Ireland the Early 20th Century
In 1914, a world war began. It was known at the time as The Great War and it was later called World War 1. It lasted until 1918. Britain took part in this war and many Irish men fought in the British army in the trenches of France. At that time, all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and was ruled from the parliament in London.There were members of parliament from Ireland too, such as John Redmond who was the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. This party wanted Home Rule for Ireland. They wanted Ireland to have its own parliament in Dublin and be ruled from Ireland not from England.
John Redmond (1856 - 1918)
Home Rule
Not everyone agreed with Home Rule. In Ulster, the Unionists, led by Edward Carson, were totally opposed to it. They saw Home Rule as ‘Rome Rule’ because a parliament for Ireland would have a Catholic majority. The Unionists set up an army, the Ulster Volunteers, and forced the British Government to change the Home Rule Act to exclude the Ulster counties.
In the south, two other armies were formed. One army, the Irish Volunteers, was set up partly to oppose the Ulster Volunteers and partly to fight for Irish independence from Britain. Another army, the Irish Citizen Army, was led by James Connolly.
The Home Rule Act was passed in 1914 but it was delayed by the outbreak of World War 1. The Irish Parliamentary Party asked their followers to wait until after the war for a parliament to be set up in Dublin. John Redmond asked Irish people to join the British army.
The Easter Rising
During the Great War, the militant members of the two armies in the south of Ireland began to plan a rising. They sent Roger Casement to Germany to buy arms, however he was captured with the arms and hanged for treason.
Roger Casement (1864–1916)
Roger Casement was one of the founders of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. Following his mission to raise arms and troops in Germany, he was arrested by British forces in Co. Kerry in 1916 and brought to London where he was executed on 3 August 1916.
Courtesy of the Irish Film Institute
On the 24th of April, Easter Monday 1916, about 2,000 Irish Volunteers and 200 from the Irish Citizen Army occupied the General Post Office (GPO) as well as other important buildings in Dublin city. One group of rebels took over the Four Courts and another group took over the South Dublin Union, which is now James’s hospital. They proclaimed the Irish Republic, read the Proclamation and raised the Irish flag for the first time.
The British army were taken by surprise and suffered heavy casualties. Reinforcements arrived from England. The British army shelled the GPO and other buildings. After a week’s fighting, the leaders of the rising surrendered. Many civilians died in the cross-fire. The guns and fires had destroyed much of the city and the GPO was in ruins.
Leaders of the 1916 Rising
At first, the Rising was very unpopular with people in Dublin and throughout the rest of Ireland. However, this opinion changed when the British executed fifteen of the leaders of the Rising after a court martial in Kilmainham Jail between the 3rd and 12th of May 1916. The executed leaders were gradually seen as heroes.
In the following pages, seven of the leaders of the 1916 Rising are discussed, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke , Sean Mac Dermott, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Eamonn Ceannt, and Thomas MacDonagh.
'The Mother'
By Pádraig Pearse
I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing, They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, And call them blessed; But I will speak their names to my own heart In the long nights; The little names that were familiar once Round my dead hearth. Lord, thou art hard on mothers: We suffer in their coming and their going; And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary Of the long sorrow--And yet I have my joy: My sons were faithful, and they fought.
During the Easter Rising of 1916, the General Post Office (GPO) was the headquarters of the Irish Volunteers. On Easter Monday of 1916, armed groups of the Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army, commanded by Padraig Pearse and James Connolly, took over the GPO where they proclaimed the Irish Republic.
Nowadays, there is a bronze statue in the GPO in Dublin in honour of the soldiers involved in the 1916 Rising. It is called The Death of Cuchulainn by the Irish sculptor Oliver Shepard.
According to ancient Irish legend, when Cuchulainn was wounded in battle, he tied himself to a pillar so that he could face his enemies when he died. It was only when a raven landed on his shoulder that his enemies dared to approach him.
Dublin city centre was almost completely destroyed after the Easter Rising. There was a total of five hundred people killed during the fighting. Three hundred of the dead were civilians who were not involved in the fighting. There were a total of 2,500 wounded, of which 2,000 were ordinary civilians.
Fifteen executions took place after the Rising, and 1,841 suspected rebels were sent to prison in England.
The First World War ended in November 1918 and a general election was called in London. Huge numbers of Irish people voted for a party called Sinn Féin and elected their members as Members of Parliament (MPs). People knew that any Sinn Féin candidate who won a seat in the election would not go to the parliament in London. They knew that they would try to set up a parliament in Ireland instead. On the 21st of January 1919 the newly elected Sinn Féin MPs called a meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin and set up a new parliament called Dáil Éireann. This was the first meeting of the Irish Dáil and the new parliament declared that Ireland was now independent. They later chose Éamon de Valera as the first president of the Dáil.
After the Sinn Féin MPs set up the new parliament in 1919, Ireland then had two governments; one was the new Dáil Éireann in Dublin and the other was the British parliament in London. Both had courts and both collected taxes, which resulted in a lot of disorder. Violence soon broke out in Ireland and the army of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), began to attack people who supported British law.
The IRA also fought British soldiers using guerrilla tactics. This meant that they attacked the British soldiers by surprise and then escaped quickly before they could be caught. The British government sent more forces to Ireland. One group was known as the Black and Tans because of their uniforms. The Black and Tans often punished the local population and because of this they were feared and hated by ordinary civilians. The IRA fought against them.
In 1921, a truce was called and treaty talks took place in London to try to find a way of ending the war. Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were among the Irish representatives at the talks. In December 1921, a treaty was signed which soon brought about a new country called the Irish Free State. It was decided that the new state would be made up of twenty-six of the thirty-two Irish counties.
Image courtesy of the Michael Collins Centre, Clonakilty.
Griffith, Arthur 1871 – 1922 was born in Dublin. He started his career as a printer, becoming a journalist and writer and finally a politician. Arthur Griffith was strongly influenced by Charles Stewart Parnell, Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel. He was a founding member of the Celtic Literary Society in 1893 and he was active in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the Gaelic League. He edited the weekly paper, the United Irishman in which he wrote editorials urging the Irish to work for self- government. In 1900, he founded Cumann na nGaedheal, a cultural and education association aimed at the promotion of Irish culture.
Eamonn Ceannt
Born in Galway in 1881, Eamonn Ceannt was a founder of the Irish Volunteers. He collected weapons in the successful Howth gun-running operation of 1914. He had an interest in Irish culture, especially in Irish language and history. He was also a musician and a talented uileann piper. He was the commander of the Fourth Battalion of Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Rising and took control of the South Dublin Union (St. James’s Hospital). He was executed on the 8th of May 1916.Éamonn Ceannt
A member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and later a founding member of the Irish Volunteers Éamonn Ceannt was a master of the uilleann pipes. He even put on a performance for Pope Pius X.James Connolly
James Connolly (1868-1916) was born in Edinburgh in 1868. He emigrated to Dublin in 1896 where he founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party. He spent time in America and then returned to Ireland to look for worker’s rights with a man called James Larkin. There was a workers strike in Dublin in 1913 and many of the workers were attacked by the police. James Connolly was one of the founders of an army set up to protect workers. It was called the Irish Citizen Army. During the Easter Rising he was appointed Commandant-General of the Dublin forces. About 150 of the rebels took over the General Post Office in Dublin and James Connolly lead that group. He was wounded in the G.P.O. and was executed on the 12th of May 1916. He was the last of the leaders to be executed.James Connolly
James Connolly worked together with Constance Markievicz and Jim Larkin during the Dublin Lockout to get more rights for workers. During the Easter Rising he was appointed Commandant-General of the Dublin forces.
Courtesy of the Irish Democrat Newspaper.
Joseph Mary Plunkett
Joseph Mary Plunkett was born in 1887 in Dublin. He was the son of a papal count and was educated in England and Ireland. He had poor health but despite this he helped to establish an Irish national theatre. Joseph Plunkett joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, and later became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He travelled to Germany to meet Roger Casement in 1915. During the planning of the Rising, Plunkett was appointed Director of Military Operations, with overall responsibility for military strategy. Plunkett was one of the rebels who were stationed in the G. P. O. during the 1916 Rising. He married Grace Gifford while in Kilmainham Gaol and was executed on the 4th of May 1916.
Patrick Pearse
Patrick (Pádraig) Pearse (1879-1916) was born in Dublin and had a great interest in the Irish language and spent many summers in Rosmuc in Galway learning Irish. At first he just wanted a parliament in Dublin rather than total independence from Britain. However, he later decided to start a rebellion and fight for independence. He established a school for boys, St. Enda’s School, where children could learn about Irish culture and language. During the 1916 Rising, Pearse was in charge of the General Post Office (G.P.O.). When the British army overpowered the Irish rebels, it was Pearse who ordered their general surrender in order to save further loss of life. He was tried and executed by a firing squad in Kilmainham Jail on the 3rd of May 1916. His younger brother Willie was also shot.
In addition to being a teacher and a revolutionary, Patrick Pearse was also a poet and a writer. One of his famous poems is called The Mother. It was written the night before his execution and describes his mother’s thoughts on the death of her two sons.
Patrick Pearse
Patrick Pearse was a teacher, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist. He was one of the main leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. He was also one of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation and president of the Provisional Government.
© Irish Picture Library.
'The Mother'
By Pádraig Pearse
I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing, They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, And call them blessed; But I will speak their names to my own heart In the long nights; The little names that were familiar once Round my dead hearth. Lord, thou art hard on mothers: We suffer in their coming and their going; And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary Of the long sorrow--And yet I have my joy: My sons were faithful, and they fought.
Séan Mac Dermott
Séan Mac Dermott was born in Leitrim in 1884 but emigrated to Glasgow in 1900, and in 1902 he moved to Belfast. He was interested in the Irish language and culture and joined a group called the Gaelic League. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) in 1906 and ran the I.R.B. newspaper Irish Freedom in 1910. Séan MacDiarmada got a disease called polio in 1912 but he was still appointed to high positions in the Irish Volunteers and in the I.R.B. Séan MacDiarmada fought in the G. P. O. during the 1916 Rising. He was executed on the 12th of May 1916.Thomas Clarke
Thomas Clarke had been imprisoned before 1916 because of his involvement in other fights for Irish freedom. He was a member of the Fenians and was also one if the leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) in 1916. He spent fifteen years in penal labour (forced to do hard work as a form of punishment) for his role in a bombing campaign in London between 1883 and 1898. He was a member of the Supreme Council of the I.R. B. from 1915 and was one of the rebels who planned the 1916 Rising. He was the first signatory of the Proclamation of Independence and was with the group that occupied the G. P. O. He was executed on the 3rd of May 1916.
Thomas J. Clarke
A photo of Tom Clarke, the oldest of the signatories to the 1916 Proclamation.
By permission of www.1916rising.com
Thomas MacDonagh
Thomas MacDonagh was from Tipperary and was born in 1878. He was a teacher and later taught at St. Enda’s School; the school he helped to found with Patrick Pearse. He was appointed director of training for the Irish Volunteers in 1914 and later joined the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood). Thomas MacDonagh was appointed to the IRB military committee in 1916. He was commander of the Second Battalion of Volunteers that occupied Jacob’s biscuit factory and surrounding houses during the 1916 Rising. He was executed on the 3th of May 1916.The GPO and the Rising
What happened the G.P.O. after the Rising?
During the Easter Rising of 1916, the General Post Office (GPO) was the headquarters of the Irish Volunteers. On Easter Monday of 1916, armed groups of the Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army, commanded by Padraig Pearse and James Connolly, took over the GPO where they proclaimed the Irish Republic.
The rebels held out for a week in the GPO before surrendering to the British forces. While the interior of the GPO was destroyed by fire because of persistent shelling, the main frontage escaped serious damage.
Under the new Irish Government, reconstruction of the GPO began in 1925 and the building reopened in 1929 .
Under the new Irish Government, reconstruction of the GPO began in 1925 and the building reopened in 1929 .
Sculpture in Honour of 1916 in the G.P.O.
Nowadays, there is a bronze statue in the GPO in Dublin in honour of the soldiers involved in the 1916 Rising. It is called The Death of Cuchulainn by the Irish sculptor Oliver Shepard.
According to ancient Irish legend, when Cuchulainn was wounded in battle, he tied himself to a pillar so that he could face his enemies when he died. It was only when a raven landed on his shoulder that his enemies dared to approach him.
End of the 1916 Rising
On Saturday the 29th of April 1916, Patrick Pearse surrendered to the British commander General Lowe to save the lives of rebels and civilians. The rebels were taken as prisoners to Richmond Barracks. Fifteen of the leaders were executed and many others were sent to prisons, mainly in England or Wales.
The 1916 Rising had failed to get independence for Ireland. However the Rising had made the cause of independence more popular as many Irish people were so outraged by the executions that they also began to call for independence from Britain. Outside of Dublin, the other main place where the Easter Rising took place was in Ashbourne, County Meath.
Fifteen executions took place after the Rising, and 1,841 suspected rebels were sent to prison in England.
Executed Leaders
Con Colbert
Con Colbert was a native of Limerick. Before the Easter Rising he had been an active member of the republican movement, joining both Fianna Éireann and the Irish Volunteers. He was the captain of F Company of the Fourth Battalion and was in command at the Marrowbone Lane distillery when it was surrendered on the 30th of April, 1916. Colbert was executed on the 8th of May 1916.Edward Daly
Edward Daly was born in Limerick in 1891. Daly’s family had a history of republican activity. His uncle John Daly had taken part in the rebellion of 1867. During the Rising, Edward Daly led the First Battalion, which raided the Bridewell and Linenhall Barracks, and eventually seized control of the Four Courts. He was a close friend of Thomas Clarke, who was married to his sister. Edward Daly was executed on the 4th of May 1916.John MacBride
John (Séan) MacBride was born in Mayo in 1865. He first trained as a doctor however he later chose to work with a chemist. He travelled to America in 1896 to further the aims of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). John MacBride married the Irish nationalist Maude Gonne in 1903. He was not a member of the Irish Volunteers, however at the beginning of the Rising he offered to fight and was at Jacob’s biscuit factory in Dublin when the rebels stationed at the factory surrendered on Sunday, the 30th of April 1916. He was executed on the 5th of May 1916.Michael Mallin
Michael Mallin was born in Dublin in 1874 and became a silk weaver. Along with Countess Markievicz, he commanded a small group of the Irish Citizen Army, of which he was the Chief of Staff. He took control of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons during the 1916 Rising. Michael Mallin was executed on the 8th of May 1916.Michael O’Hanrahan
Michael O’Hanrahan was born in Wexford in 1877. He joined the Irish Volunteers and was second in command to Thomas MacDonagh at Jacob’s biscuit factory during the 1916 Rising. He was executed on the 4th of May 1916.Roger Casement
Roger Casement was captured in Kerry before the Rising on Good Friday in 1916. He had just returned to Ireland in a German U-Boat and was imprisoned in Pentonville Gaol in London, where he was tried on charges of High Treason. He was hanged on the 3rd of August 1916 and was the only leader to be executed outside of Ireland.Seán Heuston
Seán Heuston was born in 1891 and was responsible for the organisation of Fianna Éireann in Limerick. Along with Con Colbert, Heuston was involved in the education of the schoolboys at Scoil Éanna, and organised drill and other exercises at the school. He was also a captain in the First Battalion of the Volunteers and during the Rising, his section occupied the Mendicity Institute on the south side of the Liffey, holding out there for two days. He was executed on the 8th of May 1916. Heuston Railway station in Dublin is named after him.Thomas Kent
Thomas Kent was born in 1865. Following a raid by the Royal Irish Constabulary on his home in Castlelyons, Co. Cork on the 22nd of April 1916, Kent was arrested and his brother Richard was fatally wounded. Kent had intended travelling to Dublin to participate in the Rising, however when the mobilisation order for the Irish Volunteers was cancelled on Easter Sunday he assumed that the Rising had been postponed and so he remained in Cork. He was executed at Cork Detention Barracks on the 9th of May 1916 following a court martial. In 1966, the railway station in Cork was renamed Kent Station in his honour.William Pearse
William Pearse was Patrick Pearse’s younger brother. He was born in 1881 in Dublin. William assisted Patrick in running the school St. Enda’s. Along with Patrick, he also wanted an independent Ireland. The two brothers were very close and they fought beside each other in the G.P.O. during the Rising. William was executed on the 4th of May 1916. In 1966, Pearse railway station on Westland Row in Dublin was re-named in honour of the two brothers.After the 1916 Rising
The First World War ended in November 1918 and a general election was called in London. Huge numbers of Irish people voted for a party called Sinn Féin and elected their members as Members of Parliament (MPs). People knew that any Sinn Féin candidate who won a seat in the election would not go to the parliament in London. They knew that they would try to set up a parliament in Ireland instead. On the 21st of January 1919 the newly elected Sinn Féin MPs called a meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin and set up a new parliament called Dáil Éireann. This was the first meeting of the Irish Dáil and the new parliament declared that Ireland was now independent. They later chose Éamon de Valera as the first president of the Dáil.
The First Dail
Courtesy of Hugh Oram.
Courtesy of Hugh Oram.
After the Sinn Féin MPs set up the new parliament in 1919, Ireland then had two governments; one was the new Dáil Éireann in Dublin and the other was the British parliament in London. Both had courts and both collected taxes, which resulted in a lot of disorder. Violence soon broke out in Ireland and the army of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), began to attack people who supported British law.
The War of Independence
In 1919, a war began against the British forces in Ireland. This war was called the War of Independence. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) wanted to force the British out of Ireland. They began to attack the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force in Ireland, because they were seen as supporting British rule and British law. The IRA burned their barracks and captured their arms. Many members of the police force were killed, and others resigned.The IRA also fought British soldiers using guerrilla tactics. This meant that they attacked the British soldiers by surprise and then escaped quickly before they could be caught. The British government sent more forces to Ireland. One group was known as the Black and Tans because of their uniforms. The Black and Tans often punished the local population and because of this they were feared and hated by ordinary civilians. The IRA fought against them.
In 1921, a truce was called and treaty talks took place in London to try to find a way of ending the war. Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were among the Irish representatives at the talks. In December 1921, a treaty was signed which soon brought about a new country called the Irish Free State. It was decided that the new state would be made up of twenty-six of the thirty-two Irish counties.
Michael Collins (1890 - 1922)
Born in Cork, Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary. He took part in the 1916 Rising in Dublin. He was part of the delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, the terms of which led to the Irish Civil War in 1922. Collins became the commander in chief of the forces of the new Irish government. He was killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty republicans in his native Cork in 1922.Image courtesy of the Michael Collins Centre, Clonakilty.
Arthur Griffith
Griffith, Arthur 1871 – 1922 was born in Dublin. He started his career as a printer, becoming a journalist and writer and finally a politician. Arthur Griffith was strongly influenced by Charles Stewart Parnell, Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel. He was a founding member of the Celtic Literary Society in 1893 and he was active in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the Gaelic League. He edited the weekly paper, the United Irishman in which he wrote editorials urging the Irish to work for self- government. In 1900, he founded Cumann na nGaedheal, a cultural and education association aimed at the promotion of Irish culture.
Irish Civil War
Ireland was divided into two parts with a border in between. A group called the Boundary Commission was set up to investigate whether any more of the northern counties should join the Irish Free State. Six counties remained under the rule of England. This area became known as Northern Ireland and today it is still part of the United Kingdom. Most Irish people supported the new arrangement however there were also many people who didn’t agree with the division of Ireland into two parts. A civil war broke out between the people who were in favour of the treaty and those who were against it. In the end, the people who fought in favour of the treaty won the civil war.
In 1948, the Irish Free State broke its remaining ties with Britain and became a Republic.
In 1948, the Irish Free State broke its remaining ties with Britain and became a Republic.
The Irish Constitution - Bunreacht na hÉireann
The Irish people voted in the Constitution of Ireland in 1937. The constitution is still used today. It sets out the rights of Irish citizens. It also states that Irish people have the right to govern themselves and to make their own laws. The constitution can be changed but only if a referendum is held and if a majority of people agree to make these changes.
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