘Irish’ and ‘betrayal’ had become closely linked – one never too far from the other when questions of identity, meaning or value were at issue. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Smyth follows the Irish cultural traces of betrayal in the works of key novelists from James Joyce to Anne Enright. The manifestations of betrayal shift through political and personal duplicities, arriving at Enright’s presentation of child abuse in her 2007 novel <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/apr/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview17">The Gathering</a>. </p>
<p>The state, the Catholic Church and the postcolonial national ideal are all indicted in the betrayal Enright narrates. As Smyth concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The abused child […] stands as the archetypical figure for a society in which past, present and future are entered in a seemingly unbreakable cycle of betrayal and guilt.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since 2008, Irish betrayal and guilt have also resided in the financial and state institutions that precipitated the economic crisis, which continues to mar life in Ireland. Paul Murray has, with dark humour, chronicled the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger in his novels <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/06/skippy-dies-paul-murray">Skippy Dies</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/22/the-mark-and-the-void-by-paul-murray-review">The Mark and the Void</a>. </p>
<p>The latter, set in post-crisis Dublin, contains a Joycean page-long list of descriptors for “the Irish”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… their books, saints, tickets to Australia, their building-site countryside, their radioactive sea, their crisps, bars, Lucozade, their tattoos, their overpriced wine and mediocre restaurants, their dreams, their children, their mistakes, their punching-bag history, their bankrupt state and their inveterate difference.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After the promise of a couple of decades of prosperity at the end of the 20th century, the disappointment of a return to austerity and emigration casts Ireland’s current betrayal as a weary historical repetition.</p>
<p>So, the 1916 commemorations are attempting to reconcile an assortment of historical betrayals and contemporary disappointments, alongside the state-sponsored celebration of national achievements. The national memory is being manoeuvred around the current sense that both church and state betrayed the Irish people. </p>
<p>Likewise, the Republic’s violent birth is difficult to square with a liberal 21st-century Ireland, bemused by the fervour of early-20th-century ideology and afraid that the violence, after 100 years, is even now not quite locked safely in the past. </p>
<p>These old and recent betrayals combine in the commemorations of 1916, inevitably pointing to so many unrealised futures. On the post-office steps in 1916, Pearse proclaimed the Republic’s resolve to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation […] cherishing all the children of the nation equally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Ireland’s writers continue to show, Ireland in 2016 is not yet in the future Pearse thought had arrived a century ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57723/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ryan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Often it has been Ireland’s writers and artists that have called out the hopes and failures of national politics, holding the polity to account in the culture.Matthew Ryan, Lecturer in Literature, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/534092016-04-21T09:24:06Z2016-04-21T09:24:06ZHow World War I contributed to the Easter Rising<p>We are currently in the midst of Ireland’s “<a href="http://www.decadeofcentenaries.com/">Decade of Centenaries</a>”, a period which commemorates the Third Home Rule Bill, World War I, the Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence, partition and creation of the Northern Ireland state, and the Irish Civil War. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/easter-rising">The Easter Rising</a>, which began on April 24 1916 – which then fell on Easter Monday – took place in the middle of one of the worst wars the world had yet seen, and at a time when the allied powers were under increased stain and pressure. How both events are tied to one another has meant that Irish participation in World War I has, until very recently, been surrounded by a form of “collective amnesia”. This is principally because Irish support for the war does not sit well with an identity characterised by Irish resistance to British repression. But this perspective tends to ignore the fact that around <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/05/irish-soldiers-who-fought-for-britain">200,000 Irishmen served in the British army</a> during World War I.</p>
<p>The centenary of the Easter Rising is a defining moment in the history of the Irish Republic. We do not intend to take away from that fact. But the events of Easter 1916 already have a high degree of myth surrounding them and these events risk being hijacked for political gain. Members of dissident republican groups frequently claim some sort of historical legitimacy from the legacy of the rising. So it’s good to remind ourselves how World War I fostered the events of Easter 1916.</p>
<h2>A just cause?</h2>
<p>As historian Roy Foster <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/pitfalls-on-the-road-to-the-rising/">describes</a>, the Easter Rising was staged by a “minority of a minority”. Mainstream Irish nationalists, led by John Redmond, had supported the British war effort. Redmond saw the British war effort as a just cause and nationalists made much of the “rape of Belgium” by German forces, identifying as they did with a small, independent, Catholic state. While this support varied regionally, it’s worth noting that Irish Catholics and Protestants living in Belfast were as likely as each other to enlist in the British army. Indeed, the Irish National Volunteers, a paramilitary group set up to support Home Rule, provided the bulk of recruits for the 16th (Irish) Division. </p>
<p>But Redmond’s policy did not receive uniform support within nationalist ranks: a number of MPs in his own party were rather lukewarm in their support. The first major challenge to his authority came in late September 1914, by which time the Irish National Volunteers numbered around <a href="http://www.royalulsterconstabulary.org/history1.htm">180,000 men</a>. A splinter group of around 12,000 broke away from Redmond into an organisation known as the Irish Volunteers. This group, led by Eoin MacNeill, believed that Irish Volunteers should not seek service under a “foreign government”. But MacNeill, and most of his supporters, should not be regarded as hot blooded revolutionaries. For MacNeill, a rebellion would only be justified if and only if the British government tried to suppress the Irish Volunteers, or attempted to enforce conscription in Ireland.</p>
<p>But there was a revolutionary element within the Irish Volunteer movement. This was the Irish Republican Brotherhood (also known as the Fenian movement) led by Tom Clarke. This group believed that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” and held that it was vital to stage a rebellion during World War I while British troops were committed elsewhere. Another key element in the rising was James Connolly’s <a href="http://www.1916rising.com/pic_ica.html">Irish Citizen Army</a> (ICA), a socialist movement which numbered around 200 men by April 1916. </p>
<h2>When the cat’s away</h2>
<p>The revolutionary element within the Irish Volunteers had planned the Rising for Easter Sunday 1916 (April 23) when, under cover of an Irish Volunteer exercise in Dublin, a rebellion would be launched, bringing in the whole of the Irish Volunteer movement in Dublin (around 4,000 men) and acting as the signal for a national uprising. But MacNeill discovered this conspiracy and issued a countermanding order which meant that, when the Easter Rising commenced on Easter Monday in 1916, barely 1,000 Irish Volunteers turned out, along with 200 members of the ICA. Not one of the signatories of the proclamation of the republic had stood in a local or general election in Ireland, much less secured any mandate.</p>
<p>The Rising caught British forces in Dublin unawares. But reserve battalions of the Irish Regiments of the British Army in the Dublin garrison quickly mobilised to contain it before major reinforcements arrived from England. It was <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/1916/the-victims/whose-fault-were-the-civilian-casualties-in-1916-34563888.html">Captain JC Bowen-Colthurst</a>, an Irishman, who was responsible for some of the worst British Army atrocities of Easter week 1916, ordering the shooting at least four unarmed civilians.</p>
<p>During the rebellion itself rebels received little support from the Dublin population as a whole. The decision to seize the General Post Office meant that rebels were confronted by crowds of “separation women”; wives of serving soldiers who received an allowance paid through the Post Office, who made their views of the rebels clear. When the rebels surrendered on April 29 they were jeered and spat on by crowds, who held them responsible for the destruction of central Dublin, which had been shelled by the British forces.</p>
<p>But the British government’s botched handling of the aftermath of the Rising, with secret courts martial, a prolonging of martial law and execution of <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/easter-rising-1916-the-aftermath-arrests-and-executions-1.2583019">15 rebels identified as ringleaders</a>, soon served to change Irish public opinion. And in the 1918 general election, Sinn Féin, which identified itself closely with the actions of the rebels of 1916, swept the board outside the six north-eastern counties of Ireland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Irish participation in World War I has been surrounded by a form of “collective amnesia” – largely because of the part the war played in the Easter Rising.William Butler, Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History, University of KentTimothy Bowman, Senior Lecturer in History, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/557712016-04-18T12:32:24Z2016-04-18T12:32:24ZHow women got involved in the Easter Rising – and why it failed them<p>For six days between April 24 and 29 1916, a group of about 3,000 Irish republicans occupied landmark buildings in Dublin city, until forced to surrender as a result of heavy shelling by British forces. This was the Easter Rising, a rebellion in which about 250 women appear to have taken part.</p>
<p>Most were members of either <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/profiles/po13.shtml"><em>Cumann na mBan</em></a> (the League of Women), the female auxiliary organisation to the principal rebel force, the Irish Volunteers. Others were members of the working-class militia, the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), led by James Connolly. These included Connolly’s daughters, Nora and Ina, although he ensured their safety by sending them away from the epicentre of the rebellion to mobilise volunteers in County Tyrone. Like the Connolly sisters, many women who took part in the Rising were the female relatives of rebels. Conversely, some had brothers serving alongside the British in World War I. </p>
<p>No women rebels were killed, but the ICA’s Margaret Skinnider was badly wounded when shot in the shoulder while leading a charge to occupy a house in Harcourt Street. During the 1920s she was denied a disability pension by the Irish government, ostensibly because women were not eligible. But her opposition to the government of the new state was a more likely explanation for the decision.</p>
<p>The 77 women arrested during the Easter Rising posed a dilemma for the British authorities, who had little desire to intern a large cohort of women. Most were released within weeks. Constance Markievicz, later the first female MP elected to Westminster in 1918, was the highest profile woman to serve in the rising, as a commander of the ICA garrison at St Stephen’s Green. She claimed to have inflicted a fatal gunshot wound on the police constable Michael Lahiff. </p>
<p>Although Markievicz was sentenced to death, her sentence was commuted and she was released on amnesty in 1917. The British government, having protested so strongly against the German execution of the British nurse <a href="https://theconversation.com/edith-cavell-the-british-nurse-who-taught-women-the-way-of-the-stiff-upper-lip-47061">Edith Cavell</a> in October 1915, could not themselves execute a woman six months later.</p>
<h2>Tea and sandwiches</h2>
<p>But this combat experience was not common. The vast majority of the women who fought in the rising, particularly members of <em>Cumann na mBan</em>, were relegated to supporting roles. One rebel commander, Éamon de Valera, refused to allow women into his garrison. Brigid Lyons, a medical student at the time, who would later become the first woman to serve in the Irish army after independence, recalled that she “spent a lot of time making tea and sandwiches” at her post in the Four Courts – Ireland’s main court building.</p>
<p>Over half (<a href="http://www.glasnevintrust.ie/visit-glasnevin/news/1916-list/">54%</a> of the fatalities of Easter Week were civilians, 53 of whom were female. The youngest fatality of the rising, Christina Caffrey, was two-years-old and died from a gunshot wound that had penetrated her back through her mother’s hand while being held by her mother.</p>
<p>The female relatives of the 16 executed leaders soon became potent symbols of republican resistance, playing a high-profile role in international publicity campaigns to highlight the cause for Irish independence after 1916. Those executed included Kathleen Clarke’s husband, Thomas, and her brother, Ned Daly, and Margaret Pearse’s two sons, Patrick and Willie. Both Clarke and Pearse were later elected as Sinn Féin members of the Irish parliament in 1921 and were among the most strident republican opponents of the Anglo-Irish Treaty settlement of 1921, which granted dominion status to the 26 counties of the Irish Free State, but fell short of complete sovereignty as a republic. </p>
<p>The Easter proclamation, the rebels’ manifesto declaring the republic, was addressed to Irishmen and Irishwomen and guaranteed equal rights. These promises appeared to have been realised in the 1922 Irish Free State constitution, which granted universal suffrage to men and women over 21. </p>
<p>But for women, at least, this proved to be a false dawn. Restrictions on divorce, the availability of contraception, the right to serve on juries, and continuation in employment after marriage were introduced in the Free State in the 1920s and 1930s. The strongest exponent of women’s rights among the rebel leaders, James Connolly, who was responsible for the proclamation’s gender inclusivity, was executed for his role in the rising. Many of his compatriots who survived and who took power after independence failed to deliver on the proclamation’s promises to Irish women. Éamon de Valera, the only commandant of the rising to avoid execution, introduced a constitution in 1937 – a document which to this day prioritises the domestic role of women in Ireland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marie Coleman receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>About 250 women appear to have taken part in 1916’s Easter Rising.Marie Coleman, Lecturer in Modern Irish History, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/571592016-04-13T12:21:43Z2016-04-13T12:21:43ZExplainer: what caused Ireland’s Easter rising?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117155/original/image-20160401-3932-cpjozp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising#/media/File:Birth_of_the_Irish_Republic.jpg">Walter Paget</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rebellion that unfolded in Ireland in 1916 was plotted by a secret rogue cell within a long-established revolutionary organisation – the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/profiles/po17.shtml">Irish Republican Brotherhood</a>. This group had held to the mantra that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” since its last (unsuccessful) uprising in <a href="http://www.theirishstory.com/2011/03/05/today-in-irish-history-%E2%80%93the-fenian-rebellion-march-5-1867/">1867</a>.</p>
<p>World War I presented an unparalleled opportunity for these revolutionaries. By October 1914, lead plotters <a href="http://centenaries.ucd.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Clarke-Thomas_James.pdf">Tom Clarke</a> and <a href="http://centenaries.ucd.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Mac_Diarmada-Se%C3%A1n.pdf">Sean MacDermott</a> had asked a team to look into the prospects of holding a successful rebellion in wartime.</p>
<p>The group convened to conduct this investigation were Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, and Éamonn Ceannt. In plotting, they succeeded where no previous Irish rebellion had before, most notably by successfully shutting out spies and informers.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117159/original/image-20160401-6780-1xf6w2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chief plotter Tom Clarke.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Only in the weeks immediately prior to the Rising did the police manage to secure two human intelligence sources – and even these were relatively low level. Codenamed Granite and Chalk, these two informers monitored the location of arms dumps while plain clothes detectives tracked movements in and out of locations including <a href="https://comeheretome.com/2014/10/31/thomas-clarkes-shop-parnell-street/">Clarke’s shop</a>.</p>
<p>Despite gathering evidence that would prove useful at post-insurrectionary trials, Granite and Chalk failed to penetrate the inner circles of the conspiracy and plotting continued. </p>
<p>Secret wires and messengers travelled both to the US and Germany to progress different strands of ambitious plans for a nationwide rebellion. Meanwhile, across Ireland, the open military organisations of the rebellion – the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army – drilled and paraded with weapons in broad daylight.</p>
<p>The officials at the Irish Office were reluctant to suppress these organisations. Even when they began to conduct mock attacks on buildings around Dublin, the decision was made to let them be. The view from Dublin Castle, working on the advice of senior Irish home rule MPs, was that suppression might be counterproductive.</p>
<h2>Why then?</h2>
<p>It’s clear that the people behind the rebellion benefited as the continental war worsened. Irish support for the war effort had begun to diminish from the spring of 1915 onwards. The disastrous <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/24/gallipoli-what-happened-military-disaster-legacy">Gallipoli landings</a>, first in April and again in August 1915, witnessed the decimation of Irish units in the British army, including the Dublin and Muster Fusiliers and the <a href="http://gallipoli.rte.ie/guides/the-irish-regiments-at-gallipoli/">10th (Irish) Division</a>.</p>
<p>Of the losses at Gallipoli, the Dublin diarist, Katherine Tynan (hardly a rebel by any stretch of the imagination) recorded how Dublin was “full of mourning”. As Tynan saw it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>so many of our friends had gone out in the 10th Division to perish at Suvla. For the first time came bitterness, for we felt that their lives had been thrown away and their heroism had gone unrecognised.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are several reasons why Irish nationalists were justified in believing that the social contract had been broken by 1916. For one thing, the mandate of the British parliament had run out by December 1915. By consensus of parliament, a coalition government had been formed in May to avoid going to the polls in wartime.</p>
<p>What’s more, Ireland had been granted Home Rule in 1914 but this had been put on ice by the war. By 1916, many questioned when Home Rule would be granted given the unexpected longevity of the war and the influx of anti-Home Rule unionists to Cabinet in May 1915.</p>
<p>There were also deep concerns that mandatory conscription to fight in the war would be extended to include Irish men.</p>
<p>The late and greatly talented Keith Jeffery wrote of how the threat of conscription <a href="https://theconversation.com/1916-how-the-events-of-the-first-world-war-shifted-global-history-38282">stimulated resistance</a> in places as varied as Belgium, Vietnam, Nyasaland (Malawi), Syria, and Senegal. There is some evidence to add Ireland to this list. The fear of compulsory service in what had become a continental slaughter was both real and immediate.</p>
<p>Aversion towards service in the British crown forces had been a pillar of republican and separatist activity at least since the second Boer war of 1899-1902. The decision to resist conscription in 1916 should be seen as a continuum of this.</p>
<h2>The Rising</h2>
<p>When the rising broke out on Easter Monday 1916, it was destined to be a much smaller affair than what had originally been planned. The original idea was to have a national uprising (with German aid) on Easter Sunday. But that had to be abandoned when the Irish Volunteers cancelled the manoeuvres that were to be a cover for the uprising. A contingency operation was then hastily implemented.</p>
<p>In Dublin city centre, six garrisons were occupied by approximately 1,500 insurgents. The rebels headquartered themselves at the General Post Office. It was from here that they declared an Irish republic proclaimed.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5_CFPMajn6Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1916 Proclamation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Battalions of the Irish Volunteers occupied the <a href="http://www.courts.ie/Courts.ie/Library3.nsf/pagecurrent/C405A2905C07523880256DA900495EE2">Four Courts</a>, Jacobs Biscuit Factory, Boland’s Mills, and the South Dublin Union. A sixth garrison consisting of troops of the Irish Citizen Army dug in at St Stephen’s Green, covering the southern approaches to the city before being dislodged by machine gun fire. They retreated to the safety of the Royal College of Surgeons, where they remained, well defended for the rest of the week.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117154/original/image-20160401-6825-1uhqrya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rebel positions in Dublin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1966552">Scolaire</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rebels barricaded the streets and awaited the advance of infantry and cavalry. Where this did occur – at Mount Street, at the Four Courts, and in early engagements at the GPO – the rebels were overwhelmingly successful.</p>
<p>However, by Wednesday, the authorities were deploying artillery – something that had not been planned for by the insurgents. Zoning in on the headquarters at the post office, the artillery dislodged the rebels by Friday night. </p>
<p>On Saturday April 29, the six-day republic ended with an unconditional surrender. More than 450 people died in the events.</p>
<p>Although the rising was largely confined to Dublin and was successfully thwarted, it set in train a series of events that led to the outbreak of a war of independence between 1919 and 1921.</p>
<p>An Irish Free State was established in 1922. Civil war quickly followed and did not end until May 1923. So from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Ireland was not at peace for a full decade. The persistence of political violence after the armistice of 1918 is atypical in a western European context but entirely fitting with the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/war-in-peace-9780199654918?cc=ie&lang=en&">shared experiences</a> of Europe’s Balkan, Baltic, and Eastern peripheries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Conor Mulvagh works for University College Dublin. He receives funding from the Irish Research Council and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peace and Reconciliation Funds. </span></em></p>A century ago, a group of rebels sought to found an Irish republic. This is their story.Conor Mulvagh, Lecturer in Irish History, University College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/531892016-04-05T12:51:03Z2016-04-05T12:51:03ZHow to mark the Easter Rising in Northern Ireland<p>Commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising is a tricky matter in Northern Ireland. The April 1916 event is iconic in Ireland’s national narrative. A small group of rebels, under the banner of Sinn Fein, took on the might of the British Empire in an attempt to win Irish independence. They were quickly defeated but within five years an independent Irish nation had emerged, and the island had been partitioned.</p>
<p>Unionists in what became Northern Ireland view the events of 1916 through the prism of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/14/newsid_4075000/4075437.stm">The Troubles</a>. Most people in modern-day Ireland, however, see the event as part of the national narrative by which Ireland became free. </p>
<p>This is the precisely the problem as Unionists see it, both then and now. Ireland was born as a nation through violence against the British state and without a democratic mandate. </p>
<p>Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, has already <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/easter-rising-dups-foster-will-have-nothing-to-do-with-centenary-of-rebellion-in-ireland-34345197.html">said</a> she will not attend any commemoration of the Easter Rising because it was an attack on the Crown. Neither will Mike Nesbitt, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party or David Ford, leader of the Alliance Party. This despite Queen Elizabeth’s own gestures of recognition and reconciliation during her 2015 state visit to Ireland.</p>
<p>No leading Unionist politician was prepared to attend the dinner planned to mark the centenary in Belfast City Hall at which Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins was the honoured guest, so <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35936240">Higgins withdrew</a>.</p>
<h2>The trouble with remembering</h2>
<p>I do not wish to rehearse the political tit-for-tat that will now ensue over whether a Democratic Unionist Party first minister such as Foster is the leader of just Unionists or of everyone in Northern Ireland. I want instead to broach the issue of how we might remember these events in ways that heal rather than divide. </p>
<p>Part of the problem is memory itself. The fast pace of modern life means that most people pay little attention to the past. But there are some places, groups and social contexts, where cosmopolitanisation comes up against the strong forces of localism. Here people live in a memory culture rather than an amnesiac culture. Life changes little and is experienced mostly through the past. Remembrance becomes nostalgia for some former glory or golden time.</p>
<p>Post-conflict societies often descend into memory cultures when the transition is problematic or challenged. In such circumstances, people can have very thin skins. Injury and offence can be hung on to tenaciously as part of their identity. </p>
<p>Northern Ireland has such a memory culture because some erstwhile enemies share different senses of the past and have little sense of a shared future. The 2016 commemorations risk adding to a memory culture that perpetuates old divisions. </p>
<p>But they need not. Three features mark what we might call ethical remembering in 2016: truth, tolerance and trajectory. </p>
<p>Truth is about remembering events as they occurred, not as they are perceived subsequently. This includes remembering uncomfortable things about the Easter Rising that do not fit the narrative built up around them. </p>
<p>Tolerance requires respect for competing narratives and accepting that others will see these events differently, allowing us to accept that this selectivity of memory is normal and should not be amplified into sculpting mutually exclusive identities. </p>
<p>Trajectory is about looking forward rather than backwards. What we remember and how public commemorations are practised during 2016 should reflect that we all have to inherit a shared society in the future. Having selective memories will only delay that future.</p>
<p>Ironically, remembering 1916 in the right way might well help Northern Ireland overcome its memory culture. It might help us to transcend nostalgia and encourage us to remember for the purposes of the future, not in order to remain in the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Brewer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the Republic marks the centenary of this historic event, it is becoming a very contentious matter north of the border.John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/571402016-04-04T14:42:45Z2016-04-04T14:42:45ZSix days that shook the world: how the Easter Rising changed everything<p>The <a href="http://www.easter1916.net">Easter Rising</a> of April 1916 did not just lay the foundations for Irish independence. It was an event of importance across the world. Arguably it helped usher in an era of struggles for independence, as well as laying down a milestone in social and gender equality that had similarly far-reaching effects. </p>
<p>When Irish Volunteer Patrick Pearse <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Easter-Rising">loudly declared</a> independence outside the Dublin General Post Office on April 24 1916 as one of leaders of over 1,700 insurrectionists, it was an attack on the heart of the British Empire. This was a time when it was already under pressure on the back of the Boer War and World War I.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/20/republic-fight-irish-independence-townshend-review">Though</a> the rising was thwarted five days later and Irish independence would not happen until 1923, many <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/1916/news-and-events/irish-independence-inspiration-to-others-in-empire-34425632.html">believe that</a> the actions that began that Easter Monday helped inspire similar rebellions in more distant parts of the British Empire. Not least it encouraged nationalists in India, even if they <a href="http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/listen/rte-the-history-show-the-easter-rising-and-india">rejected</a> the road of armed resistance. It was not long until the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Massacre-of-Amritsar">Amritsar massacre</a> of 1919 that helped pave the way to Indian independence several decades later. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/1916-rising-an-event-of-world-importance-conference-told-1.2075763">Arguably</a> the events in Dublin inspired other revolutionaries too, notably the Russian bolsheviks. One of the ringleaders of the Easter Rising was James Connolly, who led the socialist Irish Citizen Army, which contributed some 200 men. Both <a href="http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6016/6016_14.html">Lenin</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1916/07/dublin.htm">Trotsky</a> responded sympathetically to Connolly’s melding of Marxism and nationalism, playing up the significance of the rising and the mutual benefits of the nationalist, women’s and workers’ struggle – a point still highly relevant today.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117139/original/image-20160401-6806-1c7ivhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Connolly: ringleader.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is often overlooked that both <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1899/05/home.htm">Connolly</a> and the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm">Russian Marxists</a> were inspired by the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Commune-of-Paris-1871">Paris Commune of 1871</a>, in which 20,000 insurrectionists were killed by French loyalist troops. An <a href="https://archive.org/details/irishrebellionof00boyluoft">early account</a> of the Easter Rising compared the two events, pointing out that street fighting on such a scale in a European city was rare. </p>
<p>It is also worth mentioning Edinburgh-born Connolly’s connection to Scottish socialist <a href="http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/20thand21stcenturies/redclydeside/">John Maclean and Red Clydeside</a>. As Maclean <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/maclean/works/1922-election.htm">later said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was arrested and taken to Edinburgh castle as a prisoner of war [for being a communist], was bailed out, and was sentenced to penal servitude for three years at Edinburgh high court on Apri1 12 1916. When Jim Connolly saw how things were going in Edinburgh he resolved on the Easter rebellion in Dublin, the beginning of Ireland’s new fight for freedom, a fight that can only end in an Irish workers’ republic based on communism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>People from Scotland and elsewhere <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/ordic-rebels-%E2%80%93-the-swede-and-finn-who-fought-in-the-gpo-1916-1230007-Dec2013/">travelled</a> to Dublin to take part in the rising. Red Clydeside then had its own insurrectionist moment in the <a href="http://sites.scran.ac.uk/redclyde/redclyde/rceve14.htm">battle</a> for Glasgow’s George Square of 1919. </p>
<h2>Equality struggle</h2>
<p>Patrick Pearse’s <a href="http://goireland.about.com/od/theeasterrisingof1916/fl/Proclamation-of-the-Irish-Republic-1916.htm">proclamation of the Irish republic</a>, which was partly based on Robert Emmet’s <a href="http://www.failteromhat.com/declare1803.php">proclamation</a> of Irish independence of 1803, enshrined equal suffrage and equal rights. It spoke of “religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens” and “cherishing all children of the nation equally”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117133/original/image-20160401-6825-zand9k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The proclamation begins …</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women’s suffrage had already been gaining ground elsewhere. Adult women had gained the right to vote in <a href="http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/womens-suffrage">New Zealand</a> in 1893 and <a href="http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/women_and_politics/suffrage.htm">South Australia</a> in 1894, which also extended them the right to stand for parliament. Yet by the time of the Easter Rising, most jurisdictions had not followed suit. The fact that equal suffrage and revolution seemed bound up together in Ireland undoubtedly helped further the international cause. By the time women received the vote when the Irish Free State was established in 1923, it had been <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/russia-1900-to-1939/the-provisional-government/">extended by</a> Moscow in the declaration by the provisional government of Russia of March 1917 and also in <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/womens-suffrage/">Canada</a> and the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage">United States</a> in 1920. </p>
<p>It would take until 1928 <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collectionsdelete/equal-franchise-act-1928/">in the UK</a>, 1944 in <a href="http://www.travelfranceonline.com/french-women-s-right-to-vote-21april1944/">France</a> and 1945 in <a href="http://www.db-decision.de/CoRe/Italy.htm">Italy</a>. </p>
<p>Easter 1916 was also a fight against social inequality. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/profiles/po04.shtml">Connolly</a> told his Irish Citizen Army to hold on to their weapons when the battle seemed to be over, as they were fighting for a different Ireland from the purely nationalist Irish Volunteers. Connolly’s advice to his comrades was perhaps on the assumption that if the rising succeeded, they would have to be prepared to challenge their more conservative allies. Following the <a href="http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/09/18/the-irish-war-of-independence-a-brief-overview/">war of independence</a> between the British and Irish (1919-21), these divisions led to a bloody <a href="http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/article-9603295/Irish-Civil-War">civil war</a> in 1922-23. People then held on to their guns for many years to come. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117138/original/image-20160401-6820-1nmxl13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dublin GPO after the insurrection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/diego_sideburns/25844002015/in/photolist-FnKgpD-Fc4rDd-EqnW4z-Fc3Wvy-FkrgVs-Eq2p3N-EqnvPx-7BFUkd-Eqo1WF-9YAN9-nUfJyQ-Fq6K-bGM5fa-e8m7Fe-7SN38E-7SJFqe-nJrMDf-7SJFrV-7SJs9c-7SJscX-7SJJyg-o1CZex-7SJJvz-Fks5pE-7SN39C-nJrAJ8-o1PgLm-7SJFt4-G368X-Fc4gRC-FnKb48-Eq2ofW-7SJKtD-7SJJxr-dnK2ze-22j2ZU-sCTpRq-tzZy9x-f7Dsp-fxApci-4rhbnF-gQrWg-edYKAK-FmqtFb-edYB94-4Nwcjm-gQmL2-ecDTJ9-5hxvWd-edYyYV">Diego Sideburns</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The divided legacy</h2>
<p><a href="http://irishhistoriansinbritain.org/?p=197">Opinion still divides</a> on what the rising produced. Take the French connection. While some historians <a href="http://comeheretome.com/2016/01/13/while-dublin-was-reproducing-its-squalid-version-of-the-paris-commune/">emphasise the parallels</a> with the Paris Commune, others <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/did-easter-1916-have-that-je-ne-sais-quoi-1.967177">argue that</a> the Irish Free State had more in common with Catholic conservatism than radical republicanism. This rings true, particularly if we fast-forward to the Spanish Civil War and reflect on the fact that most Irish people <a href="http://www.rte.ie/tv/whodoyouthinkyouare/social_fionnula2.html">supported</a> fascist Franco. Then again, there were Irish Volunteers fighting against Franco’s side who <a href="http://uir.ulster.ac.uk/2627/1/SCW.id.pdf">were named</a> the Connolly Column in honour of their fallen leader, which shows that the socialist tradition played its part there too. </p>
<p>This illustrates that 1916 had a divided legacy. Connolly wrote a pamphlet in 1908, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1908/03/socinire.htm">Socialism in Ireland</a>, which insisted on the possibility of a socialist future, despite claims that the country was too economically backward and the clergy too conservative to permit such an outcome. But Connolly’s vision depended on independence for a united Ireland. The “carnival of reaction” that he predicted would result from partition of the north and south would postpone that vision and prolong the road to socialism. Neither the free state, nor later the free market, could fulfil the socialist vision. </p>
<p>Neither did it live up to <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/117981238/the-easter-rising-revolution-and-irish-nationalism">what Pearse envisaged</a> – an Ireland that would be Gaelic, independent, republican and united. Which, if any, of the leaders of the rising would recognise the state of independence that they fought for today? When we mark the centenary in the coming weeks, that is not a question that should be dismissed lightly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirsty Lusk is part-funded by the City of London Anglo-Irish Literature Scholarship</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Willy Maley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The effects of the Dublin insurrection went much further than Ireland.Willy Maley, Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of GlasgowKirsty Lusk, Pre-doctoral researcher, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.