The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (28 page)

Source: Irish Independent
, 21 September 1914.

Document 4 FIANNA ÉIREANN AND THE RISING

Gary Holohan describes the attack on the Magazine Fort at the Phoenix Park by members of the Volunteers and Fianna Éireann disguised as footballers.

After a few minutes chat together, as if we were a football team with followers, we moved around the front of the [Magazine] Fort in a casual way, some of the lads kicking a ball from one to the other. When we got near the gate we rushed the sentry who was standing outside, and then another party rushed in and took the guard room completely by surprise. I was detailed off with Barney Mellows to take the sentry on the parapet. I rushed straight through the fort, which is a rather large place, and I had some difficulty in locating him. I eventually saw him looking at me over the roof. He came towards me with his bayonet pointed towards me. I fired a shot and he fell … W e took the guard's rifles and went to the waiting hackney car … I followed behind the car on my bicycle. As the car turned towards the gate leading to the Chapelizod Road we noticed a youth of about 17 [
sic
] years of
age running towards the gate.theory.
^*
He stopped and spoke to the policeman who was in the middle of the road directing traffic, and then ran away in the middle of the road toward Islandbridge. I left the hack and followed him, and when he got to the corner of Islandbridge Road he ran towards one of the big houses, evidently with the intention of giving the alarm. I jumped off my bicycle, and just as the door opened I shot him from the gate …

*
This individual was erroneously identified as Gerald Playfair (14), son of the magazine fort's commandant. New research has shown that he was an elder brother, George Playfair (23) (Duffy, 2013: 35)

Source
: Fearghal McGarry,
Rebels: Voices from the Easter Rising
, London: Penguin, 2011, p. 162.

Document 5 THE 1916 PROCLAMATION

The Proclamation of the Irish Republic, read by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office on Easter Monday, 1916.

POBLACHT NA H EIREANN

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

of the

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN. In the name of God and the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

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 long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty, six times in the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental
right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and herby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called

Signed on Behalf of the Provisional Government

THOMAS J. CLARKE, SEAN MacDIARMADA, THOMAS MacDONAGH, P. H. PEARSE, EAMONN CEANNT, JAMES CONNOLLY, JOSEPH PLUNKETT

Source
: Liam de Paor,
On the Easter Proclamation and Other Declarations
, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997.

Document 6 THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME

Document adopted by the First Dáil on 21 January 1919, setting out the Dáil's social policy.

We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais [Patrick Pearse], we declare that the nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we
reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.

We declare that we desire our country to be ruled in accordance with the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all, which alone can secure permanence of Government in the willing adhesion of the people.

We affirm the duty of every man and woman to give allegiance and service to the Commonwealth, and declare it is the duty of the Nation to assure that every citizen shall have opportunity to spend his or her strength and faculties in the service of the people. In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the Nation's labour.

It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free and Gaelic Ireland.

The Irish Republic fully realises the necessity of abolishing the present odious, degrading and foreign Poor Law System, substituting therefore a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation's aged and infirm, who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation's gratitude and consideration. Likewise it shall be the duty of the Republic to take such measures as will safeguard the health of the people and ensure the physical as well as the moral well-being of the Nation.

It shall be our duty to promote the development of the Nation's resources, to increase the productivity of its soil, to exploit its mineral deposits, peat bogs, and fisheries, its waterways and harbours, in the interests and for the benefit of the Irish people.

It shall be the duty of the Republic to adopt all measures necessary for the recreation and invigoration of our Industries, and to ensure their being developed on the most beneficial and progressive co-operative and industrial lines. With the adoption of an extensive Irish Consular Service, trade with foreign Nations shall be revived on terms of mutual advantage and goodwill, and while undertaking the organisation of the Nation's trade, import and export, it shall be the duty of the Republic to prevent the shipment from Ireland of food and other necessaries until the wants of the Irish people are fully satisfied and the future provided for.

It shall also devolve upon the National Government to seek co-operation of the Governments of other countries in determining a standard of Social and Industrial Legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour.

Source
:
Dáil Debates
, vol. F (21 January 1919), cols 22–3 historical-debates.oireachtas.ie.

Document 7 JOHN DILLON CRITICISES THE BRITISH RESPONSE TO THE RISING

On 11 May, the day before the last executions, John Dillon, the most senior figure in the IPP after Redmond, delivered a speech that highlighted how the executions and the killing of Francis Sheehy Skeffington were turning Irish public opinion against the government.

I asked the Prime Minister, first of all, whether he would give a pledge that the executions should stop. That he declined to give. Secondly, I asked him whether he could tell whether any executions had taken place in Ireland since Monday morning; the last we had official notification of before I left there. The reply of the Prime Minister was: ‘No, Sir, so far as I know, not.’ On Monday twelve executions had been made public. Since then, in spite of the statement of the Prime Minister, I have received word that a man named Kent had been executed in Fermoy, which is the first execution that has taken place outside Dublin. The fact is one which will create a very grave shock in Ireland, because it looks like a roving commission to carry these horrible executions all over the country.

… [on the killing of Francis Sheehy Skeffington] All Dublin was ringing with this affair for days. It came to our knowledge within two or three days after the shooting. And are we to be told that this is the excuse for what has occurred? A more lurid light on military law in Ireland could not possibly be imagined than that a man is to be shot in Portobello Barracks – it must have been known to at least 300 or 400 military men, the whole city of Dublin knew it, his poor wife was denied all knowledge of it until her husband was lying buried in the barrack yard for three or four days – and the military authorities in Dublin turn round and say they knew nothing whatever about it until the 6th of May.

… the horrible rumours which are current in Dublin, and which are doing untold and indescribable mischief, maddening the population of Dublin, who were your friends and loyal allies against this insurrection last week and who are rapidly becoming embittered by the stories afloat and these executions – I say the facts of this case [Sheehy Skeffington] disclose a most serious state of things.

… Yesterday a son of my own, a boy of seventeen and a half years of age, went to the military officer in Dublin to get a pass to enable him to go to Kingstown. He happens to be a lad who asked my own permission to allow him to join the British Army on his seventeenth birthday, and I gave him permission to join when he was eighteen. He will never join it now, and there are tens of thousands like him in Ireland.

… If you had passed a Military Service Bill for Ireland, it would have taken 150,000 men and three months’ hard fighting to have dealt with it. It is not a Military Service Bill that you want in Ireland; it is to find a way to
the hearts of the Irish people, and when you do that you will find that you have got a supply of the best troops in the whole world. How can we, in the face of these facts, accept the statement of the Prime Minister, that according to the best of his knowledge no men are being secretly shot in Ireland? The fact of the matter is that what is poisoning the mind of Ireland, and rapidly poisoning it, is the secrecy of these trials and the continuance of these executions.

… As I say, there were some very bad actions, but as regards the main body of the insurgents, their conduct was beyond reproach as fighting men. I admit they were wrong; I know they were wrong; but they fought a clean fight, and they fought with superb bravery and skill, and no act of savagery or act against the usual customs of war that I know of has been brought home to any leader or any organised body of insurgents. I have not heard of a single act. I may be wrong, but that is my impression.

… I do not come here to raise one word in defence of murder. If there be a case of cold-blooded murder, by all means try the man openly, before a court-martial if you like, but let the public know what the evidence is and prove that he is a murderer, and then do what you like with him. But it is not murderers who are being executed; it is insurgents who have fought a clean fight, a brave fight, however misguided, and it would be a damned good thing for you if your soldiers were able to put up as good a fight as did these men in Dublin – three thousand men against twenty thousand with machine-guns and artillery.

Source: Hansard Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons
, 11 May 1916.

Document 8 THE EXTENSION OF CONSCRIPTION TO IRELAND

This Act made provision for the extension of conscription, introduced to Britain in 1916, to Ireland and raised the maximum age from 41 to 51. John Dillon led the IPP out of Parliament in protest at its enactment.

Military Service (No. 2) Act, 1918, 8 Geo. V, Ch. 5: An Act to make further provision with respect to Military Service during the present war.

Section 1. Every male British subject who has, at any time since the fourteenth day of August nineteen hundred and fifteen, been, or who for the time being is, in Great Britain, and who at the date of the passing of this Act has attained the age of eighteen years and has not attained the age of fifty-one years, or who at any subsequent date attains the age of eighteen years, shall, unless he is for the time being within the exceptions set out in
the First Schedule to this Acttheory.
^*
, be deemed … to have been duly enlisted in His Majesty's regular forces for general service …