1916 (69 page)

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

M
EDIA 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.

M
ISCELLANEOUS

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 campaign 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

The third and final commemorative event – that of the battle of the Somme in June – was more significant, given that it was explicitly linked by the Irish government to the Easter Rising programme two months earlier in the official literature produced by it in conjunction with both events:

The Government is committed to respecting all traditions on this island equally. It also recognises that developing a greater understanding of our shared history, in all of its diversity, is essential to developing greater understanding and building a shared future.
¹²¹

The analysis of the connection between the two events offered therewith is instructive:

The war was initially promoted by Britain as ‘the defence of little Belgium’. It later evolved into one fought for the rights of small nations as expressed by President Wilson, and the principle of self-determination for such nations, especially in the defeated central European empires, formed much of the debate at the subsequent peace talks at Versailles. For some Irish nationalists there was an irony in fighting in the British army for such a cause. Moreover initial public enthusiasm for the war quickly faded as it was felt that there was little recognition for the contribution of those Irishmen who had enlisted. The rising casualty lists, allied to the threat of conscription, further dented such enthusiasm. It was against this backdrop that the 1916 Rising was organised … When the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that killed the heir to the Austrian crown Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during their state visit to Sarajevo in June 1914, he started a chain of events that would directly affect Irish people in every part of Ireland and some of those living in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. The course of Irish history was greatly altered, leading to the emergence of forces that still influence the politics of today. The increased awareness of the Irish aspects of the War have helped to put those forces to positive use by allowing people from the two major traditions to meet on common ground.
¹²²

The decision to link the two events gave rise to a certain amount of disagreement. Not surprisingly government supporters tended to row in behind the proposal, as did leading members of Fine Gael. Liz McManus for Labour adopted a different approach, arguing that the separate commemoration of the conflict on the Somme ‘simply perpetuates a form of commemorative apartheid’. What was needed instead, she argued, was ‘that the language of our official commemoration on Easter Sunday, of our speeches and our publications, should be truly inclusive and reconciliatory and thus extend to all the combatants of 1916, as well as to the innocent civilians’.
¹²³
Others went in the opposite direction, and over a number of weeks at this time a correspondence was conducted on the letters page of the
Irish Independent
under the intriguing heading of ‘Was the Great War a crime?’
¹²⁴
If the government had hoped that the gesture would lead to a
rapprochement
with northern unionists they were quickly disabused of the idea,
¹²⁵
although it undoubtedly was consoled by the fact that there was no widespread or sustained public criticism, north or south of the border, of its action in marking the anniversary of the Somme in such a manner.
¹²⁶

H
ISTORIOGRAPHICAL THEMES

So much for the events that took place in 2005–6 to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. What aspects of the Rising as a
historical event
attracted the attention of those who participated in the diverse forums referred to in the second part of this paper?

Many themes were discussed, not least the legacy of the Rising – for women, for north–south relations, and for the conduct of public affairs in Ireland as a whole. None of these were particularly original, having been examined in depth at periodic intervals over preceding decades – albeit that the passage of time and the changed national circumstances within which the 2006 commemoration took place meant that the arguments inevitably found new audiences. For reasons of space, however, attention will be focussed here solely on the one issue that was more widely and deeply analysed than any other: that is, the justification for the Rising. The centrality of this question is best summed up in the words of Professor John A. Murphy when writing in the
Evening Echo
: ‘Contrary to a popular misconception, all historians, revisionists or otherwise, are in agreement about the significance of 1916 … The real difference among historians and the general public is whether the Rising was a GOOD THING [original emphasis].
^’127
The analysis of this issue covered several distinct themes: the state of the country in 1916; the impact of the First World War; the issue of a democratic mandate for the Rising; and explicitly moral issues such as the use of violence and the killing of civilians. These points are now considered in more depth.