Empire: World History - 238. Ireland’s Fight For Freedom: The Easter Rising (Ep 1)

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

The 1916 Easter Rising was a definitive moment in 20th-century Irish history. Its memory was evoked throughout The Troubles, with republicans wearing commemorative Easter Lily badges to honour the revolutionary martyrs that came before them.  On Easter Monday in 1916, amongst the backdrop of the ongoing First World War, Irish revolutionaries brought the anti-colonial struggle to Britain’s doorstep.  Armed men and women stormed and seized important buildings across Dublin, and proclaimed the beginning of The Irish Republic. From the steps of the General Post Office, Patrick Pearse read the proclamation of independence that would be referred back to for generations. As the leaders of the revolution faced their tragic fate, we trace the journeys of three rebels who escaped execution: a countess with a pistol, a maths-teacher-turned-military-commander, and a young man from Cork who will soon oversee a guerrilla war campaign as the revolution is reborn…  Listen as Anita and William are joined by Diarmaid Ferriter, author of A Nation Not A Rabble, to discuss the impact of the Easter Rising.  _____________ Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, and a weekly newsletter! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Lerampal. Now, before we carry on with our Ireland series, and thank you so much for all of your very kind comments. It's wonderful when you pick a subject that really resonates with listeners.

So we know this one is. So thank you for that. But let me tell you, for the next three episodes, we're very lucky to have a rather outstanding guest, a brilliant historian of Ireland. Demud Ferreter is with us. Author of so many great books on the History of Ireland, including a joint book with our previous guest,

Coln Tobin, who we really enjoyed on The Famine. But two of his books are particularly relevant to the next few episodes. between two hells, the Irish Civil War and a nation not a rabble, the Irish Revolution of 1913 to 1923. Welcome to you. Thank you so much for being with us. Absolutely pleasure to be here. I think I've already impressed you so much by saying,

oh, lovely picture of Yates behind you. It's Beckett, you idiot. So, you know, we got off to a flying start. I have to admit, I thought it was Trump at one point. That would have been weird. I didn't voice it. You know, I think we should go to Spec Savers, Any other optician, others are available.

But we are largely going to be concentrating on the Easter Rising on this episode. And right at the last episode, we left Com talking, and it was very emotional talking about the Great Famine. I have to say, very glad not to have such a depressing subject this week. I find the reading, particularly reading Dermott's books on the Easter Rising and the Civil War gripping. But I was so depressed by the famine books. It was just such a bleak and terrible story. Well, there is a contemporary historian who, Cormacogh, Graada, has done a lot of work on the economic consequences of the famine, but he also spoke not too long ago about the psychological consequences to this day.

And the way he put it as part of us still does not want to go there, which, of course, you will both appreciate after hearing the enormity of its impact and the way it reverberates down to the generation. So there's still a degree of reticence, I suppose, about opening it up. So it's healthy to have done that. Would it be correct to say that all of those feelings, all of those emotions, so much fresher than today, sort of led to this bedrock of absolute defiance saying, you know what, we're not going to live like this anymore. We're not going to let this happen again. Well, I mean, it's very important when you consider at the outset of the Easter rising in 1916, the declaration is that this rebellion is being fought in the name of the dead generations.

And the dead generations, of course, invokes all of that difficult history that you're talking about, but also the history of exile, the sense that people have been banished, and of course the link with emigration arising from the famine era and the building of that resentment, that sense of exile. And that sense as well of the British Empire not being called to account for the calamitous events of the 19th century. So there's an awful lot of history that reverberates for that 1916 generation. But of course, you also have a wider European context,

We often talk about the generation of 1914 and what propelled them and the degree to which they felt that the established order was absolutely rotten and they wanted to cleanse it and they wanted to do dramatic things in order to try and create that change. And, you know, the Irish 1916 story is very much a part of that wider European impulse. And you can trace it through the poetry sometimes as well because we often think about the 1916 leaders as having been immersed in cultural revival in the promotion of language of Irish antiquity. Many of them wrote poems. Some of the poems are awful. No, it has to be said. There was an awful of bad poetry being written in Europe between 1914 and 1918. But it does, I suppose,

illuminate that degree to which they feel they are attached to a higher purpose. Before we get to the long fella and the big fella, as Amon de Valera and Michael Collins, were known as two major characters in these three episodes that we're going to be talking about. Can we talk about the bridging period between the famine and what took us to 1916? Because there were increasing cries for Home Raw after that. One name that I feel we ought to mention is Charles Stuart Parnell, who did a lot to drive forward the agenda of, look, we will not live like this. Tell us a little bit about the man who came so close.

but was actually ultimately thwarted by a sex scandal. Parnell's rise was remarkable because he would not have been seen as someone who was a natural leader. He was a substantial landowner in Wicklow in Ireland and he was not an impressive parliamentary performer when he first came on the scene. But what Parnell did was he developed what we would now recognise as a modern political party. And the idea was that you would get an. alliance of Irish MPs in Westminster, who were broadly committed to the idea of home rule,

but that they would sit, act and vote in accordance with the instructions of the party leadership. And Parnell really grew into the role, firstly by making an impact, by becoming a more confident speaker, but also by obstructing the business of the House of Commons to try and persuade them to turn their attention to Irish affairs. And he built very important alliances then, of course, with certain British politicians, including most famously the Prime Minister William Gladstone. And the idea was to try and build a strong enough Irish party in Westminster to hold the balance of power so that if you were holding the balance of power, the price of your support would be a British backing of home rule. And that's where Parnell brought the Irish party to.

And he was regarded as an extraordinary parliamentary performer, having obviously had very, nervous beginnings. And William Gladstone referred to him as one of the most impressive people he had ever seen in the House of Commons. But as you mentioned, he was undone by his personal life. And his personal life involved him living with the wife of one of his party members, who subsequently became Parnell's wife. But in that Victorian climate and given the influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland as well, this ruptured the Irish Parliamentary Party when the story broke. And Parnell was still a young man and he attempted to fight on, but he couldn't hold the party together. And ultimately, it broke him, his political power, but also his health. And he died very young

in 1891. And historians have often referred to the Parnell-shaped hole that was left as a result because he was a character who became iconic. He was regarded as the great champion of the people, despite his privileged background. And of course, he had close alliances with those who were fighting campaigns in relation to land reform as well. One of the names that comes up at this time which has entered universal language is the boycott. Tell us about who Captain Boycott was. The revolution involves transferring that ownership of land from landlords to tenants. And, you know, that happens in the late 19th and the early 20th century.

One of the tactics of those who orchestrated the land war was to boycott, to boycott those who were prepared to purchase land from which tenants had been unfairly evicted. and Captain Boycott was a land agent in Ireland at that time. And because of the controversy over the particular land that he was administering, he lent his name to what became this boycott description, Captain Boycott. So it was just one tactic in what was a wider land war, orchestrated originally by the Land League. It originated in Mayo, the poorest county in Ireland when it came to land and the poor quality of land.

Let's move from Parnell now on Oval. over the century into 1912 and the home rule crisis. Tell us about that, Dammit. What is it that begins the march towards the Easter rising? Well, when we talked about Parnell, I mean, his mission, obviously, is to achieve home rule for Ireland. There were home rule bills that were introduced by the British government in 1886 and again in 1893. They fail, obviously, because the House of Lords is never going to contemplate acceptance of home rule for Ireland, even if the House of Commons is going to back it. So Parnell brings nationalist ardent close to

home rule, but he can't ultimately achieve it. What has changed by 1912 is that the House of Lords veto has gone. Removed by Lloyd George. By Lloyd George. And, you know, I mean, you had that whole controversy over the people's budget and, you know, the liberal experiments. So for those who don't know, let's

just a little context to that. The liberals were trying to put through a whole bunch of reforms that would have led to things like pensions. I mean, they were very socially progressive welfare reforms. And every time it would pass through the House of Commons, which has the electoral mandate in this country. If you vote, you know, your elected members go to the House of Commons, wherever you live in the world, this is how it works here. But the House of Lords, which are sort of anointed peers, you know,

who normally were at that time very wealthy, very influential people, sometimes peers, whose grandfathers have been some great shakes in the past and they may not be, but they still had a seat in the House of Lords. At that time, the House of Lords could say no. And whatever the will of the elected representatives, they would say no. And it is this crisis, both home rule and the people's budget, that you just can't get your legislation past these hoity-to-oits that leads to the reform,

and we don't have that anymore in this country. We can have the House of Lords delaying bills, but they can't stop it, they can't throw it out anymore. So it changed, I mean, this period of time is so important in British parliamentary democracy because it changes, and no longer they can slow it down, but they can't stop the will of the people.

And it's a huge advance in relation to that broader sense of what constitutes democracy. It's also a reminder in Ireland of the impact that British politics has on Ireland. I mean, you mentioned the budgetary decisions, the welfare provisions. I mean, the old age pension, for example, was a big, big story in Ireland when it was introduced in 1908 because Irish pensioners were going to benefit from that. And there were those within nationalist Ireland who recognised that there were advantages to a close alliance with the Liberal Party because you could get housing reform and you could get land reform and you could get wider welfare provision.

So there is a certain alliance there between the Liberal Party and what is now the reunited Irish Parliamentary Party under the leadership of John Redmond, because John Redmond becomes the leader in 1900. And in a sense, he is stepping into the shoes of Paranelle. He's interested in working with the Liberals. And what happens by 1912 is that he has persuaded the British Liberals again to back home rule,

but this time it looks like it is going to become a reality. And that provokes a forroval. response from those unionists in Ireland, particularly centered in the north of Ireland, in the Ulster province of Ireland, who of course historically have a deep affinity with Britain and the British Empire, and they are absolutely adamant that they are not going to countenance this third home rule bill as it is becoming a reality, and they mobilise an unprecedented opposition campaign, which ultimately brings Ireland to the brink of civil war. For those that are not aware of the big differences, can you paint a picture of the unionist community at this period?

What are they frightened of? Why does the idea of home rule in Ireland appalled them? And what are their views about Catholic Ireland? I mean, obviously, I mentioned the affinity with the British Empire. So, I mean, ideologically, they would see themselves very much as a part of that United Kingdom, of that great empire. So they have that ideological affinity. Now, obviously, you can go back to the 17th century and the plantations and the reasons why Ulster had the particular character it did in terms of the people who were placed there at an earlier stage and the displacement of the natives. But, I mean, they do have that ideological positioning. They are also, of course, finding themselves, many of them at odds with the dominant religion in Ireland, which is the Catholic religion. And if you look at the census returns for 1901 or 1911, you can see how Southern Ireland was over 80% Catholic. so they fear that home rule will be Rome rule, that they will be dominated by a Catholic majority, which they will find, of course, of obnoxious and offensive, and will threaten their rights as they see it.

That part of Ireland is also more industrialized. You know, Ireland is overwhelmingly an agricultural and rural country, but unionists are also populating parts of the north of Ireland that are more akin, I suppose, to the British industrial cities. You know, when we think of Belfast being an obvious example. So there are very obvious differences, but they also, of course, ultimately fear that the whole basis of their political and ideological identity will be swept away from them. And tell us about their leaders. Tell us about Edward Carson, the man who first came to prominence by demolishing poor Oscar Wilde in the witness box.

Well, yeah, Carson was a very, he was a very effective lawyer and a very impressive performer and a renowned orator. What's interesting about their leadership of unionism around this time 1912 is that it has changed. Unionists historically had been led by the landed elite. Edward Saunderson would have been recognised as the landed leader of parliamentary unionism in the House of Commons representing the Irish unionists and he would have seen himself as an Irish unionist. And indeed Edward Carson was a Dubliner. And ultimately, I suppose it's ironic that he becomes associated with the cause of Ulster unionism. So when does Irish unionism become Ulster unionism with the threat of the third home rule bill?

They recognize that they need to concentrate their strength where they have the numbers. And in many respects, that means leaving the Southern Uninus behind. And the Southern Unis, of course, are in a quite small minority. But they want an effective campaign. And Edward Carson becomes the figurehead of that campaign. And there's an extraordinary response to Edward Carson's leadership because he is a voracious speaker. He's able to galvanize people. He also works closely with those who are contemplating arming unionists to resist home rules should it be implemented.

And, you know, in a similar way to Parnell, you could argue, he has to be conscious of what he has created and the politics of brinkmanship. How far can he take this militancy? Well, what he does, I mean, he introduces the language of warfare that we are on the brink of war and that is, you know, the kind of clarion call that really stirs the blood in the unionists. I mean, just an extract from one of his parliamentary speeches is, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will not go in which I should not be prepared to support them and which would not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people. Carson's a fascinating character. I mean, if you look through Hansard, as I do as a nerd, you know, he's there all over in some of the most bombastic speeches about empire, particularly about India. And the conservatives love him because he is a bedrock support to conservatism in the country at that time. So, you know, the language of war is out there in the ether now, and guns follow suit. So there are a couple of very important gun running activities.

The first one which gets busted, but actually nothing is done about it, is the Larn gun running, a major gun smuggling operation for the Unis to get guns from Germany, from the German Empire, ironically, so that they can prepare and tool up for the kind of warfare that Carson is talking about. And I mean, these arms were for the Ulster Volunteer Force, which comes into being in 1913. And I mean, even the name of that, of course, speaks volumes about the increased fraughtness and the militancy. Now, how do you make such a group more effective and more threatening? Will you need to arm them? So you spirit in these arms, you get them across the sea, as you mentioned.

They're then distributed across the province of Ulster. there was never enough arms, of course, to go around. But it was more about the appearance of militancy and a demonstration of the genuineness of the determination to resist. And of course, that provokes a response on the part of Irish nationalists who then formed their own organization, the Irish volunteers later that year in 1913. So that's why you have the language of war, because effectively you have two armed organisations, because there's another gun running in Hoth, in County Dublin. in 1914, which is more controversial in the sense that there's an attempt to intervene and to disarm those who have just collected this shipment of arms. And the accusation, of course, was that there were complete double standards in operation in relation to the administration

of Ireland and the governance of Ireland, because the Ulster volunteers had been allowed to spirit their arms away. A blind eye was effectively turned in relation to that. But that's why you're getting this increased emphasis on possible civil war on brinkmanship. Yeah, and also just complete distrust now, and almost a break with Westminster, all the work that Pan Al had done, you know, that you must have a voice here in Westminster. It's like, well, what is the bloody point of having a voice in Westminster? I think that is one of the most important developments of this era. The focus shifts from parliamentary politics to the grassroots. The unionists are recognising that if they want to create an impact if they want to successfully resist the imposition of home rule, they're going

to have to take it to the streets. And they actually make plans for a provisional government in Ulster, again, creating this huge gulf between Belfast and Westminster. And what they are saying is that it's now the Ulster Unionist Council, which is the kind of umbrella body for the unionist movement, who will be dictating the decisions. And obviously, there are those in the Irish volunteers who are similarly interested, not in parliamentary politics. In many respects, parliamentary politics is becoming more derided. What they are most interested in now are expressions of resistance, of militancy and determination at the grassroots level.

Tell us about these two fascinating characters involved in trying to get arms to the Irish, not to the unionists, to the Republicans. Erskine Childers, who we all read as children with the Riddle of the Sands, this very good movie too, who allies with another fascinating character, Sir Roger Casement. One of the interesting things about this period of history is that there are individuals whose background, whose professions would suggest little sympathy with the cause of Irish nationalism or ultimately the cause of an Irish Republic, but they become converted and convinced and absolutely determined, bloodily determined in some respect.

Sirskine Childers will be an example of that. I mean, he was an eminently respectable and renowned author, but also a British civil servant, a senior British civil servant. Likewise, Roger Casement, who came to prominence and fame as a result of his work on behalf of the British Empire to expose the horrendous conditions that were operating in the Congo in relation to the exploitation and the slave labour and the brutality. And that was the prominence that he achieved, so much so that he became a knight of the realm. And again, he is somebody who studies much more closely the Irish situation. He had an Irish background, obviously. He was born originally in Ireland. And Erskine Childers obviously has very strong Irish connections as well.

So they do have an Irish lineage. They do have Irish backgrounds. But like so many of that generation of Irish, they do find a role within the British Empire or within the British Civil Service. But they are beginning to focus their attention on Ireland. and they become, in Childers' case, of course, very much involved in the gun running of 1914. In casement's case, he becomes very much a link between Irish nationalists and Germany when it comes to trying to complicate the British war effort.

And just to put this down, it's an incredibly successful attempt to get guns. 900 German rifles and 26,000 rounds of ammunition are brought in. Well, I wouldn't exaggerate that because they were Mauser. they were German Maza rifles. They were actually quite out of date. I actually held one during the centenary of the 1916 rising in 2016, and I didn't appreciate just how heavy and laborious they were. But again, I think the importance is not so much the volume,

because it wasn't that big a volume. It was more the demonstration of the determination that they, if they had to, would use these. And Demit, just before we dive into now the military story, and before we take a break, just give us an impression of how Ireland is actually now beginning to turn. We have this extraordinary generation coming up in the aftermath of Yates and Lady Gregory in the Abbey Theatre, a revolutionary generation, and this feeling that people are living in a time of flux, of transformation, many are changing their names to Gaelic spelling, and this whole world that Roy Foster writes about in his wonderful book, Vivid Faces.

He says, revolutionaries were part of a generation which exposed other forms of liberation beside the political and national. One of those concerns was the drama of loving. So it's kind of free-loving, revolutionaries, going to art school, influence by radicalism. Give us a little portrait of that before we move on. Do bear in mind, though, that they are not representative of the general population. And this is the important thing about our focus on the radicals. And, you know, Roy Foster also refers to the fact that they can have a very self-referencing

and sometimes closed world. They move in the same circles. You know, they are convincing each other of their own radicalism. They're not necessarily representative. Ireland was not in a revolutionary frame of mind in the first decade, for example, of the 20th century. The land question hadn't been completely settled, but had been largely settled. There's still a very strong attachment to the empire in both the north and the south of

Ireland. And, you know, Ireland is not simmering towards the outbreak of rebellion, you would think, in the first decade of the 20th century. Certainly, there are those strands that you refer to there. People are imbued with a sense of cultural purpose. You know, Yates, as a poet famously said, that Ireland was like soft wax in the aftermath of the death of Parnell, that it was waiting to be moulded in a particular direction. There are no shortage of people who want to contribute to that moulding in relation to language revival and the promotion of culture. And some of them, their teeth in the Irish language movement and then become politically radicalised. But broadly speaking, there is still a conservative Ireland there that is supportive of home rule, not revolution.

They see a future for a nationalist Ireland within the British Empire. What changes everything is the outbreak of the First World War. As with the rest of the world, Ireland is transformed by that conflict. Well, look, let's take a break here. Join us after the break, where we show you just how things change after the Declaration of World War. Welcome back. So as Dermid was saying just before the break, the war changes everything. But for a while, people don't recognize just what exactly has changed. Because you have a situation where you have Ulster volunteers and Irish volunteers. So from both sides of this divide that has developed in Ireland,

stepping forward, putting on the uniform, taking the guns to defend Ireland. and indeed Britain in this new world war. And so you get, people like the Foreign Secretary going, well, look at that. That's handy, Sir Edward Gray says. This is a direct quote, handy with me. The one bright spot in the very dreadful situation is Ireland, the position in Ireland. It is not a consideration among things we have to take into account now. So look, in other words, put that out of your mind.

Look, they stop their squabbling. It's always talking about them like they're silly children, you know, they stop their squabbling. They've got something else to think about now. I just want to tell you, you mentioned Roger Casement, and we should say he comes to a very sticky end because he is tried as a traitor, and he is ultimately hanged at Pentonville Prison. Now, I've been to the place where he was hanged, because I was doing research for the patient assassin,

and I saw the place where he was thrown into an unmarked grave, and very weirdly, next to that place, was thrown in 20 years later, more than 20 years later, in 1940, an Indian who was the man responsible for killing Michael O'Dwai, the man from Tipperary who was in charge of Punjab at the time of the Gendermanagh massacre, right next door. So what they did was because there was not much room. So it's a diversion, but it's so interesting.

It's a good diversion. It's a little square of green earth outside the walls of the prison, around the back, and there's nothing to mark it, just a rising mound of earth. And they would bury the people that they hanged in layers, It's like the most macabre cake you've ever heard of. So certain depths. And because there wasn't so much room, you'd have them, you know, sort of one, two, three, four, five deep, maybe.

And there would be sort of a plum line thrown into where the bodies were buried. And there would be a little chart saying, at this level, is Roger Casement, for example. And Utham Singh, the man I wrote about, was buried almost within fingertip-touching distance of Roger Casement in that mound and left that way until the 1970s where he's then exhumed and taken to India. So I think there are so many foreshadowings

between Irish politics and Indian politics. And I'm going to sort of, you know, keep getting excited about that throughout these episodes that we're doing, these three episodes. But I think that that was the inspiration behind, well, if casement can go home, can't we bring our boy home as well? And this mass movement in the, you know,

from the mid-1960s to the 70s of bring him home, bring him home. And we have a very detailed account from the British Archive of the process of the disinterring. It's a fairly grisly business you'll appreciate, but they had to document everything very carefully. But the British ambassador in Ireland in 1965 found himself with a bit of a dilemma about whether he should be visible

at the ceremony to remark the return of the body of Roger Casman. Let's go back to January 1916 when Casement is very much alive and talk about what happened on the 21st of April with the British Navy intercepting the German steamer, the Ord. And this was Roger Casement's plan, wasn't it, to get more arms into Ireland? Take us there. Well, Roger Casman was very pessimistic about an inadequate level of support from Germany. Now, you'll understand, of course, that there were certain advantages in cooperating with Germany

on the part of Irish nationalists to try and complicate the British war effort, but also to try and bolster the potential for Irish rebels. us to be successful if they had outside assistance. But Casement was aware that the Germans were not taking this as seriously as Irish nationals would have liked. So whilst he was traveling back with some support, it wasn't near enough. And Casement actually had the intention while he was traveling back of persuading the organizers of the rising to call it off because he didn't believe it had any prospect of success. And he was very pessimistic about the ability to build those international alliances. So this is a very sad tale for Casement. Ultimately, he finds himself on a beach

in Kerry. He's stranded. He's disoriented. He's clearly not well, as nobody would be having travelled that long in those conditions. And of course, that begins the end of Roger Casement, who ultimately becomes a figure of great derision. Is there a tip-off? Are the British troops waiting for him? Do they know these arms are coming? Yes, I mean, they have intelligence in relation to this, and he is ultimately picked up. So this is one of the interesting aspects of the whole of that story of 1916, is just how clued in the British authorities were to what was going on and what was being organized. Now, the answer is not particularly well.

They did have certain strands of information and intelligence, but they had also taken their eye off Ireland. And, you know, many of the people who they had on their list of potential subversives or radicals were actually eminently respectable pillars of the community by 1916. So they're not necessarily looking. at the right lists or the right people. But I mean, that casement episode is a harbinger, I suppose, of complications. In relation, let's not forget to what was being planned as a nationwide rising in 1916. The plan was not that it would be confined to Dublin. The original plan is

that there will be a countrywide rebellion. And because of a serious of mish haps and because of the deceptions that went on, and because the head of the Irish volunteers, whose own McNeil, who was a history professor, who are perhaps not the most natural of rebel leaders. Because he was deceived, he called off the instruction for Irish volunteers to mobilize on Easter Sunday. After the guns were captured, after the road is seized by the Navy. And he also was aware that there were conspiracies to organize things behind his back. He was being kept out of the frame. And when he subsequently discovered that he was hugely angered by the level of deception, because a rumour had been put about as well that the British government were intent on disarming the volunteers,

which O'McNeill originally would have accepted, would have been grounds for resistance. But his line, of course, was that Ireland was not a poetic abstraction, that it couldn't afford this luxury of a rebellion that had no prospect of success and that it was deeply irresponsible to go ahead with it. Well, so all of these misgivings, guns confiscated, heroes of the movement, imprisoned, thrown in jail, and nobody knowing just what kind of intelligence the British has. have, nevertheless, at 11 a.m. on the 24th of April, 1916, around a thousand Irish nationalist Republicans gather in central Dublin. Now, tell me who they were, these people. They weren't

all Irish volunteers and they weren't all Irish Republican Brotherhood. Who else was there in that crowd? Yeah, I mean, we won't bamboozle people with the names of many different organisations. it's important to recognise that the 1916 Rising was planned in secret, ultimately by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, often referred to as the Brotherhood, which actually dated from the late 1850s in the aftermath of the famine. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were secret, oathbound members of an organisation, a clandestine organisation that was dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland through violence. And again, the members of the IRB also infiltrate other organisations, including the Irish volunteers. So they are operating on that level. There is also a smaller Irish Citizens Army, which arises as a result of labour unrest in Ireland in 1913. There was a great famous lockout of employees in Dublin, about 20,000 employees in Dublin, 1913.

That citizen army was there to represent the interest of workers. And of course, most famously associated with James Connolly, who becomes an iconic figure in in Irish labour history. And you also had Come on a Man. And Come on a Man was the female auxiliary of the Irish volunteers. And I emphasise auxiliary because they did not have equal status with the Irish volunteers. So it's a variety of these different groups who assemble at the beginning of the Easter Rising. And what sort of people are they, Dermot? Are they poets and intellectuals and urban middle class, or are they the urban poor? They're a mixture. No, I mean, most of them are not poor. There were certainly those who represented the labour interest.

There are those who are intellectuals. Patrick Pierce, of course, who becomes the commander-in-chief of the Republican forces. The president of this nascent Irish Republic is famously a schoolmaster. He's a poet. He's a cultural figure. They're not household names, and we need to remember that. The 1916 writing makes them household names. Pierce was well-known within educational and cultural circles.

He had been increasingly radicalized by the war. He gives a cracker of his speech, doesn't he, doesn't he? the grave side speech. The first of August. And he says, the seeds sewn by the young men of 65 and 67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. The British think they have pacified Ireland.

But he tells them that the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left Arfenae dead. And while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland will never be at peace. Now, what was interesting about that speech is very carefully choreographed, and there was also a great mobilisation of volunteers in uniform. They were paying homage to,

one of the Fenian dead, the Fenian being another description of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the 19th century when they came to prominence. And Tom Clark, who was also involved in organizing the Rising, he was a veteran Fenian. He was guiding Patrick Pierce in the preparation of that speech, and he said to him, make it hot as hell. So there's a very careful choreography around this. This is an advantage to try and show the strength and determination of the volunteers, but also invoke the legacy and the lesson of the Fenians. And that's why we get this emphasis in 1916 on the dead generations as well as the living. So Pierce is very much imbued with that sense of a historic as well as a contemporary purpose.

So you have these firebrands who are making it hot as hell. And people do obey the call from all walks of life, as you said. Now, interestingly, you know, you'd think they'd try and besiege Dublin Castle or somewhere like that. Which is, you know, the headquarters of British rule in Ireland, but they don't. They go to the Jacob's Biscuit Factory, the home of Jacob's Cream Crackers. It's not the obvious place to it. No, the magazine fort, a military fort in Phoenix Park, St. Stephen's Green, and the General Post Office, which is the central, the beating hub of this rebellion. Now, first of all, let's go straight to the General Post Office, because that will become the iconic battle of all.

We should say maybe, Anita, before we go dive in, that this is Easter Monday. It's a holiday. Many army officers are off enjoying the Ferry House races. And so they've got a sort of empty Dublin in which they can do all this. Yeah. And I mean, the original plan was to mobilize on Sunday, but because of the confusion, they postponed it until Monday. Monday, the post office, the general post office was open on the Monday. It was a working day for the post office.

Some of those who turned up to buy stamps were in for a very rude awakening. But it's interesting what you refer to there, Nita, in relation to the strategy about seizing certain prominent city center buildings. You would have assumed that they would have gone to Dublin Castle as the historic center or British rule in Ireland. But the idea was that they would seize prominent city center buildings and then buildings on the outskirts of the city to try and cover the approach to the city. Now, it's not a particularly sophisticated military strategy, is it? The idea is that they will dig themselves in and wait to see what the response will be. But this also, I suppose, illuminates another very interesting strand, which is the degree to which it was consciously staged as a drama. There were those Irish who at this time were fighting inconsiderable numbers in the British Army.

They were being lost in the industrial scale of slaughter during the First World War. But what happens in Dublin in particular in 1960, there's a relatively small group who are staging this drama by seizing these buildings. It's a show of defiance, of course. it's also an invitation for Britain to respond. But what they can do during that initial period of confusion is communicate their message. One of the reasons why they take over the GPO, it's the centre of communications, obviously, the head of the post office. Of course, like in a revolution more recently seizing the telegraph office would be the equivalent. Yeah, and I mean, it's Sackville Street.

You know, it's the main thoroughfare of Dublin City. Patrick Pierce cuts a somewhat strange figure outside the GPO in real. the proclamation of the Irish Republic, which of course ultimately becomes an iconic Irish political document. Can I read it? So for people who don't know it, I mean, it is a stirring piece of work. 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. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights, equal opportunities to all its citizens and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation. and all its past, cherishing all the children of the nation equally. I mean, it's stirring stuff. Now, remember what cherishing all the children of the nation equally means,

because it's the most quoted phrase in the 1916 proclamation. It's not about children or infants, as we understand in the modern era. All the children of the nation, unionists and nationalists. And he goes on to say that, you know, we will be oblivious to the differences that have been fostered by an alien government, you know, that ultimately we will resolve our own differences. Well, unionists certainly weren't oblivious. to those differences, but it also begins in the name of God. There's an intense religiosity

to many of that generation in relation to how they frame their particular mission. But the promises of equality and of equal suffrage between men and women, they are very advanced, they're very progressive. There are about 200 women who were involved in the 1916 rising. Many of them were emboldened by this promise of equality. And the proclamation was a mixture of the words of Patrick Pierce and James Connolly. You can see the different influences. Controversially, you also, of course, and it is a piece of war propaganda, let's be honest about that as well, you also controversially have the invoking of our gallant allies in Europe. And that is a reference to Germany, of course. So there's also a reference to the exiled children, you know, Ireland's exiled children.

You can see how the different layers of the Irish experience, the historical experience are being woven into that. And in many respects, it's timeless. You know, we do need to put it in the context of 1916, but subsequent generations have also made what they want to make or what they wanted to make of the words of the 1960 proclamation to kind of latch it on to many future causes. Dermott, now in the GPO, there is a young man aged 26 from Cork, very handsome young man who will be a major figure in the next three episodes. Tell us about Michael Collins. Michael Collins was not well known at this point in 2016. He's in a very junior position as

Ada Comp to Joseph Plunkett who ultimately becomes one of the executed 1916 leaders. Michael Collins's experience in 1916 is vital, it's formative. It also convinces him that the military strategy of 1916 cannot be the military strategy of the future

when it comes to the Republican movement. You do not dig yourself in and wait to be attacked. You adopt a complete different approach. So the lessons of 1916 from Michael Collins are very important. It's also significant, I suppose, that he is junior enough or not well known enough not to be one of the high profile victims. Well, very famously, I mean, in the film, very famously, you know, the film Michael Collins, of the same name, starring Liam Newsom, he's there. But, you know, you've got the British walking down the line saying pick out the leaders and they pick out the man next to Michael

Collins, but not Michael Collins, because he's a nobody. I mean, he's a tall and statuesque young fella, one of many who is fighting on this day. That's one of the interesting things about 1916, about those who survive it. I mean, obviously, the rebels hold out for nearly a week. And you can see that there's a lot of resentment initially in Dublin and elsewhere towards what they have done, because this causes a huge surprise and huge disturbances. 40 children are killed during the 1916 rising, about 500 people overall. And of course, as always is the case, the majority of them are civilians.

because the GPO is cheeked by gel with some of the most densely populated parts of the city and these are poor people and of course ultimately Patrick Pierce is appalled he says by the civilian shootings that he has witnessed and it persuades him ultimately to surrender and of course there are a number of British Crown forces who were killed as well about 130 of them

and about 80 of the rebels but over 250 civilians and 40 under 18 So that's the kind of body count. It's not a high body count in relation to the scale of what was going on in Europe at that time. But again, because of the compact nature of the city and the surprise it caused and the embarrassment that it caused to the British authorities, it makes an impact well beyond its numbers. So, I mean, Michael Collins is not pulled out of the line, the big fella, as he's known. The long fella is somewhere else entirely. Amon de Valera is at Boland's Mill.

And he is actually a commander. and by rights, when that too is put down at Boland's mill. Let's talk a little bit about Amin de Valera, a bit about his background, and why this American link will ultimately be his salvation after the Easter rising. Well, you see, Amy Devalera was born in New York, and he was somebody who ultimately is returned to Ireland at a very early age to live with his grandparents in Limerick, because his mother felt that was the best option for him.

His dad is Spanish? His father's Spanish. That's, you know, the Devalera name, of course, does not suggest a dyed in the wool, Irish man. Some of his enemies were later to use that as a slur against him. You know, the Spanish onion and the Irish stew was a famous insult hurled at Aymand de Valera. But, you know, he did grow up in Limerick and his schools there. I mean, Amin de Valera was an eminently respectable Matt's professor and teacher.

Quite an austere and pious figure. He was. I mean, those who knew him well would argue that, you know, there was a humorous side to devil error and a softer side to devil era that wasn't necessarily seen. But he met his wife, Chenade when he was studying Irish. She was his Irish teacher. So he's very much imbued with that sense of the Gaelic League mission to spread Irish language. He's committed to education. But of course, he becomes involved in the Irish volunteers. He attended the inaugural meeting. And he's galvanized by that sense of purpose and possibility and the wearing of uniform. And we should remember how important that was. that sense of belonging to a collective and having a purpose. But he had serious crimes about membership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. De Valera was conservative. He did not believe the oathbound secret societies were appropriate when it came to the promotion of that particular cause. But he recognized, too, of course, that he had to sideline his conscience to a degree if he was to assume a prominent role in 1916.

But we should emphasize Anita, it's not so much. his American citizenship as the fact that he is not considered a ringleader. And those who were in charge of identifying the ringleaders and ultimately were involved in the court marshals, they did not recognize Amid de Valera as one of the ringleaders. And the chronology of executions is important here because the executions occur between the third and the 12th of May. And there's a building up of expectation. Rumors are swirling around Dublin. One contemporary observer described it as like watching blood seeping from behind a closed door.

An opinion is beginning to change. It perhaps would have been wiser at Britain to have executed the leaders at the same time very quickly in the immediate aftermath, but that's not what they did. But Devalera ultimately is identified by the authorities as one

who is not regarded as a principal actor. He's also not particularly well known to the other sort of Dublin-based revolutionaries, is he? He's an outsider at this point. This is it. I mean, obviously, what makes Devalera famous is his status in the aftermath of 1916 as the sole surviving commandant of the 1916 rising by 1917. So he does

have a certain rank, obviously, within the Irish volunteers, but that did not mean by any means that he was nationally a well-known figure. And John Maxwell is sent over from Britain as a military governor to suppress the rising. And he writes letters to his wife. And one of the interesting observations he makes is that ever since the British government turned a blind eye to the business in Ulster. They've had nothing but trouble in Ireland. And it was interesting that he was being a bit more nuanced. He was tracing the problems back to the arming of the Ulster volunteers that we mentioned earlier on in 1913. So he was trying to see a wider picture there. But what he was suggesting in the aftermath of the 1960 and rising was that obviously it's our duty to suppress this strain of rebellion.

But there are bigger questions there about whether the British authorities have had their pulse on Irish affairs. Dimmett, one other figure we must talk about before we deal with the aftermath of all this is the Countess, Constance Markovic. She's a very colourful character. Can I do a wee quote from Yates, who was completely obsessed with her and her sister? It's a poem called Two Eva Gawbooth and Con Markowitz. And it starts off referring to their home in Lissadale, the light of evening Lissadale,

two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle. So, you know, these are two sort of women who are brought up in. a rarefied environment, but Con Markowitz is an absolute firecracker of a revolutionary. And again, I mentioned earlier on those whose background would suggest little sympathy with the cause of the Irish Republic finding themselves with the zeal of the convert. And Markievich, of course, was one of them. She was actually presented to Queen Victoria, you know, given her aristocratic background, and you mentioned the estate there in Lissidel. And she begins to move in artistic circles. She's a painter. She wants to go to art school. She eventually persuades her parents of that

she meets, of course, this Polish count who has links and land in Ukraine, actually, and she becomes Constance Markievich. But she also immerses herself in many of those circles that we mentioned. She becomes involved in an organisation that is the youth wing of the Irish Republican movement. She's also, of course, identifying with the cause of labour. And ultimately, in 1916, she is with the Irish Citizen Army. She's second in command at Stevens Green. There's conflicting testimony about whether she shot a policeman at the outset of the 1916 rising on the balance of probability she probably did and seemed to be particularly animated by it. But she was also as a woman not going to be executed after 1916. She was second in command

under Michael Malin at Stevens Green. And Markievich has this remarkable sense of purpose when it comes to the cause. She is hugely proud of the idea of bearing arms and of being in uniform. And when you look at her correspondence, you can see the extent to which it is imbued with excitement. You know, she regards these events as thrilling in so many respects.

And, you know, that's what guides or that sense of purpose and excitement. But also, I suppose, that ultimately, she's the ultimate rebel, because she really is dancing on the grave of the tradition she has been brought up in. There's two wonderful quotes by her when she's talking to her friends in the run-up to the rising.

One is she tells them if you could shoot straight with an air gun, you can do the same with a rifle. And then a bit of advice to her fellow Easter risers, she says to the women, dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver. And of course, she goes on to become the first woman elected to the House of Commons. and she becomes a Sinn Féin Minister. And she died prematurely. Markievich was also a chain smoker. She didn't look after herself.

Her health completely broke down and she was dead by 1927. But she did enough in that 10 or 12-year period to ensure her place in the history books in a very prominent place. Well, look, I mean, first of all, I've been pronouncing her name because I read the poetry as Markovic.

I've learned a thing today. Thank you, Dermud. Anita, I can't let this episode end without bringing in a relation. I know it always thrills me when my relations turn up in. Okay, good. So, Dammit, he does this all the time. He's related. He's like the where's wallie of history. Basically, there's one of them in every chapter. Yeah, go on. But my grandfather's younger brother was in the Scots Borders. And we are a Catholic family. And he was a very pious young man who was considering going to the priesthood. And we've got all his letters at home from Dublin,

in 2016, and he is absolutely torn apart because as a good Catholic, he thinks he shouldn't be shooting and fighting his fellow Catholics. And these heartbroken letters is he's on the barricades shooting into the GPO. And likewise, there were Irish men in the British Army who found themselves charged with the task of suppressing and shooting on the rebels in 1916. And it's a reminder of the sheer complexity of Irish loyalties and of Irish alliances and allegiances during that period. It's so fluid. And this man is posted straight from here to Ipe and he gets caught on the wire and is gassed a month later. Out of the Irish frying pan into the horrors of that fire. Yeah. God, and again, sort of the Indian experience as well, you know, those who are sort of starting to ask for home rule

themselves in India who then get shipped off to fight in lands that they've never been to, maybe never out of their own home villages before, dumped on sort of the Western front, freezing and clothes that aren't warm enough to keep them. And then they go back and nobody thanks them the way they think they should be thanked. Well, Tom Kettle, and I'll just finally mention this, Tom Kettle was a well-known Irish academic and nationalist who was appalled by 1916 because he had joined the British Army. He believed in the righteousness of the cause of the war. and what he said about 1916, and he was ultimately to die in the Battle of the Psalm, what he said about the 1916 rising is that I will go down if I go down at all as a bloody British soldier,

while the 1916 rebels will be remembered as heroes and martyrs, which brings us back to this idea of the stage, the rising staged as a drama in 1916, and what it did to the reputations of those who, fought it and who died in it in contrast to the anonymity of the slaughter on the Western Front. Well, look, our next episode is going to deal with what happened to the rebels now that they have been forced to surrender to the British. Will anyone be shown mercy? If you want to hear that right now, what you do is sign up to our Empire Club. And the way to do that is EmpirePod UK.com.

Empirepoduk.com. You get early access. You get bonus episodes. You get a weekly newsletter. But for those of you on our usual slipstream till the next. Next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnhon. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.