A Nation Once Again
The Easter Rising -- Monday, April 24, 1916
2006 Brooklyn Irish American Parade Theme
"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of our country: these are my objections"
-Theobald Wolfe Tone Autobiography
"...I assumer I am speaking to Englishmen who value their own freedom and who profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium and Serbia. Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more desirable than anything else in the world. If you strike us down now, we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom; if our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it by a better deed"
-Padraic Pearse -- Court Martial Speech - May 2, 1916
After nearly a fortnight of daily rain, Easter Monday dawned as a blue sky day with only a few puffs of clouds and a temperature in the sixties. Rumors of Revolution circulated in the streets of Dublin. For weeks the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizens Army had marched through the City in military formations.
The Irish Citizens Army was formed by James Larkin, leader of the Irish Transport Workers, as a result of the 1913 Dublin transit strike lockout. It was a small unit of just over 200 members with a high degree of military competence. In 1914, James Connolly, who had been a labor organizer in America, returned to Ireland to join forces with James Larkin. By 1916, Connolly had become Acting General Secretary of the Union and Commandant of the Irish Citizens Army.
The Irish Volunteer Army under the leadership of Eoin MacNeill had over 2,000 active members.
With England locked in a bloody trench war with Germany, the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in September of 1915 decided to plan an insurrection and accept assistance from Germany. Under the leadership of Thomas J. Clarke, Sean MacDermott and Padraic Pearse, missions had been made to German seeking the support of arms.
Meanwhile in America, John Devoy, the head of Clan Na Gael was raising funds for arms and munitions.
Events, positive and negative were quickly moving forward that Good Friday weekend. On Banna Strand, Tralee Bay, County Kerry, Roger Casement was captured by the British in an attempted landing from a German submarine of arms for the Rising. The British had broken the German code and knew about the plans.
On Easter Sunday, there appeared a notice in the Irish Independent signed by Eoin MacNeill, as Chief of Staff, countermanding the prior order of an all Ireland demonstration and show of force by the Irish Volunteer Army on that day.
For whatever reasons, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Citizens Army had kept the leadership of the Volunteer Army in the dark about their impending plans. A month before on St. Patrick's Day, the Volunteers, most of them armed, had assembled and marched in College Green Dublin. Leaflets were distributed to the public clearly stating... "In Raising, training and equipping the Irish Volunteers, as a military body, the men of Ireland are acquiring the power to obtain the Freedom of the Irish Nation."
On that fateful Easter Monday, James Connolly would lead from Liberty Hall, the Irish Citizens Army of two hundred well trained soldiers. Despite the Sunday countermanding order of Eoin MacNeill, twelve hundred Irish Volunteers joined the Rising.
Connolly was open to women in the Citizen Army and fifteen of them were in the ranks. Connolly declared, "There are no longer Volunteers or the Citizens Army, there is now only one Army; The Irish Republican Army." They would confront the might of the British Colonial Empire and seize the Dublin Post Office, Jacob's Biscuit Factory and attack Dublin Castle.
At noon, at the Post Office, Padraic Pearse, Commanding in Chief the forces of the Irish Republic and President of the Provisional Government declared -- "Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for freedom...We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible..."
Pearse and the other signatories to the Proclamation -- Eammon Ceannt, Thomas James Clarke, James Connolly, Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas MacFonagh and Joseph Plunkett had signed their death warrants. After court martial trials, they were executed by a firing squad.
Other than Connolly who was an international Labor figure and a Revolutionary, it was a most unlikely Revolutionary group, but then it was uniquely Irish -- three were poets and teachers, one a teacher, another a tobacconist, and one a gardener and tram conductor.
In addition to the signatories, the other martyrs to the Rising were Cornelius Colbert, Roger Casement, Edward Daly, Sean Heuston, John MacBride, Michael Mallin, Michael O'Hanrahan and Willie Pearse. All were executed by firing squad.
Their martyrdom would eventually free Ireland from six hundred years of occupation and oppression. The long yearning tradition of Irish nationalism and the struggles for a free and united Ireland stretches all the way from Wolfe Tone to this year's 25th Anniversary of the Long Kesh Hunger Strikers' deaths. Often unknown or overlooked are the contributions of the Women to the Rising and the long struggle for a free and United Ireland. Every year, the Parade Committee honors in August the memory of Matilda Tone in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Since this is the first and an introductory piece on 1916, in a ten year commemorative observance of the Easter Rising, a separate parade them will recognize and honor "Women of the Rising" like Countess Constance Markievicz, Kathleen Clarke, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Maud Gonne, Mary Spring-Rice, Anne Ceannt and many others.
The Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution were the first shots fired in the twentieth century which would free the peoples of the Earth from British colonialism and imperialism.
"All was changed, changed utterly"
-Yeats
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