Definitely designed to provoke, but elements of truth in it. The main point to appreciate is that like all other history the Post Office issue has been rewritten by the victors, and in this case that's the victors of the Irish internal arguments after independence, to mean what they wanted it to.
I agree that the article is indeed provocative but it debateable as to how much ‘truth’ it contains.
According to the headline, the writer’s claim that the Rising was “Immoral” is a sweeping statement especially in the context of the time. The Easter Rising took place not too long after the first reported use of Phosgene gas by German forces on the Western Front and the BEF was moving into place for the planned Summer offensive. Is the writer claiming that all ‘Risings’ against governments, legitimate or otherwise, “Immoral”?
Secondly, describing the Easter Rising as “Undemocratic” is a tad spurious. Democracy as a concept didn’t exist in the world of 1916, universal suffrage didn’t arrive in Ireland until two years after the Rising. Ironically a significant number of those inside the GPO would probably have been ineligible to vote in the 1918 General Election as only men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30 could vote.
It would be correct though to assume that the majority of the population in Ireland wanted some form of change to the administration of the island of Ireland as the Irish Home Rule Party did return the largest number of MP’s to Westminster. There was also a vocal and well-armed minority who didn’t who were content with the way things were.
Padraig Pearse was a useful asset to the IRB in planning the Rising in that he recognised the symbolic value of Catholic iconography in anti-British propaganda. His graveside oration at the funeral of the old Fenian O’Donovan Rossa has been credited as the ‘first shot’ of the 1916 Rising. The choice of Easter was deliberate at it chimed with the concept of death and resurrection, familiar to a largely Catholic population. However it wasn’t simply a matter of religious identity, the population on the island of Ireland was already very politicised following the Land War that lasted from 1870 to 1903 and the recent Pro/Anti Home Rule campaigns, there was a receptive audience that could be swayed to the new idea of a Republic.
Pearse’s personal interest in the concept of ‘blood sacrifice’ is well known and written about. His father was from Birmingham and his claim to an Irish identity has something of a desperation about it. However his notion of ‘Irish identity’ was an elitist, idealised and exclusive as he regarded most ordinary Irish people with contempt, something he shared with another well-known ‘Irish’ writer of the day W.B. Yeats.
I disagree that the history following the melee around the GPO was written by the victors simply because it is difficult to identify any victors from the event. Instead I would say that it was written by the propagandists, each with their own end in mind.
It started the moment the smell of the cordite began to fade when the British press labelled it the “Sinn Fein Rising” probably as a consequence of having to call it something. The Easter Rising did catch the British Administration by surprise and it was a significant failure in Intelligence on their part and I think the British Government was quite content to let the press lead the way rather than step in and correct any factual inaccuracies. If they did move to correct the press, then this would have led to the inevitable questions of “Who did organise it?”; “Did the Intelligence services know anything about it?”; “Why didn’t they prevent it from happening?”.
One of the most active propagandists after the Rising was Padraig Pearse’s mother, Margaret. She lost two sons following the Rising, both Padraig and William were executed by firing squad. Her vigils outside Kilmainham Jail, swathed in black handing out pictures of her sons began to sway public opinion very quickly against the British authorities but not necessarily in favour of the actions of the rebels. She joined the rebranded Sinn Féin led by de Valera for the 1918 General Election and won a seat in Dublin for the party. It is probably due to her single-minded efforts that Padraig Pearse was elevated to iconic status in the years subsequent to the Rising, but isn’t that typical of all Irish mammies!!?
The article also claims:
"It should have come as no surprise then that the outcome of such ill-thought-out unilateral violence was two sectarian states on this island, a Protestant state for a Protestant people and a Catholic state for a Catholic people."
Again I think this is deliberately provocative and wholly inaccurate. The Government of Ireland Act, granting Home Rule to Ireland, was passed with Royal assent in September 1914 but with a provision for the possible exclusion for some counties in Ulster. The partition of Ireland was already an accepted concept by the end of 1914, the only issues that remained to be clarified if and when Home Rule was enforced was whether that partition would be temporary or not and which counties would be included/excluded.
Your comment relating to the victors of
“
the Irish internal arguments after independence”
is simplistic as the “
internal arguments” south of the border are very distinct from those north of the border and should not be regarded as identical.
In the ROI as it exists today most “
internal arguments” stemmed from positions regarding the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. This led to the bitter and destructive Irish Civil War won by the Pro-Treaty side. The victors in this case were the middle ground dominated by the pragmatic Middle Classes far removed from the motley collection of idealistic Nationalists, Social Revolutionaries, Radical Feminists, Leftist Anarchists and so on that packed the inside of the GPO six years earlier.
North of the border “
internal arguments” arose from the toxic mix of a restricted voting franchise; economic deprivation and poverty; gerrymandering; religious affiliation and identity; perceived advantages and disadvantages of the ‘other’; overt and covert discrimination presided over by a privileged and fossilised oligarchy, permitted by an indifferent Westminster government.
