SYMHC Classics: The Easter Rising of 1916

Today's show revisits one of the most pivotal events in modern Irish history. It was a precursor to a number of other events that have happened since then, both within and outside of Ireland.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. Today's classic is a little bit newer
than the ones that we have shared on previous Saturdays.
It is our April episode on the Easter Rising, and
we have a new episode coming up next week that's
focused on one of the figures from the Rising, and
because there are several other major events to talk about
in that upcoming episode, we didn't want to spend too

(00:22):
much time recapping something that we've covered before, but we
also did not want new listeners to miss out on
that part of the story, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
you missed in History Class from housetop works dot com. Hello,

(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry. The anniversary of Ireland's nineteen sixteen
Easter Rising is really just around the corner, so consequently
we have been getting periodic requests talk about it for
about the last year today. This is considered to be
one of the most pivotal moments in modern Irish history

(01:08):
and it was the precursor to a number of events
that have happened since then, both within and outside of Ireland.
But at the same time, it's an event that was
and continues to be really full of contradictions. There were
a lot of different organizations that were involved in planning
the Easter Rising and carrying it out, and each group
had its own perspectives and goals, and the people within

(01:30):
each group did too, and a lot of times these
contradicted each other. Although what happened is pretty well established,
there's still significant disagreement about what it meant and whether
it was justified. And depending on who is doing the talking,
it was either a much needed anti colonial revolt that
directly led to Ireland's independence or it was an unasked

(01:53):
for violent overthrow of a democratically elected government. So wildly
diverging spectives on what it was all about. Even though
it happened a century ago, so you might think things
were a little more settled about understanding it today. A
lot of papers related to it were only released by
Ireland's Bureau of Military History and two thousand and three,

(02:17):
after the last of the survivors had died, the Irish
government actually established the Bureau of Military History in nineteen
forty seven to document the perspectives of the people who
had been involved involved in revolutionary activities between nineteen thirteen
and nineteen twenty one. This is the biggest collection of
written accounts from the Republican point of view that exists,

(02:38):
and so basically decades passed between when the events happened
and when a lot of these documentations or a lot
of these individual testimonies were written down, and then once
they were released to historians to review, which only happened
comparatively recently, all the people whose memories were documented there
had passed away. All this together means that today's podcast

(02:59):
cannot possible touch on every motivation and every interpretation for
the Easter Rising, or even everything that happened during Easter
Week nineteen sixteen. It also means that the written history
of the Easter Rising and people's perspectives on its significance
and its impact will definitely continue to evolve long after
this podcast is over. So today is really an overview

(03:20):
of the basics and some of the way is that
people interpret the Easter Rising today. Conflicts between England and
Ireland about how Ireland should be ruled and by whom
go back for centuries, As we've talked about on the show,
before the Normans invaded what is now England in the
Battle of Hastings, in ten sixty six, and then about
a hundred years later, Anglo Norman's went on to invade Ireland,

(03:43):
with Henry the Second arriving there in eleven seventy one.
In fifteen forty one, Henry the Eighth was declared King
of Ireland. The Irish Parliament was formally abolished in eighteen
o one when the nation became part of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union.
At that point, Ireland's MP's and peers became part of

(04:04):
the UK Parliament, rather than Ireland having a Parliament of
its own. So throughout all of these centuries a wide
range of laws and policies were put into place that
restricted the Irish population in various ways, particularly related to
religious freedoms. Most but not all, of the people in
Ireland were and continued to be Catholic, just as examples

(04:27):
in the early seventeenth century, King James the First sent
Protestant farmers to Ireland, specifically to take over farmland that
was owned by Catholics. Laws that forbade Catholics from voting,
owning land, or practicing their religion were passed in nineteen
sixte two, when a potato blight struck Ireland in eighteen
forty five, which we've talked about in a previous two

(04:48):
part on the show. The British government's response was basically
to do nothing, which led to about a million deaths
and a massive wave of immigration from Ireland to other nations,
include in the United States. So unsurprisingly, there has also
been resistance to English rule of Ireland during those same centuries,
through both violent and non violent means, and often these

(05:11):
conflicts have had multiple sides, with some of the Irish
populations supporting the idea of self governance or independence and
others supporting the idea of remaining as part of the
United Kingdom, and these conflicts have had both political and
religious roots which have often been deeply interconnected. Throughout the
history of English presence in Ireland, more moderate groups and

(05:32):
political parties have basically tried to work within the system
through things like petitions and demonsts, demonstrations and getting nationalist
representatives elected to Parliament. At the same time, more radical
groups have led numerous armed uprisings, and whether they were
violent or non violent, all of these movements and uprisings
and rebellions have all had their own leaders and their

(05:53):
own ideologies and their own tipping points, but at a
very basic level, they were all about Ireland resisting British
rule or British laws and practices that Irish people found
to be unjust or discriminatory. In the eighteen seventies, isaac
BUT established the Home Government Association, which called for Home rule,
basically Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom while also

(06:15):
governing itself through its own parliament, which would convene in
Ireland rather than England. Through the late eighteen hundreds and
into the early nineteen hundreds, multiple Home Rule bills were
introduced in Parliament, but they ultimately failed. Then, finally, after
two years of debate, the Government of Ireland Act of
nineteen fourteen was given Royal assent on September eighteenth of

(06:37):
that year. This Act was intended to establish Home rule
in Ireland, but on the same day the Suspensary Act
of nineteen fourteen was also passed, which effectively delayed the
Government of Ireland Act, along with the Welsh Church Act
of nineteen fourteen, which we're not really talking about today,
from going into effect for a year. This was because

(06:57):
of World War One, which was going on at the time.
This situation made a lot of people with widely diverging
ideologies extremely angry. The Government of Ireland Act itself infuriated
the most radical Unionists, that is, the people who wanted
Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom because it
would allow for a separate parliament for Ireland. Many, but

(07:19):
not all of these were Protestants living in the northern
part of Ireland. It simultaneously infuriated the most radical Republicans,
that is, the people who wanted Ireland to be completely
independent from the United Kingdom because under the Act, Ireland
would continue to be part of the UK. Along with
other organizations that had been formed for and against the

(07:39):
idea of home rule, while this Act was being debated,
militias had formed as well. There was the Ulster Volunteers.
These were on the Unionist side, mostly in the northern
part of Ireland, and then there were the Irish Volunteers
on the nationalist side. They were basically the Irish Volunteers
were formed kind of in response to the existence of
the Ulster Volunteers. Then there was the Irish Citizen Army,

(08:03):
which was originally formed to protect protesters from police during
a labor dispute, which had evolved into a nationalist organization
as well. People whose opinions were more moderate were generally
in favor of Home Rule. It was a sort of
compromise between being independent and remaining part of the UK,
and a lot of them agreed that the middle of

(08:24):
a war wasn't the right time to go about separating
Ireland's government from the UK Parliament. But the year long
delay brought about by the Suspensary Act did lead some
supporters of Home Rule to fear that by the time
that year was up or the war was over, something
would happen to derail it entirely. I should also point
out that there are pretty moderate Protestants living in the

(08:44):
mostly in the northern part of Ireland, who were not
in favor of Home Rule because they were afraid that
if Home Rule were implemented that their needs would be
outweighed by the majority Catholic vote ah and that that
wasn't as much of a threat um as with everyone
being part of the UK Parliament rather than having a
separate parliament for Ireland. The people who planned and executed

(09:08):
the Easter Rising were against Home Rule. They were all
Republicans who wanted Ireland to be completely independent from the
United Kingdom. We'll talk about who they were and what
they planned to do after a brief word around a
fusor getting back to the story. A huge number of

(09:41):
people and organizations were involved in the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising.
The Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army has mentioned before
the break We're both involved, as was the Irish Republican
Brotherhood which went by i RB, who we discussed in
our podcast on the Catalpa. Kuman Naman was a women's
militia formed in response to the fact that the Irish

(10:01):
volunteers were all male. A nationalist youth organization called Nafina
Aran was involved as well, along with many other smaller organizations.
In terms of the participants, the largest numbers of actual
people were from the Irish Volunteers in the Irish Citizen Army,
but in terms of leadership, the people who were in

(10:21):
the most powerful positions who did the most strategic planning
were from the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who were also known
as the Fenians. This has since then evolved into a
slur often used against Irish people. A lot of the
first pieces of the planning an organization started with IRB
members Thomas Clark and Sean mcgearmada. Essentially with the start

(10:44):
of World War One, Thomas Clark and other militant nationalists
in the i RB saw an opportunity. Within just a
couple of weeks of Britain's entry into the war on
August five of nineteen fourteen, the i RB had decided
to pursue the idea of an open rebellion be or
the end of the war. The government was focused on
the war and not on Ireland. Plus, the war had

(11:07):
led to a schism within the Irish Volunteers, with many
of them volunteering to fight following the encouragement of Irish
Revolutionary Party leader John Redmond. The ones who were left
were primarily the organization's most radical members, who were against
both Irish involvement in the war and Home rule. Consequently,
the i RB was able to place some of its

(11:29):
most radical members into leadership roles within the Irish Volunteers. Soon,
Padrick Pierce, whose name is often anglicized to Patrick, Joseph Plunkett,
Aiman Kant and Thomas McDonough had all been placed into
positions that were directing the organization's military training and communications functions.
While planning the rising, they turned to Germany for support,

(11:51):
with Roger Casement, subject of a previous podcast that previous
hosts Sara and Deblina worked on trying to secure weapons,
ammunition officer, and an army of volunteers recruited from Irish
POW's being held in Germany. Neither of these efforts was successful,
few of the POWs wanted to volunteer, and the largest
weapons shipment was intercepted on its way to Ireland. A

(12:14):
couple of side notes here. Casement ultimately realized that the
rising was not likely to succeed, and he tried to
return to Ireland to discourage it, but he arrived too
late and he was captured and charged with treason. There's
a lot more detail about that in this episode from
the archive, which will link to you in our show notes. Also,
Germany basically wound up providing weapons to both the Irish

(12:35):
Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteers, basically opposite sides of the
Home Rule versus not Home Rule disagreement, in part because
Germany was really hoping to turn World War One into
a two front war, with Britain being distracted by fighting
in Ireland and unable to focus on what was happening
on the continent. By May of nineteen fifteen, the i

(12:58):
RB had established a military council specifically for planning a rebellion.
They conducted their planning in total secrecy. They had to
avoid being caught by Irish authorities as well as by
the more moderate members of all the organizations that were
ultimately involved in the rising. This was difficult since one
of the things they needed to do was to prepare
the Irish volunteers on the Irish Citizen Army to fight

(13:20):
in the rebellion without tipping their hands that they were
planning one. Eventually, they settled on Easter Sunday nineteen sixteen
and planned a nationwide uprising. The date was to was
chosen deliberately. The Irish volunteers had conducted some pretty large
exercises on St. Patrick's Day that year, as well as
on Easter or the year before, so they were hoping

(13:42):
that this precedent would make it seem like this mobilization
was just a recognition of the day and not something
more violent. However, about a week before Easter, Bulver Hobson,
who was the i RBS Quartermaster General and Owen McNeil,
chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers, heard about the
upright thing that was being planned and they confronted Patrick

(14:02):
Pierce about it. McNeil published an order in the Irish
Sunday Independent on Easter Sunday commanding that the rising not
go forward. Another hiccup was that the weapons shipment promised
from Germany had not arrived on Good Friday as expected.
That was the one that had been uh that had
been intercepted on the way. Finally, the decision was made

(14:23):
to go ahead with the rising in spite of these obstacles,
but it was moved to Easter Monday and the focus
was primarily Dublin. There were some other smaller things outside
of Dublin, but Dublin became the primary focus. On Monday
a members of the Irish Volunteers led by Patrick Pierce
and the Irish Citizen Army led by James Connolly, along
with members of Konaman, met at prearranged places at about

(14:47):
eleven in the morning. Just after noon, they took multiple
locations around Dublin, including the General Post Office and Bowlin's Mills,
as well as laying siege to Dublin Castle. The rebels
established a headquarters the General Post Office, and the Kuma
Naman set up a field hospital there as well. The
g p O was also the location of the Provisional Government.

(15:09):
From the steps of the g p O, Pierce read
the Proclamation of an Irish Republic, which he had drafted
and which was signed by seven men, Aiman Kant, Thomas
James Clark, James Connolly, Sean mcdermida, Thomas McDonough, Patrick Pierce,
and Joseph Mary Plunkett. It began Irishman and Irish Women

(15:30):
in the name of God and of the dead generations,
from which she receives her old traditions of nationhood Ireland
through us someons our children's are flag and strikes for
her freedom. It goes on to declare Ireland a sovereign
nation and quote guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights
and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its
resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole

(15:54):
nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the
children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences
carefully fostered by an alien government which have divided a
minority from the majority in the past. It ends by
establishing a provisional government and placing the Irish Republic under
the protection of the Most High God. We're going to

(16:15):
talk about how the rising played out and what happened
in its aftermath, but first we're going to pause once
again for a word from one of our fantastic sponsors.

(16:40):
There were some fatalities in the first few hours of
the Easter Rising, but the uprising had caught the British
mostly by surprise. That changed, however, once Britain actually had
time to react to what was going on. Britain declared
martial law, and because Republican forces hadn't been able to
take control of the railroad stations with the docks, British
troops were able to make their way to Dublin really easily.

(17:03):
British troops who were already in Ireland were in Dublin
by Monday afternoon, and more troops arrived from England on Tuesday.
Soon about six d rebels were facing off against about
twenty thousand British soldiers. Street fighting was extensive, and the
rebel held locations that didn't fall right away wound up
mostly being besieged for the remainder of the week. Britain

(17:26):
had greater numbers and better weapons, and didn't really hesitate
to use heavy artillery. This led to extensive damage and
a number of fires. On Friday night, a fire forced
the rebels who were in the gp O to have
to flee. Patrick Pierce unconditionally surrendered the next day with
the hope of preventing more loss of life. With his
surrender reading quote in order to prevent further slaughter of

(17:48):
the civil population, and in the hope of saving the
lives of our followers, the members of the Provisional Government
present at headquarters have decided on an unconditional surrender, and
commandants or officers commanding districts will order their commands to
lay down arms. By that point, though the death toll
was already significant, sixty two rebels died and from the

(18:09):
British troops, one hundred and six were killed and three
hundred and thirty four were wounded. Hardest hit were civilians
caught in the crossfire, with two hundred and fifty six
deaths and thousands of injuries. At first and the immediate
aftermath of the rising, both Republicans and Unionists were outraged
at the risings leaders, not at Britain. A lot of

(18:31):
people felt like this was a violent uprising that had
attempted to overthrow a democratically elected government and replace it
with people who had basically appointed themselves to the job
rather than being elected. When Irish Parliamentary Party MP John
Dylan expressed his disapproval of the rebels, but then followed
it with a statement that they had quote fought a
clean fight, and they fought with super bravery and skill,

(18:51):
and no act of savagery or act of the usual
customs of war end quote. In House of Commons, people
yelled shame at him so like, even though he said
pretty directly that he disapproved of what they had done,
but that they had fought bravely, people were angry enough
about it that they yelled shame at him on the
uh on the floor of Parliament. Perception shifted, however, after

(19:13):
Britain began court martialing and executing the leaders of the rising,
including some whose roles had really been quite minor, and
imprisoning more people than had even participated. Between May three
and May twelve, all seven people who had signed the
Proclamation of the Irish Republic were executed along with nine
others for a total of sixteen. These included Roger Casement

(19:34):
and William Pierce, who was Patrick Pierce's younger brother, and
all of those executed were buried in a quick line
with no funeral. Only one woman was court martialed, although
there were many others who were involved, and that one
woman was Constance Marketiche. She was known as the larka
nite rebel countess, and when she surrendered she was reported
to have kissed her revolver before handing it over. She

(19:56):
was one of the people who had helped found Nafena
Aaron and during the rising, she was second in command
to Michael Mollin, who was one of the leaders who
was executed. She was sentenced to death as well, although
it was commuted to life in prison because of her sex,
and she was later released under a general amnesty. From there,
she became the first woman elected to the British Parliament,
although she and other members of Shenfeine refused to take

(20:18):
her seat. After she had been elected, I realized how
awesome she was very late in the process of this,
and the kind of wish the whole episode had been
about her because she's fascinating and maybe we will do
that later. I also coincidentally, like I emailed you the
outline for this episode, and then I checked the inbox

(20:41):
and we had an email from a listener saying that
exact thing, like, you could do something about the Easter Rising,
but this is really who you should focus on. Maybe
next year for Easter Risings anniversary that will not be
a hundred Executing the rebellions leaders and imprisoning many others
had the opposite of act of Britain's intentions. It did

(21:02):
not discourage for the rebellion or nationalist sentiment. Instead, this
was when a republican sentiment, which had existed in Ireland
for as long as Britain had been present there to
really start to pick up steam. Thanks to the Irby
secrecy and planning the rising for a time, authorities actually
thought it had been the work of sin Fain, even
though this was not correct. Sin Fain benefited really enormously

(21:24):
from the error it reck. It reorganized in the wake
up the rising and became much more powerful, ultimately replacing
the more moderate Irish Parliamentary Party in Parliament in the
next general election. This victory ultimately led to the Irish
War of Independence from nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty one,
after which the six northeastern counties which did not want

(21:45):
to leave the United Kingdom were partitioned into Northern Ireland
and the rest of Ireland became the Irish Free State
and then the Republic of Ireland. And this is really
why people point to the Easter Rising as being this
extremely important formative moment in the history of of the UH,
in the history of the Republic of Ireland. Like it,
it wasn't the thing that like It wasn't quite the

(22:10):
same as say, the Revolutionary War in the Americas. There
was a whole other conflict that followed this one. But
this was sort of the turning point of a lot
of republican sentiment, Like a lot of people who had
been a lot more moderate and said, well, it will
be fine if we just have home rule, if we
can rule ourselves but be part of the UK still
like that, it was really the thing that turned a
lot of that opinion to be no, we need to

(22:31):
be completely independent from the UK. UM. So it was
galvanizing moment UH in in terms of republican sentiment in
Ireland and then in the years that have passed since then,
the Easter Rising has been cited as the inspiration for
other a lot of other events, including the Russian Revolution
and then the troubles in Northern Ireland, which uh for

(22:54):
folks who don't personally remember it, which I think a
lot of us do, a lot of us were alive
at the either through all of it or at the
end of the troubles, the decades long conflict between Northern
Ireland's Unionist Protestants and Republican Catholics, and extremely basic level
law enforcement in Northern Ireland have actually expressed some concerns

(23:15):
that the centennial of the Eastern Rising of the Easter
Rising main lead to violent protests in Northern Ireland from
the folks who would have preferred to have become independent
with the remainder of Ireland as well. And that's the
scoop that is the basics of the Easter Rising. I'm
not kidding. There is so much more that we could

(23:36):
talk about, like they're the one of the books that
that I got for this is one of the ones. There.
There are several books that have come out after that
release of documents that we talked about at the beginning.
UM that generally have a have made a lot of
use of those particular documents, UM, and one of them
is quite long. We will they will all be in

(23:58):
the show notes if you were interested in learned more. Um.
There is all currents, so much more stuff to actually
that we could actually get into, but this is a
thirty minute podcast, so when we are not, thank you
so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since

(24:20):
this is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar during the course of the show, that may be
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are at history Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
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(24:41):
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