The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (8 page)

Outside Dublin the main activity took place in Cork, Wexford, Meath and Galway. There was an initially poor turn out in Cork on Easter Sunday morning, MacNeill's countermanding order not yet having arrived, suggesting that other factors, such as fear, might also explain why mobilisation was poor in general for the Rising. The demoralised Cork Volunteers demobilised and returned home ‘wet, sore and sorry’ on Easter Sunday night. Wexford Volunteers held the town of Enniscorthy for most of Easter week. In Galway, a small contingent led by Liam Mellows attacked
Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)
barracks at Oranmore and Athenry. The highest casualties outside of Dublin occurred at Rath Crossroads near Ashbourne, County Meath, where the Volunteers, commanded by Thomas Ashe and Richard Mulcahy, engaged the local RIC in a five-hour gun battle that resulted in the deaths of eight policemen and two Volunteers. Very little mobilisation occurred in Ulster, where Denis McCullough tried unsuccessfully to link up with Mellows in Connaught (McGarry, 2010: 213–9; 240–3; Townshend, 2005: 218–21, 228–9).

Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)
: The police force for Ireland outside of Dublin, which was disbanded in 1922.

An unusual feature of the Rising was the participation of women and children. Approximately 200 women were involved, the majority of whom were members of
Cumann na mBan
, the women's auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers. The most prominent female rebel was Constance Markievicz, who commanded the St Stephen's Green Garrison for the ICA along with Michael Mallin and appears to have shot dead at least one policeman (McGarry, 2010: 137). Cumann na mBan was not part of the initial operations on Monday morning and was only mobilised at its own insistence that evening. With the exception of Markievicz, no other woman was given a senior role and the members of Cumann na mBan were denied any combat role at all, focusing instead on the subordinate duties of providing food supplies and first aid. Those who had medical expertise, such as Brigid Lyons, a medical student in University College Galway, Elizabeth O’Farrell, who was a nurse, and Dr Kathleen Lynn, the ICA's chief medical officer, provided essential treatment for wounded rebels. Women were also used to carry dispatches and ammunition between the rebel garrisons, a dangerous undertaking during the most intense phases of the fighting (
http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0259.pdf#page=1
).

Cumann na mBan
: The women's auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers/IRA, formed in 1914.

These activities were in line with Cumann na mBan's perception of itself as an auxiliary force for the Volunteers and with its activities prior to 1916. While Eamon de Valera is often cited for not allowing women into his garrison, he was prepared to make use of them as dispatch carriers
(Matthews, 2010: 123). Thomas MacDonagh reluctantly permitted women into the Jacob's factory. In general, the ICA women enjoyed a larger measure of equality, though their experience did not differ greatly from that of Cumann na mBan. Unlike the Volunteers, which was an all-male force supported by a female cast in its own separate organisation, women were members of the ICA, in line with Connolly's thinking on gender equality. Nevertheless, Markievicz was the only member of the force to see serious military action and Connolly refused to allow his daughter Nora to become involved, sending her on a mission to Tyrone instead. Similarly, Thomas Clarke would not allow his wife, Kathleen, to join him, an understandable decision given that they had small children; he knew that the Rising would probably result in his death and she was pregnant (and was to suffer a miscarriage later in the year) (Clarke, 2008: 112, 161). Outside Dublin women took little part in the provincial fighting, apart from acting as messengers. Seventy-nine women were subsequently arrested though most were released after a short period. Markievicz was tried by court martial and initially sentenced to death along with her fellow commanders, but this was commuted ‘solely and only on account of her sex’. None of the female rebels were killed, although Margaret Skinnider of the ICA was badly wounded by a sniper while attempting to set fire to a hotel (McGarry, 2010: 162, 226–8; Foy and Barton, 1999: 358).

Children participated in the Rising as members of
Fianna éireann
and the ICA's boys’ corps, including James Connolly's son Roddy, who was only 15 and acted as an
aide-de-camp
for his father and Pearse in the GPO. Fourteen-year-old John Healy of the Fianna was probably the youngest combat fatality, though not the youngest child to die as a result of the Rising. John Francis Foster was only two years old when shot in cross-fire on Church Street, one of three children killed on Easter Monday and of 30 in total who died as a result of gun-fire during Easter week (Duffy, 2013: 34–5; McGarry, 2010: 198; Matthews, 2010: 145–6). The Fianna's most notable action during the Rising was the attempted raid on the Magazine Fort at the Phoenix Park which resulted in the shooting dead of the 23-year-old son of its commander by Gary Holohan of the Fianna (McGarry, 2010: 138) [
Doc. 4
]. Some minors who fought in the Rising subsequently became prominent figures in the
Irish Republican Army (IRA)
, including Seán Lemass and Vinnie Byrne.

Fianna éireann
: Republican boy scouts and youth wing of the Irish Volunteers, many of whose members took part in the Easter Rising.

Irish Republican Army (IRA)
: see
Irish Volunteers
.

Approximately 450 people were killed in the Rising, more than half of whom were civilians. Slightly more than 100 soldiers and policemen were killed, while the rebels incurred the fewest fatalities, losing approximately 60. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people – including civilians and combatants – were injured. The rebel strategy of occupying buildings in the middle of the city, and the intense street fighting that ensued, helps to account for
the high level of civilian casualties, the majority of which have been attributed to the crown forces. The potential impact on civilians appears to have been overlooked by the planners (McGarry, 2012: 50–1; Townshend, 2005: 393).

The single largest loss of civilian life took place in North King Street, where 15 civilians were killed by the military, which had previously lost 14 men in the same area in a shoot-out with the rebels (McGarry, 2010: 187–8). The most notorious killing of an innocent civilian was that of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, a well-known journalist, pacifist and campaigner for female suffrage. Arrested on Easter Tuesday night while returning home from trying to prevent looting, he was taken to Portobello Barracks in Rathmines where he was shot by firing squad on the orders of Captain John Bowen-Colthurst, who was subsequently court-martialled and found guilty but insane (Townshend, 2005: 192–5).The army suffered its highest loss of life in the rebels’ most successful action when a detachment of Sherwood Foresters,
en route
to the city from Kingstown, was ambushed at Mount Street Bridge on Wednesday, resulting in 230 being wounded or killed (McGarry, 2012: 45).

The actions of men like Bowen-Colthurst highlight the psychological effect of the violence and killing on those who took part in the Rising. Few of the rebels had any military experience and Eamon de Valera in particular appears to have suffered from the mental strain of commanding the garrison at Boland's Mills (Townshend, 2005: 199–201). While they were part of an ostensibly professional army, many of the British reinforcements sent to Dublin were in reality recent war-time recruits or conscripts, whose training was also fairly rudimentary. The Sherwood Foresters who were ambushed at Mount Street Bridge were ‘merely boys . . . Recruits who had not been in uniform about 6 or 8 weeks’ and ‘had never fired a service rifle before’ (McGarry, 2010: 173).

THE PROCLAMATION

The general philosophy of the rebels can best be deciphered by a close reading of their manifesto, the Easter Proclamation, read aloud by Pearse outside the GPO on Easter Monday morning to bemused passers-by
[Doc. 5]
. Influenced by famous declarations of historic revolutionary movements, including the eighteenth-century American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, it also drew upon Robert Emmet's 1803 manifesto. Drafted largely by Pearse, with input from Connolly, the final version was ratified on Easter Sunday and signed by the seven members of the military council. Eoin MacNeill had been invited to
sign but declined. Two thousand five hundred copies were printed hastily at Liberty Hall and distributed early on Easter Monday morning by members of the ICA (de Paor, 1997: 15–18, 29–30).

In spite of Pearse's centrality to the Gaelic League and the language revival, there were only three words of Irish in the document – the heading ‘Poblacht na h éireann’, necessitating the creation of a new Irish word – ‘poblacht’ – literally translated as ‘peopledom’, that has since become the recognised Irish translation of ‘republic’. The announcement that a provisional government of the Irish republic had been established echoed not only Emmet, but also the Ulster Unionists, who in 1914 had elaborate plans in place to establish a provisional government in Ulster in defiance of an Irish Home Rule Parliament (de Paor, 1997: 31–8).

Much of the Proclamation was a justification for the actions of the rebels, asserting Ireland's right to freedom, eschewing foreign domination and placing this latest bid for freedom in the tradition of armed Irish uprisings dating back to 1641. The financial assistance and support of Clan na Gael in the USA (‘exiled children in America’) was recognised, as was the contribution, limited though it turned out to be, of the Germans (‘our gallant allies in Europe’).

The influence of James Connolly was noticeable in many areas. One was the unusually inclusive nature of the language, which refers throughout to Irishmen and Irishwomen. It held out the promise of equal citizenship, promising equal rights and opportunities and universal suffrage, but also highlighted the obligations of citizenship, claiming the allegiance of all Irishmen and women for the republic, a reference that was also aimed at unionists (de Paor, 1997: 42, 72). While beginning and ending with religious references, invoking the deity in support of their actions in a similar way to which the unionists had sought divine support for opposition to home rule in the covenant of 1912, the proclamation also sought to bridge the sectarian divide by promising equality of treatment for all citizens and blaming ‘an alien government’ for dividing the ‘minority from the majority’ (McGarry, 2010: 133–4). The most socialistic aspect of the proclamation was the assertion that the people of Ireland had the right ‘to the ownership of Ireland’. Aspects of it, such as this claim to public ownership, were reiterated in the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil in 1919
[Doc. 6]
and some of its promises were made good after independence, such as the introduction of universal suffrage under the 1922 Irish Free State Constitution.

The proclamation has always been central to commemorations of the Rising, none of which are complete without the ritual of reading it aloud. In 1966, to mark the Rising's fiftieth anniversary, a display containing the English and Irish versions, along with pictures of the seven signatories, was sent to all primary schools in the Republic of Ireland. Approximately 50 copies
are extant, a rarity reflected in the record price of €360,000 paid for one at an auction in 2008. In recent years it has been adopted by defenders of Irish sovereignty in the face of the perceived surrender of political and fiscal independence to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (Higgins, 2012: 48, 208–9). While the Easter Proclamation has always been held in high regard by the Irish public and its political leaders as the foundation stone of the independent Irish state, much of its rhetoric is antithetical to the socially conservative, theocratic and capitalist policies pursued by successive Irish governments since independence.

REACTIONS

The deaths of more than 200 civilians and the destruction to the heart of Dublin explain why the rebellion and those responsible for it were initially despised by much of the city's population. Throughout the course of Easter week, relations between those living in the vicinity of the fighting and the rebels were poor and there was widespread looting of some of the city's leading commercial premises. The rebels both despised the motives of the looters, which reflected badly on what they perceived as their more noble aims, and worried that their actions, including incendiarism, might endanger rebel-held posts. Many families in the city also had male relatives fighting with the British Army in France, and this accounts for the particular bitterness that the rebels encountered from so-called separation women (wives who received a separation allowance while their husbands were at war) (McGarry, 2010: 142–8).

The rebels also encountered significant hostility from Dublin's commercial and propertied elite, aghast at the destruction wrought by the uprising on the commercial centre of the city. Recent research has also highlighted the role of class distinctions in underlying this antipathy, as many of the rebels, especially those in the ICA, came from working-class backgrounds and the hostility of the city's employers to trade unionism, especially during the lockout, was still fresh in their minds. Religion might also have played some part in such attitudes, as the rebels were overwhelmingly Catholic, whereas a significant part of Dublin's commercial elite was Protestant and held unionist political sympathies. Class, as well as contemporary mores, partly explains the extent of the hostility displayed towards female rebels, much of which was directed at Markievicz (McGarry, 2005: 139, 160, 164–5). However, within a short space of time, Dublin's hostility, and the general lack of public support for the political aims of the rebels, was to be transformed.

Immediately after the Rising over 3,500 people were arrested, more than 1,800 of whom were interned in prisons in Britain, although 1,200 were
released within a few weeks (Foy and Barton, 1999: 347). Many of these had little or no involvement in the Rising and were rounded-up because of suspected Sinn Féin sympathies. The experience turned many into ardent republicans on their return to Ireland. Inexplicable decisions, such as the arrest of 27 people in Roscommon town, which had played no role in the Rising, illustrated the mistakes made by the authorities in Ireland that helped to galvanise support for the rebels in the aftermath of the Rising (McGarry, 2010: 265).