1916
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The range of activities undertaken by local authorities to mark the Rising was, if anything, even more impressive than those organised by the state, when one bears in mind the more limited resources available to them – albeit, inevitably, the response was by no means evenly spread across the country. The local commemorations also tended to be characterised by less manifest party-political differences than their national equivalents. Dublin City Council was, naturally, one of the more active centres. It organised a series of lunchtime lectures by several experts on such topics as the Irish Citizen Army, the role of Éamonn Ceannt, and the contributions of two female participants, Dr Kathleen Lynn and Helena Molony; produced a directory of locations in the city associated with the Rising and contemporaneous events; erected a commemorative plaque to Ceannt on his work-place at municipal buildings in Castle Street; made available through its website a previously unpublished eye-witness account of Easter Week; and held a minute’s silence in commemoration of the Citizen Army garrison in City Hall at noon on Monday 24 April (the precise anniversary of the start of the Rising).79
Most county councils also responded in some manner. Cork County Council, for example, arranged for a formal reading of the Proclamation at its meeting on 27 March, and for a letter to be sent to the Department of Education and Science calling on it to distribute copies of both the Proclamation and the national flag to all national schools in the state. Many such authorities – Donegal, Kerry, Westmeath, and Clare, for example – arranged exhibitions of material relating to the Rising and the independence struggle in county libraries and museums, with a pronounced emphasis upon the involvement of locals in the events. Waterford County Council, amongst others, increased the provision of literature on the Rising for adults and children through its library service.
Many other local authority bodies were also involved, with noteworthy events organised by Ennis, Athy and Carlow Town Councils, and the Co. Kilkenny Vocational Education Committee, amongst many, many others.80
ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
One of the lasting achievements of the ninetieth anniversary commemorations of the Easter Rising will surely be its historiographical legacy. Both in the build up to 2006, and during the year itself, a plethora of titles – some of lasting value, others of more dubious merit – appeared in bookshops and, by degrees, worked their way into the thinking of the book-buying and reading public. It is no exaggeration to say that in this respect 2006 is second only to 1966 in terms of the quality of the academic studies produced; and by the time the publishing cycle has fully turned, it may be that the year will prove as significant in its impact upon scholarship on the Rising as it has undoubtedly been in terms of public opinion regarding it.81
Two full-length academic monographs about the Rising appeared during the period in question. The first, Michael Foy and Brian Barton’s, The Easter Rising, is an updated version of a text that originally appeared in 1999 and, as such, inevitably does not incorporate the new source material that has come on stream in recent years.82 The second, Charles Townshend’s magisterial Easter 1916: the Irish rebellion, made its appearance in 2005, and suffers from no such handicap.83
At a more popular level Tim Pat Coogan’s illustrated account of the Rising, originally published in 2001, was re-issued in paperback form and sold well,84 as did the similarly well-illustrated Irish Times book of the 1916 Rising, which was an expanded version of the special supplement produced by the paper mentioned above.85
The title of Jonathan Githens-Mazer’s Myths and memories of the Easter Rising was slightly misleading, in that its focus was as much on the First World War as the Rising, although it did have a useful chapter on the concept of the Rising as a ‘cultural trigger point’.86 James Moran’s Staging the Easter Rising took a rather different slant on the events in Dublin in 1916, by examining the evolution of its theatrical and other representations in the decades following independence.87
Rather more grounded in archival material was Annie Ryan’s, Witness: inside the Easter Rising, which utilised excerpts from a large number of Witness Statements from the Bureau of Military History to provide a detailed chronological narrative of the events of the Rising, with a welcome emphasis on the role of female participants.88 Owen McGee’s The IRB: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Féin likewise made extensive use of original source material.89
A limited number of older titles were reprinted during the year. Garret FitzGerald’s edition of his father’s memoirs, Desmond’s Rising: memoirs 1913 to Easter 1916, which had originally appeared in 1968, was issued in revised form by Liberties press.90 Likewise, L.G. Redmond Howard’s eyewitness account of Easter Week, which had been originally published in the immediate aftermath of the Rising, was re-published by the Aubane Historical Society as part of its on-going, and most welcome, programme of re-issuing neglected texts from the revolutionary period;91 and Seán Cronin’s Our own red blood: the story of the 1916 Rising was re-issued after a thirty year gap.92
Two studies which took the General Post Office (GPO) as their focus also appeared during the year. The first, GPO staff in 1916, was published by An Post and examined the impact of the Rising on the workings of the postal system in Ireland, and its staff at all levels. Keith Jeffery’s The GPO and the Easter Rising traversed similar ground in rather more detail.93
Six works examined different aspects of the rebellion from local perspectives. Two, published by Oxford University Press in 2005, supplied invaluable information on the evolution of nationalist politics in provincial Ireland (notably Connacht) in the decades leading up to the Rising, and, in one case, a few years after.94 The third, Marie Coleman’s County Longford and the Irish revolution 1910–1923, adopted a similar approach, albeit on this occasion taking a single county as the focus of study.95 Two more focused primarily on the activities of the Irish Volunteers, in one case in Cork in the years prior to the Rising,96 and in the other in Roscommon in the years following.97 The final work, Lyn Ebenezer’s Frongoch and the birth of the IRA, was slightly different in that it examined the role of the famed prison camp in creating a disciplined revolutionary cadre, but with a primary focus on its Welsh aspects.98
The anniversary also produced a rich crop of biographical studies. The most significant was Donal Nevin’s James Connolly: ‘a full life’, the first full-length study of the man in several decades.99 The biggest disappointment was that Ruth Dudley Edwards, in reissuing her commanding biography of Pearse, failed to update the text in any meaningful way, on the basis of the rather puzzling observation: ‘Little new material has appeared since 1977 [the date of original publication] and subsequent books and articles on Pearse have been tangential.’100
Two of the executed leaders of the Rising (Ceannt and MacDermott) were the focus of middling length studies,101 a third (Casement) the object of an excellent edited volume of essays,102 while a fourth (Joseph Plunkett) featured prominently in his sister’s memoir of the period.103 There was also a welcome re-appearance of Jack White’s autobiography.104
One cannot finish this section without reference to the success of Recollections of 1916 and its Aftermath, a hybrid publication which incorporated excerpts from dozens of interviews with survivors of the Rising, undertaken over many years, together with the interviews themselves, supplied on compact disc.105 The full version of the publication (which runs to thirty such compact discs) is a historical source of undoubted value.
Historical, political and religious journals also provided a range of material for the reading public. Pride of place in this respect must go to History Ireland, whose March–April 2006 issue was entirely given over to various aspects of the Rising, with articles on Seán McLoughlin, the Citizen Army, the Rising in Galway, the 1966 commemorations and an acerbic critique of the 2006 official commemorations by Professor Paul Bew. Not surprisingly the defence forces’ journal An Cosantóir also produced a memorial number, a double-sized issue in April–May, which explored various aspects of Easter Week from a m
ilitary perspective. Both the BBC History Magazine and History Today also included articles on the Rising in their April numbers, with journals as diverse as The Word, Village, The Phoenix, Irish Political Review and INC News offering information and opinion on both the Rising and the commemoration from a range of perspectives.
In addition to this remarkable level of written output there were, of course, other academic activities organised to mark the event. The university sector, for example, organised a number of conferences, of varying size and scope (in addition, of course, to the event held in University College Cork which was the wellspring for this volume). Dublin University (Trinity College Dublin), in fact, organised two such events: the first, ’1916: then and now’, was a joint enterprise between the Ireland Institute and the university’s Historical Society and ran over two days; while the second, ‘The 1916 Rising: new perspectives and arguments’, was held a week later. University College Dublin adopted a more interdisciplinary approach, the topic of its venture being ‘The life and after-life of P.H. Pearse’, a two day bi-lingual event split between UCD and the Pearse Museum in Rathfarnham. The Centre for Human Settlement and Historical Change in the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) adopted a markedly different approach, with its seminar ’1916: local dimensions’ in May offering a welcome focus on events during Easter Week outside Dublin, while NUI Maynooth also organised an open debate in which both staff and students participated.106
The non-university sector was also active in this respect. Two summer schools, respectively the Byrne Perry event in Gorey in June, and the annual Desmond Greaves symposium in Dublin in August, were both given over in their entirety to analysis of the event (indeed this was the second successive year that the Rising was the principal theme of the Byrne Perry school). Lectures on the theme of the Rising – either as part of a series or one-off events – were also thick on the ground, with events organised by, amongst other agencies, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Church of Ireland’s Representative Church Body, Conradh na Gaeilge, the Robert Emmet Association, the Ireland Institute, the James Connolly Education Trust, Coiste Spiorad 1916, the 1916–21 Club and the Liam Mellows Commemoration Committee.107
MEDIA COVERAGE AND CULTURAL EVENTS
Given the manifest public interest in the topic of the Rising, it is no surprise to find that the media gave extensive coverage both to the commemoration ceremonies and to aspects of the original event itself. The various television stations naturally gave airtime to the military parade (with RTÉ covering the entire event live), as well as offering a range of programming that both explored the historical aspects of the Rising and analysed the public debate on its commemoration. Among the historical figures that were the subject of documentaries broadcast at this time were Pearse, Casement and Maxwell, with two separate programmes on the role of women during the Rising. Current affairs or light entertainment shows such as The Week in Politics, Questions and Answers, Primetime and The Late, Late Show also devoted either sections of or entire shows to the topic.108
It was on radio, however, that the political debate on the appropriate manner of commemorating the Rising was investigated most thoroughly, with Vincent Browne’s Tonight show on RTÉ Radio One particularly noteworthy in this respect. Other archival or current affairs-themed shows also devoted varying amounts of airtime to the topic, including broadcasts by John Bowman, Rodney Rice, Rattlebag, Morning Ireland and Five Seven Live ; and during the immediate build-up to, and the aftermath of, the Easter Sunday parade, the day-time discussion shows of Pat Kenny, Marian Finucance and Joe Duffy also facilitated public discussion of the event on the national broadcaster. Other national and local radio stations also devoted dedicated airtime to coverage, as did BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Radio Three.109
Newspapers, both national and local, also covered the anniversary in some depth. As is evident, they are one of the principal sources of information for this paper. Many of the nationals were markedly sceptical of the commemoration process in the early months of the year,110 only to shift position when it became evident that the public response to the event was overwhelmingly positive.111 During the week prior to the military parade the Times, Independent and Examiner all devoted areas of their ‘comment’ sections to various analysis pieces, thereby providing a healthy dissensus of opinion, and the letters pages of all three did likewise throughout the spring months.
The local press, by and large, offered less editorial comment and, where this was forthcoming, it tended to be less hostile towards the Rising and its remembrance than the dailies. Rather these papers focussed on report-age of local commemorative events, with nearly all containing notices of same in their Easter week editions. A particularly interesting approach was taken by the Kildare Nationalist in its 28 April number, which was accompanied by a replica of its predecessor, The Nationalist and Leinster Times, dated 6 May 1916, replete with descriptions of the after-effects of the Rising.
One of the unique features of the 2006 anniversary of the Rising, as compared to previous commemorations, was the use of the internet, both as a means of distributing information relating to state and non-state events and as a vehicle for a completely open public discussion on the significance of the Rising itself. The largely unmoderated nature of the internet is, of course, one of its defining features, and many discussion boards, blogs and similar websites carried numerous, wide-ranging threads relating to the Rising – even if the absence of editorial control inevitably meant that the quality of some submissions was somewhat questionable.
In terms of artistic and cultural activities the winter of 2005–6 was also characterised by a wide variety of events with the Rising as common theme.112 Two of the principal cultural institutions in the state – the National Library and the National Museum – organised very different, but mutually complementary, exhibitions: the former (‘The Easter Rising: understanding 1916’) a conventional but still impressive exhibition of contemporary artefacts and accompanying commentary; the latter (‘The 1916 Rising: personalities and perspectives’) an online exhibition, consisting for the most part of newspapers, photographs and manuscript material drawn from the Library’s own collection.113
Two plays, with contrasting approaches to the Rising, were also staged at this time. The first, ‘Shooting Gallery’, was performed at the Andrews Lane theatre in late 2005, and viewed the events of Easter Week from the perspective of two down-and-outs. An altogether more serious piece of theatre was staged in Kilmainham gaol (the site of the executions that followed the Rising) in April–May 2006. ‘Operation Easter’, written by Dónal O’Kelly, sought, in the playwright’s words, to ‘challenge the nationalist glorification and revisionist hammer bashing that still dominates public perceptions’ of the Rising by concentrating on the ‘complexity, the full human picture’ of the event.114
Visual artists, too, responded to the public’s demand for material with 1916 as its theme, with several galleries and other sites in different parts of the country staging exhibitions and installations of varying descriptions.115 Those whose interest lay in the area of motion pictures were also catered for by the re-release, by RTÉ in conjunction with the Irish Film Institute, of the 1926 feature film Irish Destiny, one of the first films to take the Irish independence struggle as its theme.116 Gael Linn also took the opportunity to release the landmark documentary Mise Éire, along with its equally memorable score by Seán Ó Riada.
MISCELLANEOUS
Before moving on to an assessment of the historiographical themes that accompanied this diverse range of activities, a small number of other events associated with the commemoration process must be briefly mentioned. The first was the campaign to ensure that 16 Moore Street, the final headquarters of the Irish Volunteers following their flight from the burning shell of the GPO, would not be subject to commercial re-development. This campaign predated the 2006 revival of interest but was undoubtedly given added momentum by the enhanced public awareness that flowed from the year’s events. The cam
paign had initially focussed on the addition of the site to Dublin City Council’s record of protected structures, but a series of technical and other obstacles delayed such a move. As this article goes to press it appears that this campaign has been superseded by a government decision to designate the site a national monument.117
The campaign over 16 Moore Street threw into sharp relief the conflicting pressures of historical conservation and the demands of modern commerce, and the controversy over the auction of artefacts associated with the Rising did likewise. There were two principal sales at which such items were offered as lots. The first was at Whyte’s of Dublin, on 9 April; the second, the widely publicised ‘Independence’ sale, was a joint affair between Adam’s of Dublin and Mealy’s of Kilkenny, and took place on 12 April. The range of material on offer at both sales – in particular the Tom Clarke collection and the original handwritten manuscript of Amhrán na bhFiann – reflected the unprecedented degree of public interest in the Rising, which in turn led to bids well in excess of predictions for most items. It also led to protests, before, after, and indeed during the auctions.118
Three other commemorative events must be mentioned in closing. The first was a coda to the military parade in Dublin on Easter Sunday. It was hosted by the Southern Brigade of the defence forces in Collins Barracks, Cork, on 9 May 2006, and consisted of a dignified ceremony in memory of Thomas Kent, apart from Casement the only other participant in the Rising who was executed outside Dublin.119 The second was the controversy over the mass to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Rising at the Augustinian priory in Drogheda, Co. Louth, on Sunday 16 April. The concelebrated nature of this service – with the participation of a minister of the Church of Ireland and members of his congregation alongside their Roman Catholic counterparts – produced expressions of concern by both the Catholic and Church of Ireland primates of all Ireland that the service may have hindered, rather than facilitated, the process of ecumenism on the island, and a vigorous subsequent correspondence which explored the merits both of the mass itself and the archbishops’ response.120