After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Easter Rising: Build-Up To Irish Rebellion

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

(Part 1/2) With Britain engaged in the First World War in Europe, Irish rebels sensed an opportunity.Irish revolutions had fought for independence from Britain in the past, would the Easter Rising be any different?In this first of two-parts, Anthony and Maddy talk to Dr. Conor Mulvagh, lecturer in Irish History at University College Dublin, about the dramatic events that lead to the 1916 Easter Rising.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Easter Monday 1916 appears to start peacefully in Dublin, as it often has. More so in the last two years, however, with many of the city's men away fighting in

the Great War. Beneath the peaceful façade, a collection of men and women across the city, across the country, indeed, begin to stir with the promise of possibility. Observe, then, a group of men making their way along what is, for the time being, still referred to as Sackville Street. At the front walks one Patrick Pearse, leader of the Irish Volunteers, with two armed guards in combat uniform either side of him. The men make their way to the General Post Office, or GPO, a symbol of British occupation in the Irish capital. And, as the building is empty for the public holiday, it's quickly established

as the Rebels HQ without resistance. By now it is 12.45pm and onlookers have gathered voicing a mix of curiosity and confusion. Before them, Pierce stands outside the GPO holding a piece of paper. The sense of occasion weighs upon him as he clears his throat. He begins reading. Irishmen and Irish women, 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 her freedom. There is no turning back now.

This is the proclamation of the Irish Republic. It is a statement of independence, of severance from British rule, and in effect, it is a declaration of war. As the new flag of the Irish Republic is raised above the GPO, rebels are taking their positions inside and in key locations across the city, bracing for the bloodshed that they know will come. The Easter Rising has begun. Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And we have just heard the words of Patrick Pearce reading out the Proclamation of Independence

at the General Post Office in central Dublin, marking the first moments of the Easter Rising. But what is this history all about? How did it come to be? And what followed this particular turning point? Here to help us today to answer these questions and more is Dr. Connor Mulver, lecturer in Irish history at University College Dublin. Connor, we are so excited to have you on After Dark and to talk about this history. So welcome. Thanks, Maddy. Hi, Anthony. Hi, Maddy. Connor is, I think, from what I can see from the office, potentially in my alma mater of UCD, where I did my undergrad many moons ago. Well, no, 10 years ago. No, it's more than 10

years, but let's just make that time a little sweeter in my head and pretend I'm not as old as I am. So it's great to have you on Connor. It's great to be talking about this particular topic. As you may know, most of our listeners, well, they're between the UK and the US. So we're going to be talking about a topic of history here that potentially a lot of our listeners have never heard about. And to Irish people, that's a feat because we are very much kind of au fait with this, even though I studied the 18th century myself, but this is obviously a part of history that we grow up with in a very, in a very real sense. But Maddy, I just wanted, before we kind of get into the details with Connor,

I just wanted to see with you from, you know, being in school in Britain, what is your knowledge of this history if there is a knowledge of it at all? It's yeah, it's a really interesting question because I mean, I can't speak for schools now, but certainly a long time ago when I was in school, this history did not register. This was not on the syllabus. This was never, ever, ever mentioned. The only time, the first time that I encountered this history was as an adult in Dublin visiting. I went to Kilmain in jail. I walked all the sites associated with this particular moment of Irish history. Honestly, it was a real revelation for me. It was quite mind blowing that I knew

nothing about it up till that point. I think even now, the version that I have of these events in my head is very cinematic. It's very romanticized. I'm thinking of Liam Neeson's Michael Collins, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, those kind of cinematic renditions of this moment. I'm really excited,, Connor, to get into the actual facts on the ground, because this is just not history that in Britain, we rehearse with any regularity at all. And funnily enough, both of those examples, and I think a lot of people do this, both of those examples aren't actually this history at all. That's the next stage in this conversation. But Connor, I wanted to for people who are maybe coming to this fresh,

I want you to give them a little bit of an insight, if you don't mind, as to what the historical context for Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th century is, and what is the relationship to Britain at this time, just to kind of set the scene for us before we get into the details. Yeah, so politically Ireland is part of the United Kingdom since the Act of Union in 1801. So in the same way that Scotland, Scotland is a little bit different. First, Scotland unifies the Crown in 1603 and then the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. Ireland's Crown is unified under Henry VIII in the 1540s, but it's not until after another rebellion, the 1798 rebellion, that it's decided that Ireland is this dangerous colony very close to Britain that has just been used as an attempted

backdoor by the French Revolutionary armies and it's had this indigenous insurgency, the United Irishmen. So the Act of Union decides that Ireland will become an intrinsic part of the United Kingdom. There will no longer be a parliament in Dublin. There had been a parliament in Dublin going right back to medieval period up to 1800, 1801 when it's formally dispersed. But that parliament had only been a parliament for the Protestant descendancy since the Reformation. So the Gaelic Irish did not have their own political rights under the colonisation and conquests that had occurred in Ireland going right back to the 12th century and then right up to the Henryian Reformation, the English Civil War

and the Cromwellian Reconquest of Ireland. So that's the long 800 years of Irish history that I think many people are well versed and drilled into them. So Ireland is a participant in British colonization in the British Empire but in many ways it's an unwilling participant. So from the get-go in the start of the 19th century Ireland is 75 to 80 percent Catholic. The majority of the population are opposed to both the Union and British control of Ireland and beginning with Catholic emancipation, first under the constitutional leader Daniel O'Connell, Irish people start to look for appeal and what actor they're trying to repeal? It's the Act of Union and right through the 1850s, the 1860s, the 1870s, 1880s, a cohort of Irish politicians, ultimately Irish MPs under this banner of Home Rule, argue that Ireland should be restored to having its own parliament.

But these aren't revolutionaries, they're not radicals. They're simply looking for the restoration of a parliament in Ireland without breaking the Union. So devolution in the same way that Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have devolution today. The change that we start to see occurring towards the late 19th century is a growth of sentiment for radical revolutionary change. And there had always been a cohort of Irish nationalists who believed in full separation, indeed in republicanism, going right back to those United Irishmen of the 1790s, and then through various movements, to the movement that ultimately will be responsible for the

1916 rising, which we're here to talk about today. And that's the Fenian movement. They're constituted, they initially just called themselves the Organization, not particularly inventive, but they're the Irish Republican Brotherhood. And in the 1850s, they're founded. And in 1867, they hold a series of small rebellions, which are ultimately crushed by the constabulary here in Ireland, without the need for significant military intervention. But that cohort of, let's say, a revolutionary vanguard who are constantly trying to see where are there avenues

to exploit weaknesses in the British imperial hold on Ireland? where are there avenues to exploit weaknesses in the British Imperial hold on Ireland, where are there avenues to argue either politically or through rebellion to try and stop the British hold on Ireland. They're doing this constantly in the background. So the majority of Irish people are voting constitutionally to try and restore the parliament and do this through British legislation without any violence. But there's a small subset within that who are constantly thinking about separatism, revolution and republic. It's such a fascinating and complex political landscape that you've introduced

there, Conor, and one that is informed, as you say, by hundreds of years of history. Can you just set out for us as well, the role that the First World War plays in this, you know, we're in 1916 here, we're two years into the war. And there is on the one hand, all of that history coming into play here, but there's also the contemporary events of a global war. So what role is that playing at this point? There's a famous axiom in Irish politics and in Irish history, which is that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity. So the Fenians have been, they decide after the failure of the 1867 rebellion to essentially wait until conditions are favorable to ever rebel again. And by the

late 1870s, they decide on a policy that they called the New Departure, where they dip their toe into constitutional politics. They very much throw themselves behind agrarian radicalism and they become the driving force in a land war in Ireland that's supported by constitutional politicians who are not nearly as, they're certainly not separatists like the Fenians. And the First World War is the first real opportunity, with the possible exception of the Boer War, where Fenians and Irish separatists have an opportunity to strike a blow against the British control of Ireland while Britain is otherwise occupied. From the very outset of the war, the smallest cohort, we have to remember that the Irish 1916 rising is a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy by rebel insurgents to carry out a secret rising and to plan it during the First World War to strike a blow against the mighty British Empire.

And we have to think about the 1916 rising as a battle in the First World War. I think for too long it's been thought of as simply something in a lineage of Irish history. And it absolutely is that in the opening lines of the proclamation, they talk about the times in generations past where Irish people have risen up and they situate themselves in that lineage. But the rising is occurring because the First World War is happening. If the First World War hadn't occurred, the 1916 rising, we could say almost certainly wouldn't have happened when it did or how it did. So this group decided to plan a

rebellion and they literally do a feasibility study within the opening months of the war is a rising possible and by 1915 one of their number Joseph Mary Plunkett who's one of the signatories of the 1916 proclamation and the key planner of the 1916 rising has gone over to Germany and he's submitting plans for a rising not just in Dublin but across the island of Ireland with German support and submitting them to German Imperial High Command. So this is very much an action of the First World War, if you ask me.

I love that Conor. I've actually never heard it referred to that because within the context of the First World War, but it absolutely rings true. I mean, I had during this period of time, one great-great-grandfather who was very much involved in the IRB, and we'll talk about them in a little bit more detail in a second, and then the other who was fighting for the British Army as an Irishman in the context of the Great War. So I think that's so pertinent to this conversation. So I love that observation. For people who may not be familiar with the IRB, and I remember when I was told this as a child, that, oh yes, your great-great grandfather is part of the IRB. I panicked slightly and I went,

sorry, what was he part of? So if you could tell us what the IRB is exactly. Dr. John F. Kennedy Yeah. So in more recent decades, let's say in post-911 academia, the IRB has been studied a lot because it does fit into the history of insurgency, you could say the history of insurgency, you could say the history of terrorism. One of the things that they invent is the cellular structure for insurgent groups. So the IRB is made up of centers and circles. So there are people who control the center and then there will be small circles, roughly analogous to later Irish history, the IRA's active service units. So these are small groups who are responsible for an area or an action, and the only people

they know are the other people in their unit. So they don't know other people. So it's an anti-infiltration device. And that's the first innovation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The second thing that the Irish Republican Brotherhood gave to modern history, and this is maybe the darker side and maybe perhaps particularly pertinent for this podcast, the darker side of Ireland's contribution to the history of warfare, the IRB are one of the first dynamiters.

So from 1881 to 1885, the IRB carried out a highly successful campaign aimed at terrorizing the British public by planting bombs across England, predominantly in London and Liverpool where they have a lot of activists. They successfully bombed the House of Commons in Westminster. They bombed the tube lines. And this is largely forgotten about nowadays, but it does give us a sense, one of how professionalized and how advanced the IRB are in their insurgency activities, the fact that they are transnational, so they're operating in Scotland, England, the United States, Ireland.

Incidentally, the IRB invent modern Canada when they try and evade Canada, and the British North America Act is written to federate Canada because the IRB have proved such a threat to the British interests in Canada. So this is what the group is. Now, the IRB after 1867, or maybe more correctly, after those dynamiting campaigns in the 1880s,

become somewhat marbled. They become a talking shop for older men sitting around in towns and villages across Ireland who talk about the great old days of 67 and things like that. And a younger generation centering around two individuals who are perched from the scene by the 1916 Rising, Dennis McCullough, whose family run a music shop, and Bulmer Hobson, who interestingly comes

from a Quaker background. So not a religion that's synonymous with violence and terror, but these two individuals joined the IRB at the turn of the 20th century, and they immediately start to purge. They start to purge out the older generation generation and they start to enlist younger people into the IRB. By 1908, Bulmer Hobson, along with the famous revolutionary Constance Markovich, who we'll

be talking about in due course in this podcast, found Nafina Aron, who are Republican boy scouts. And this becomes a way of recruiting young boys into Republican activity. I'm not sure I want to use the word, they're blooding them for this, but some of the initiation tasks that they run for the Fianna Aire and Boy Scouts are to rob a hat off a member of the Baden Pals Scouts or the Boys Brigade and also to tear down Union Jacks across Dublin. So they very much are inculcating young people into republicanism, into a quasi-military organization, and ultimately these young boys will become the men who populate the Irish Republican

Army, the Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army who carry out the 1916 rebellion. So that's the longer history of the IRB. They're an oath-bound organization, they're a secret organization, they're constantly pledged to republicanism, they have a social organization. They're constantly pledged to republicanism. They have a socialistic strand to them, although the 1916 rise shouldn't be seen as, let's say, a socialist or a communist rising in the same way as the Bolshevik revolution is.

We can talk about that in due course. But they're the secret organization that is using open groups, the Fianna Éireann, the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan, which is their women's auxiliary, and then the more socialist Irish Citizen Army. They're using these open paramilitary organisations to plan a rebellion in plain sight during the First World War. Something that's occurring to me, Conrad, as you speak there, is about the sort of gendered nature, I suppose, of this. That this seems to me to be very tied to ideas of Irish masculinity

and especially Irish young masculinity at the turn of the 20th century. There are women involved in this movement, you mentioned a woman called Constance who we're going to go on to talk about, but in your research what's the sort of ratio I suppose of men and women involved in this? Are women a predominant part of this movement? Predominant no, but they're in numbers outside of any gender norms in the United Kingdom or indeed Europe, yes. So, even if we just go on the arrests, off the top of my head, there were about 90 women interned after the 1916 Rising.

There were about 2,000 people overall. So, the numbers of women involved are small, and out of that 2 of that 2000 not all of them are actually involved in the rising. One of the problems with the British response to the 1916 rising is martial law means they in turn the wrong people and they annoy a lot of people who had nothing to do with the rising or indeed we're trying to stop the rising. So our estimates are about 1,500 people involved in the Easter Rising over Easter week and maybe one to two hundred women depending on how we look at it. So women are not there in equal numbers, but as a proportion of female involvement in

anything like this, there's no real comparable service by women in these roles elsewhere. Now, gender politics plays in a very important way because we have two organizations I've already alluded to here. The Irish Volunteers, they have a women's auxiliary, Cumann na mBan, which is, Irish word Cumann means like a group or a league, so it's the League of Women, but Ban is the Irish word for women, it's the generative case of the word, so Cumann na mBan. In the Irish Citizen Army, the smaller socialist group that's set up to defend workers during a lockout in 1913. Women and men serve on a completely equal footing. They're much more radical on gender politics in the Irish Citizen Army.

So during the rising, there are women like Constance Markovich and Margaret Skinnerder who are members of the Irish Citizen Army and Markovich holds a command role. She's two IC to the Citizen Army at Stevens Green and the Royal College of Surgeons. Margaret Skinner is a sniper who sustains wounds from counter sniper fire during the 1916 Rising. But then at the GPO, where we have coming them on serving, they're dispatch riders, they're carrying very important messages. They're in some cases doing arms resupplies. But by and large, they are being confined to cooking duties

and first aid duties and things like that. It's very clear that they're in an auxiliary role. Now some members have come in the mown push against that, but by and large the gender norms in the more nationalist and more conservative Irish volunteers are replicated. So it's very nuanced, but you know there's nowhere else in Europe where we see women serving in these kinds of roles. I know we have volunteer ambulance and things like that during the first world war, but these are women on the front line serving next to men, doling out ammunition, dealing rations, carrying dispatches and being subjected to enemy fire because it's hard to see gender at 300 yards

through iron sights. Yeah. And it's incredible, isn't it, to think this is during the movement of women's suffrage as well across Britain, certainly, and in Ireland as well, and that this is a different moment for Irish women potentially. It's really exciting. You mentioned Constance there. Can you tell us a little bit more about her? Because she's from quite an unusual background, isn't she? She's not necessarily the sort of revolutionary that you might expect to be joining this.

Constance Markovich is a fascinating individual. So she's born Constance Gore Booth. She's from an Anglo-Irish landed family who are landlords, they have tenants on their estates. They would be of a class that were very much the target of agrarian radicals and home rulers during the land wars of the 1870s, the 1880s, and right the way up. Agrarian radicalism and agrarian descent in Ireland is something of a constant up until the early years of the 20th century. Now, many have seen them as progressive landlords, but she's coming from a class, as many women are, where she rejects the assumptions and the allegiances of her ancestors and her male relatives. And that's something that isn't unique to

Constance Markovich. We see other women from Anglo-Irish and aristocratic backgrounds rejecting their class and throwing in their lot with a new aspirant revolutionary zeitgeist that is born out of cultural nationalism. So the reason she becomes Constance Markiewicz and has this very unusual surname is she goes to art school in London and she meets there a member of the Polish nobility, Kazimir Markiewicz. And when she marries him, she takes on the name Constance Markiewicz. I would say, you know, we're only surmising here, but by assuming that title, she is tying herself into the Catholic poetics of nobility and she is eschewing her family name, which

is linked to colonization and linked to the aristocracy in Ireland. She was debuted to Queen Victoria as a teenager. So you know, she was a debutante who was presented to the Queen in her debut season in London. And the great quote which Sinead McCool, one of her biographers, uses to the Queen in her debut season in London. And the great quote which Sinead McCool, one of her biographers, uses to great effect in her biography is, "'Put your gems in a safe and buy yourself a revolver.'" This is Constance Markovich's idea

of throwing yourself into a generational moment where she says that, you know, my class and my background shouldn't preclude me from being involved in what she sees as the most exciting wave to be washing over society at that time, that she wants to be at the centre of it. And she completely abandons her background after the rising, she throws her lot in with the poor, she dies destitute, committing her life to republicanism and the service of the poor in 1927 in really poor conditions. So she never leans into her aristocracy with

the possible exception of her title. We need to pause this podcast now while I order her biography immediately. Obsessed. Just move to Ireland. She's everywhere. Let's start assembling then, Connor, some of the key players. And Markovich we know was a member of the ICA. We also have the Irish volunteers and the third kind of players and I guess the antagonist from an Irish point of view is the British Army. So with those three players, can you give us a background to each of those groups and let us know what we're dealing with? You've touched on that slightly throughout, but let's bring them together in the listener's mind so that they know exactly what's lining up here. Who are these people? Who's leading

these people in the different, in an Irish context, particularly I'm talking about the British Army there, and how are they all due to come together for the Easter Rising? Yeah, so in order to understand Ireland in 1916, we have to go back to the concept of home rule. So this is devolution exactly like we have in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland today. That's the demand of the majority of Irish voters and their representatives who go over to Westminster from the, really from the 1870s, but certainly from the 1885 general election onwards. The majority of Irish MPs are being returned to demand from the parliament to Westminster that a new parliament be set up in Ireland, Home Rule Parliament, a devolved Parliament.

Because I'm sure many of the listeners will be familiar with Lord George's People's Budget and the Parliament Act of 1911, so that battle between the Lords and the Commons over the rejection of the budget in 1909. Because of all those turmoils in British politics, when the Irish Parliamentary Party, this party that's pledged

to Home Rule, find themselves holding the balance between almost equally matched liberal and conservative MPs in 1911, after the two general elections of 1910, they do a deal with Herbert Henry Asquith. And Asquith says that if you guys support us on our budget and also on the Parliament Act, which will castrate the House of Lords and their hereditary powers and their powers of veto over House of Commons legislation and the Lords have used that exact veto to veto the last Home Rule Bill in 1893. So this is music to John Redmond, their leaders ears. He says, we'll support you on Home Rule.

So Home Rule Bill is introduced for the third time in 1912. And as a result of that, Home Rule is on a path to be passed because the Parliament Act means the Lords can't block Home Rule. Now, in the middle of all this, Ulster Unionists and British Unionists who are deeply committed to the Union and deeply opposed to Home Rule, they've been organizing at various levels, political level, business level, local level in Ireland to campaign against Home Rule since the 1880s. And now with their traditional route of veto in the House of Lords blocked, they decide to take the extraordinary step that these are these are peers of the realm, industrialists, unionists on both sides of the Irish Sea.

They decide that they are going to throw their weight behind Ulster Unionists who are drilling at arming to resist with arms if necessary, the Home Rule bill that is passing through Parliament. So in 1913, an Ulster Volunteer Force is founded, a Unionist group that is pledged to defend with arms if necessary against Home Rule. And by November of 1913, Irish nationalists respond. So they set up another paramilitary army to defend Home Rule. It's very clear and it's quite an important point, they're not

defending them against the Ulster Unionists and the Irish volunteers are very clear, they're not, this isn't sectarian, they're not against Unionists, they're there to defend Home Rule if necessary against the British Army but they always leave that ambiguous and they make it very clear that if the Ulster Unionists want to join with them, they all work together and they can become functioning political parties in a Home Rule Ireland, but they are pledged to defend Home Rule. So we have this incredible movement in Irish politics between 1912 and 1914 from constitutionalism to a situation by the end of 1913 where there's two private paramilitary armies who are gathering arms and ammunition on the

island of Ireland to defend or object to this whole rule bill. And within the Irish volunteers, there is that cohort of Fenians who have always been planning to exploit vulnerabilities like this to maybe take a strike against the British Empire. They've been very motivated during the Boer War between 1899 and 1902. So they're this revolutionary vanguard secretly within the Irish volunteers. They've infiltrated it. They've taken over many of the leading positions, the officerships of the various companies. Now, just to add further complexity to this, as we lay out our dramatist persona, there's a major industrial dispute in Dublin into the winter of 1913. It's called the Dublin Lockout.

It's syndicalist labor action. So basically it's a general strike with the aim of forcing employers into a bind to have them recognize a general workers union. So these aren't even skilled workers. This is for ordinary laborers, transport workers, and they're amassed around a union called the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. And because of the violence of the police in Dublin against the strikers during the lockout, their two leaders, James Larkin and James Connolly, who will become a 1916 rebel, decide that they're going to found a third army, the Irish

citizen army. And this is an army to defend the workers. Now they're not armed with rifles or anything like this. They're armed with sticks and cudgels, but they're, let's say, a counter police force and they're there to defend the workers. But they remain active and they become more and more aggressive and maybe assertive, is probably the better word, through the years of the First World War. And they see themselves in general alignment with the Irish volunteers on some issues. They're anti the British Empire. They're deeply anti imperialism. They are clearly for the Republic.

James Connolly edits a paper called the Workers Republic. So they see themselves as bedfellows. And all these groups are now openly parading, openly drilling. And at the eve of the First World War, the Irish volunteers in emulation of the Ulster volunteers who have done this in April of 1914, import arms from Germany into Ireland. volunteers in emulation of the Ulster volunteers who have done this in April of 1914 import arms from Germany into Ireland. So there's about 1500 rifles imported for the Irish volunteers and about 35,000, 45,000 rounds of ammunition in broad daylight. And that's deliberate.

That's so that the British authorities can see that the Irish volunteers are doing exactly what Edward Carson and the Unionists did under the cover of darkness in April. And they're really goading the British government and Dublin Castle to say, well, you didn't stop the Ulster volunteers when they did this. There was clearly a degree of police collusion and now we're doing it in broad daylight. And the British government sent out soldiers and police to stop them and there's an altercation when they do that. So this is the tension we have on the eve of the First World War. And I hope that gives you a sense of the various groups in Ireland. On the eve of Britain declaring war on Germany, there are approximately 180,000 Irish volunteers, about 80,000 Ulster volunteers, and about 200 to 300 Irish citizen army in Ireland.

So there's about a quarter of a million private soldiers. Not all of them have a weapon in their hand, but there's about on paper, a quarter of a million people pledged to armed action in Ireland, which is a significant force and certainly much greater than the size of the British Army in Ireland at that time. Well, let's talk about the British Army for a second Connor, because what is going through their mind and in terms of planning for this, as you say, these things are happening now in broad daylight, tensions are building, these different groups are operating in a very obvious and potentially provocative way that there's a real sense that this is building to something. Of course, we have

then the breakout of the First World War and the focus shifts in terms of where the British army is deployed to, but of course they are still on the ground in Dublin. Is there a sense that they simply don't do enough? Is that why, for example, in Britain we are not taught this history because it's an embarrassing moment in which the British army failed to act, failed to prepare, are caught off guard? Or do they let this play out in order to be able to respond in a more violent and extreme way? What do you think is happening in terms of those planning meetings going on behind the scenes? So I suppose what I should say first is that when if we take that date of the 4th of August 1914, when the first war breaks out, in the days before that, John Redmond, the leader of those constitutional nationalists, the Home Rulers, he pledges the Irish

volunteers, which he has managed to gain control of over the summer of 1914. He pledges them to the British government and says, the Irish volunteers, and if they want the ultra volunteers, will defend Ireland and free up the British army to go off to France and to Belgium and to fight the Germans. So we will loyally hold down Ireland and stop a German invasion of Ireland. And this causes an immediate split in the Irish volunteers. So about 153,000 Irish volunteers side with John Redmond, the vast majority of the force and a tiny minority, about 13,500 side with a professor of history here at the University

of Eddingen, Vaughan MacNeill, who's the leader of the Irish volunteers from there. They're founded. He's dead against this policy of, I suppose, countering to the British and involving themselves in an imperial British war effort. So those 13 and a half thousand side with MacNeil and they say, we're going to stay in Ireland and we're going to continue to be pledged to defend Home Rule, but there's no way we're sending our troops, our volunteers off to fight in Flanders for the British Empire. And that split means that while we have the majority of Irish nationalists

nominally being loyal to the war so that they can show that loyalty and therefore be awarded home rule when the war is finished as a thank you, there's that minority who are much more advanced in their nationalism. And within that minority, there's another minority who are those Fenians, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. And they have meetings at the start of the war saying, okay, Britain's turned its back, it's looking at Europe. There's an opportunity here. Let's do a feasibility study and see if we can actually strike a blow

against the British Army during the rising. So to return to your question, Maddy, the British Army are not really the main group that are responsible for internal security and surveillance in Ireland. That's a police matter. Now, the Irish police are not like the London Metropolitan Police or the Irish Guard of Siacana today, who are unarmed predominantly. The Royal Irish Constabulary in Ireland are more like an Italian or French Carabinieri. They're an armed paramilitary police

force and they don't just carry around like, you know, a pistol on their belt like American police today. They're armed with rifles. Outside of Dublin, where the Dublin Metropolitan Police are an unarmed police force, police across Ireland have been heavily involved in evictions during the land war, in the suppression of agrarian radicals, in protecting landlords and protecting people who have bought out boycotted holdings. So they're very much the force that holds down Ireland in the name of the Crown. So the real enemy and also the intelligence apparatus in Ireland is the police. Every month, every single county inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary submits an intelligence report to Dublin Castle, reporting on the Irish volunteers, the Citizen Army,

agrarian radicals, boycotting, intimidation, land grabbing, maiming of cattle, anything like that that's happening in the district. Some people have compared the Royal Irish Constabulary to more like the Russian Imperial Police around the same period. They are a police force that is holding down Ireland in a colonial sense,

and they're the primary people that the Irish volunteers come up against. Now, you're absolutely right. There is a significant military presence in Ireland. And Ireland becomes something of a staging post for the British Army in the First World War. There are massive trench networks dug in the Curran and Gildare, in the British Army base there, in Kilworth and County Cork. And they're used to train soldiers who go and fight in the First World War. And just like Anthony, I have one relative Thomas Ash, who was head of the Supreme Council of the IRB and I have another relative, James Scott, who fought and died in

the First World War and he was the last man in Melmellic to die. He dies a month before the war ends. So all these Irish families, we have these blended histories within it. But the British army was here in Ireland. They were called out to oppose the volunteers when they land those guns at Hoth in Dublin in the summer of 1914, just before the war breaks out. But predominantly, this is police who are keeping an eye on the Irish volunteers. And the civilian administration in Dublin Castle is deciding, are these different armies, the Ustra volunteers, the Irish volunteers, the citizen army, are they a threat? Should we suppress them?

And the general thinking by liberal politicians in Britain is let's just leave these guys out. And they're being advised by the Irish nationalist MPs at Westminster. John Redmond and his fellow MPs are saying if you suppress these guys, it's going to give them the oxygen of publicity. They're going to make themselves into martyrs. They're going to call themselves victims. And it will only cause people to become more sympathetic. So a policy advised by Irish MPs, advocated by the Liberal government, means that the Irish volunteers and the other paramilitary armies, both the unionists and the workers, are given huge latitude before and during the First World War to carry out armed parades in

uniform up and down the streets of Dublin and other towns and cities across Ireland. And some people look at that and rightly say that that's an insane situation for a democratic government to tolerate. But tolerated they did. And it's really only after the horses bolted in the Commission of Investigation into the rising that people ask why did we tolerate this why why was this acceptable and both the Chief Secretary Augustin Burrell and the Under Secretary the head civil servant in Dublin Castle Matthew Nathan both of them lose their jobs for being so lax in the years before the 1916 rising book that was their policy and it was one that had dire and fatal consequences for many British

soldiers and police in Ireland as a result of what they did. It's great to have this really extensive actually background that we've set up now for the events that are going to lead to the rising in 1916. So let's come up closer to those events now, Connor, and let's have a look at what's unfolding in that week, because the week prior to the to the rising itself, because there is a lot going on on the ground. It's not necessarily always unified in its approach. There are hits and misses and there's will we won't we and there's questions and there's not an awful lot of answers. And eventually it kind of just happens. So lead us up through that week just before to give us an idea of what's happening on the ground at this moment in time. So to embed some Catholic terminology into your listeners, which will be important on this, Holy Week is the week before Easter and Easter week is the week after Easter.

So if we're referring to Holy Week, I mean pre-rising and Easter week is the week after the 1916 rising when it's happening. So in Holy Week 1916, there is unbelievable intrigue in Ireland. The first thing that's happening in the weeks before that, an Irish revolutionary, again, from a Protestant, Anglo-Irish background, he had been a British civil servant. He had been an intelligence officer for the British, sending back reports during the Boer War. He had been awarded a knighthood by the British Empire for his service to humanitarianism when he exposes the humanitarian abuses of rubber miners in the Putumayo and the Congo. So this is Roger Casement, one of the great

humanitarians of the early 20th century. Nowadays, an incredibly important LGBT icon because he was gay and his gayness was used against him after the rising where his diaries that document his homosexuality were used to discredit him by the British authorities. But in Holy Week 1916, he is in a German submarine bound for the West Irish coast. And this is the rising that never happened.

There was a rising plan for Easter Sunday, a big rising, a rising for the whole Irish coast. And this is the rising that never happened. There was a rising plan for Easter Sunday, a big rising, a rising for the whole of the country, where German arms would be imported, they would be distributed among Irish volunteers and the Irish public, and the whole country would rise up against the British army. So whether that was Kerry or whether it was Limerick, we're never sure exactly what the overall plan was, but Joseph Mary Blunkett, the primary

tactician of the 1916 rising, had gone to Germany in 1915 and submitted his plans for a nationwide rebellion to the German Imperial High Command. And that involved this shipment of arms and Roger Casement and a brigade of Irish soldiers who were POWs from the First World War. So Irish soldiers who fought for Britain and now were in German prisoner camps, they would be released and brought to Ireland. Now, ultimately, Roger Casement, as a guy with an upper-class accent and a background that suggests he might be not a particularly fair trader, this might not be a trick, he stands up in front of POW camps and

tries to recruit people into this brigade to go and fight and possibly die in Ireland. And only 56 prisoners are mad enough, I would say, to follow Roger Casement. So the Irish Brigade is a failure. So the only people traveling to Ireland are Roger Casement, this nominal head of the Irish Brigade called Robert Monteith, and a couple of other individuals. But this plan for the Irishbogate collapses before it even begins. The one thing that does come to Ireland is a massive shipment of captured weaponry. As we understand it, this is predominantly weapons that have been captured on the Eastern front.

So these are Russian weapons, as you understand it by and large, machine guns, some land mines and explosives as well. And that's in a ship that is masquerading as a Norwegian neutral ship, the ODD. So flying under a false flag, this ship is floating off the Irish coast ready to land and distribute all these arms and start a nationwide rebellion. First thing that happens is the British Navy intercept this ship and they they realize that it's not a Norwegian ship and they're escorting it at Cork Harbour to detain it And while they're escorting it into Cork, the captain brings down the neutral flag

of Norway, flies up the German naval ensign and then scuttles the ship. He blows up his own ship in Cork Harbor and sinks it. At the same time, an unusual individual is found by locals wandering the beaches of County Kerry and the police are informed and the police intercept Roger Casement. They never catch Robert Monteith. He actually manages to make it to America. But all these stories are being filtered back to Dublin. And Old MacNeill, remember, is not in on the conspiracy for the rising, but he is the head of the Irish Volunteers. And he's hearing all these things. And over 1915 and 16, he had been asked at various occasions by the platters of the rising,

but they kept the wool over his eyes, but they said, what conditions would you allow a rising to occur? And he says, well, the two key conditions to boil it down are the rising would have to have, let's say our rising, not the rising, our rising would have to have a chance of success, and it would have to have popular support. So he's leaning into just war theory. And he said, so if the British government tried to take our weapons off us, or if they tried to suppress our volunteers, O' McNeill says, yeah, I could get behind the rising. So the rebels weaponize this information and they forge a document. Now it's based on a real document. It's a cipher that had been found in Dublin Castle and they call it the Castle document. But the actual piece of paper that's put into MacNeill's hands

to convince him that he should rise up now because the rebels are about to be suppressed is a forged document printed in Kimmich in the suburb of Dublin on a printing press by Joseph Mary Blunkett and his family. And this Castle document I'm looking at in front of me here says, the following precautionary measures have been sanctioned by the Irish Office on the recommendation of the General Officer Commanding of the forces in Dublin. And then basically says that the arrest has been ordered of the Sinn Féin National Council, the Irish Volunteers County Board, and various other people are listed, including Aam Macneill

and including the Archbishop of Dublin. This is a fake document designed to convince Aam Macneill to say, yeah, we have to rise up. We're about to be suppressed. And by the Friday of Holy Week, Old MacNeill realizes that Roger Casement has been intercepted. This castle document is a forgery. And he realizes there's been a plot going on for years behind his back to lead up to this moment, to make sure that a rising will happen on Easter Sunday. And when he realizes he's been duped, he immediately puts an ad into the largest circulation daily newspaper, the Irish Independent. And looking

at there here, it says Irish volunteers marches cancelled, a sudden order. Easter maneuvers for the Irish volunteers, which were announced to begin today and which were to have taken part in all branches of the organization in city and country were unexpectedly cancelled last night. The following announcement communicated to the press last evening by the staff of volunteers and that says, owing to the very critical position, all orders given to Irish volunteers for tomorrow, Easter Sunday are hereby rescinded and no parades, marches or other movements of Irish volunteers will take place. Each individual volunteer will obey this order strictly in every particular. So this is the leader of the Irish volunteers trying to stop the conspiracy he's just

on Earth that from happening by literally putting an ad in the paper. And you can imagine the chaos that ensues as a result of this. Remember, there are Fenians and IRB who have infiltrated every layer of the Irish volunteers from their provisional committee, the supreme government of the Irish volunteers, down to local branches and local units in towns and parishes across the country. So all through Easter Sunday, volunteers were asking themselves, is this thing on or off? I think we have to stop for a second here and talk about the subterfuge. And, you know, I do think it's quite smart how the plotters of the 1916 rebellion planned this. What they do is they say there had been a parade of national volunteers.

They're the pro-first world war volunteers and Irish volunteers in 1915 at Easter. So this idea of the volunteers all going to Dublin and having a big parade with their weapons, it didn't spook the British authorities in 1915. So they say, let's just do the same thing again. And Thomas Macdonagh, who's the adjutant for the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, he has five battalions under his command, a significant enough amount of volunteers. He says, there's going to be a kit competition on Sunday. So everyone's to bring your best kit, bring your weapon, make sure you bring your ammunition if you've given ammunition. He says, bring 24 hour rations and the person who has the best kit in Dublin

will be given a prize. So this is a great way. If you ever want to organize a rebellion and everyone thinks they're just coming for a kind of a fun test your kit, scouch and brie type affair, and then you break open the secret orders and say, oh, actually we're taking over the following buildings in the city and there's a rebellion happening in real time. So that was the subterfuge and it was incredibly effective. Outside of the seven signatories of the proclamation, while there were rumors flying, not that many people knew about the plot before it happened. And these plotters now are in disarray because Old MacNeill is to cancel the rising. That was to be the front for this big insurgency.

So they have multiple meetings on Saturday and Sunday of Easter 1916 and on Easter Sunday they decide yes, we're gonna go ahead, but we're gonna delay by 24 hours. We're gonna rise on Monday tomorrow. This is a pretty useful situation. Monday is a public holiday because of the Easter liturgical celebrations, festivities. So a lot of civil servants are on holidays. There's a big horse racing meet happening in Ferry House and a lot of British Army officers are actually down at the races because the Anglo-Irish and British Army officers are

into turf and racing and all that kind of stuff. So Dublin's kind of empty and the rebels, maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves here, but it's not quite the rising. They seize a bunch of buildings and they do so with very little resistance. So even though the rebellion has been delayed, even though this grand plan for a national rebellion has been abandoned, a Dublin rebellion is now carried out by those who've been plotting this and they managed to amass on day one probably about a thousand individuals and by the end of the week, 1,500 individuals who despite the counterbanding order, despite the danger involved, are prepared to risk their lives and to rise up for an Irish Republic. And Portig Piers, outside the GPO reads out a proclamation and declares an Irish Republic. And that's what starts off the

1916 rise. I feel like I have slight whiplash listening to that Connor. I mean, there's so many back and forths, you know, it almost happens and it doesn't then it does. And it's, I'm amazed actually, by how much of that happens in the open. I mean, literally telling people to turn up with all their kit and ammunition. I'm not sure you'd get soldiers doing that today for some kind of competition. I don't think they'd bother, but you know, it's so incredible

that this is the situation that it's happening. I mean, literally with the advert in the newspaper, it's absolutely fascinating. And then it's kind of back underground until it's actually happening. I suppose we have to remember that the heart of this, as you say though, that these are men and women who are genuinely willing to risk their lives now. There's a humorous side, I suppose, to these proceedings in, you know, it is slightly farcical, all the calling off and calling back on of everything. But this is about to get violent, and there are going to be serious consequences. Do you think that is in the mind of the people involved at this point? Do you think they are preparing to potentially give their lives for this cause? Those who had planned the rising are absolutely clear that they're risking their lives. And I would say by carrying out a rebellion that I don't think

it's unfair to say is going off half cocked, it's certainly going off not nearly at the scale that was being planned. So that criteria and old McNeill had always specified that this has to have a chance of success. There is no chance of success on Monday of 1916. This is a gamble to make a stand before they're about to be suppressed. They know that with all the things that happened in Holy Week that, you know, likely Dublin Castle

are now gonna turn around, and when they all return to their desks on Tuesday, they're probably going to start ordering the arrests of the people because it's quite clear something has been happening behind the scenes. They've intercepted a ship full of German weapons and ammunition. They've intercepted a man coming off a U-boat in Kerry, and they know that there's been some weird plan happening in Dublin. So as a result of that, they say, let's make a stand before we're suppressed.

And remember, they're standing in a revolutionary tradition of rebels who've risen up in 1798 in the 1848 rebellion, which is a desperate attempt at rebellion during the Irish famine. And I know you had a brilliant two-part series on the famine here on this podcast. So we don't need to tell listeners all about that. In 1867, there had been a rebellion. So this is the fourth rebellion in 120 years to have occurred in Ireland. So the planners definitely know that they're

probably risking what, and I forgot Robert Emmett's rebellion of 1803, a very small affair by the way. The rebels know that the people who have gone before them, Wolf Tone, Robert Emmett, the young Irelanders, the Fenians, many of them faced the scaffold and faced hanging and faced execution. So they know what they're at. The Defence of the Realm Act, which is passed during the First World War, means there are very clear laws against tradition. And they know the British are not going to take this lying down. And I think in many ways, life is cheapened by the First World War. Remember that people have read the lists of people dying in the First World War,

including my great-great-uncle, James Scott. They read those lists in the papers every day of the war. And I've read diarists in Dublin, like Elsie Henry, who's writing about all her relatives who were off in the war and she's trying to follow their proceedings. So by the democratization of death in World War I, life has become a little cheaper.

Conscription has been introduced in Britain in January of 1916. Ireland has avoided conscription, but conscription fears mean that Irish Republicans are very afraid that they're gonna be just shipped off on British military transports and put into the trenches in a war that they very clearly don't believe in. So they decide that it's better to die on Irish soil for a cause that they believe in than to wait

for either the recruiting sergeant or the hangman to come for them. So I think that gives a little bit of context as to why they do this. But to go back to your original question, are they going into this with their eyes open? The planners and maybe the more senior people? Absolutely. I look at the photographs and there are photographs taken inside the GPO during the rising and some of the rebels are those Fianna Éireann kids, they're boys, they're 16 in some cases and I think for them they have no idea of the enormity of what they've just done by taking over in many cases vacant

buildings and factories around the city but by doing that they realized realised in about 48 hours that they're actually now throwing down a gauntlet that not the Dublin Metropolitan Police or the Royal Irish Constabulary are responding to, but the British Army is coming. The Imperial Army is now marching on Dublin and they're planning on a full-scale counter assault against the rebels. And people are going to die in that. So that brings us to the end of the first of our two part special on the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. Join us again next time as we explore the history of Easter week itself

and get right into the action of what unfolded in Dublin and around the country. As ever, you can leave us a five star review and check out our other episodes wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.