Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
As the century turned, Ireland prepared for the inevitable showdown with Britain.
The
Sinn Fein
party (meaning “Ourselves”) lobbied politically for independence. The
Irish Volunteers
were more Catholic and more militant. Also on the scene was the
Irish
Citizens Army,
with a socialist agenda to protect labor unions and clean up Dublin's
hideous tenements, where 15 percent of children died before the age of one.
Of course, many Irish were Protestant and pro-British. The
Ulster Volunteers
(Union-
ists, and mostly Orangemen) feared that Home Rule would result in a Catholic-dominated
state that would oppress the Protestant minority.
Meanwhile, Britain was preoccupied with World War I, where it was “fighting to pro-
tect the rights of small nations” (except Ireland's), and so it delayed granting Irish inde-
pendence. The increasingly militant Irish rebels, believing that England's misfortune was
Ireland's opportunity, decided to rise up and take independence while the time was ripe.
On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, 1,500 Irish Volunteers, united with members of the
Irish Citizens Army, marched on Dublin, occupied the General Post Office (and six other
key buildings across town), and raised a green, white, and orange flag. The teacher and
poet
Patrick Pearse
stood in front of the post office and proclaimed Ireland an independ-
ent republic.
British troops struck back—in a week of street fighting and intense shelling, some 300
died. By Saturday, the greatly outnumbered rebels had been killed or arrested. The small-
scale uprising—which failed to go national and was never popular even in Dublin—was
apparently over.
However, the British government overreacted by swiftly executing the 16 ringleaders,
including Pearse. Ireland was outraged, no longer seeing the rebels as troublemakers but
as martyrs. From this point on, Ireland was resolved to win its independence at all costs. A
poem by W. B. Yeats, “Easter, 1916,” captured the struggle with his words: “All changed,
changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”
