Easter Rising

[Thunderoad]

The Declaration of Independence for the Irish Republic of 1916 is now dubbed " the Proclamation " and is among the texts that forms the foundations of the Irish identity today, because it stood up, amid a tough period, as a testament for those who signed it and their ideals .

The revolution of 1916 both failed and succeeded in many ways : it failed because all seven signatories were afterward executed with nine other leaders of the rebellion and 66 fighters were killed in action while the whole event ransacked the city, and ended up in about 3'500 arrests which have torn families apart and seemingly crushed all hopes for an independent Ireland since even in times of war, Britain was still able to crush a tentative of rebellion .

Yet in many ways, the Easter Rising could be seen as a success : with just 1'250 fighters , the rebellion managed to hold on for six days against its archenemy, killing 143 British soldiers and wounding almost 400 in the process, in a time when injuries were far more incapacitating than today, because of the backward medicine and often inappropriate treatments .

Anyway, and all in all, it still remains a technically rather small revolt , in terms of geographical superficies as well as casualties and duration .

How could it therefore be that such a small event per se ended as one of the cornerstone of the current Irish identity ?

In fact , it may be said that it is precisely because this extremist program for which people fought way too early failed that it had settled the tone of the future movements for independence .







Compared to its time and space, and even though we will never know if a successful rebellion was really going to stick to it , it must be said that this program, when considered alone , is radical .
It undoubtedly stands out : its propositions are of a kind that was unseen back then .

First it tackles directly, right in its introduction , several issues at once !

And notably the issue of identity. Even though the text is written in English , for everyone to understand its message which is another proof of how it seeks universality, the first words of the leaflet are in the Irish language and mean : "the people of Ireland". With this duality, it both emphasize the past and the foundations of Ireland , with the language at its forefront, and the present times in which the reality is that most of the people of Ireland speak English by then even more when considering that the uprising took place in Dublin where even less people speak Irish .

Moreover, this declaration is a clear-cut breakaway from monarchy, thus from both the ancient ways of Ireland and the current system ruling the British Isles : the signatories are and propose a new regime that is fully independent (no dominion !) against both the past and the present , a bold move which radically puts them in the future and it is exemplified with what comes right next => the issue of the involvement of women in the modern society.

The whole message is addressed not only to men , but to all Irishwomen as well , with a commitment to a universal (ie = for both genders) suffrage which at the time didn't exist in the UK nor the USA and in fact in just a very small handful of countries worldwide . The two aforementioned countries will not implement it to its full extent before 1928 and 1965 !

No wonder, shall we say, since about two hundred women fought in the Easter Rising...

It is even linguistically underlined with the personification of Ireland with the use of the female attributes 'she' and 'her', giving to the country a maternal figure , calling all the traditional positive tropes associated with women as calming, gathering and caring for the people , referred to later in the text as children but of course in its broadest sense .

A universal suffrage is also very appealing to the various factions that have constantly rejected from the rising British democracy, for numerous reasons , and people who felt abandoned or even silenced and often being right in that feeling, naturally should have been driven to this rebellion since it not only claimed its own rights but those of the forgotten ones as a whole .

The proclamation includes the words "comrades", "welfare", "equally"... etc ... Which detonates in the context of World War One and the tendency toward laissez-faire : it shows that the revolution cares for the whole nation of Ireland , not only for those of Dublin where the coup is done nor the "enlightened class" of those who speak Irish and studied the history and culture of the island .

This idea of an ascension of the people is made crystal clear by the further explanations that interestingly begin halfway in the text : " the Irish Republic is entitled to the allegiance of every Irish men and women " => For the first time in the history of the island anyone can join and feel part of the nation , wiping off any distinction whatsoever.


Moreover, the call to unites the people for the "ownership" of Ireland is ambiguous : while the idea of ownership may recall capitalism , it isn't certain ! Socialism , as opposed to anarchism , accepts the concept of ownership, in a collective vision : the declaration so far leaves the door open to even more radical leftist ideas a year before the Red Russian Revolution of October 1917, and it was well known that Séamas Ó Conghaile, one of the seven signatories who led the ICA which was one of the groups of the coup d'état tentative, was very close to three socialist parties before joining it and that Padraig Pearse himself, in his pamphlet called The Sovereign People of 1916, explicitly opposed the private interests to the idea of a public and national engine for progress in favour of the people .

Yet , this somehow unsaid socialist substrate clashes with the manifest influence of the USA :

While the United Kingdom is desperately trying to grab the attention of the neutral forces to get them to join the Britons in the war, the rebels don't hesitate to claim openly that they have received help from foreign powers including first and foremost America , with the "exiled children" of Ireland who now lives there including the Clan na Gael with John Devoy, one of his most active member.

By the time of the Easter Rising, 20 Million US citizens claimed Irish ancestry. With old and tight links between the USA and Ireland it has been relatively easy for the Irish community, of growing influence at the time , to bankroll the rebellion in Ireland , "back home", as suggested by the melodramatic term of "exiled children"...

It is therefore no wonder, if the Proclamation calls for the "Republic to declare its resolve to pursue happiness", which is strikingly similar to the "pursuit of happiness", from the US Constitution !

Much in the way the Young Irelander Rebellion of early July 1848 was strongly inspired by the February Revolution that happened in France , the Easter Rising may somehow be seen as an answer to the surge of the United States on the world stage : its the "return of the stick" for the UK that maybe hasn't seen the danger of allowing a million people to go across the ocean to the USA .

Because while their fate once there was not that much different at first , on the long run after several generations the Irish community discovered and got used to one of the most efficient democracy at the time and it thus naturally formed the basis for a project of sending this progress to Ireland helping those who dare to act for change .



Also, the pudic mention of "our gallant allies in Europe", right after mentioning America , is a subtle and clever move from the plotmasters to indicate that the Irish people , even taken as a large entity including the Irish-American community, is not alone in its fight and is linked to the continent .

Although it is not said, a short analysis rapidly shows it's probably the Germans , because the two major sympathisers to the Irish cause in Europe were France and Germany, but since France is openly allied with the UK and relies on it because without it France would fall altogether, they had no moral rights nor the interest to try and support the Irish rebellion ! In the way it takes potential cannonfodder away from the trenches it rather is detrimental to its current position ...
Thus it was blatant that Germany was the country suggested in the text, and we know a century later, with hindsight and the opening of the archives , that Germany did tried to help the Easter Rising even though it failed and that projects of a pact were in mind on both sides .

And from here we can see the flaws in this declaration : it shows the level of impreparation and how much doomed the tentative was because it has been done poorly, at the wrong moment , the wrong way, so that it can be said that the Easter Rising was probably condemned to fail .

Why it failed

The reality was that it was more a terrorist plot than a revolution .The distinction can be paper-thin but several factors tend toward this :

First the operation was too much centered around Dublin . Even though some action took place in four other counties the plot relied solely on the capital and main city, which was a big mistake : you don't do a revolution if you're supported only by one spot , not matter how strong your support is in it because the goal stated in the Proclamation was to establish the Republic of Ireland, not of Dublin .

To succeed, you need to make sure your coup-d'état not only cut a head to the hydra but kill it altogether, and the fact is that no one relayed the shot in the countryside and the other towns .

If relying on tipping only the center, you need the information to be carried over the whole country.

Even with the rapidly expanding radio and telephonic communications , a revolution in 1916 had to take at least more than a week to be heard across Ireland and to call the people to arise : the human mind is so that it takes time to trigger a snowball effect !

Moreover, if the Irish people didn't participate as much as what was expected it was probably because the signatories were already known as extremists , total fanatics and their use of violence that ruined the city center could only confirms this vision .


The implication of Germany was probably unfortunate to the uprising : Britain was at war against them and it had an even stronger need of silenceful uniformity across the country to keep it from falling apart and the combination of the unneeded troubles it generated and the fact that it was supported by Germany, in a tentative to dislocate the kingdom from the inside was bound to trigger a massive and islandwide crackdown since it was the very survival of the United Kingdom which could be at stake there .


They somehow show their weakness when seeing how much the proclamation is sugar-coated wth propaganda and outright fallacies throughout the text . They're wrong saying there had been a revolution attempt every generation for the last three centuries because of the timelapse that separates each of those six rebellions is actually quite erratic , ranging from over a century to only a few years while obviously they weren't even all true nationalist rebellions to begin with .
People who were so solidly educated about their own history couldn't possibly make the mistake unintentionaly, so it must be propaganda.

They're wrong on this point and they knew it but it indeed is more pleasant to say there have been a revolt in every generation , so they kept it like that to inspire , to give both faith and sense of duty to the audience in a hope they will be answering the call .


The weakness is also in their total rejection of the factual difference that exists between the rest of the country, and Ulster, in particular. While it of course could be seen as openmindness , in a move to try and reach new potential recruits for the fight in the independence of Ireland , knowing the anglosaxon protestants did revolted from time to time against London , it might as well be seen as refusing to see "the real truth", that Ulster, not matter what they say, even if it's because of an alien power, really is different now, and may not share the same project as the majority of Ireland .