One hundred years ago, this weekend, the men and women of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were occupying the General Post Office in Dublin in the “Rising” for Irish independence from Britain.
It wasn’t the first “rising” of that sort. The Irish had attempted to throw off the cloak of British oppression on an almost regular basis every fifty years.
The previous one had occurred in 1865 and 1867 and had a unique twist to it. Many of the participants had just returned home from fighting in the American civil war where they had fought either for the Union or the Confederacy. Some of them had gone to America for the sole purpose of learning military skills they could utilize in this quest for freedom.
That the British ultimately put down that rising and either executed or imprisoned the rebels did not stamp out their efforts to achieve freedom. The Fenian movement lived on and one of its most fervent champions was Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. Rossa had been prosecuted for Treason and sentenced to life in prison. He was later paroled and exiled from Britain to America and would write of the horrors he endured in the British jails.
Despite being barred from Britain for twenty years, he worked tirelessly, utilizing all means, legal and illegal to wage war on the British Empire. He died in Brooklyn, New York on June 29, 1915 and his body was returned to Ireland where the largest funeral procession to that day was held.
On August 1, 1915, at Rossa’s grave site Padraig Pearse, uttered these words;
“Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a younger generation. And the seed sown by the young men of ’65 and ‘67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and Defenders of the Realm had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in in secret and in the open. They think they have pacified Ireland They think they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think they have foreseen everything, they think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!-they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
Six months later on April 16, 1916 Pearse stepped out of the Dublin General Post Office and read a proclamation declaring Ireland to be free and independent.
In a few days, the rising was put down and its leaders, including Pearse, were executed but the people in Ireland and the Irish in America would not accept that Ireland was not free and independent.
Many battles would be fought and many lives would be lost as the Irish fought the British and each other to obtain freedom and independence.
Ireland would be known as the “Free State,” a twenty-six county Dominion in the British Empire from 1922 until 1937 when Eamon de Valera abolished the Oath of Allegiance and began an economic war with England.
In 1937, de Valera wrote a new constitution adopted by referendum and the Republic of Ireland was officially born. Although from the day that Pearse had proclaimed a Republic in front of the General Post Office, it had existed in the hearts and minds of the men and women who worked tirelessly, many giving their lives, to bring it into existence.
Another six decades would pass before the sectarian violence that continued in Northern Ireland would subside and the island would be at peace.
As we look around the world and see the many places torn apart and ravaged by sectarian violence and atrocities being committed in the name of religion or economic oppression, it is well to remember that if peace can come to Ireland after centuries of strife, it can happen anywhere.