Michael B-C
The Living Force
Whilst on a UK group get together last year I raised the topic of what is known as the ‘1916 Dublin Easter Rising’ for discussion. Understandably many of those present had not heard of this seismic event in Irish history (even though it was also a pivotal moment in 20th century British colonial history) and so, with the centenary fast approaching I thought I would bring the subject matter to the attention of the forum and broaden the debate we had.
There have been - and will no doubt continue to be - many commemorations of the key events of WWI but this hitherto sidelined eruption may well be news to those well versed in such headline events as the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele along with key political earthquakes such as the Russian Revolution, the so called decline of the British Empire, the isolation and dismemberment of defeated Germany and the rise of American Imperialism that led to a reshaping of our world post 1918. At first glance the events in Dublin seem localised and insignificant, receiving scant regard in any overview history of the period. But the truth is more subtle and long lasting than that and I have a suspicion that the commemorations this year, especially, its potential impact in the States and even possibly the UK, may provide a potential impetus for a will to openly oppose the psychopathic power now closing its noose around the globe. Here in may lie both opportunity and danger – for the lessons coming from the choice by the rebels in 1916 to use organised violence as their perceived only means to obtain freedom from tyranny - creates a valuable insight into the nature of the system when confronted head on.
To commence with a personal note, like most of us here I suspect, I instinctively view the use of violence as deeply inhuman and invariably counter productive. History is littered with well meaning people who have allowed the lure of bloodshed in a righteous cause to cloud their judgement and in almost all cases for it to backfire in the most terrible of ways. Along with the Lie, War is perhaps the key psychopathic tool – it is their chosen instrument of oppression and control; they excel at it, reveling in its disgusting, macho culture in a way that humans find hard to fathom. The calculated use of mass culling, the profiteering and industrialisation on a global scale, the game theory manipulation of events, the total comfort with utilising its ensuing horrors as a means for establishing a long term policy of domination through chaos, etc, are well documented on this forum. To quote the 1960s song by Edwin Star, as far as real human beings are concerned, ‘War, huh, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!’
The psychopath in power, however, sees it as good for everything. So we cannot avoid the fact that it is our imposed history. It surrounds us day and night as the norm, the perceived acceptable means by which organised human society creates progress and dynamic collective action, determining the destinies and collective misery of countless millions. We must thus face it individually and collectively; not only its total and ongoing shaping of our world, but in how we contribute to its continuation and spread through our compliance and our contribution to a system that creates it on ‘our behalf’ (e.g. a recent study in the UK showed that the average person in the UK pays some £740,000 in taxes over a lifetime, a high percentage of which will end up in the coffers of the military industrial complex to fund their global mayhem and pillage). We are all it seems complicit in mass murder, but we sit by powerless to stop it; maybe doing what we able to do in becoming consciously aware and to limit our direct acquiescence, yet nothing seems to halt the machine of war as it marches ever on.
When films such as ‘American Sniper’ fill the cinemas with ‘normal’ (read ponerologised) people munching contentedly on their popcorn as they are entertained by the ‘heroic’ exploits of an individual who, if he did not wear a uniform, would be viewed as one of the worlds most reviled mass murderers, we know we are in trouble! Yet back in 1916, a group of a quite different sort of men and women, some of the most courageous, highly educated, sensitive and artistically aware people you could imagine, decided to pick up this monstrous tool and by using it for themselves, tried to reshape their people’s destiny by choosing to not only spill the blood of their oppressor, but most shockingly, their own, in an effort to break the chains that surrounded them. And the question still remains – were they wrong to do so or did they have no other choice?
For those who are new to this slice of history, here’s a quick potted outline of the circumstances leading up to - and here I quote from a theatre show I am currently involved in which deals with this topic - ‘that fateful, hateful, Easter Monday…’
For the best part of 800 years the British had conquered and repressed the indigenous people of Ireland (ignore for the moment the blinding issue of religion – catholic vs. protestant – for this has always been a falsely imposed imperial policy of divide and rule). The Irish were seen by the British as ‘other’ and used accordingly. The resources of the island were relentlessly bled dry and bit by bit the culture was being extinguished. Whether as labourers or as cannon fodder in the British military or as forced exiles or through deliberately engineered famine and mass depopulation, the Irish citizenry was kept in an artificially engineered state of perpetual suppression and trauma. Throughout the centuries any attempt to rise up and shake off the yoke was met with enormous force and brutality. The Irish were en masse perceived as sub-human animals to be farmed accordingly. The systemic use of colonisation, confiscation of land and cultural indoctrination by the system, had created a country that was essentially a tamed and traumatised backwater of England (which is even still referred to by some as ‘the mainland’).
The ‘Irish Issue’ was presented by the British establishment as a tiresome drain on noble national resources; she (for Ireland has always been seen as a ‘she’) was by nature rebellious, seditious, licentious, callous, cruel and barbarous and should be tamed accordingly. Following the deliberately engineered mass culling of the Great Famine of 1845-1852, political forces turned increasingly to finalising the issue once and for all and politically embedding Ireland into a greater United Kingdom by grudgingly moving towards a Home Rule act by which an Irish Parliament would exercise some basic local powers whilst remaining entirely subservient to the ‘mother’ parliament at Westminster – a policy designed to effectively neuter domestic political dissident and entrench the by now heavily anglicized political elite into the norm of Westminster as the final arbiter of all real political power over the Island. It was presented as a noble gesture from a worthy parent to its errant, wayward child, but was in truth the worst kind a Machiavellian manipulation.
Two men, Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, who were to form an unlikely strategic alliance, knew precisely what the proposed act represented – the likely death of Irish cultural and national ambitions, a fact that was further confirmed by the outbreak of WWI which saw the legislation temporarily shelved as hundreds of thousands of Irishmen either volunteered or were drafted into the British army and the ensuing surge in patriotism for ‘Mother England’ this provoked. Union Jacks and recruiting stations were everywhere and as Connolly viewed the wreckage of his dreams for internationalism, he knew more than anyone here also lay the final solution to the Irish issue – a mass culling which would further drain her of her will and man power to fight followed by an imposition of a political solution that would entrench and bury Ireland in the UK, most likely forever.
Connolly was a truly remarkable man of astonishing fortitude, integrity and dedication to others. Born into extreme poverty in the Irish slums of Edinburgh, he gave his entire adult life to the cause of the downtrodden working man and woman whatever their national, religious or political persuasions. He learnt about the world the hard way, not only from his paupers background in Scotland, but from his period as a young, impoverished man forced into the British Army and stationed thereafter in Ireland for seven years where he witnessed first hand the unashamed use of force to crush all opposition to the ongoing theft of land from the indigenous people.
A life long socialist who had self educated himself to a remarkable degree, he spent time in the States where he worked tirelessly for the rights of Italian dockers in New York. Upon moving to Dublin he became a close associate of the labour activist James Larkin and once more faced the brutal face of state power allied to commercial interest during the terrible violence and oppression that surrounded the 1913 mass lock out of Irish workers who were denied the right to unionise. It was at this point that he came to view military action as the only possible path ahead; he formed the Irish Citizens Army, a highly politicised militia force designed to defend the working people from the state violence of their employers. He began to see that building of a highly trained and professionally disciplined volunteer fighting force was going to be the only way such a beast could be effectively confronted. Fight might with might became his chosen way.
He soon came into contact with Patrick Pearse, an Anglo-Irish lawyer from a comfortable middle class background who saw the gradual erosion of the native culture as the real Trojan horse in the whole affair; the step by step eradication of the Irish language, the suppression of Irish cultural history, the imposition of British cultural values, all used as tools to tame and acclimatise the population to the norm of eternal colonial rule. A school teacher, barrister, poet and passionate legal advocate for human rights, Pearse was a dreamer and a visionary (albeit one with some suspect psychological tendencies that would significantly impact on the strategic purpose of the revolt he was to lead); it was his dream of a native Irish culture, reborn and renewed from the ghosts of the lost Gaelic past, that was to become the focus for the movement that was by now gathering pace.
He was chosen as spokesman for an amalgamated militarised movement that involved his own armed force, the Irish Volunteers, a grass roots militia called the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Connolly’s Irish Citizens Army, and plans were put in place for a large scale uprising in Dublin set for Easter 1916. As Commander in Chief of the Forces of the Irish Republic, and President of the Provisional Government, along with six others including Connolly, he signed his name to a Proclamation Document that was to be the basis for an independent, sovereign Irish state.
As usual in Irish history events went against their carefully laid plans. They had prepared a force of 10,000 militia, trained in near secrecy and to be armed with a significant catchment of munitions supplied by Germany. Unfortunately these arms were lost to the seas following a series of misadventures and intrusions by British military intelligence. A decision to go ahead without these resources was taken by the council of seven but at the last minute Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Volunteers, having discovered that his commanders had hoodwinked him into agreement, countermanded the orders via adverts in a newspaper, forcing the signatories to issue a last-minute order to go through with the plan the following day but now limited to 1,200 men and women in the Dublin area who turned out for the rising on Easter Monday 1916. The rebels seized a number of key buildings in the centre of Dublin, including famously the General Post Office (GPO) on what was then known as Sackville Street (O’Connell Street today), presenting their Proclamation – including a radical promise of suffrage for all men and women of Ireland - to startled bystanders.
From the get go their position was hopeless, for although they caught the British off guard (many of their senior officers were literally at the races!) they soon found themselves surrounded by a numerically superior force (Dublin was enveloped by no less than seven British Army barracks in long term preparation for such an eventuality) and bit by bit the noose was tightened. Connolly had banked on the idea that there was no way the British would do serious damage to the grandeur of what was then the second city of the empire and he could thus entrap the army in costly hand to hand, house to house combat, buying time for the uprising to spread beyond the capital. To his utter dismay he learnt a final lesson regarding the nature of the beast he faced; the British response (after discovering the bloody cost of falling for such guerrilla tactics) brought in heavy artillery and a large gunship and proceeded to pound the city centre into dust.
Photographs of the time reveal the devastation, bringing to mind the horrors that were to come in the years ahead for such cities as Dresden and Hamburg. This was pathology writ large – the casualties were terrible for both the rebels and the local citizenry and although the British army sustained heavy losses, within a week it was over. Some 3,000 people were either killed or wounded, including 2,500 volunteers and citizens. The British Commanding Officer, General Maxwell, followed through his orders to a letter and under the terms of Martial law, summarily executed by firing squad, amongst others, all seven of the signatories including Pearse and Connolly (who having been wounded in the fighting was shot bound to a chair).
It was this act, more than any other perhaps, that was thereafter to galvanise Irish and international public opinion in support of the righteous cause of the rebels. The outcry spread far and wide and their ‘martyrdom’ (in truth Pearse’s goal all along) became a clarion cry for others to follow. Within six years a further more broadly based war of independence ensued and in 1922 the British were finally forced into an ignominious retreat, partitioning Ireland into 6 northern counties that would remain in the UK and granting an independent Republic of Ireland to the remainder in the south. From this unhappy compromise arose the seeds of many future divisions and conflicts, including a painful civil war and the so called Troubles that benighted Northern Ireland in the 60s-90s.
A question arose thereafter, one that has haunted the Irish psyche ever since; were these men indeed righteous martyrs or were they the dark shadow of their oppressors, men and women whose wilful blood-letting would bedevil the new born nation and for here-after give unwarranted credence to violence as a righteous political act? Were they therefore no better than their oppressors?
In the ensuing years, as Ireland has struggled with the perceived challenge of ‘taking the gun out of Irish politics’ that many lay at the feet of the 1916 rebels, there has been a deep unease about the road taken that Easter and the men and women who chose this means. Such pearsian phrases as “the Tree of liberty must continually be watered with the blood of martyrs and the blood of tyrants” (actually first used by Thomas Jefferson) go some way to explaining why the current Irish government are extremely uncomfortable with the impending anniversary (well they might be considering their total sell out to the globalist elite) and many otherwise sympathetic commentators still openly question the veracity of their choice.
I mull this issue each day that I go into work on a project that in many ways eulogises their deeds for a new generation, many of whom are oblivious of the fact that they owe the few freedoms of self expression they have left to the sacrifice of those in 1916. I have found from the beginning that my thoughts are surprisingly ambivalent. I find myself agreeing with Connolly; come 1918 the reality is that Ireland would undoubtedly have ended up fully subsumed into an alien nation. I do not hold to the idea that the British Empire was soon to fall and therefore independence would have followed on as a natural by-product of history. Yes India, Australia, Canada and the dozens of other smaller nations all claimed independence within forty years or more. But many of them still have a union jack emblazoned on their flag or the British Queen as titular head of state. Yes we live in a one world oligarchical, fascistic corporatist state, so national identities, flags and such are merely window dressing to disguise the real truth. But I suggest that Ireland’s geographical proximity and length of colonisation are a different matter. As with Wales and Scotland, proximity to the power centre brings with it a particular set of circumstances. The British hang onto Northern Ireland for many reasons, but most importantly they do so for long-term, self-serving strategic reasons, including the speed of military access to the south should the need and desire arise (a belief sporned from the paranoia that Ireland as the soft underbelly to England and is thus theirs to meddle in by right).
I am more and more persudaded by Pearse’s assertion that every generation has its calling and his was to do this deed then and not shirk it, whatever the cost, for to fail the call would most likely have lead to long term failure for all future strivings for self determination of a long oppressed people. Taking on board the broader philosophical view that such resistance is essentially counter productive and that fighting inhumane tactics with like brute force makes you no better than your oppressor (and there is no doubt the modern Irish psyche has been much haunted by the violently fatalistic, near nihilistic do-and-die mentality of the warrior Cú Chulainn archetype that now lords it over the front hall of the GPO), I still think the scale of the impending threat and the longevity of oppression when weighed against the single act of bloody defiance must surely be taken into account. We do not scorn the defenders of the Alamo for their stand, or the 300 Spartans who stood against the might of the Persian invaders. Who can blame the Palestinians when they choose to rise up against the Zionist genocide they face? Sometimes the willingness to stand and fight is all you have to hand at that moment and the result may well resonate out informationally in a more complex and dynamic way than the terrible initial cost the doing suggests - even perhaps influencing others to effective mass non-violence as with the likes of Ghandi and King (both of whom admitted to being inspired by the 1916 rebellion). I even dare to ponder if Saturn-Yahweh-Mithras-4th density STS is thirsting to have blood sacrifice – and continually engineers the circumstance for such - why not sometimes make it at a time and a place of your own choosing and for a cause that has real meaning and veracity? In an ideal world such choices would not be necessary, but in this one, where hunt or be hunted is a basic reality, where violent death is actually the norm of the natural environment, why should humans not at times of dire need make this ultimate if fatal choice of self-determination? In a strange way it is one of the many names of God. Is it not just another lesson? I am torn… but on balance I’m with the rebels.
What do others think about the choice they made?
For those interested to explore background to this topic further, here are videos you might want to watch.
These are the fascinating personal motivations and memories of actual survivors of the rebellion recorded in the 1970s
This 10 part series is an excellent account and in particular paints vivid portraits of the seven signatories/leaders of the revolt (in Irish but with English subtitles).
Edit=Youtube links
There have been - and will no doubt continue to be - many commemorations of the key events of WWI but this hitherto sidelined eruption may well be news to those well versed in such headline events as the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele along with key political earthquakes such as the Russian Revolution, the so called decline of the British Empire, the isolation and dismemberment of defeated Germany and the rise of American Imperialism that led to a reshaping of our world post 1918. At first glance the events in Dublin seem localised and insignificant, receiving scant regard in any overview history of the period. But the truth is more subtle and long lasting than that and I have a suspicion that the commemorations this year, especially, its potential impact in the States and even possibly the UK, may provide a potential impetus for a will to openly oppose the psychopathic power now closing its noose around the globe. Here in may lie both opportunity and danger – for the lessons coming from the choice by the rebels in 1916 to use organised violence as their perceived only means to obtain freedom from tyranny - creates a valuable insight into the nature of the system when confronted head on.
To commence with a personal note, like most of us here I suspect, I instinctively view the use of violence as deeply inhuman and invariably counter productive. History is littered with well meaning people who have allowed the lure of bloodshed in a righteous cause to cloud their judgement and in almost all cases for it to backfire in the most terrible of ways. Along with the Lie, War is perhaps the key psychopathic tool – it is their chosen instrument of oppression and control; they excel at it, reveling in its disgusting, macho culture in a way that humans find hard to fathom. The calculated use of mass culling, the profiteering and industrialisation on a global scale, the game theory manipulation of events, the total comfort with utilising its ensuing horrors as a means for establishing a long term policy of domination through chaos, etc, are well documented on this forum. To quote the 1960s song by Edwin Star, as far as real human beings are concerned, ‘War, huh, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!’
The psychopath in power, however, sees it as good for everything. So we cannot avoid the fact that it is our imposed history. It surrounds us day and night as the norm, the perceived acceptable means by which organised human society creates progress and dynamic collective action, determining the destinies and collective misery of countless millions. We must thus face it individually and collectively; not only its total and ongoing shaping of our world, but in how we contribute to its continuation and spread through our compliance and our contribution to a system that creates it on ‘our behalf’ (e.g. a recent study in the UK showed that the average person in the UK pays some £740,000 in taxes over a lifetime, a high percentage of which will end up in the coffers of the military industrial complex to fund their global mayhem and pillage). We are all it seems complicit in mass murder, but we sit by powerless to stop it; maybe doing what we able to do in becoming consciously aware and to limit our direct acquiescence, yet nothing seems to halt the machine of war as it marches ever on.
When films such as ‘American Sniper’ fill the cinemas with ‘normal’ (read ponerologised) people munching contentedly on their popcorn as they are entertained by the ‘heroic’ exploits of an individual who, if he did not wear a uniform, would be viewed as one of the worlds most reviled mass murderers, we know we are in trouble! Yet back in 1916, a group of a quite different sort of men and women, some of the most courageous, highly educated, sensitive and artistically aware people you could imagine, decided to pick up this monstrous tool and by using it for themselves, tried to reshape their people’s destiny by choosing to not only spill the blood of their oppressor, but most shockingly, their own, in an effort to break the chains that surrounded them. And the question still remains – were they wrong to do so or did they have no other choice?
For those who are new to this slice of history, here’s a quick potted outline of the circumstances leading up to - and here I quote from a theatre show I am currently involved in which deals with this topic - ‘that fateful, hateful, Easter Monday…’
For the best part of 800 years the British had conquered and repressed the indigenous people of Ireland (ignore for the moment the blinding issue of religion – catholic vs. protestant – for this has always been a falsely imposed imperial policy of divide and rule). The Irish were seen by the British as ‘other’ and used accordingly. The resources of the island were relentlessly bled dry and bit by bit the culture was being extinguished. Whether as labourers or as cannon fodder in the British military or as forced exiles or through deliberately engineered famine and mass depopulation, the Irish citizenry was kept in an artificially engineered state of perpetual suppression and trauma. Throughout the centuries any attempt to rise up and shake off the yoke was met with enormous force and brutality. The Irish were en masse perceived as sub-human animals to be farmed accordingly. The systemic use of colonisation, confiscation of land and cultural indoctrination by the system, had created a country that was essentially a tamed and traumatised backwater of England (which is even still referred to by some as ‘the mainland’).
The ‘Irish Issue’ was presented by the British establishment as a tiresome drain on noble national resources; she (for Ireland has always been seen as a ‘she’) was by nature rebellious, seditious, licentious, callous, cruel and barbarous and should be tamed accordingly. Following the deliberately engineered mass culling of the Great Famine of 1845-1852, political forces turned increasingly to finalising the issue once and for all and politically embedding Ireland into a greater United Kingdom by grudgingly moving towards a Home Rule act by which an Irish Parliament would exercise some basic local powers whilst remaining entirely subservient to the ‘mother’ parliament at Westminster – a policy designed to effectively neuter domestic political dissident and entrench the by now heavily anglicized political elite into the norm of Westminster as the final arbiter of all real political power over the Island. It was presented as a noble gesture from a worthy parent to its errant, wayward child, but was in truth the worst kind a Machiavellian manipulation.
Two men, Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, who were to form an unlikely strategic alliance, knew precisely what the proposed act represented – the likely death of Irish cultural and national ambitions, a fact that was further confirmed by the outbreak of WWI which saw the legislation temporarily shelved as hundreds of thousands of Irishmen either volunteered or were drafted into the British army and the ensuing surge in patriotism for ‘Mother England’ this provoked. Union Jacks and recruiting stations were everywhere and as Connolly viewed the wreckage of his dreams for internationalism, he knew more than anyone here also lay the final solution to the Irish issue – a mass culling which would further drain her of her will and man power to fight followed by an imposition of a political solution that would entrench and bury Ireland in the UK, most likely forever.
Connolly was a truly remarkable man of astonishing fortitude, integrity and dedication to others. Born into extreme poverty in the Irish slums of Edinburgh, he gave his entire adult life to the cause of the downtrodden working man and woman whatever their national, religious or political persuasions. He learnt about the world the hard way, not only from his paupers background in Scotland, but from his period as a young, impoverished man forced into the British Army and stationed thereafter in Ireland for seven years where he witnessed first hand the unashamed use of force to crush all opposition to the ongoing theft of land from the indigenous people.
A life long socialist who had self educated himself to a remarkable degree, he spent time in the States where he worked tirelessly for the rights of Italian dockers in New York. Upon moving to Dublin he became a close associate of the labour activist James Larkin and once more faced the brutal face of state power allied to commercial interest during the terrible violence and oppression that surrounded the 1913 mass lock out of Irish workers who were denied the right to unionise. It was at this point that he came to view military action as the only possible path ahead; he formed the Irish Citizens Army, a highly politicised militia force designed to defend the working people from the state violence of their employers. He began to see that building of a highly trained and professionally disciplined volunteer fighting force was going to be the only way such a beast could be effectively confronted. Fight might with might became his chosen way.
He soon came into contact with Patrick Pearse, an Anglo-Irish lawyer from a comfortable middle class background who saw the gradual erosion of the native culture as the real Trojan horse in the whole affair; the step by step eradication of the Irish language, the suppression of Irish cultural history, the imposition of British cultural values, all used as tools to tame and acclimatise the population to the norm of eternal colonial rule. A school teacher, barrister, poet and passionate legal advocate for human rights, Pearse was a dreamer and a visionary (albeit one with some suspect psychological tendencies that would significantly impact on the strategic purpose of the revolt he was to lead); it was his dream of a native Irish culture, reborn and renewed from the ghosts of the lost Gaelic past, that was to become the focus for the movement that was by now gathering pace.
He was chosen as spokesman for an amalgamated militarised movement that involved his own armed force, the Irish Volunteers, a grass roots militia called the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Connolly’s Irish Citizens Army, and plans were put in place for a large scale uprising in Dublin set for Easter 1916. As Commander in Chief of the Forces of the Irish Republic, and President of the Provisional Government, along with six others including Connolly, he signed his name to a Proclamation Document that was to be the basis for an independent, sovereign Irish state.
As usual in Irish history events went against their carefully laid plans. They had prepared a force of 10,000 militia, trained in near secrecy and to be armed with a significant catchment of munitions supplied by Germany. Unfortunately these arms were lost to the seas following a series of misadventures and intrusions by British military intelligence. A decision to go ahead without these resources was taken by the council of seven but at the last minute Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Volunteers, having discovered that his commanders had hoodwinked him into agreement, countermanded the orders via adverts in a newspaper, forcing the signatories to issue a last-minute order to go through with the plan the following day but now limited to 1,200 men and women in the Dublin area who turned out for the rising on Easter Monday 1916. The rebels seized a number of key buildings in the centre of Dublin, including famously the General Post Office (GPO) on what was then known as Sackville Street (O’Connell Street today), presenting their Proclamation – including a radical promise of suffrage for all men and women of Ireland - to startled bystanders.
From the get go their position was hopeless, for although they caught the British off guard (many of their senior officers were literally at the races!) they soon found themselves surrounded by a numerically superior force (Dublin was enveloped by no less than seven British Army barracks in long term preparation for such an eventuality) and bit by bit the noose was tightened. Connolly had banked on the idea that there was no way the British would do serious damage to the grandeur of what was then the second city of the empire and he could thus entrap the army in costly hand to hand, house to house combat, buying time for the uprising to spread beyond the capital. To his utter dismay he learnt a final lesson regarding the nature of the beast he faced; the British response (after discovering the bloody cost of falling for such guerrilla tactics) brought in heavy artillery and a large gunship and proceeded to pound the city centre into dust.
Photographs of the time reveal the devastation, bringing to mind the horrors that were to come in the years ahead for such cities as Dresden and Hamburg. This was pathology writ large – the casualties were terrible for both the rebels and the local citizenry and although the British army sustained heavy losses, within a week it was over. Some 3,000 people were either killed or wounded, including 2,500 volunteers and citizens. The British Commanding Officer, General Maxwell, followed through his orders to a letter and under the terms of Martial law, summarily executed by firing squad, amongst others, all seven of the signatories including Pearse and Connolly (who having been wounded in the fighting was shot bound to a chair).
It was this act, more than any other perhaps, that was thereafter to galvanise Irish and international public opinion in support of the righteous cause of the rebels. The outcry spread far and wide and their ‘martyrdom’ (in truth Pearse’s goal all along) became a clarion cry for others to follow. Within six years a further more broadly based war of independence ensued and in 1922 the British were finally forced into an ignominious retreat, partitioning Ireland into 6 northern counties that would remain in the UK and granting an independent Republic of Ireland to the remainder in the south. From this unhappy compromise arose the seeds of many future divisions and conflicts, including a painful civil war and the so called Troubles that benighted Northern Ireland in the 60s-90s.
A question arose thereafter, one that has haunted the Irish psyche ever since; were these men indeed righteous martyrs or were they the dark shadow of their oppressors, men and women whose wilful blood-letting would bedevil the new born nation and for here-after give unwarranted credence to violence as a righteous political act? Were they therefore no better than their oppressors?
In the ensuing years, as Ireland has struggled with the perceived challenge of ‘taking the gun out of Irish politics’ that many lay at the feet of the 1916 rebels, there has been a deep unease about the road taken that Easter and the men and women who chose this means. Such pearsian phrases as “the Tree of liberty must continually be watered with the blood of martyrs and the blood of tyrants” (actually first used by Thomas Jefferson) go some way to explaining why the current Irish government are extremely uncomfortable with the impending anniversary (well they might be considering their total sell out to the globalist elite) and many otherwise sympathetic commentators still openly question the veracity of their choice.
I mull this issue each day that I go into work on a project that in many ways eulogises their deeds for a new generation, many of whom are oblivious of the fact that they owe the few freedoms of self expression they have left to the sacrifice of those in 1916. I have found from the beginning that my thoughts are surprisingly ambivalent. I find myself agreeing with Connolly; come 1918 the reality is that Ireland would undoubtedly have ended up fully subsumed into an alien nation. I do not hold to the idea that the British Empire was soon to fall and therefore independence would have followed on as a natural by-product of history. Yes India, Australia, Canada and the dozens of other smaller nations all claimed independence within forty years or more. But many of them still have a union jack emblazoned on their flag or the British Queen as titular head of state. Yes we live in a one world oligarchical, fascistic corporatist state, so national identities, flags and such are merely window dressing to disguise the real truth. But I suggest that Ireland’s geographical proximity and length of colonisation are a different matter. As with Wales and Scotland, proximity to the power centre brings with it a particular set of circumstances. The British hang onto Northern Ireland for many reasons, but most importantly they do so for long-term, self-serving strategic reasons, including the speed of military access to the south should the need and desire arise (a belief sporned from the paranoia that Ireland as the soft underbelly to England and is thus theirs to meddle in by right).
I am more and more persudaded by Pearse’s assertion that every generation has its calling and his was to do this deed then and not shirk it, whatever the cost, for to fail the call would most likely have lead to long term failure for all future strivings for self determination of a long oppressed people. Taking on board the broader philosophical view that such resistance is essentially counter productive and that fighting inhumane tactics with like brute force makes you no better than your oppressor (and there is no doubt the modern Irish psyche has been much haunted by the violently fatalistic, near nihilistic do-and-die mentality of the warrior Cú Chulainn archetype that now lords it over the front hall of the GPO), I still think the scale of the impending threat and the longevity of oppression when weighed against the single act of bloody defiance must surely be taken into account. We do not scorn the defenders of the Alamo for their stand, or the 300 Spartans who stood against the might of the Persian invaders. Who can blame the Palestinians when they choose to rise up against the Zionist genocide they face? Sometimes the willingness to stand and fight is all you have to hand at that moment and the result may well resonate out informationally in a more complex and dynamic way than the terrible initial cost the doing suggests - even perhaps influencing others to effective mass non-violence as with the likes of Ghandi and King (both of whom admitted to being inspired by the 1916 rebellion). I even dare to ponder if Saturn-Yahweh-Mithras-4th density STS is thirsting to have blood sacrifice – and continually engineers the circumstance for such - why not sometimes make it at a time and a place of your own choosing and for a cause that has real meaning and veracity? In an ideal world such choices would not be necessary, but in this one, where hunt or be hunted is a basic reality, where violent death is actually the norm of the natural environment, why should humans not at times of dire need make this ultimate if fatal choice of self-determination? In a strange way it is one of the many names of God. Is it not just another lesson? I am torn… but on balance I’m with the rebels.
What do others think about the choice they made?
For those interested to explore background to this topic further, here are videos you might want to watch.
These are the fascinating personal motivations and memories of actual survivors of the rebellion recorded in the 1970s
This 10 part series is an excellent account and in particular paints vivid portraits of the seven signatories/leaders of the revolt (in Irish but with English subtitles).
Edit=Youtube links
