North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

The Rising

Pearse's cottage, Rosmuck, Co. Galway. The cottage is only open during the summer, apart from the Easter weekend, to facilitate various republican commemorations. There was a few curious tourists and myself wandering about in the spring sunshine. there isn't much to see - just two sparsely decorated bedrooms.

There's been a lot of talk about what is genuine and what is fake during the Easter week. The Bishop of Kerry fired a broadside at ersatz Catholics in his Easter message, complaining about people who never show up at church from one end of the year to another but expect to have a full church wedding and all the other sacraments when it suits them. Naturally the media had a great time, with every columnist having their say (including some that probably never troubled a pew themselves, but what the hey). One gets the impression that the bishop fired off his missive after giving yet another carefully-crafted sermon to a near-empty church.

Meanwhile, Michael McDowell's Easter message was also about the genuine versus the false; that Sinn Féin are not real republicans, mainly because of their alleged connection to criminal activity on both sides of the border. The Minister for Justice has been giving variations on this sermon for quite a while, and I'm sure that there are many people in the country who, while not in any way supportive of Sinn Fein, are wondering when McDowell will stop talking the talk and start walking the walk. The reason that the Minister was expressing an opinion at all is because, eighty eight years ago today, 1,600 republicans staged an armed rebellion in Dublin against British rule that became known as the Easter Rising. It was a short bloody battle - by the end of the week, five hundred people were killed and two and a half thousand were injured. Most were civilians - the rebels had seized buildings in the city centre such as the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, and the fighting between the rebels and the British Army took place in the heavily-populated city centre.

Commemorating the Rising has always been a bit problematic for political parties in the Republic - Sinn Fein and the IRA have long justified their campaign in Northern Ireland as a continuation of the 1916 ideals, which causes a problem for most of the other parties in the Republic, who seek to draw a line between the 'good' rebels on yesteryear and the 'bad' rebels of today. In truth, there are as many uncomfortable similarities as there are differences and McDowell's argument (which can be heard here) were no more or less convincing than others offered in previous years.

View from the front door. Most of the Republican commemorations take place on easter Monday - Republican Sinn Fein were having a ceremony here today. By coincidence, the ashes of Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, broadcaster and Irish language enthusiast, were being scattered at the cottage today. He grew up in Rosmuck.

One place of pilgrimage at this time is the home of Padraig Pearse in Rosmuc, Co. Galway. Pearse was a teacher who was also a member of the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood). Pearse, Thomas Clarke, Thomas McDonagh and later James Connolly were also part of the Irish Volunteers, a volunteer militia that numbered almost 200,000 by the beginning of WWI. Many of the Volunteers joined the British Army at the behest of the Irish/National Party to fight in the Great War (on the understanding that Home Rule would be granted after the war was over - it had been agreed but suspended on the outbreak of war). About 11,000 of the Volunteers organized under Eoin MacNeill who did not support the war. The IRB leadership were determined to stage a national rebellion during WWI and planned for Easter Sunday 1916, without telling MacNeill. The plans for the rebellion went quickly awry. Roger Casement attempted to return secretly to Ireland via German U-boat but was arrested in Kerry on Good Friday. A German ship, the Aud, carrying weapons for the rebels was intercepted and was scuttled in Cork on Easter Sunday morning. MacNeill, having finally discovered the plot, issued orders that the rebellion was cancelled. His orders were ignored by the IRB and the rebellion in Dublin went ahead. Pearse served as Commander-in-Chief of the rebels, a role that included reading the Proclamation of Independence outside the GPO to largely bemused passers-by on Easter Monday morning. He was also declared the President of the Provisional Irish Government. He was shot by firing squad on May 3 - one of fifteen rebels executed. Many of the surviving rebels, including Michael Collins and Eamonn de Valera (who had his death sentence commuted) played key roles in the War of Independence three years later. The execution of so many rebels in 1916 caused the Irish citizenry to be far more sympathetic to the Republican cause a few years later.

The Progressive Democrats, of which Michael McDowell is a prominent member, have always taken a strong line against the 'modern' republican movement (i.e. Sinn Fein and the IRA) - a line established by the PD founder, Des O'Malley (who was Minister for Justice during the Arms Crisis of 1970 when Fianna Fail ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney were accused of trying ship weapons to republicans in Northern Ireland). Ironically, McDowell is a grandson of Eoin MacNeill, who was sentenced to penal servitude for life for his 'part' in the Rising. MacNeill was released the following year, and became a minister for Education in the first Free State government after Independence.

More on this issue over at Slugger...

Mention of a 1916 re-enactment over at Crooked timber - not much detail though...

Posted by Monasette at April 12, 2004 10:25 PM