That Easter Monday, 1916, seventy-five years ago this month, was a sleepy one in Dublin. Most of the sporting set, high society and many common folk had gone to the Fairyhouse races, where the Irish Grand National was the star attraction. My own grandfather, from County Sligo, had taken the train to the races, the biggest meeting of the year. Years later he would relate how it took him ten days, sleeping in ditches along the way to walk home.
At the races the crowd was filled out with many military men, some home from the front in France, and others from several of the Dublin garrisons, who had little reason to fear any outbreak of violence from the Irish nationalists who had been growing in strength and numbers.
In fact they were doubly at ease, because the leader of the militant Irish Volunteers, Eoin McNeill, had issued an order via the Irish Independent newspaper, cancelling a training exercise. Military intelligence had interpreted that as a clear sign that no armed action was imminent. It was a time to relax, to focus on a sporting occasion and not on the distant guns of war in Europe or the murmurings of uprising in Dublin.
But extraordinary events were afoot that would shake the very roots of the monolithic British Empire and transform the face of Ireland forever. That Easter morning, 800 years of British rule of all of Ireland was about to end.
It began without promise. Unknown to MacNeill, the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had decided that Easter Monday was the day to strike. But MacNeill’s countermanding order meant that only 1,200 volunteers showed up in Dublin for what many of them thought was another military exercise.
Instead, most of them marched up O’Connell Street and, at the command, turned right at the General Post Office and began the Easter Rising.
The rest took over other key strategic positions around Dublin. The populace of the city jeered at first, not believing what they were seeing. Later they would curse and spit on the leaders. It was not a popular uprising.
But it was a prophetic one, carried out by leaders who were poets, labor leaders, old Fenians and journalists. All understood perfectly the symbolism of Easter and the resurrection. All knew that almost certain death awaited them, but were convinced that the masses would eventually rise up and follow them.
Twenty thousand British troops eventually were rushed to the city, as were major artillery and gunboats. For a time, the city resembled Flanders Field, with dead bodies strewn everywhere and constant artillery bombardment. It was a hopeless military cause for the insurgents and they surrendered just five days later.
The British had quelled the rising. and it is doubtful it would have been more than a footnote in history if they had jailed rather than shot the leaders.
However, the brutal executions of James Connolly strapped to his wheelchair; James Plunkett, just one hour after he was married; the old Fenian Tom Clarke, almost blind and feeble, along with many other leaders, backfired.
Their deaths led to widespread revulsion and the nascent feelings of Irish nationalism became a flood tide, which eventually swept the British from the Irish Republic in 1921.
All that happened 75 years ago this month. Unfortunately it is not a fashionable commemoration in Ireland, because the Northern troubles remind people far too much of what 1916 unleashed. But imagine the United States without the Fourth of July? That is what some revisionists would have happen in Ireland today, elided from the history books, the Easter Rising of 1916. But we cannot rewrite history any more than we can undo the events that shaped it. Let us hope by the 100th anniversary, in 2016, that at least, will have become apparent.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the April 1991 issue of Irish America. ♦
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