1916 (63 page)

The memorandum also stated that leaders of the movement had been attending ‘education’ classes conducted by persons listed by the police as members of communist organisations. The expansion of the IRA’s role was also emphasised:

Since its inception, the Political Education department of IRA headquarters has spearheaded the organisation’s agitational, economic, social and political policy through the following groups: the Wolfe Tone Society, Cómhar Linn, Dublin Housing Action Group, the Economic Independence Committee, Civil Liberties League, Republican Clubs.
⁵⁴

The republican movement undoubtedly took a very serious interest in the golden jubilee. The Wolfe Tone Society branches in Dublin, Belfast and Cork organised a number of lectures on the rebellion. Amongst the lecturers provided by the society in Dublin were George Gilmore on ‘Labour and 1916’, Jack Bennett on ‘Connolly and Ulster’ and Kader Asmal on
’1916 and twentieth century freedom movements’.
⁵⁵
The republican ‘Golden Jubilee Commemoration Committee’, under the chairmanship of Éamon Mac Thomáis, also organised a series of lectures as well as a very large number of commemoration ceremonies throughout the island. In all cases the commemorations consisted of:

religious services, parades to republican memorials, blowing of the last post and reveille, the laying of wreaths, the reading of the Proclamation and the Easter statement from the Army Council and the delivering of an oration. Invariably the platform party included relatives of men who had given their lives in the struggle for independence as well as veterans of that struggle.
⁵⁶

A parade was organised for Easter Sunday from the Customs House in Dublin to the republican plot in Glasnevin cemetery, via O’Connell Street and the GPO. Compared to the orderly procession of the official parade two hours earlier the republican parade appeared disorganised as it passed the GPO.
⁵⁷
The parade included a number of disparate groups including groups from various ‘Celtic’ separatist groups from Wales, Brittany, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Cornwall.
⁵⁸
A spokesman for
Pleidiol Wyfin Gwlad
,
a Welsh home rule body, stated: ‘We came here to join this parade to show our hatred of England.’
⁵⁹
Approximately 400 people later took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Glasnevin, where the speakers included Joseph Clarke, an eighty five year old veteran of the Rising and a member of the republican Commemoration Committee. Clarke was very frank in his introduction: ‘If the men they killed in ’16 were alive today they’d be up here with us. Our parade is much closer to what they fought for than the one down in O’Connell Street.’
⁶⁰

Although the state parade and the republican parade did not meet on Easter Sunday the danger of a clash would be much more likely to occur on the following Sunday (17 April) when another republican parade and demonstration in O’Connell Street was planned to begin while the state event would still be taking place. The Coiste Cuimhneachán attempted to alleviate the possibility of a clash by dialogue but the republicans were insistent on their original plan.
⁶¹
On the day the state ceremony conveniently ended somewhat earlier than predicted and the republican procession was quietly delayed long enough for any danger of a clash to pass. The republicans were then permitted the use of the podium and sound equipment used in the state display.
⁶²

State compliance and harmony with the republican ceremonies, however, was not widespread. Mac Thomáis’ committee had approached the national transport company, Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ), requesting them to put on a special train to take a party of their members from Dublin to Belfast for 17 April. A further, rather brazen, request was made that the tickets issued for the occasion be overprinted with the slogan ‘Freedom train 1966’. On receipt of this application, the general manager of CIÉ, Frank Lemass (brother of the Taoiseach) forwarded the details to Erskine Childers, Minister for Transport and Power, for government views on the matter. After the contents of this letter were brought to the attention of the Taoiseach, counsel was sought from the Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan. Lenihan recommended that, as this committee was ‘composed of members of the IRA, Sinn Féin and Cumann na mBan’, their request should not be acceded to. As Lenihan’s secretary replied:

In the minister’s view the plans of the IRA/Sinn Féin group to hire a special train to Belfast from Dublin on 17 April in order to have a parade in Belfast and an oration in the cemetery is for IRA organisational purposes. Furthermore the committee’s suggestion to CIÉ that the rail tickets should be overprinted with the slogan ‘Freedom train 1966’ appears to be for the purpose of cocking a snook at the six county authorities and it would probably give rise to feelings of resentment in Belfast.
⁶³

The views of garda authorities were consulted, and the headquarters responded that there would ‘be trouble in Belfast if the train runs; opposition is mounting, even if the travellers do not provoke trouble the opposition will; the train should not be provided if at all possible’.
⁶⁴
The police authorities in Northern Ireland also sent word to Dublin, stating that they had ‘grave apprehension’ as to what the outcome might be if the freedom trains were allowed to travel.
⁶⁵
In response, Seán Lemass instructed Childers to inform CIÉ of these circumstances. The taosieach did not, however, desire that the government’s intervention in the matter would become public knowledge. He instructed Childers to advise CIÉ that if they decided against supplying this train, ‘request them to do so without giving this as a reason, or indicating that they have sought the government’s advice on the matter’.
⁶⁶

As it transpired the potential embarrassment over the issue was alleviated when a decision was taken by Terence O’Neill’s cabinet security committee not to permit any trains to enter Northern Ireland on the main line from Dublin to Belfast from 9.30pm on Saturday 16 April until 7pm
on Sunday 17 April.
⁶⁷
The border was effectively sealed off for the main jubilee parade in Belfast. The mass turnout from the south, if it was ever a realistic possibility, did not materialise. The Dublin brigades of the IRA instead concentrated on their main parade the following week in Dublin.

On Sunday 24 April the IRA held their main parade from St Stephen’s Green to Glasnevin cemetery. The republican movement’s commemoration ceremonies in the south had been poorly attended and although nationalist feeling was undoubtedly high in the country at this time, the IRA failed to capitalise on this popular feeling and there were to be no indications afterwards of an increase in support for the IRA. The movement’s 1916 ceremonies paled in comparison to the highly impressive state ceremonies. This suggests that, far from opening a Pandora’s box, the official ceremonies actually curtailed republican sentiment. The defence forces of the state had been rigidly determined to quell any signs of republicans fomenting trouble.

L
ITERATURE AND POPULAR REACTION

Although some modern commentators have commented on the one-dimensional nature of 1916 commemoration in 1966, even the most cursory examination of the publications produced for the commemoration demands a different interpretation. The impression that historical understanding in the Republic largely reflected a simplistic monolithic view of Ireland cannot be easily sustained. In fact the golden jubilee year witnessed a raft of new studies on the Rising and related events. What was so striking about this new material was that it was
not
polemical but clearly sparked by a genuine interest in recovering the past. It must be stressed that much of the literature produced at this time remains unsurpassed in historical scholarship on the period. To any student of the 1916 rebellion publications from this time still form the backbone of any research on the Rising.

One of the earliest intentions of the Coiste Cuimhneachán was to produce a work of historical scholarship on the Rising. Kevin Nowlan and nine other highly regarded historians were approached to produce just such a work.
⁶⁸
The contributors were given no thesis to prove and no official line to follow; this was to be no mere eulogy of the rebels.
The making of 1916: studies in the history of the Rising
,
although not actually published until 1969, includes very valuable analysis and criticism of the Rising. The
notion that 1916 could only be treated as a sacrosanct national epic by the establishment (academic, political or otherwise) is simply untrue. A mood of questioning was already becoming apparent even before 1966.

The first real question mark against the ‘accepted’ story about 1916 appeared in March 1961 with the publication in
Irish Historical Studies
of two memoranda by Eoin MacNeill. As the historian F.X. Martin later recorded:

Rarely if ever has the appearance of an historical record received such attention at a popular level. Two of the principal national daily newspapers, the
Irish Press
and the
Irish Independent
,
displayed posters announcing the publications of the documents, and it was included as an item on the 1pm news bulletin from Radio Éireann on the day of publication. The national daily and evening newspapers ran a series of articles analysing and commenting on the memoranda.
⁶⁹

It emerged clearly from the documents that MacNeill had been deceived, in particular by Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh, and that at least Pearse and Plunkett had undeniably lied to him about their intentions. It certainly highlighted that Pearse was no plaster saint, and given the wide public interest the documents attracted, this point must have filtered down to a popular level.

Even Éamon de Valera, to some the father figure of the Irish nation in 1966, was the subject of serious critical evaluation. Max Caulfield’s
The Easter Rebellion
published less than two years before the golden jubilee, raised serious question marks about de Valera’s military leadership during the Rising.
⁷⁰
Caulfield’s account of the Rising has been the most widely read version of the rebellion ever written and has been frequently re-printed. His book was the first on the Rising that included interviews with British officers who were fighting against the rebels. The view of these servants of the British Crown in Ireland was explored in more detail in two highly commended studies which appeared in 1966, Leon Ó Broin’s
Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising
,
and
Intelligence Notes 1913–16
,
edited by Breandán Mac Giolla Choille.
⁷¹

With the release of so much archival material, nearly all of which had been on fifty year hold, it was a very exciting time for all historians with a sincere interest in uncovering something of the reality of 1916. Such historians were not driven by an overly iconoclastic zeal but a sincere interest in trying to discover the complexities of the time. The result was a considerable number of first class critical evaluations of the 1916 rebellion. The suggestion, therefore, that there was a paucity of critical material in 1966 must be seen as a fundamental, but very common, misunderstanding of the jubilee. What was missing in that year, although not entirely absent, was a corrosively cynical form of examination of the Rising.

Roger McHugh’s
Dublin 1916
,
also published in 1966, included a wide range of contemporary accounts of Easter week, an impressive attempt to recapture the moods and opinions of some of those involved in the drama and others who observed the actions with various different opinions, nationalist, unionist and undecided.
⁷²
One of the great values of McHugh’s book is that the reader could peruse and contemplate contrasting and contrary opinions, ‘many of them written either while Dublin was reverberating with the sound of gunfire or while Easter week was still a vivid memory’.
⁷³
Another volume of contrasting opinions about the Rising,
Leaders and men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916
,
although not published until 1967 was the printed record of nineteen essays composed for a radio series in 1966 to commemorate the Easter Rising.
⁷⁴
The series was part of the Thomas Davis lectures broadcast on Radio Éireann and under the editorship of Professor F.X. Martin. The rebellion was examined in a detached spirit and from multifarious angles by the cream of historians of modern Ireland (who were themselves from diverse backgrounds and traditions) including F.S.L. Lyons, T. Desmond Williams, F.X. Martin, A.T.Q. Stewart, Leon Ó Broin, Kevin Nowlan, Terence de Vere White, David Thornley and J.C. Beckett. Donagh MacDonagh, the son of Tomás MacDonagh, contributed a talk on Plunkett, MacDonagh and the poets and writers of the revolution. A young Brian Farrell discussed Countess Markievicz and the women of the revolution.

All of the contributions were intended to be accessible to as wide a listenership as possible and the programmes were a great success. As George Boyce has written, the series:

cast the net widely, drawing in themes and topics hitherto hardly associated with the rising at all. For example, it related the Rising to the Ulster crisis of 1912–14, and to other political developments before 1916. Thus the Ulster Volunteer Force, Sir Edward Carson, Dublin Castle, Lloyd George and Asquith, were all woven into the texture of the Rising, and the historiography of the event moved from the narrow (though of course important) focus on conspiracy and martyrdom to the more general question of the Rising as an episode in the history of all Ireland and indeed of the British Isles.
⁷⁵