1916: Ireland’s Revolutionary Tradition

Who fears to speak of the 1916 Easter Rising? A year before the hundredth anniversary of the Rising, the Irish government issued a video,Ireland Inspires 2016. It did not mention the executions of the signatories of Ireland’s proclamation and instead the camera focused on such luminaries as Ian Paisley, Queen Elizabeth and Bob Geldof. The appearance of Elizabeth Windsor rather than, say, Patrick Pearse or James Connolly was highly unusual. 1916, the video proclaimed, was ‘where we came from’ but Reconciliation was ‘where we are now’. Somebody, somewhere, it appeared was worried about the commemoration and they covered their...

On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the Irish television network, RTE, showed an eight-part series calledInsurrection, which used Irish troops and a host of actors to re-enact the story of the week-long rebellion. Its purpose, according to the RTE Controller of Programmes Roibéárd Ó Faracháin, was to pay homage to ‘the high emotion and daring of that week, which not only aroused the moribund mind of Ireland, but afterwards fired that considerable part of the world which until then was sunk in Colonialism’.¹ For many it was the highlight of the Golden Jubilee but the spirit that...

From 1918 to 1923, Ireland was in the throes of revolution and the British Empire, which had ruled over much of the world’s population, was shaken. It had tried to crush a mass uprising by brutal measures – including assassination and burnings of towns – but its troops were forced to leave Ireland. Revolutionary politics, which were once deemed to be marginal and extreme, won the allegiance of many people. Yet, strangely, the full scale of this revolution is played down in official histories.

The period is normally known as the ‘War of Independence’ or the ‘Anglo-Irish War’. As the...

In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, British propaganda targeted the so-called ‘Sinn Féin’ rebels as the insurgents. This was the name of the party founded by Arthur Griffith to promote the idea of a dual monarchy. He believed that an independent Ireland should share a monarchy with Britain rather than abolishing it. The ‘Sinn Féin’ label stuck because there was no other open political organisation to which responsibility for the rebellion could be attributed. James Connolly had not built a substantial socialist party and Patrick Pearse believed in the primacy of the gun rather than political organisation.

Ironically, Arthur...

Just off the Dublin Road coming out of Tuam, if you turn into a small working-class estate, you will come across a monument set in a peaceful collection of houses. It commemorates six republicans – Seamus O’Maille, Martin Moylan, Francis Cunnane, Michael Monaghan, Sean Newell and Sean Maguire – who were executed at a military barracks in the old workhouse in the town. They had been captured by Free State soldiers during the final month of the Civil War and shot dead in cold blood.

If you look behind the monument, you will see a gate with a white cross...

In January 1960, after the abject failure of the IRA’s border campaign, republican internees were released from prison but there were few people to welcome them at the gates. Jimmy Drumm felt himself to be part of ‘a forgotten race of people’ and noted that ‘some of the people in the street [where] we lived didn’t even know we were in prison.’¹ Republicanism had reached its lowest point since the pre-1916 period. Throughout much of the decade, the IRA remained a virtually defunct organisation. On the fiftieth-anniversary commemoration for the 1916 rising, a large crowd marched to Casement Park in...

‘The date of Tuesday, September 30, 2008 will go down in history as the blackest day in Ireland since the Civil War broke out’, declared the Fine Gael politician Michael Noonan.¹ It was the date the Southern state was exposed as a servant of big corporations.

At about 1.40 a.m. on 30 September 2008, the Irish government decided to issue a blanket guarantee for the €440 billion worth of debt of Irish banks. The drama had all the appearance of a high farce. The idea of a bank guarantee had originally come from David McWilliams, a popular newspaper columnist, who...

Irish society is shifting to the left. The anti-water charges movement created an explosion of class awareness, because many saw how the political elite answer only to the wealthy. After the demise of the Celtic Tiger, this elite protected privilege while imposing financial burdens on middle- and low-income Ireland. New confrontations on class issues are, therefore, inevitable. When they occur, a layer of activists will search for a language to articulate their grievances and hopes. They may reconnect with a subterranean revolutionary tradition that stretches back to the 1916 Rising.

That insurrection was a blow against empire and an assertion...