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hawkwing_lbYesterday was the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. And all this Easter weekend, Dublin celebrated.
As an Irishperson and something of a patriot, I suppose, where it comes to my country, I'm an anomaly. Why? Because I think it's wrong to celebrate something so bloody and thoughtless and ultimately futile as 1916.
1916.
Time and the pens of republican historians have given it a gloss it doesn't really deserve.
Let's examine the situation in Ireland with regard to independence circa 1916, shall we? In 1912, the House of Commons at Westminster passed a bill granting Home Rule - albeit limited, but still Home Rule - to Ireland. The House of Lords exercised its prerogative and caused the implementation of the Act to be delayed for two years. In the interim, John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, David Lloyd George, the British PM, and the Unionist leaders Carson and Craig, sat down to hash out the status of the million Unionists who, under the Act, would become subject to a Dublin parliament where they would be outnumbered by Irish nationalists and would not be able to count on the protection of the British Crown.
(Events in the Free State during and after the war of independence would prove them right to have been worried, but the fledgling state's attitude to southern Unionists who remained after 1918 is, indeed, a topic for another day.)
In 1914, they were still talking when war broke out in Europe and caused their talks to be adjourned. Westminster, understandably, chose to delay the implementation of Home Rule until after the European war was over. (The fact that they had yet to find a solution to the Unionist problem probably made them glad they had an excuse to delay.) John Redmond, in order to demonstrate his good faith, called for Irish volunteers to join the British army. At this point in time there were paramilitary groups on both sides of the ideological divide: the Ulster Volunteers for the unionists, the Irish Volunteers for the nationalists. Many Irishmen, including nearly all the Ulster Volunteers and a majority of the Irish Volunteers, volunteered and went away to the war.
The Irish Volunteers remaining in Ireland were the most nationalist of the nationalists. The hardest of the hard-liners, so to speak, among them many members of the IRB. Of these, Thomas Clarke was to take the lead in planning an uprising to overthrow British rule in Ireland.
Let us recall that at this point Home Rule had been decided upon; all that waited was the end of the war and some kind of compromise with the unionists. Let us recall that many Irishmen were serving in the British army, sending home their pay - or their death benefits - to families at home. Let us recall that most Irish people did not want a rebellion.
Fast-foward two years to Easter Monday, 1916. The preparations for a rising have had the whiff of farce about them: expected arms never came; the British aware of all the preparations; McNeill tricked into calling out the Volunteers and, finding out that he'd been lied to, calling them off with a notice in the paper. James Connolly, bringing the Irish Socialist Army out with those volunteers who did go - not that many more than a thousand - is famed for saying, "We're going out to be slaughtered."
Reading out the proclamation at the GPO, Pearse is heckled by the crowd. In the week of fighting that follows, Sackville Street and the GPO are bombed from the Liffey and turned into rubble; over a thousand civilians are killed in the fighting. Afterwards, Dublin is furious - at the rebels, not the British. Until the over-reaction of the authorities - 4,000 people arrested and interned, 200 condemned to death; hardly anyone knowing who had been executed until the death notices were posted on the door of Kilmainham Gaol - turns the anger and resentment in a new direction.
It is to the credit of the 1916 dead - and those who survived it - that they were very brave.
But that does not change the fact that they had no real moral justification for what they did. To celebrate them as heroes is to venerate violence over reason.
We can't afford to do that. Not now, not ever.
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart
O when may it suffice?
- W. B. Yeats, "Easter 1916"
As an Irishperson and something of a patriot, I suppose, where it comes to my country, I'm an anomaly. Why? Because I think it's wrong to celebrate something so bloody and thoughtless and ultimately futile as 1916.
1916.
Time and the pens of republican historians have given it a gloss it doesn't really deserve.
Let's examine the situation in Ireland with regard to independence circa 1916, shall we? In 1912, the House of Commons at Westminster passed a bill granting Home Rule - albeit limited, but still Home Rule - to Ireland. The House of Lords exercised its prerogative and caused the implementation of the Act to be delayed for two years. In the interim, John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, David Lloyd George, the British PM, and the Unionist leaders Carson and Craig, sat down to hash out the status of the million Unionists who, under the Act, would become subject to a Dublin parliament where they would be outnumbered by Irish nationalists and would not be able to count on the protection of the British Crown.
(Events in the Free State during and after the war of independence would prove them right to have been worried, but the fledgling state's attitude to southern Unionists who remained after 1918 is, indeed, a topic for another day.)
In 1914, they were still talking when war broke out in Europe and caused their talks to be adjourned. Westminster, understandably, chose to delay the implementation of Home Rule until after the European war was over. (The fact that they had yet to find a solution to the Unionist problem probably made them glad they had an excuse to delay.) John Redmond, in order to demonstrate his good faith, called for Irish volunteers to join the British army. At this point in time there were paramilitary groups on both sides of the ideological divide: the Ulster Volunteers for the unionists, the Irish Volunteers for the nationalists. Many Irishmen, including nearly all the Ulster Volunteers and a majority of the Irish Volunteers, volunteered and went away to the war.
The Irish Volunteers remaining in Ireland were the most nationalist of the nationalists. The hardest of the hard-liners, so to speak, among them many members of the IRB. Of these, Thomas Clarke was to take the lead in planning an uprising to overthrow British rule in Ireland.
Let us recall that at this point Home Rule had been decided upon; all that waited was the end of the war and some kind of compromise with the unionists. Let us recall that many Irishmen were serving in the British army, sending home their pay - or their death benefits - to families at home. Let us recall that most Irish people did not want a rebellion.
Fast-foward two years to Easter Monday, 1916. The preparations for a rising have had the whiff of farce about them: expected arms never came; the British aware of all the preparations; McNeill tricked into calling out the Volunteers and, finding out that he'd been lied to, calling them off with a notice in the paper. James Connolly, bringing the Irish Socialist Army out with those volunteers who did go - not that many more than a thousand - is famed for saying, "We're going out to be slaughtered."
Reading out the proclamation at the GPO, Pearse is heckled by the crowd. In the week of fighting that follows, Sackville Street and the GPO are bombed from the Liffey and turned into rubble; over a thousand civilians are killed in the fighting. Afterwards, Dublin is furious - at the rebels, not the British. Until the over-reaction of the authorities - 4,000 people arrested and interned, 200 condemned to death; hardly anyone knowing who had been executed until the death notices were posted on the door of Kilmainham Gaol - turns the anger and resentment in a new direction.
It is to the credit of the 1916 dead - and those who survived it - that they were very brave.
But that does not change the fact that they had no real moral justification for what they did. To celebrate them as heroes is to venerate violence over reason.
We can't afford to do that. Not now, not ever.
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart
O when may it suffice?
- W. B. Yeats, "Easter 1916"
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 08:13 pm (UTC)..and many other romantic cliches. ;-)
It's always more romantic on paper, innit?
Nice summary, BTW. Been to Kilmainham Gaol and seen the GPO..::shakes head::
Then again, the Scots still remember Culloden Moor and other sad things. There must be something about our human brains that makes sad things stick around more.
Off to collect dinner for the family and dine.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 09:10 pm (UTC)We have plenty of those. It hurts my head just to think of them all.
The idea of a heroic stand is at root a Romantic one, and the trouble with the 1916-ers is that, to a man, they were Romantics, and valued the ideal over the nasty, messy reality that their descendents had to - and still have to - deal with.
I mean, read some of Pearse's poetry. Or rather, don't. It's like looking at really disturbing picture, the kind of one that you think, if you just find the right angle to view it from, it'll make sense... but it doesn't.
As for the summary, I spent three years studying modern Irish history. My old teacher would be very miffed with me if I couldn't write a concise précis on the Rising at this point. :-)
I'll opine from my limited understanding that the Scots had more justification for Culloden - which in its scale is the greater tragedy - than the Volunteers had for '16. The true tragedy of 1916 is not the deaths that resulted from it, but the fact that it completely destroyed the possibilty that independence could have been achieved without violence.
Because it was possible. Never likely, but... possible. And 1916 killed that possibility stone dead.
Enjoy dinner :-).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-19 01:23 am (UTC)There's all kinds of examples of the Doomed Rebellion. People get so carried away with their rhetoric they lose sight of their goal. About the only one that really makes sense to me was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; even there, knowing that they had no hope, yet continued to fight -- that was just spectacular and had unexpected effects upon the SS.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 12:09 pm (UTC)And I know jack about Scottish history, so I'll take your word on Culloden.