Margaret, for the third time out of four, talks with Katy Stoll about the motley collection of rebels who sparked Irish independence.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Is part three. But first you all have to meet
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Hi, so nice to meet you, Sophie. Let you talk, Yeah, Sophie,
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You're close.
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It looks great. She just hint a piece of art.
It looks great.
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It does look good.
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Thank you.
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Yeah, it's nice to have something in your office space. Yeah,
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That works. It works.
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Thanks, although it wasn't the right place because first we
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Everyone's to say hi to Daniel.
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Hi, Danel, Danel, Hello, Hi, that's Daniel, Hey Daniel.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Our theme music was written for Vice Unwoman and part
three of four parter. Sometimes you will message me and
are like, but I wait till all of them are out,
and I'm like, well, you're going to have to wait
longer with four parts. And that's the I don't have
a lot of power to exert in my life, but
that's one of the powers. I So where we last
(02:19):
left our heroes, two separate vines of Irish independence were
starting to intertwine, and both were growing thorns. I spent
way too long reading Irish poetry. Beautiful thank you. Yeah.
I thought it would go well with the way that
the Irish always talked about the revolution. You've got the nationalists,
most remembered by Patrick Pierce, who are all about Irish culture,
(02:41):
lots of poets and playwrights and school teachers and all
of that. And then they have the Irish Volunteers, the
larger military organization with Kum and Nabah, the Women's Council
that operates as a somewhat independent women's auxiliary to it.
The other vine are the socialists, most remembered through James. Finally,
they're all about workers control the means of production. They're
(03:03):
doing it in a very specifically Irish way. They're deviating
from classical Marxism and British Marxism on a bunch of points.
They don't reject religion as kind of the biggest one
that people argue about to this day. They're also not
into the dictatorship of the proletariat, but instead creating a
socialist republic rather than a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.
(03:28):
Their way into the cooperative movement. They like co ops
and shit, not necessarily like the bougie food ones, but
you know, instead of instead of nationalizing the means of production,
they're more overall, they're into some of that but they're
also more into like democratic workforces, controlling the means of production, copyright,
which is I'm way more into.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So yeah, me too, And I'm wondering if that's my
political ideology, if it's because i'm you know, mostly Irish,
I'm not sure. I'm also more into that, Brandy.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, no, it just like it works for me. It's
a way more democratic form of yeah, overall, I would say.
And they have their own militant organization, the smaller and
feistier Irish Citizen Army, in which there's no women's auxiliary
because women are an equal part of the organization and
participate in arms training the same as everyone else. And
I read a lot of different stuff about women's involvement
(04:23):
in the Easter Rising and overall, like normally you're like,
you have this big thing full of men, and then
people are like, there was a couple of women. It
was cool, and like, don't get me wrong, that's cool,
Like it's cool that not everything is as completely men
as possible. But in this case, women were really involved
in the Easter Rising, which is even cooler. Yeah, and
(04:45):
they're just left out of it, you know, less cool,
way less cool. And we'll talk about some of the
ways in which that happened in a little bit. But
the thing about these two different groups, not the men
and the women, but the nationalists and the socialists a
sketchy thing to say in conjunction with each other. They
(05:05):
have always bled into each other. Patrick Pierce supported unions
even though he wasn't a socialist, and he was also
against authoritarianism and wrote very like masculinist stuff all the time,
right about like good strong men, like we talked about
last time. M hm. But I was doing a little
bit more reading about him in the Intervening several days
since the last recording, and he would often say things
(05:25):
like that one of the problems with Irish colonial society
was that not enough women were running things, like the
problem with the education system is that it was that
women weren't at the highest levels of it, and stuff
like that. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I like that, an interesting juxtaposition of what you would
associate a person that's into a big strong manly man
but also acknowledging how powerful women are.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Okay, totally, And he's he's he's an interesting I'm not
trying to be like this is whatever. He's an interesting
person and he's like again, like probably asexual. He's kind
of a mama's boy, and we'll talk about that in
the end. And he really respects and believes in the
women in his life, and he just also had this
very masculinist attitude around what Irish men could be, okay,
(06:13):
And so then on the other side, the Socialists were
also all about Irish independence of Ireland too, and they
were also a bunch of weirdo artists. Apparently James Connolly,
in his ample free time that I don't know where
he came up with, wrote plays and the lead actor
in one of his most popular plays was the one
of the leaders of the Rising.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Oh cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
And there are real ideological and organizational differences between the two,
but it's not as distinct as one might immediately think.
The Nationalists are a bit less radical, and plenty of
them are like, well, home rule would be okay, right,
that thing where we're kind of part of England but
not as much, you know, And the socialists are like,
the fuck it would be. Yeah, we're fighting for some
(06:56):
more shit. This is a very big distinction. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And the two groups they're like, all right, well, we're
gonna fucking do this. We've got to overthrow England. How
are we gonna do it? England is the mightiest empire
in the world. We need an opportunity, an opportunity, Like
when you think of things that happened in the nineteen tens,
any big ones come to mind?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I mean so many. I don't know, I don't know
where were we going with this.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I know it's always a setup. World War one. We're
going to World War one?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Okay, yeah, I beat that. Yeah, yes, fair En, that's
the big one.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah. Which is still my favorite joke in the world
is that when they named it World War one, they
were like one, there's gonna be more than one of this. Yeah,
I mean they called it the Great War, but yeah,
until I got over shot.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
We're just setting it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah yeah. So the Great War hits and home rule
is tabled for now. The government is like, we're not
going to halfway free anybody right now. We're busy sending
men into a meat grinder, and the Centrists in Ireland,
including a ton of the Irish volunteers, probably the majority
of the Irish volunteers, march off to war in the
(08:08):
British Army. Last week I was talking about how there
was like some numbers is two hundred thousand volunteers and
some numbers were a like ten thousand volunteers, and I
was this was as I guessed, this was the pre
and post split. Right. Once World War One hits, the
people willing to try and overthrow England drops drops dramatically. Yeah,
(08:31):
And because the Irish volunteers were there to protect Home rule,
they weren't there to overthrow England, right, And so the
Irish Centrists were like, well, if we prove we're loyal
to the English crown, maybe they'll give us a little freedom.
And then because of this, you have these two militias
that were about to fight each other, the Ulster Volunteers
(08:52):
who are the Protestant anti freedom militia, and then the
Irish Volunteers, and they are fighting side by side in
the trenches to save the British Empire. And that's kind
of sad. But Germany was the aggressor in World War One,
and it's not like in and of itself bad that
people tried to stop them from do.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
No, this is messy and complicated, is what it is. Yeah,
Because this other big thing is going on and it
kind of splits your allegiance. This isn't kind of changes
your priorities. Maybe you're your timeline for achieving certain goals too.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
But totally but yeah. And also one of the reasons
the Irish volunteers fought for the British was to defend
Catholic Belgium against the Germans and German invasion. But after
the so you have this first rush of volunteers. But
then after that, basically as soon as everyone figures out
that World War One is like the first time that
(09:47):
someone hmm, the first time that Europeans were forced to
charge machine gun nests. You know, like the beginning of
World War One is like one of the nastiest pieces
of human history of just like people being down and
mass because old tactics don't work with new technology and
leaders don't care about the lives of the people that
they lead at this point. And so then the Irish
(10:11):
are like, we don't want to go anymore. That doesn't sound.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Nothings.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I'm good, yeah and sold, yeah exactly. And so the
rest of the Irish volunteers who go off are essentially
poverty draft. They're the poorer folks from the urban slums
who are like, well, it's this or starve or die
of TV, you know mm. And the war increased price
of food so much that it actually the urban poor
(10:40):
got way poorer, but some of the rural poor kind
of did all right, because if they grew and sold food,
it was like worth a lot more.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Interesting thing to note for all of ourselves at all times, and.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Like right now, yeah, I know, right, And so a
lot of Irish people instead are like, well, We're going
to do the other most traditional Irish thing in the world, emigrate.
But then England was like, you know, I guess something else,
but yeah, no, no emigrate, Yeah, like just leave Ireland.
A ton of people left Ireland to get away from
(11:14):
just all the horrors that were happening.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I guess this is when my family emigrated.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I want to know the.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Fill in the blank that you were thinking on your
mad loosind just like drinking, I still procreating, fucking.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
And I'm Irish so I can say all of that too,
or being aggressively Catholic and getting mad at everyone for
all of those things and then doing.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It, yeah, exactly, you know, we all filled in those
on fills. Have you been to one of my family reunions?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Because that is like the entire script.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I think that my family came in like nineteen thirteen
of this of this time frame.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, that's roughly the nineteen's, the nineteen tens or when
I only came as well, and so England was like, well,
you're not allowed to leave anymore, which I didn't even
it didn't even occur to me, Like of all the
bad colonial things, it never quite occurred to me that
England would just be like, now we're closing the borders.
You're not allowed to leave Ireland. Ireland is now your prison.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
But also you know, checks out in its own ways.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's like, oh yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
It was like I didn't know that that was a thing,
but it wasn't surprising that that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Was exactly That's what I mean. Not yeah, not that
I agree with their logic.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, And that's the thing about borders, right, you put
up a wall that keeps you in as much as
it keeps other people out, and so you've got this war.
The diehard Irish nationalists are like, all right, this is
an opportunity. They're off doing another thing. We talked on
(12:52):
the Roger Caseman episode about how Roger Casement the gay,
anti colonial Irish Knight, who's one of my favorite people
in history, who is not as much in this episode
because we did a whole two part about him, but
him and then Joseph Plunkett, the tuberculosis guy, who would
probably be pretty annoyed that that's how I'm remembering him
in this show.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
It's like, do you feel like we're remembering lots of
people as the tuberculosis fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Well, there's a tuberculosis man and a tuberculosis woman that
we go true, that's true. Yeah, and then the tuberculosis
poverty of Dublin.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
They go to the Kaiser. They go to Germany in
the middle of World War One and they're like, hey,
we want to fight England too, Can we have some
guns so we can like fight England?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And Germany's like, yeah, fine, whatever, Like they're not super committed,
but they're like, we'll see how it goes. We'll give
you some guns, we'll see how it goes. And there's
already been a couple this has already happened a couple times,
and there's this whole side story that we don't won't
get into or this like a this like adventurer couple.
It's like man and this woman like went around on
this like yacht and like brought five hundred guns over
(13:55):
and then they had to like smuggle them into and
then the cops started shooting people, and then people like
whatever happened A couple years prior I'd watched that movie.
I know absolutely going to Germany was a big way. Okay,
So when the media frames the East arising at the time,
they're like, this is just treason. They're just helping Germany. Right,
this is not a new strategy for the Irish rebels.
(14:17):
They're not specifically like man, we love the Kaiser. Right.
Whenever England was at war with someone, the Irish would
go to England's enemy and be like, could you could
you invade us really quickly, just like a little quick
landing with an army takeover the island. We'll like help
you out until the war's over and then you leave.
One of the most famous Irish rebels in history is
(14:38):
this Protestant Irish dude named Wolf Tone, which is a
sick name. His first name is Wolf wolf Tone. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Oh okay, first name Wolf, last name tone, middle name okay,
last name tone Yeah, wolf Tone sick.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah, it's a fucking cool name. He tried twice to
get the French to land in Ireland before dying in
seventeen ninety.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh Wolf Tone, my man, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
So back to the twentieth century, the Irish Volunteers and
the Citizen's Army are finding out that they have a
lot in common, right the socialists and the nationalists. They're like,
even though some of the volunteers had been anti union,
some of them hadn't been. And folks start getting over
those differences because there's bigger problems right now. Jack White,
(15:25):
the adventurer with a Fedora, who we talked about last time,
who I just kind of a side.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Note character Fleet singer of the White Stripes.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly when the lead singer of the
White Stripes he was a vampire. It's been around for
a very long time, Jackson. Yeah, glad he got rid
of Fedora. It was a good style at this time.
Would not have been a good style in odds not now.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
He actually quits the ICA the Citizen Army and goes
over to join the Volunteers, even though he's one of
the founders of the Citizen's Army. And he does this
to draw connections. He was like, well, we need to
we need to be closer in with these other armed groups, right,
And then our countess she's just like, well, I'm just
gonna do both. I'm going to be in the Citizen's
Army and the Irish volunteers. Who the fuck is going
(16:08):
to stop me? I am a six foot one armed
noble woman who sold her diamond tierra to feed the
poor and buy gun. Yes, no one's going to stop me,
and she will not be contained.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
No.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I found out she was six to one in the
intervening couple of days, and I'm like really excited.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Just didn't remark on it at first because I was like,
did I miss that specific detail?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
No, I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Wow, Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, she is a fucking awesome person, not just for
being tall, but I just you know, whatever, I know,
But that helps. Yeah, And then the other reason that
the two are decided that they have to get together.
At this point, there's like two to three hundred folks
in the Citizen's Army and there's like maybe ten thousand volunteers.
So the Citizen's Army is like, oh, yeah, we need them. Yeah,
(16:56):
we need them. Within a month of Britain joining the
war in nineteen fourteen, the IRB, the Irish Republican Brotherhood,
who are one of the groups that the Volunteers is
sort of built out of, they meet and they're like,
we got to do this uprising before the war ends.
Like we just it's it's our chance. And so they
start planning and they do it really secretly. Not even
(17:19):
everyone who runs the IRB and the Volunteers knows about
the plan because a lot of the leadership is more conservative,
and by that I don't mean like votes Reagan, I
mean like a little bit more careful in how they
want to go about things, and so they're not clued in.
They're like, all right, well, we can't tell the people
who want to say no, we'll just plan it, you know.
(17:42):
And then an old Irish nationalist from the past generation
of revolutionaries died in June nineteen fifteen at the age
of eighty three. But if you don't want to die prematurely, Katie,
you should buy all of the products, which, whether or
not they advertise it, also include the property of making
(18:06):
you immortal.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Immortal Okay, so hmm, what if that sounds bad? I
already am worried about whether or not I can afford
a regular long life, let alone an immortal one.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Okay, okay, but you know what, hey, compound interest is
your friend. If you're immortal. There's no draculas, right, there's
no poor draculas.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
And I guess if I'm I'm immortal, I probably I'm
not going to be racking up a big hospital bill. No,
no health insurance. Probably the blood well, we can take
care of that.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Oh okay, good because some other ideas in mind.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
All right, you know what I'm sold right on?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
The products and services here they are the key to immortality.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And we're back. Oh I feel great and youthful forever.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I already bought and consumed all my products and services.
It'd be really cool if it was like like a
mattress AD and it's like no, no, no sleep on this.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Forever. I hope it's skincare because that's the closest.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Is the closest, just like a really nice mineral sunscreen AD.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, full support. It's just the concept of wearing sunscreen
that could be our new Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
The concept you by the concept I bring this all
the time.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Are you staying home is it cloudy outside but you're
not wearing sunscreen?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
You should be inside your house.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Oh yeah, Katie on Kadi just switched on am moisturizer
that has sunscreen in it, and then you just cover
both bases. I know some people argue against the sunscreen
and the moisturizer as like.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, but I'm not gonna argue against it. I sometimes
fuck with something like that, but it doesn't seem to
absorb in the same way. That's true, and I've got
a nice light facial sense green. I just never think
to where it's sitting here on a cloudy day when
it's oh yeah, you're getting hit with those ridiculously windy
windy in California, you're getting hit with those UV rays.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
So Jeremiah O'Donovan Rosa Jeremiah Donovan Rosa was born in
eighteen thirty one, and he believed in what was called
physical force Irish Republicanism aka why don't some people get
some dynamite and go to London and just see what happens?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (20:39):
And normally when people like write about this and don't
do it as much personally, I'm a little bit like, yeah,
fuck off. But he wrote about it a lot, and
this led to some negative ramifications in his life, so
he put some skin in the game, specifically an awful
lot of time in prison exile where he did not
get to live his life in Ireland, and at one
(21:01):
point an english woman just shot him. But he survived, okay,
and I think it was over. I don't know. Whenever
I hear about a woman shooting a man, I'm like,
probably deserved it. But I think in this case, now
it's hard to aside. I know, I think this time
it was it was actually ethnically motivated crime. Yeah, yeah,
(21:22):
but he survives that. When in prison, at one point
he was manacled to a wall for thirty five days
because he threw his chamber pot at the warden. And
then another time he spent three days because he refused
to take his cap off in front of a visiting doctor.
(21:43):
So he's not, oh, Jeremiah, he's not a what he
doesn't like being told what to do, it's not being
told what to do. I could have guessed that from
how he got in prison. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You know, knowing nothing about him other than what you've said,
I I'm on his.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
You know, Yeah, I don't know much about him personally.
I'm you know, he's not the deep dive of the episode,
but he's interesting and he he managed an Irish classic thing,
which was he got himself elected to the British House
of Commons while he was in prison, and like couldn't
serve because Ireland was like pretty good at voting for people,
just as fuck used to England.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So he couldn't serve. They took it away, give it
to someone else.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I think, so I believe that that is what happened interesting,
or maybe his seat was empty, I am I actually
not certain, but it's a thing that the twentieth century
has a ton of is Irish people being like, yeah, well,
I'm going to run from prison because fuck you.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
He was exiled in eighteen seventy one, basically like I
we'll let you out of jail. You're not allowed in
the United Kingdom and he's like that's fine, and they're like,
Ireland's in the United Kingdom and he was like, oh fuck,
and I don't. I'm not even paraphrasing him entirely making
up that exchange, and then he went to America. He also,
over the course of his life, had eighteen kids, by
three different wives, because his first two wives died young.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Okay, bringing a background the Irish, Yeah, they love their
fucking yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Catholicism is all of a drug, unlike prophylactics. While he
was in exile, he was only allowed to return to
Ireland for like short visits. I think he got to
visit twice for like brief moments. And then he died
in nineteen fifteen, and the Easter Rising was already being
planned and then here's this famous rebel who had died.
So the rebels wrote the US and they a lot
(23:27):
of them like knew him, right. One of the people
who's going to get killed, executed at the end of
the Easter Rising is one of the guys who took
the dynamite and went to London a generation prior, you know.
So they're like, hey, give us the body. He's dead
now he can come home in England's like fine, fuck you,
And so his remains are shipped home to Ireland and
(23:50):
tens of thousands of people came to his funeral and
the various revolutionists gave speeches from his graveside, but the
most famous one is by Patrick Pierce, and I'm gonna
quote part of it. Life springs from death, and from
the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.
They think they have pacified Ireland, They think that they
(24:13):
have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything. But
the fools, the fools, the fools they have left us
Arephenian dead. And while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree
shall never be at peace.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I know. More poets in the revolution, please and not
where you think your job is just poet.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Side note, this is not to stay in a sorry,
really funny you cut up slightly for me. As the
weather just hit in my mountain. Okay, wind and hail
just started coming down.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Whoa, whoa, I just keep that in, but all right,
keep it in. That last, Ireland unfree shall never be
at peace is the most quoted part of this. And
what's wild to think about is it holds true even
today because throughout the whole twentieth century and the troubles,
(25:14):
like the reason that the troubles continued is Ireland not
being free yet?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, So the rank and file of the including the
non military parts of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and like
a lot of people in the volunteers and stuff. They
don't know the details of the rising, and at this
point Connolly and the Socialists don't know about the rising.
But everyone is training, everyone's getting ready, everyone can feel it.
(25:45):
There's something in the air. And soon enough, England, Wales
and Scotland all have the draft to get into World
War One because people aren't, for some weird reason volunteering
to go get mowed down by a machine gun. Weird,
I know, cowards, I know. But speaking of cowards, the
English were too nervous to conscript the Irish. Oh, cowards,
(26:09):
and they were like they they're considering it, right, but
it's like harder because Ireland is kind of fighty and
keeps up. Maybe they don't always want to give all
the Irish guns. And you know, although actually you have
this interesting thing where a lot of the militia trainings
the government let happen, right, because you're like, how are
all these people getting all these guns and running around
(26:31):
in the woods and shooting practice stuff. And the answer
is that one when England was considering giving home rule,
the Ulster volunteers, the right wing ones, they were preparing
to fight against England. So they actually the English actually
believed that the Irish volunteers would have a right to
self defense to defend home rule against the militia, which
(26:52):
is interesting. And then the Irish citizen army by this point,
you know, World War one's hitting and like England's like, well,
we don't mind those people that were considering drafting knowing
how to shoot. You know, it's messy, it's so messy.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It's messy. Yeah, I'm I mean, we talked about this
in the first two it's complicated. It's hard to keep
some of these threads straight. But yeah, especially with the
other war.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, and so a lot of the volunteers because volunteers
don't know there's an uprising plan, right, no one knows
this except like, I think it's five people at this point,
I'm not sure. So they're practicing because they know that
they're going to have an uprising if the draft is called,
and they're like, all right, if they try to draft us,
we'll fight back. And now James Connelly, the socialist guy,
(27:45):
he doesn't know about the rising yet, and he's basically
like he's hanging out with the nationalists. He's like, y'all
gonna fucking start this thing, or do I gotta do it,
like what the fuck? Like yeah, and so the volunteers
are like, all right, better bring them on board and
to our plan because otherwise they're just gonna do it
without us. Yeah, and it'll fuck everything else.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
There's some like basic level communication that needs to happen
in order for this to be effective. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And so they recruited Connolly to be on their like
Supreme Council or whatever, the like the hidden body that
was planning the rising, and they bring on two more
people and so they it's I think up to seven
people now on the like not many people hidden Revolutionary
Council or whatever. Yeah. So the ICA, the Irish Citizen Army,
(28:36):
they join with the ivy the volunteers, and some of
the Citizen's Army quit over this. They're like, we are
fucking Marxist revolutionaries. We're not fighting alongside capitalists. That's not
what we're doing here, you know. And if you ever
want to hate yourself and the left, you can spend
(28:57):
your time now. One hundred and eight years later, reading
analyses from different Marxists about why the Irish were bad
for supporting the Irish Volunteers and how they weren't suitably
Marxist in this way or that way.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Foot cringe inside, and it's like, it's not that I
inherently disagree with the philosophy of like, oh, I can't
like a firm line in the sand capitalists are but
but like the context of situations bigger than right again, priorities.
Let's get through this first part and then we can
(29:28):
start figuring out we just tend to cannibalize each other sometimes.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, no, absolutely, and like I get it. I get
quitting over that, and I'm not mad at the people
quit over it. I'm only mad at the like later
armchair like yeah, yeah, you know, it's the principal people.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Fine, It's like I can't actually be mad at strong principles,
and I'm not, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah. So everyone's getting ready now, right, the two sides
have essentially joined with each other. And the volunteers are like, hey,
on Easter this year, everyone should get ready for three
days of parades and maneuvers and training exercises in public,
like as a big show of force, you know. And
(30:14):
then people are like maneuvers, how do you spell maneuvers?
And no one got it right, least of all Margaret
while writing this script and I was like, please don't
ask me to spell it right now. No, No, it's
not even spelled correctly in my notes here. And then
to make it worse, I think this is a British
versus English and I don't know it's all from French anyway.
(30:36):
I can't even spell the bourgeoisie. That's why I hate them. Actually,
sometimes I spell bourgeoisie correctly, and I feel like it's
like I feel like I've like sold out that I
noticed this point somehow. I'm yeah, I spent too much
of my life thinking about this that I can fucking
box spell They're winning.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I've probably told this story before, but one time I
made this pin and it said death the bourgeoisie, and
it was like a guy with a little machine gun.
It was kind of ironic, and it was a little
bit like you know, and then like and my friend
looked at it and was like, that says death to
the rich women. Because because there's three ways of spelling
boot there's bourgeois and then there's bourgeois z and there's
(31:17):
one version that's gender inclusive and one version it's just women.
And I had spelled it wrong, but the spell check
had passed it because it was a real word. Because
it was a real word. Well, smart Garet, Yeah, and
so I'm real glad that I didn't put together a
kill the lady's pin with a man with a machine
gun on it, which is part of the lesson around
militant rhetoric that you use ironically anyway. So they have
(31:40):
this cover story, this is what was told to the
volunteers right Easter Sunday. We're all going to go around
to a parade. After all, they have a German boat
full of guns with five thousand or twenty thousand rifles
depending on which source you read, and the million rounds
of AMMO on its way. So they're like, we're going
to do this fucking thing. And they're there less feisty
(32:01):
leaders than the volunteers I was talking about, who aren't
excited about the rising unless it's spurred on by a draft.
There's one guy history doesn't remember him particularly kindly, and
his name is Owen McNeil, and he's the chief of
staff of the volunteers, but he's not in the Supreme
Council or whatever the fuck, and when he finds out
(32:22):
about the rising, he only finds out kind of at
the last minute, and he's like, are you fucking kidding me?
We can't do this. And then they're like, look, we've
already got all these guns coming, like come on, just
let us do this man, you know, and he's like,
all right, if the guns show up, we can do it.
But if the guns don't show up, we got to
call the whole thing off. The guns don't show up.
(32:43):
I've read a couple different accounts of this whatever as
best as I can tell. You know, you have this
boat coming over from Germany with all these guns on it,
in a million rounds of ammunition and shit, right, and
a German boat getting it, and they're like pretending to
be Norwegian to get past all this shit. And so
the Irish go to go meet it. But these three
(33:06):
three Irish folks are in a car and they're driving
without headlights on, like the coast of Ireland to not
get caught. They have their headlights off and they just
take a turn wrong and they fall into the ocean
and drowned, and so no one's there to meet the ship.
So then the English show up and the German captain
has to like blow the ship and sink it. Meanwhile,
(33:31):
Roger Casement, the gay anti colonial knight who I love.
He shows up the next day and it's like all
too late, it's all fucking over, and he gets arrested
and he aw man he is never a free man again.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
This goes from bad to worse.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I know, I know that does Easter Rising does not
start or end? Well, it only after the end goes well,
you know, it's a bumber. So he's the last, first
arrested and the last executed of the Easter Rising martyrs.
And the guns don't arrive, and so Owen is like, fuck, no,
the revolution is off. We only have like two thousand guns.
(34:07):
We can't fucking do it, and he writes all over
the country, Hey everyone, the parades and maneuvers are canceled.
And he's such a fucking asshole. He probably spells maneuvers, right,
That's how a bastard this man is. I have no
idea anyway. So he does this because he thinks he's
in charge, and then he finds out he's not as
in charge as he thought he was because he tries
(34:27):
to call it off. But you know what does arrive always,
like the sun coming over the horizon, is ad breaks
it's ad breaks inside your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I really, honestly should have guessed that, given the fact
that we just had those ads, your entire demeanor, changing
your tone of voice. Yeah, but I didn't, and I
was surprised. And now I'm going to be delighted and
surprised by these ads.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I know, totally gonna listen to him. That's what I
do with ads. I listened to them all way, instead
of using easy mechanical conveniences like skipping forward. Here they
go and we're back.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Great ads. I can a few sets of wonderful ads. Boy,
I know.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
So Owen does not manage to successfully call off the revolution,
he manages to fuck it up Owen, because there's this
old quote that I think I have quote on the
show before, and I always forget the name of the
German guy who made this quote from a long ast
time ago, but he is this quote, those who make
half a revolution dig their own graves. And the guy
who like made that quote, like I think, died as
(35:45):
a result of his imprisonment at a fairly young age
for his advocacy of anti capitalist revolution, so he knew
what he was talking about. Yeah, but that's what Owen did.
Owen showed up to dig everyone's grave by trying to
make half a revolution. It was it's too late to
call it off, and he tried anyway between the fuck
up with the guns and oh and chickening out and
(36:05):
fucking up the initial muster, Who knows what happened if
it actually worked out, because they still managed a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, that's the point in time where you double down,
where you try to find you can't put the you
can't stop the train. Yeah, so instead you got to
figure out other ways to you know, I would love
to be quick and sharp enough to continue with the
train analogy, but find other ways to get the guns. Yeah, totally,
(36:32):
much like trains need guns, much like guns. I don't know,
you guys get it. Pretend that was clever.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, And even more than the guns, they needed everyone
to show rights.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
To be there, not to be confused as to whether
or not the party was canceled due to weather or not.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Right exactly, It's like, yeah, some people still come even
though it's raining, and then everyone has a terrible time
because the person who was supposed to bring tents didn't
come because it was posed raining And to be fair,
whenever there's like a supreme council that's deciding how a
bunch of people live and die. It's like, not great, right, And.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Don't call yourself supreme council. I think is good too.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I think they might have had a different name, and
I can't remember right now. I can't remember whether ironically
I called it supreme council when I first wrote this.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
I'm just going to be mad at them about it.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, fuck them. But disclaimer on this part. So there's
some sketchiness all around on this. Owen wasn't alone in
trying to call the whole thing off. He's the one who,
much like we have a great Man of history, where
everyone's too lazy to remember Molt. I never remember any names,
so that's why I don't remember one person's name. Owen
wasn't the only person, but he's the name that everyone remembers,
(37:42):
and I'll remember. I reason I remember it is I
had to look up how to pronounce it because it's EO.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I n okay, so that might be Ewen. I don't
know e Owen. You're probably rightoh, I looked it up.
I looked it up fairly quickly. But I'm gonna keep
calling it Owen, and I'm yeah, sound off with the
garments if we got it right or wrong.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Oh yeah, that's what I love. I love when people
correct me.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
It's not alive. I don't think he cares, and I
don't think his children are alive or his children's children.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
His children's children actually probably alive. A lot of these
people's grandkids are still around.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Apologies to you and Owen's Yeah, children.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
There's also children. I mean, this is like not knowing
how to pronounce the name John or something right. You know,
it's a pretty common name that we're talking here, but
it's not one that made it over lasted very long
in the diaspora.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I will just say real quick, John might not be intuitive.
There's that h in there sometimes.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
John Well John is shamous.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Oh yeah, I'm a terrible Irish lady.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, you're just absolutely the worst. It's almost like you've
been separated from it by one hundred years of yes, bro,
because of families having to leave, because of.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Side all these things.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, yeah, Anyway, there's at least three of these conservative
leaders who are like, we don't want to have the revolution.
One of them gets kidnapped by his friends to shut
them the fuck up. Well, they're like, you can't tell
people not to come, and he's like, well, I'm gonna
tell people not to come, and they're like, then we're
fucking kidnapping you. And they treated him fine, and he
(39:16):
was fine. I don't think he's happy about any of this,
you know. And then the other thing that they did
that was fucked up was the pro rising people sent
around this fake leaked memo from Dublin Castle from the
ruling colonial institution saying Hey, we're going to arrest all
the rebel leaders. And so they were like, well, we
(39:37):
have to rise up. They're going to arrest us. All
our organizations are about to be destroyed. And everyone's like, oh, okay, well,
I guess we got to do it otherwise we all
get arrested. But what had happened it was a real
memo that the colonial government had written in case of draft.
Oh so if they had drafted the Irish, they were
(39:59):
going to go around and arrest all of the leaders
of the Nationalists and the Socialists. Okay, okay, But they
got the hold of the of a leak memo because
they had I mean, they infiltrated the shit out of
all of us they were like, they're pretty.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Legit, sure spies and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, and then they went around they lied to their
own side. That's the shitty I think that sucks.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
It's pretty shitty.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah. But because of all the fuckery, the rising didn't
happen on Easter Sunday. In the end. I've read that
it was to trick England. I've read that it was
to recover from the cock up that Owen and the
others had managed. I think basically they took a day
off to figure out what the fuck to do. Yeah.
Norah Connolly, one of James's daughters, showed up Easter morning
(40:46):
and said, quote, is it true we're not going to fight?
And her father told her quote, if we don't fight now,
the only thing we can do is pray for an
earthquake to come and swallow us up and our shame.
So Conna wanted to fight.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Connie wanted to fight, and earthquake didn't come.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
No, So I guess he fought.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Juesse fought on Monday, bloody Monday. That's a call back
to episode one sort of.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
That you too can make that you too can make.
Oh yeah, And so it felt like now or never
for the rebels. Basically, the way that they talked about
it was that every generation had a chance to overthrow
the government and end colonial rule, because that's about how
it was going, right about once a generation people would
(41:44):
be like, what if we do this thing? And wolf
Tone shows up and tries to invade from France, and
then they're like, what if we do this thing? And
a guy with a bunch of dynamite goes over to
London and they're like, well, what if we do this thing?
You know? And so this was their thing, right and
they were like, it will be another generation before we
have a chance like we have right now. They're quite possibly, right, Yeah,
(42:10):
pretty much every history book has a favorite character they're
rooting for. It's like one of the fun things you
do when you read a history book is you're like,
all right, what's the bias of this author?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Right?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And then you have to be especially careful when the
bias is the same as your bias, and so, like
one of the main books that I read about this
called nineteen sixteen by Kieran Allen. It's not a detailed
analysis of the rising or even what came before it.
It's more of an analysis of the political situation and
what came after. But you can tell that a lot
(42:42):
of people are rooting for Connolly and are rooting for
the Socialists and then using Connolly as the stand in
for all the Socialists, which is annoying. It's hard to
tell exactly how it went down, but it seems likely
this is just me laying out my bias and the
biases some of the authors I'm reading. It seems really
likely that the Socialists and or Connolly himself were like,
(43:05):
you fucking cowards, we are not going to back down. Now,
what the fuck are you even thinking and basically like
chided them into committing staying, sticking with their commitments even
though the conditions were not so good as they had
been right. And this leads to these moments that are
(43:27):
absolutely made for TV, made for movie moments where you know,
a leader will be going around and be like, you know,
all right, lads, of any of you, I can't do
an Irish accent, I can't do any accents. If anyone
want to leave, now there's the door, and then like
no one would leave, and then they would be like, well,
good on you, you know, yeah, And so then on
(43:50):
Sunday Easter Sunday, they set up their provisional government. The
poet Pierce was the President of the Irish Republic and
the commander in chief of its army was the commandant
of the Dublin Brigade. So Connelly was like militarily in
charge of the Dublin part of the rising. Messengers went
out everywhere, get your guns, get your bombs. Tomorrow it's
(44:13):
fucking happening. But by tomorrow I mean Wednesday. For all
you listeners.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Wow, Oh she's a professional.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
It is so exciting to see someone at the top
of their game with the transitions. It snaps for Magpie snaps.
It's poetry, poetry rivaling the greatest Irish poets.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Sometimes I listen to other cool Zone media podcasts and
whenever they like nail an ad break or like any
other transition, I'm like, fuck, that's so good.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
So it's like such a little inside baseball for you
got you folks at home.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
It's always like a strange part of the show. So
you're trying to focus on the stuff that you want
to get through, but you're trying to watch the clock
and you've got these contractual obligations and you want to
make it organic or as ridiculous as possible.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, totally anyway. But what's a totally organic transition is
from that to you talking about your pluggables.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Absolutely, absolutely organic. Our show is called some More News.
That's the show I work for with Cody Johnston, and
you can watch our YouTube channel. We've gotten new episodes
every Wednesday. And then we've also got a podcast. A
lot of people don't know that. A lot of people
(45:38):
do know that. I know some people don't know that.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I've heard.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
We also have a podcast, Margaret it's been on it
called even More News, and so you can check me
out on both of those things. End of sentence. Yeah,
crushed it.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
When I was on even More News, I got a
bunch of people writing me like my friends, my my
actual irl friends being like, oh my god, that's amazing
because they really like it.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Really Yeah, that's lovely. It's very easy to think no
one ever listens, especially.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Except for people.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Write into correct me, you know, or that hate women.
I stay off of the social media is now so
trying to insult me. Ha ha ha.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Speaking of people who hate women. My other podcasts Live
like the World is dying. I have another co host
who's a non binary person who has a who speaks
with vocal fry. Yeah, and which is a traditionally uh whatever,
people who hate how women talk hate vocal fry. It's
like a specific thing, you know. And the most recent
(46:45):
review of on Apple podcasts have Lived like the World
is Dying is like one star, the vocal fry is terrible,
blah blah.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Five star reviews to push that to the bottom, please
it just it always really really lights me up a
flame of fury and.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Commitment to continuing the vocal fry the right whatever it
is you find annoying. My favorite comment are things like
I think I said this on one of these shows,
some more news was better when Katie wasn't involved. You fuck,
I started the show with it's never been I did
say this last week, but you know, stuff like that.
But yeah, most of our listeners are very kind and
(47:28):
like our vocal fry, and.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
That actually just like points out that one of the
reasons is nice to leave reviews or or when you
talk about podcasts that you like publicly, it's nice because
otherwise podcasting is a funny thing where even though a
lot of people listen. It's like talking a little bit
into a void. And so yeah, absolutely it is nice. Yeah,
and that's my I guess that's my plug is that.
(47:52):
I also a podcast called Love Like the World's Dying,
Individual and Community Preparedness Sophie. What do you got at
cool Zone Media? Hell yeah, Oh I vocal Fried people
are gonna get mad. See you on Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, app a Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Wol Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff your
weekly podcast, twice weekly podcast, I weekly by weekly. But
see then it's confusing because it's like, are there more
than two genders and it's attracted to both of them?
Or is it only two genders that it's attracted to.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Like, I don't think that we have to put those
limitations on it, agreed, you know your Pan weekly podcast,
your Pan weekly podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and my guest. You
all have probably guest hit God.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
She's back. Yeah, I mean, like presumably you know by now,
because we've made it loud and clear that there are
four parts to this series that we are currently are
it's true embarking on Yeah, and this.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Is part three. But first you all have to meet
Sophie for the very first time. By Sophie So he's
the producer of the show.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hi, so nice to meet you, Sophie. Let you talk, Yeah, Sophie,
might I just remark on that wonderful framed piece of
art behind you. Is that your great grandmother with Leonard Bernstein,
my great aunt. Thank you, your great aunt.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
You're close.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
It looks great. She just hint a piece of art.
It looks great.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
It does look good.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Houseplant game for everyone on this screen except me, and
is on point. All my house plants are not in
my office. I'm thinking I need to correct that.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, it's nice to have something in your office space. Yeah,
re mind you of life, something green like ire Lynn.
That works. It works.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Thanks, although it wasn't the right place because first we
have to say that the audio was engineered by Daniel.
Everyone's to say hi to Daniel.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Hi, Danel, Danel, Hello, Hi, that's Daniel, Hey Daniel.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Our theme music was written for Vice Unwoman and part
three of four parter. Sometimes you will message me and
are like, but I wait till all of them are out,
and I'm like, well, you're going to have to wait
longer with four parts. And that's the I don't have
a lot of power to exert in my life, but
that's one of the powers. I So where we last
(02:19):
left our heroes, two separate vines of Irish independence were
starting to intertwine, and both were growing thorns. I spent
way too long reading Irish poetry. Beautiful thank you. Yeah.
I thought it would go well with the way that
the Irish always talked about the revolution. You've got the nationalists,
most remembered by Patrick Pierce, who are all about Irish culture,
(02:41):
lots of poets and playwrights and school teachers and all
of that. And then they have the Irish Volunteers, the
larger military organization with Kum and Nabah, the Women's Council
that operates as a somewhat independent women's auxiliary to it.
The other vine are the socialists, most remembered through James. Finally,
they're all about workers control the means of production. They're
(03:03):
doing it in a very specifically Irish way. They're deviating
from classical Marxism and British Marxism on a bunch of points.
They don't reject religion as kind of the biggest one
that people argue about to this day. They're also not
into the dictatorship of the proletariat, but instead creating a
socialist republic rather than a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.
(03:28):
Their way into the cooperative movement. They like co ops
and shit, not necessarily like the bougie food ones, but
you know, instead of instead of nationalizing the means of production,
they're more overall, they're into some of that but they're
also more into like democratic workforces, controlling the means of production, copyright,
which is I'm way more into.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So yeah, me too, And I'm wondering if that's my
political ideology, if it's because i'm you know, mostly Irish,
I'm not sure. I'm also more into that, Brandy.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, no, it just like it works for me. It's
a way more democratic form of yeah, overall, I would say.
And they have their own militant organization, the smaller and
feistier Irish Citizen Army, in which there's no women's auxiliary
because women are an equal part of the organization and
participate in arms training the same as everyone else. And
I read a lot of different stuff about women's involvement
(04:23):
in the Easter Rising and overall, like normally you're like,
you have this big thing full of men, and then
people are like, there was a couple of women. It
was cool, and like, don't get me wrong, that's cool,
Like it's cool that not everything is as completely men
as possible. But in this case, women were really involved
in the Easter Rising, which is even cooler. Yeah, and
(04:45):
they're just left out of it, you know, less cool,
way less cool. And we'll talk about some of the
ways in which that happened in a little bit. But
the thing about these two different groups, not the men
and the women, but the nationalists and the socialists a
sketchy thing to say in conjunction with each other. They
(05:05):
have always bled into each other. Patrick Pierce supported unions
even though he wasn't a socialist, and he was also
against authoritarianism and wrote very like masculinist stuff all the time,
right about like good strong men, like we talked about
last time. M hm. But I was doing a little
bit more reading about him in the Intervening several days
since the last recording, and he would often say things
(05:25):
like that one of the problems with Irish colonial society
was that not enough women were running things, like the
problem with the education system is that it was that
women weren't at the highest levels of it, and stuff
like that. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I like that, an interesting juxtaposition of what you would
associate a person that's into a big strong manly man
but also acknowledging how powerful women are.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Okay, totally, And he's he's he's an interesting I'm not
trying to be like this is whatever. He's an interesting
person and he's like again, like probably asexual. He's kind
of a mama's boy, and we'll talk about that in
the end. And he really respects and believes in the
women in his life, and he just also had this
very masculinist attitude around what Irish men could be, okay,
(06:13):
And so then on the other side, the Socialists were
also all about Irish independence of Ireland too, and they
were also a bunch of weirdo artists. Apparently James Connolly,
in his ample free time that I don't know where
he came up with, wrote plays and the lead actor
in one of his most popular plays was the one
of the leaders of the Rising.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Oh cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
And there are real ideological and organizational differences between the two,
but it's not as distinct as one might immediately think.
The Nationalists are a bit less radical, and plenty of
them are like, well, home rule would be okay, right,
that thing where we're kind of part of England but
not as much, you know, And the socialists are like,
the fuck it would be. Yeah, we're fighting for some
(06:56):
more shit. This is a very big distinction. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And the two groups they're like, all right, well, we're
gonna fucking do this. We've got to overthrow England. How
are we gonna do it? England is the mightiest empire
in the world. We need an opportunity, an opportunity, Like
when you think of things that happened in the nineteen tens,
any big ones come to mind?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I mean so many. I don't know, I don't know
where were we going with this.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I know it's always a setup. World War one. We're
going to World War one?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Okay, yeah, I beat that. Yeah, yes, fair En, that's
the big one.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah. Which is still my favorite joke in the world
is that when they named it World War one, they
were like one, there's gonna be more than one of this. Yeah,
I mean they called it the Great War, but yeah,
until I got over shot.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
We're just setting it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah yeah. So the Great War hits and home rule
is tabled for now. The government is like, we're not
going to halfway free anybody right now. We're busy sending
men into a meat grinder, and the Centrists in Ireland,
including a ton of the Irish volunteers, probably the majority
of the Irish volunteers, march off to war in the
(08:08):
British Army. Last week I was talking about how there
was like some numbers is two hundred thousand volunteers and
some numbers were a like ten thousand volunteers, and I
was this was as I guessed, this was the pre
and post split. Right. Once World War One hits, the
people willing to try and overthrow England drops drops dramatically. Yeah,
(08:31):
And because the Irish volunteers were there to protect Home rule,
they weren't there to overthrow England, right, And so the
Irish Centrists were like, well, if we prove we're loyal
to the English crown, maybe they'll give us a little freedom.
And then because of this, you have these two militias
that were about to fight each other, the Ulster Volunteers
(08:52):
who are the Protestant anti freedom militia, and then the
Irish Volunteers, and they are fighting side by side in
the trenches to save the British Empire. And that's kind
of sad. But Germany was the aggressor in World War One,
and it's not like in and of itself bad that
people tried to stop them from do.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
No, this is messy and complicated, is what it is. Yeah,
Because this other big thing is going on and it
kind of splits your allegiance. This isn't kind of changes
your priorities. Maybe you're your timeline for achieving certain goals too.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
But totally but yeah. And also one of the reasons
the Irish volunteers fought for the British was to defend
Catholic Belgium against the Germans and German invasion. But after
the so you have this first rush of volunteers. But
then after that, basically as soon as everyone figures out
that World War One is like the first time that
(09:47):
someone hmm, the first time that Europeans were forced to
charge machine gun nests. You know, like the beginning of
World War One is like one of the nastiest pieces
of human history of just like people being down and
mass because old tactics don't work with new technology and
leaders don't care about the lives of the people that
they lead at this point. And so then the Irish
(10:11):
are like, we don't want to go anymore. That doesn't sound.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Nothings.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I'm good, yeah and sold, yeah exactly. And so the
rest of the Irish volunteers who go off are essentially
poverty draft. They're the poorer folks from the urban slums
who are like, well, it's this or starve or die
of TV, you know mm. And the war increased price
of food so much that it actually the urban poor
(10:40):
got way poorer, but some of the rural poor kind
of did all right, because if they grew and sold food,
it was like worth a lot more.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Interesting thing to note for all of ourselves at all times, and.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Like right now, yeah, I know, right, And so a
lot of Irish people instead are like, well, We're going
to do the other most traditional Irish thing in the world, emigrate.
But then England was like, you know, I guess something else,
but yeah, no, no emigrate, Yeah, like just leave Ireland.
A ton of people left Ireland to get away from
(11:14):
just all the horrors that were happening.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I guess this is when my family emigrated.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I want to know the.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Fill in the blank that you were thinking on your
mad loosind just like drinking, I still procreating, fucking.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
And I'm Irish so I can say all of that too,
or being aggressively Catholic and getting mad at everyone for
all of those things and then doing.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It, yeah, exactly, you know, we all filled in those
on fills. Have you been to one of my family reunions?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Because that is like the entire script.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I think that my family came in like nineteen thirteen
of this of this time frame.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, that's roughly the nineteen's, the nineteen tens or when
I only came as well, and so England was like, well,
you're not allowed to leave anymore, which I didn't even
it didn't even occur to me, Like of all the
bad colonial things, it never quite occurred to me that
England would just be like, now we're closing the borders.
You're not allowed to leave Ireland. Ireland is now your prison.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
But also you know, checks out in its own ways.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's like, oh yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
It was like I didn't know that that was a thing,
but it wasn't surprising that that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Was exactly That's what I mean. Not yeah, not that
I agree with their logic.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, And that's the thing about borders, right, you put
up a wall that keeps you in as much as
it keeps other people out, and so you've got this war.
The diehard Irish nationalists are like, all right, this is
an opportunity. They're off doing another thing. We talked on
(12:52):
the Roger Caseman episode about how Roger Casement the gay,
anti colonial Irish Knight, who's one of my favorite people
in history, who is not as much in this episode
because we did a whole two part about him, but
him and then Joseph Plunkett, the tuberculosis guy, who would
probably be pretty annoyed that that's how I'm remembering him
in this show.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
It's like, do you feel like we're remembering lots of
people as the tuberculosis fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Well, there's a tuberculosis man and a tuberculosis woman that
we go true, that's true. Yeah, and then the tuberculosis
poverty of Dublin.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
They go to the Kaiser. They go to Germany in
the middle of World War One and they're like, hey,
we want to fight England too, Can we have some
guns so we can like fight England?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And Germany's like, yeah, fine, whatever, Like they're not super committed,
but they're like, we'll see how it goes. We'll give
you some guns, we'll see how it goes. And there's
already been a couple this has already happened a couple times,
and there's this whole side story that we don't won't
get into or this like a this like adventurer couple.
It's like man and this woman like went around on
this like yacht and like brought five hundred guns over
(13:55):
and then they had to like smuggle them into and
then the cops started shooting people, and then people like
whatever happened A couple years prior I'd watched that movie.
I know absolutely going to Germany was a big way. Okay,
So when the media frames the East arising at the time,
they're like, this is just treason. They're just helping Germany. Right,
this is not a new strategy for the Irish rebels.
(14:17):
They're not specifically like man, we love the Kaiser. Right.
Whenever England was at war with someone, the Irish would
go to England's enemy and be like, could you could
you invade us really quickly, just like a little quick
landing with an army takeover the island. We'll like help
you out until the war's over and then you leave.
One of the most famous Irish rebels in history is
(14:38):
this Protestant Irish dude named Wolf Tone, which is a
sick name. His first name is Wolf wolf Tone. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Oh okay, first name Wolf, last name tone, middle name okay,
last name tone Yeah, wolf Tone sick.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah, it's a fucking cool name. He tried twice to
get the French to land in Ireland before dying in
seventeen ninety.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh Wolf Tone, my man, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
So back to the twentieth century, the Irish Volunteers and
the Citizen's Army are finding out that they have a
lot in common, right the socialists and the nationalists. They're like,
even though some of the volunteers had been anti union,
some of them hadn't been. And folks start getting over
those differences because there's bigger problems right now. Jack White,
(15:25):
the adventurer with a Fedora, who we talked about last time,
who I just kind of a side.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Note character Fleet singer of the White Stripes.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly when the lead singer of the
White Stripes he was a vampire. It's been around for
a very long time, Jackson. Yeah, glad he got rid
of Fedora. It was a good style at this time.
Would not have been a good style in odds not now.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
He actually quits the ICA the Citizen Army and goes
over to join the Volunteers, even though he's one of
the founders of the Citizen's Army. And he does this
to draw connections. He was like, well, we need to
we need to be closer in with these other armed groups, right,
And then our countess she's just like, well, I'm just
gonna do both. I'm going to be in the Citizen's
Army and the Irish volunteers. Who the fuck is going
(16:08):
to stop me? I am a six foot one armed
noble woman who sold her diamond tierra to feed the
poor and buy gun. Yes, no one's going to stop me,
and she will not be contained.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
No.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I found out she was six to one in the
intervening couple of days, and I'm like really excited.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Just didn't remark on it at first because I was like,
did I miss that specific detail?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
No, I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Wow, Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, she is a fucking awesome person, not just for
being tall, but I just you know, whatever, I know,
But that helps. Yeah, And then the other reason that
the two are decided that they have to get together.
At this point, there's like two to three hundred folks
in the Citizen's Army and there's like maybe ten thousand volunteers.
So the Citizen's Army is like, oh, yeah, we need them. Yeah,
(16:56):
we need them. Within a month of Britain joining the
war in nineteen fourteen, the IRB, the Irish Republican Brotherhood,
who are one of the groups that the Volunteers is
sort of built out of, they meet and they're like,
we got to do this uprising before the war ends.
Like we just it's it's our chance. And so they
start planning and they do it really secretly. Not even
(17:19):
everyone who runs the IRB and the Volunteers knows about
the plan because a lot of the leadership is more conservative,
and by that I don't mean like votes Reagan, I
mean like a little bit more careful in how they
want to go about things, and so they're not clued in.
They're like, all right, well, we can't tell the people
who want to say no, we'll just plan it, you know.
(17:42):
And then an old Irish nationalist from the past generation
of revolutionaries died in June nineteen fifteen at the age
of eighty three. But if you don't want to die prematurely, Katie,
you should buy all of the products, which, whether or
not they advertise it, also include the property of making
(18:06):
you immortal.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Immortal Okay, so hmm, what if that sounds bad? I
already am worried about whether or not I can afford
a regular long life, let alone an immortal one.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Okay, okay, but you know what, hey, compound interest is
your friend. If you're immortal. There's no draculas, right, there's
no poor draculas.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
And I guess if I'm I'm immortal, I probably I'm
not going to be racking up a big hospital bill. No,
no health insurance. Probably the blood well, we can take
care of that.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Oh okay, good because some other ideas in mind.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
All right, you know what I'm sold right on?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
The products and services here they are the key to immortality.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And we're back. Oh I feel great and youthful forever.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I already bought and consumed all my products and services.
It'd be really cool if it was like like a
mattress AD and it's like no, no, no sleep on this.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Forever. I hope it's skincare because that's the closest.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Is the closest, just like a really nice mineral sunscreen AD.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, full support. It's just the concept of wearing sunscreen
that could be our new Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
The concept you by the concept I bring this all
the time.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Are you staying home is it cloudy outside but you're
not wearing sunscreen?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
You should be inside your house.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Oh yeah, Katie on Kadi just switched on am moisturizer
that has sunscreen in it, and then you just cover
both bases. I know some people argue against the sunscreen
and the moisturizer as like.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, but I'm not gonna argue against it. I sometimes
fuck with something like that, but it doesn't seem to
absorb in the same way. That's true, and I've got
a nice light facial sense green. I just never think
to where it's sitting here on a cloudy day when
it's oh yeah, you're getting hit with those ridiculously windy
windy in California, you're getting hit with those UV rays.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
So Jeremiah O'Donovan Rosa Jeremiah Donovan Rosa was born in
eighteen thirty one, and he believed in what was called
physical force Irish Republicanism aka why don't some people get
some dynamite and go to London and just see what happens?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (20:39):
And normally when people like write about this and don't
do it as much personally, I'm a little bit like, yeah,
fuck off. But he wrote about it a lot, and
this led to some negative ramifications in his life, so
he put some skin in the game, specifically an awful
lot of time in prison exile where he did not
get to live his life in Ireland, and at one
(21:01):
point an english woman just shot him. But he survived, okay,
and I think it was over. I don't know. Whenever
I hear about a woman shooting a man, I'm like,
probably deserved it. But I think in this case, now
it's hard to aside. I know, I think this time
it was it was actually ethnically motivated crime. Yeah, yeah,
(21:22):
but he survives that. When in prison, at one point
he was manacled to a wall for thirty five days
because he threw his chamber pot at the warden. And
then another time he spent three days because he refused
to take his cap off in front of a visiting doctor.
(21:43):
So he's not, oh, Jeremiah, he's not a what he
doesn't like being told what to do, it's not being
told what to do. I could have guessed that from
how he got in prison. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You know, knowing nothing about him other than what you've said,
I I'm on his.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
You know, Yeah, I don't know much about him personally.
I'm you know, he's not the deep dive of the episode,
but he's interesting and he he managed an Irish classic thing,
which was he got himself elected to the British House
of Commons while he was in prison, and like couldn't
serve because Ireland was like pretty good at voting for people,
just as fuck used to England.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So he couldn't serve. They took it away, give it
to someone else.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I think, so I believe that that is what happened interesting,
or maybe his seat was empty, I am I actually
not certain, but it's a thing that the twentieth century
has a ton of is Irish people being like, yeah, well,
I'm going to run from prison because fuck you.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
He was exiled in eighteen seventy one, basically like I
we'll let you out of jail. You're not allowed in
the United Kingdom and he's like that's fine, and they're like,
Ireland's in the United Kingdom and he was like, oh fuck,
and I don't. I'm not even paraphrasing him entirely making
up that exchange, and then he went to America. He also,
over the course of his life, had eighteen kids, by
three different wives, because his first two wives died young.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Okay, bringing a background the Irish, Yeah, they love their
fucking yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Catholicism is all of a drug, unlike prophylactics. While he
was in exile, he was only allowed to return to
Ireland for like short visits. I think he got to
visit twice for like brief moments. And then he died
in nineteen fifteen, and the Easter Rising was already being
planned and then here's this famous rebel who had died.
So the rebels wrote the US and they a lot
(23:27):
of them like knew him, right. One of the people
who's going to get killed, executed at the end of
the Easter Rising is one of the guys who took
the dynamite and went to London a generation prior, you know.
So they're like, hey, give us the body. He's dead
now he can come home in England's like fine, fuck you,
And so his remains are shipped home to Ireland and
(23:50):
tens of thousands of people came to his funeral and
the various revolutionists gave speeches from his graveside, but the
most famous one is by Patrick Pierce, and I'm gonna
quote part of it. Life springs from death, and from
the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.
They think they have pacified Ireland, They think that they
(24:13):
have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything. But
the fools, the fools, the fools they have left us
Arephenian dead. And while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree
shall never be at peace.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I know. More poets in the revolution, please and not
where you think your job is just poet.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Side note, this is not to stay in a sorry,
really funny you cut up slightly for me. As the
weather just hit in my mountain. Okay, wind and hail
just started coming down.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Whoa, whoa, I just keep that in, but all right,
keep it in. That last, Ireland unfree shall never be
at peace is the most quoted part of this. And
what's wild to think about is it holds true even
today because throughout the whole twentieth century and the troubles,
(25:14):
like the reason that the troubles continued is Ireland not
being free yet?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, So the rank and file of the including the
non military parts of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and like
a lot of people in the volunteers and stuff. They
don't know the details of the rising, and at this
point Connolly and the Socialists don't know about the rising.
But everyone is training, everyone's getting ready, everyone can feel it.
(25:45):
There's something in the air. And soon enough, England, Wales
and Scotland all have the draft to get into World
War One because people aren't, for some weird reason volunteering
to go get mowed down by a machine gun. Weird,
I know, cowards, I know. But speaking of cowards, the
English were too nervous to conscript the Irish. Oh, cowards,
(26:09):
and they were like they they're considering it, right, but
it's like harder because Ireland is kind of fighty and
keeps up. Maybe they don't always want to give all
the Irish guns. And you know, although actually you have
this interesting thing where a lot of the militia trainings
the government let happen, right, because you're like, how are
all these people getting all these guns and running around
(26:31):
in the woods and shooting practice stuff. And the answer
is that one when England was considering giving home rule,
the Ulster volunteers, the right wing ones, they were preparing
to fight against England. So they actually the English actually
believed that the Irish volunteers would have a right to
self defense to defend home rule against the militia, which
(26:52):
is interesting. And then the Irish citizen army by this point,
you know, World War one's hitting and like England's like, well,
we don't mind those people that were considering drafting knowing
how to shoot. You know, it's messy, it's so messy.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It's messy. Yeah, I'm I mean, we talked about this
in the first two it's complicated. It's hard to keep
some of these threads straight. But yeah, especially with the
other war.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, and so a lot of the volunteers because volunteers
don't know there's an uprising plan, right, no one knows
this except like, I think it's five people at this point,
I'm not sure. So they're practicing because they know that
they're going to have an uprising if the draft is called,
and they're like, all right, if they try to draft us,
we'll fight back. And now James Connelly, the socialist guy,
(27:45):
he doesn't know about the rising yet, and he's basically
like he's hanging out with the nationalists. He's like, y'all
gonna fucking start this thing, or do I gotta do it,
like what the fuck? Like yeah, and so the volunteers
are like, all right, better bring them on board and
to our plan because otherwise they're just gonna do it
without us. Yeah, and it'll fuck everything else.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
There's some like basic level communication that needs to happen
in order for this to be effective. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And so they recruited Connolly to be on their like
Supreme Council or whatever, the like the hidden body that
was planning the rising, and they bring on two more
people and so they it's I think up to seven
people now on the like not many people hidden Revolutionary
Council or whatever. Yeah. So the ICA, the Irish Citizen Army,
(28:36):
they join with the ivy the volunteers, and some of
the Citizen's Army quit over this. They're like, we are
fucking Marxist revolutionaries. We're not fighting alongside capitalists. That's not
what we're doing here, you know. And if you ever
want to hate yourself and the left, you can spend
(28:57):
your time now. One hundred and eight years later, reading
analyses from different Marxists about why the Irish were bad
for supporting the Irish Volunteers and how they weren't suitably
Marxist in this way or that way.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Foot cringe inside, and it's like, it's not that I
inherently disagree with the philosophy of like, oh, I can't
like a firm line in the sand capitalists are but
but like the context of situations bigger than right again, priorities.
Let's get through this first part and then we can
(29:28):
start figuring out we just tend to cannibalize each other sometimes.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, no, absolutely, and like I get it. I get
quitting over that, and I'm not mad at the people
quit over it. I'm only mad at the like later
armchair like yeah, yeah, you know, it's the principal people.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Fine, It's like I can't actually be mad at strong principles,
and I'm not, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah. So everyone's getting ready now, right, the two sides
have essentially joined with each other. And the volunteers are like, hey,
on Easter this year, everyone should get ready for three
days of parades and maneuvers and training exercises in public,
like as a big show of force, you know. And
(30:14):
then people are like maneuvers, how do you spell maneuvers?
And no one got it right, least of all Margaret
while writing this script and I was like, please don't
ask me to spell it right now. No, No, it's
not even spelled correctly in my notes here. And then
to make it worse, I think this is a British
versus English and I don't know it's all from French anyway.
(30:36):
I can't even spell the bourgeoisie. That's why I hate them. Actually,
sometimes I spell bourgeoisie correctly, and I feel like it's
like I feel like I've like sold out that I
noticed this point somehow. I'm yeah, I spent too much
of my life thinking about this that I can fucking
box spell They're winning.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I've probably told this story before, but one time I
made this pin and it said death the bourgeoisie, and
it was like a guy with a little machine gun.
It was kind of ironic, and it was a little
bit like you know, and then like and my friend
looked at it and was like, that says death to
the rich women. Because because there's three ways of spelling
boot there's bourgeois and then there's bourgeois z and there's
(31:17):
one version that's gender inclusive and one version it's just women.
And I had spelled it wrong, but the spell check
had passed it because it was a real word. Because
it was a real word. Well, smart Garet, Yeah, and
so I'm real glad that I didn't put together a
kill the lady's pin with a man with a machine
gun on it, which is part of the lesson around
militant rhetoric that you use ironically anyway. So they have
(31:40):
this cover story, this is what was told to the
volunteers right Easter Sunday. We're all going to go around
to a parade. After all, they have a German boat
full of guns with five thousand or twenty thousand rifles
depending on which source you read, and the million rounds
of AMMO on its way. So they're like, we're going
to do this fucking thing. And they're there less feisty
(32:01):
leaders than the volunteers I was talking about, who aren't
excited about the rising unless it's spurred on by a draft.
There's one guy history doesn't remember him particularly kindly, and
his name is Owen McNeil, and he's the chief of
staff of the volunteers, but he's not in the Supreme
Council or whatever the fuck, and when he finds out
(32:22):
about the rising, he only finds out kind of at
the last minute, and he's like, are you fucking kidding me?
We can't do this. And then they're like, look, we've
already got all these guns coming, like come on, just
let us do this man, you know, and he's like,
all right, if the guns show up, we can do it.
But if the guns don't show up, we got to
call the whole thing off. The guns don't show up.
(32:43):
I've read a couple different accounts of this whatever as
best as I can tell. You know, you have this
boat coming over from Germany with all these guns on it,
in a million rounds of ammunition and shit, right, and
a German boat getting it, and they're like pretending to
be Norwegian to get past all this shit. And so
the Irish go to go meet it. But these three
(33:06):
three Irish folks are in a car and they're driving
without headlights on, like the coast of Ireland to not
get caught. They have their headlights off and they just
take a turn wrong and they fall into the ocean
and drowned, and so no one's there to meet the ship.
So then the English show up and the German captain
has to like blow the ship and sink it. Meanwhile,
(33:31):
Roger Casement, the gay anti colonial knight who I love.
He shows up the next day and it's like all
too late, it's all fucking over, and he gets arrested
and he aw man he is never a free man again.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
This goes from bad to worse.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I know, I know that does Easter Rising does not
start or end? Well, it only after the end goes well,
you know, it's a bumber. So he's the last, first
arrested and the last executed of the Easter Rising martyrs.
And the guns don't arrive, and so Owen is like, fuck, no,
the revolution is off. We only have like two thousand guns.
(34:07):
We can't fucking do it, and he writes all over
the country, Hey everyone, the parades and maneuvers are canceled.
And he's such a fucking asshole. He probably spells maneuvers, right,
That's how a bastard this man is. I have no
idea anyway. So he does this because he thinks he's
in charge, and then he finds out he's not as
in charge as he thought he was because he tries
(34:27):
to call it off. But you know what does arrive always,
like the sun coming over the horizon, is ad breaks
it's ad breaks inside your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I really, honestly should have guessed that, given the fact
that we just had those ads, your entire demeanor, changing
your tone of voice. Yeah, but I didn't, and I
was surprised. And now I'm going to be delighted and
surprised by these ads.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I know, totally gonna listen to him. That's what I
do with ads. I listened to them all way, instead
of using easy mechanical conveniences like skipping forward. Here they
go and we're back.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Great ads. I can a few sets of wonderful ads. Boy,
I know.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
So Owen does not manage to successfully call off the revolution,
he manages to fuck it up Owen, because there's this
old quote that I think I have quote on the
show before, and I always forget the name of the
German guy who made this quote from a long ast
time ago, but he is this quote, those who make
half a revolution dig their own graves. And the guy
who like made that quote, like I think, died as
(35:45):
a result of his imprisonment at a fairly young age
for his advocacy of anti capitalist revolution, so he knew
what he was talking about. Yeah, but that's what Owen did.
Owen showed up to dig everyone's grave by trying to
make half a revolution. It was it's too late to
call it off, and he tried anyway between the fuck
up with the guns and oh and chickening out and
(36:05):
fucking up the initial muster, Who knows what happened if
it actually worked out, because they still managed a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, that's the point in time where you double down,
where you try to find you can't put the you
can't stop the train. Yeah, so instead you got to
figure out other ways to you know, I would love
to be quick and sharp enough to continue with the
train analogy, but find other ways to get the guns. Yeah, totally,
(36:32):
much like trains need guns, much like guns. I don't know,
you guys get it. Pretend that was clever.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, And even more than the guns, they needed everyone
to show rights.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
To be there, not to be confused as to whether
or not the party was canceled due to weather or not.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Right exactly, It's like, yeah, some people still come even
though it's raining, and then everyone has a terrible time
because the person who was supposed to bring tents didn't
come because it was posed raining And to be fair,
whenever there's like a supreme council that's deciding how a
bunch of people live and die. It's like, not great, right, And.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Don't call yourself supreme council. I think is good too.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I think they might have had a different name, and
I can't remember right now. I can't remember whether ironically
I called it supreme council when I first wrote this.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
I'm just going to be mad at them about it.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, fuck them. But disclaimer on this part. So there's
some sketchiness all around on this. Owen wasn't alone in
trying to call the whole thing off. He's the one who,
much like we have a great Man of history, where
everyone's too lazy to remember Molt. I never remember any names,
so that's why I don't remember one person's name. Owen
wasn't the only person, but he's the name that everyone remembers,
(37:42):
and I'll remember. I reason I remember it is I
had to look up how to pronounce it because it's EO.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I n okay, so that might be Ewen. I don't
know e Owen. You're probably rightoh, I looked it up.
I looked it up fairly quickly. But I'm gonna keep
calling it Owen, and I'm yeah, sound off with the
garments if we got it right or wrong.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Oh yeah, that's what I love. I love when people
correct me.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
It's not alive. I don't think he cares, and I
don't think his children are alive or his children's children.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
His children's children actually probably alive. A lot of these
people's grandkids are still around.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Apologies to you and Owen's Yeah, children.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
There's also children. I mean, this is like not knowing
how to pronounce the name John or something right. You know,
it's a pretty common name that we're talking here, but
it's not one that made it over lasted very long
in the diaspora.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I will just say real quick, John might not be intuitive.
There's that h in there sometimes.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
John Well John is shamous.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Oh yeah, I'm a terrible Irish lady.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, you're just absolutely the worst. It's almost like you've
been separated from it by one hundred years of yes, bro,
because of families having to leave, because of.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Side all these things.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, yeah, Anyway, there's at least three of these conservative
leaders who are like, we don't want to have the revolution.
One of them gets kidnapped by his friends to shut
them the fuck up. Well, they're like, you can't tell
people not to come, and he's like, well, I'm gonna
tell people not to come, and they're like, then we're
fucking kidnapping you. And they treated him fine, and he
(39:16):
was fine. I don't think he's happy about any of this,
you know. And then the other thing that they did
that was fucked up was the pro rising people sent
around this fake leaked memo from Dublin Castle from the
ruling colonial institution saying Hey, we're going to arrest all
the rebel leaders. And so they were like, well, we
(39:37):
have to rise up. They're going to arrest us. All
our organizations are about to be destroyed. And everyone's like, oh, okay, well,
I guess we got to do it otherwise we all
get arrested. But what had happened it was a real
memo that the colonial government had written in case of draft.
Oh so if they had drafted the Irish, they were
(39:59):
going to go around and arrest all of the leaders
of the Nationalists and the Socialists. Okay, okay, But they
got the hold of the of a leak memo because
they had I mean, they infiltrated the shit out of
all of us they were like, they're pretty.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Legit, sure spies and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, and then they went around they lied to their
own side. That's the shitty I think that sucks.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
It's pretty shitty.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah. But because of all the fuckery, the rising didn't
happen on Easter Sunday. In the end. I've read that
it was to trick England. I've read that it was
to recover from the cock up that Owen and the
others had managed. I think basically they took a day
off to figure out what the fuck to do. Yeah.
Norah Connolly, one of James's daughters, showed up Easter morning
(40:46):
and said, quote, is it true we're not going to fight?
And her father told her quote, if we don't fight now,
the only thing we can do is pray for an
earthquake to come and swallow us up and our shame.
So Conna wanted to fight.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Connie wanted to fight, and earthquake didn't come.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
No, So I guess he fought.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Juesse fought on Monday, bloody Monday. That's a call back
to episode one sort of.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
That you too can make that you too can make.
Oh yeah, And so it felt like now or never
for the rebels. Basically, the way that they talked about
it was that every generation had a chance to overthrow
the government and end colonial rule, because that's about how
it was going, right about once a generation people would
(41:44):
be like, what if we do this thing? And wolf
Tone shows up and tries to invade from France, and
then they're like, what if we do this thing? And
a guy with a bunch of dynamite goes over to
London and they're like, well, what if we do this thing?
You know? And so this was their thing, right and
they were like, it will be another generation before we
have a chance like we have right now. They're quite possibly, right, Yeah,
(42:10):
pretty much every history book has a favorite character they're
rooting for. It's like one of the fun things you
do when you read a history book is you're like,
all right, what's the bias of this author?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Right?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And then you have to be especially careful when the
bias is the same as your bias, and so, like
one of the main books that I read about this
called nineteen sixteen by Kieran Allen. It's not a detailed
analysis of the rising or even what came before it.
It's more of an analysis of the political situation and
what came after. But you can tell that a lot
(42:42):
of people are rooting for Connolly and are rooting for
the Socialists and then using Connolly as the stand in
for all the Socialists, which is annoying. It's hard to
tell exactly how it went down, but it seems likely
this is just me laying out my bias and the
biases some of the authors I'm reading. It seems really
likely that the Socialists and or Connolly himself were like,
(43:05):
you fucking cowards, we are not going to back down. Now,
what the fuck are you even thinking and basically like
chided them into committing staying, sticking with their commitments even
though the conditions were not so good as they had
been right. And this leads to these moments that are
(43:27):
absolutely made for TV, made for movie moments where you know,
a leader will be going around and be like, you know,
all right, lads, of any of you, I can't do
an Irish accent, I can't do any accents. If anyone
want to leave, now there's the door, and then like
no one would leave, and then they would be like, well,
good on you, you know, yeah, And so then on
(43:50):
Sunday Easter Sunday, they set up their provisional government. The
poet Pierce was the President of the Irish Republic and
the commander in chief of its army was the commandant
of the Dublin Brigade. So Connelly was like militarily in
charge of the Dublin part of the rising. Messengers went
out everywhere, get your guns, get your bombs. Tomorrow it's
(44:13):
fucking happening. But by tomorrow I mean Wednesday. For all
you listeners.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Wow, Oh she's a professional.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
It is so exciting to see someone at the top
of their game with the transitions. It snaps for Magpie snaps.
It's poetry, poetry rivaling the greatest Irish poets.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Sometimes I listen to other cool Zone media podcasts and
whenever they like nail an ad break or like any
other transition, I'm like, fuck, that's so good.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
So it's like such a little inside baseball for you
got you folks at home.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
It's always like a strange part of the show. So
you're trying to focus on the stuff that you want
to get through, but you're trying to watch the clock
and you've got these contractual obligations and you want to
make it organic or as ridiculous as possible.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, totally anyway. But what's a totally organic transition is
from that to you talking about your pluggables.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Absolutely, absolutely organic. Our show is called some More News.
That's the show I work for with Cody Johnston, and
you can watch our YouTube channel. We've gotten new episodes
every Wednesday. And then we've also got a podcast. A
lot of people don't know that. A lot of people
(45:38):
do know that. I know some people don't know that.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I've heard.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
We also have a podcast, Margaret it's been on it
called even More News, and so you can check me
out on both of those things. End of sentence. Yeah,
crushed it.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
When I was on even More News, I got a
bunch of people writing me like my friends, my my
actual irl friends being like, oh my god, that's amazing
because they really like it.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Really Yeah, that's lovely. It's very easy to think no
one ever listens, especially.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Except for people.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Write into correct me, you know, or that hate women.
I stay off of the social media is now so
trying to insult me. Ha ha ha.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Speaking of people who hate women. My other podcasts Live
like the World is dying. I have another co host
who's a non binary person who has a who speaks
with vocal fry. Yeah, and which is a traditionally uh whatever,
people who hate how women talk hate vocal fry. It's
like a specific thing, you know. And the most recent
(46:45):
review of on Apple podcasts have Lived like the World
is Dying is like one star, the vocal fry is terrible,
blah blah.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Five star reviews to push that to the bottom, please
it just it always really really lights me up a
flame of fury and.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Commitment to continuing the vocal fry the right whatever it
is you find annoying. My favorite comment are things like
I think I said this on one of these shows,
some more news was better when Katie wasn't involved. You fuck,
I started the show with it's never been I did
say this last week, but you know, stuff like that.
But yeah, most of our listeners are very kind and
(47:28):
like our vocal fry, and.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
That actually just like points out that one of the
reasons is nice to leave reviews or or when you
talk about podcasts that you like publicly, it's nice because
otherwise podcasting is a funny thing where even though a
lot of people listen. It's like talking a little bit
into a void. And so yeah, absolutely it is nice. Yeah,
and that's my I guess that's my plug is that.
(47:52):
I also a podcast called Love Like the World's Dying,
Individual and Community Preparedness Sophie. What do you got at
cool Zone Media? Hell yeah, Oh I vocal Fried people
are gonna get mad. See you on Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, app a Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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