91�ȱ�

On 29th April 1916, a crowd of curious Dubliners watched as a large group of men in the uniform of Irish Volunteers was led away by British soldiers. The locals reacted angrily, jeering the men.

They were furious for a number of reasons:

• Dublin had been brought to a standstill for a week;
• the city centre was a smouldering ruin;
• 450 people, including 38 children, had lost their lives;
• women could not collect their war pensions.

However, within six weeks, the same rebels would be celebrated in a way few could have imagined possible. Those who had witnessed the surrender of the rebels had no idea that a chain of events had begun that would eventually see Ireland split in two with British Rule ended in one part.

• When this rebellion took place, World War One had been going on for more than a year and a half.
• Over 170,000 Irishmen were fighting for the British army against Germany.
• Almost 90% of the Irish Volunteer force (IVF), the paramilitary group set up to ensure the implementation of 91�ȱ� Rule , had followed the call of John Redmond, the Nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) leader to “go wherever the firing line extends.”

Redmond was part of the Constitutional Nationalist tradition. Constitutional Nationalists used politics to achieve greater Irish independence and were against the use of force.

This was supported by the vast majority of Irish Nationalists and their campaign seemed to be working given that 91�ȱ� Rule had been passed into law, even though it had not yet been implemented, due to the start of the War.

A small group remained committed to this strategy.

In 1907 a man named Thomas Clarke opened a tobacconist shop in Dublin.

Clarke had spent 15 years in prison in England for his part in the 1883 assassination of a British official. He then spent ten years working in America with Clan naGael, a group of exiled Fenians .

The shop was actually a front. Clarke was on the leadership committee of a small, secretive organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), funded by Clan naGael with the express intention of planning a major rebellion in Ireland.

The IRB leadership, which included radical poet Padraig Pearse, knew that a successful rebellion would rely on three things.

The date set for rebellion was Easter Sunday, 23rd April 1916. However the original plans ended in disaster.

1. The Aud was captured by the British navy and its weapons sent to the bottom of the sea.
2. MacNeill found out that he was being used by the IRB and, in order to stop the planned rebellion, placed a message in the Sunday Independent, telling Volunteers not to participate.

Despite their plans being in ruins, the IRB decided the rising would go ahead on Easter Monday.

Their chances of success were extremely slim; however, Pearse believed that even if they were captured or killed, their ‘blood sacrifice’ might inspire others.

• Approximately 1,500 rebels, made up of Irish Volunteers, IRB members and members of the Irish Citizen Army took up defensive positions around Dublin.
• Puzzled onlookers listened as Pearse read out the ‘Proclamation of the Republic’ on the steps of the General Post Office, the rebels’ headquarters.
• Over the course of the next week there were skirmishes between the rebels and the authorities, but once British reinforcements arrived there could only be one outcome and the rebels surrendered on Saturday 29th April.

With the rebellion over, it looked as if the events of Easter 1916 would be added to the long list of Physical Force Nationalism’s ‘heroic failures’. That it was not was more the result of the reaction of the authorities than the actions of the rebels themselves.

• In its aftermath the press called the Easter Rising the Sinn Féin rebellion - after a small anti-British political party operating in Dublin. This was a mistake, but it played a key part in the growing support for Sinn Féin as a consequence of the executions that followed the Rising.
• Between 3rd and 13th May 1916, 15 rebels - including all seven signatories of the ‘Proclamation’ - were executed in Kilmainham Jail.
• The main consequence of these executions was outrage at the British actions - and an increase in support for those associated with the Rising.

Sinn Féin was led by Éamon de Valera. Its newly-elected MPs refused to attend Westminster and instead set up their own parliament, Dáil Éireann, which they insisted was the rightful authority of the Irish Republic.

• Dáil Éireann met for the first time on 21st January 1919. On the same day two members of the police, the RIC, were shot dead in County Tipperary by a Republican called Dan Breen. These murders were only the first in a long series of guerrilla style ‘hit and run’ attacks on members of the RIC and those that worked for the British government.
• Those responsible for the killings called themselves the Irish Republican Army (IRA). They were directed by Michael Collins, an increasingly prominent member of the Republican movement. There were clear links between the IRA - which had emerged from those Irish Volunteers responsible for the Easter Rising - and Dáil Éireann.
• Britain responded by sending in reserve forces to support the RIC. There were two such groups, the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans. They were mainly World War One veterans who were poorly prepared to work in a civilian situation. They often carried out ill-disciplined attacks against the local population.
• Their behaviour made people angry and led to a growth in support for the IRA.
• This pattern of violence would be repeated for almost 18 months. On one Sunday alone in November 1920 the IRA killed 11 British agents and in response the British killed 12 people and wounded 50 others in Croke Park.

Finally, under pressure from public opinion in England, the government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George agreed a truce with Sinn Féin in July 1921, to be followed by negotiations.

By this stage the British government had decided that it was not prepared to force Ulster Unionists to accept 91�ȱ� Rule. The Unionist position had been strengthened by the fact that so many of its supporters had died fighting for Britain at the Battle of the Somme.

This decision was reaffirmed in the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, which created Northern Ireland. It would consist of six counties (the historic Ulster counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal were not included). The new Northern Ireland Parliament was opened by King George V in June 1921.

It was against this backdrop that the Sinn Féin negotiation team, led by Collins, arrived in London to discuss a settlement. They were not interested in 91�ȱ� Rule; they wanted a full Republic.

They were not offered this. Instead, an independent Irish Free State consisting of the remaining 26 counties was proposed. It would remain part of the British Empire and members of its parliament would have to swear an Oath of Loyalty to the monarch. The negotiators were also offered a Boundary Commission to review partition at some future date.

Knowing that they could not restart hostilities, the Irish delegation signed the Treaty. It proved controversial among Republicans, particularly the Oath of Allegiance. In the end the Dáil voted narrowly to accept the Treaty, but its opponents, led by Éamon de Valera, walked out as a result.

The Irish public later backed the Treaty in an election, but the split among the Republicans led to a bitter Civil War (1922-1923), which was won by the supporters of the Treaty.

Meanwhile, the new government in Northern Ireland, led by Sir James Craig, was not prepared to participate in any review of partition. Partition thus became permanent and the two parts of Ireland set off into the future on very different paths.