1916: The Irish Rebellion

"Look up, look up,

"arise from the death dust where you have long been lying.

"And let the light of liberty visit your eyes and touch your souls.

"Let your ears drink in the blessed words,

"liberty, fraternity and equality,

"which are soon to ring from pole to pole."

Easter Monday, April 1916.

A small band of rebels, including poets and teachers,

actors and workers, gathers in Dublin intent on liberating

Ireland from 700 years of British rule.

EXPLOSIONS

Against the might of the British Empire,

the poorly armed rebels stand little chance.

Yet the decision is made to proceed,

even if it brings failure or death.

Outside Dublin's General Post Office,

rebel leader Padraig Pearse reads

a proclamation, declaring the birth of an independent Irish Republic.

"Irishmen and Irishwomen...

"Ireland strikes for her freedom."

In that document in 1916,

we have a very radical, a very liberal

and very far-reaching affirmation

of the equality of men and women.

"We declare the right of the people of Ireland

"to the ownership of Ireland."

This is a document that just exudes radicalism.

"The Irish Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty,

"equal rights and equal opportunities to all."

I think everything about the Rising

and the writing around it is futuristic, it's future driven.

"To pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation,

"cherishing all of the children of the nation equally."

In reality, the proclamation was read to a disinterested small

group of people, but symbolically it takes on enormous power

and ensures that this rebellion

will become a defining event in Irish history.

The Irish Rebellion of 1916 would fundamentally change

the course of Irish history.

While its vision, enshrined in the proclamation

of the Irish Republic, will inspire freedom movements

throughout the world to rise against their colonial masters.

The ideals of the proclamation of 1916 arise from a turbulent history.

For over 800 years,

the relationship between Ireland and her closest neighbour, Britain,

is contested and troubled.

Centuries of British conquest leave the native Irish dispossessed.

A strategy of plantation established a new dominant class

of Protestant settlers loyal to the English crown -

most significantly in Ulster, in Ireland's North.

The mostly Catholic Irish rise sporadically in rebellion.

Each time, their rebellions are suppressed.

In Ireland, you have a very unequal society

where the feeling of injustice about the inequality is exacerbated

by the idea it's been founded on conquest and expropriation.

But in Europe, a revolution of science and philosophy has begun

that will create a yearning for liberty and equality

that will in time reverberate throughout the world.

If you look at the proclamation of 1916,

some of the core ideas in it

represent the authors of the proclamation

looking back to a series of different moments in the past.

They've got a set of ideas about universal principles

that comes out of a kind of political activation

of some philosophical ideas

that were being developed in the 17th century.

Part of what we call the Enlightenment.

The idea that there are certain things

which everyone should share in.

Equal rights, equal liberties, equal opportunities.

The emphasis they place on happiness

certainly seems to echo the words

of the American Declaration of Independence.

Among the clearest voices of the Enlightenment

is that of Thomas Jefferson.

Seven years before the American Revolution

puts an end to British rule in America,

he writes the Declaration of Independence.

"All men are created equal,

"endowed with certain unalienable rights.

"Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Ten years later, the French Revolution

shakes the foundation of the Ancien Regime in Europe.

The age of revolution has begun.

The spirit of the Enlightenment

ignites two subsequent Irish rebellions,

both led by Protestant radicals -

Theobald Wolfe Tone in 1798...

..and Robert Emmet in 1803.

Both uprisings fail,

and yet the ideals of equality and self-determination

proclaimed by Tone and Emmet are now deeply rooted in Ireland.

In 1845, a potato blight crosses the continent of Europe.

Its effects hit Ireland hardest, where over 30% of the people

are dependent on potatoes for their survival.

The failure of the crop is devastating.

And the great famine that follows

casts a long and lasting shadow on Irish history.

The famine of 1845 to 1851

is regarded by majority Irish opinion

as demonstrating that the British government

is not prepared to look after

the Catholic population of Ireland

in the same way it would have done its own English people,

or, indeed, Scots people, as well.

About a million perish from the famine,

and a million are going to leave -

but that's only in the years of the famine.

The migration, the exodus, is going to continue from that point forward.

It's coming into Manhattan, it's coming into Boston,

it coming into Chicago.

The example I like to cite in Manhattan,

which, in the 1855 census,

one quarter of all Manhattan was Irish born.

Really, what they brought with them was very little materially,

but they brought this hunger for independence,

this hunger for freedom.

They saw it here in the United States.

Here in America, you had the opportunity,

the freedom to nurture the animosity,

and, indeed, hatred for the British.

And to see them forming groups

that were devoted to Irish independence,

and those groups became important prior to the Easter Rising.

In 1858, those people coalesced in New York and Dublin

as two organisations -

the Fenian Brotherhood in New York,

and the Irish Republican Brotherhood based in Dublin.

From the outset, they were regarded as two linked organisations

working towards the same objective,

the creation of an independent Irish Republic.

This is the seedbed, in many ways, of 1916.

The number of Fenians who actually had spent time in America

is very striking,

and they are looking at Ireland from an American perspective,

and they've imbibed something of this can-do mentality

that was already part of the American psyche.

Having served six years for treason in a British prison,

Kildare man John Devoy is exiled to America.

There he becomes a key figure in the Irish struggle for independence.

Driven by Devoy, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or IRB,

develops its vision.

Only by becoming free from the British Empire

can Ireland achieve full self-determination for her people.

John Devoy is absolutely fundamental

to the whole exercise -

he's one of those people who seemed to live for ever.

He's a committed revolutionary,

and he never seems to have let a day pass

without contriving to bring about

the destruction of the British Empire.

The 1800s are the golden age of the British Empire.

Straddling the globe from Canada to India.

Many Irish people play a part in the Empire, making up the armies

and legions of professionals required to administer it.

Ireland is in a peculiar way in the 19th century -

part of the imperial project,

and, at the same time, within the British state,

a part of it is refusing to conform.

One of the Irish working for the Empire is Roger Casement.

Stationed in Africa's Congo as a British diplomat,

Casement becomes horrified by the brutality

of Belgium's colonial regime.

He exposes Belgium's atrocities to the world

and becomes a renowned crusader against the excesses of imperialism.

Turning his attention home,

Casement becomes increasingly attracted

to the cause of Irish nationalism, and an outspoken

critic of the deep-rooted origins of the injustices he witnesses.

In post-famine Ireland, many of the poor peasantry

still live on a knife edge,

with evictions a constant threat.

Casement is not alone - a new generation is emerging.

Men and women with strong nationalist convictions,

determined to advocate for equality and freedom for the Irish people.

Evictions I saw in 1885

changed the whole course of my life.

Transforming me from a carefree society girl

into a woman of set purpose.

I was determined to do my share

to free Ireland from the British Empire.

Revolution is a tool for remaking states and societies.

It's not just a kind of protest against injustice,

it's a creative process in its own right.

The most striking feature of the Irish Revolution in world terms

is that the cultural revolution precedes the political revolution.

The famine had created this enormous vacuum in Irish culture.

Ireland had shifted from being essentially a bilingual country

to being increasingly a monolingual one.

Ireland had become much more anglicised,

much more drawn into the mainstream of British culture.

Nationalist leaders come to believe

that if the Irish people are to be set free,

they need an ideal to inspire them.

Ireland's ancient and traditional culture

becomes a central pillar of the cause.

In many ways,

there was a cultural revival - particularly in the 1890s.

It was in a context in which wider politics had failed,

and what happens is that culture fills the political vacuum.

The group who staged the Rising tended to be the younger people,

tended to be the politicised people,

perhaps also the more socially and culturally aware people.

They were the people who were at the cutting edge

of the causes of the time, including women's rights,

the language movement, the literary movement.

There's this cohort of people

who begin to kind of say, "We need to take responsibility for this,

"we need to imagine a new kind of Ireland,"

and, in some respects, the 1916 Rising

is about the Irish saying,

"We belong to an old, ancient, proud culture,

"and we are not willing any more

"to be treated as second-class subjects."

In 1904, poet William Butler Yeats and writer Lady Gregory

forge their part of this new Irish world.

They found an institution

that will become the high church of the Gaelic revival -

the Abbey Theatre.

Yeats liked to quote Victor Hugo.

"In the theatre, a mob becomes a people."

You know, a mob is usually what starts a revolution.

Those attending or acting on stage at the Abbey Theatre

include Maud Gonne

and future leaders of the Rising Roger Casement,

Thomas MacDonagh and Countess Markievicz.

Playwrights include Eoin MacNeill,

the future leader of the Irish Volunteers...

..and one of the writers of the proclamation, Padraig Pearse.

In 1908, Pearse founds St Enda's School in Dublin...

..dedicated to the cultural and moral formation

of the ideal young Gael.

"It will be attempted to inculcate in the pupils

"the desire to spend their lives working hard and zealously

"for their fatherland...

"..and, if it should be necessary, to die for it."

St Enda's becomes a seedbed for the rebellion.

Many pupils will join their teachers in the Rising of 1916,

including Pearse's brother Willie, Thomas MacDonagh and Con Colbert.

It was about 1910, we were in an English class,

just a small group of us.

To our surprise, suddenly Pearse opened up his mind and said,

"It'll all end in an insurrection, the Irish struggle."

He said, "There's no way out.

"It's the teaching of history."

In America, the IRB leader, John Devoy,

is constantly alert to the revolutionary potential

of various nationalist movements in Ireland.

By his side is the staunch Fenian Tom Clarke.

Like Devoy, Clarke has also spent years in British prisons.

At Devoy's prompting, in 1907

Clarke returns to Ireland.

His mission -

to mobilise and exploit growing nationalist sentiment

to instigate a rebellion.

At that time, those of us who were trying to gee up the IRB

weren't making much headway,

because we weren't, ourselves, of any importance.

Tom Clarke added weight and power and dignity to the movement.

And with Tom Clarke's advent

came a kind of a positive, forward movement.

But in Ireland, Tom Clarke finds that nationalist sentiment

is going in a different direction.

The Irish Parliamentary Party,

under its hugely popular leader John Redmond

has been agitating in the British house of Parliament

for a limited form of Irish self-governance,

to be known as Home Rule.

By 1910, the Home Rule movement

has achieved widespread popular support in Ireland.

There was the feeling among the nationalist population

that Ireland required separate recognition constitutionally...

for devolved government -

however limited may have been the authority of a Dublin parliament,

and even those who want more, like the IRB,

even they are prepared to acknowledge that, essentially,

majority sentiment is going to go for Home Rule.

Though they would like something more robust and more extreme.

A British general election in 1910 results in a hung parliament.

Immediately, John Redmond seizes the opportunity.

He offers Henry Asquith, the leader of the British Liberal Party,

his political support

on condition that a Home Rule Bill for Ireland is enacted.

With great reluctance, Asquith agrees.

But in Ulster, in Ireland's North,

the majority Protestant community believes Home Rule

to be a betrayal of their steadfast loyalty to the United Kingdom.

In 1912, 500,000 unionists sign the Ulster Covenant,

a solemn oath to defend Ulster

against the implementation of Home Rule.

Ulster Unionists saw Home Rule as a conspiracy,

a conspiracy to undo the Ulster plantation -

and that was something which could not be allowed.

As early as 1909, 1910, the Ulster Unionist leadership

is beginning to import small-scale caches of weapons

into the North.

The creation of the Ulster Volunteer Force is part of a drift

towards militancy.

The Ulster Volunteer Force is founded in 1913

to oppose Home Rule by any means necessary.

Nationalists respond quickly.

They will set up their own armed militia.

On November 25, 1913, thousands gather in Dublin

to join the Irish Volunteers under Eoin MacNeill's leadership.

Among the 4,000 members to enrol the first evening

are Padraig Pearse,

Thomas MacDonagh

and Roger Casement.

At the back of the room, standing in the shadows, is Tom Clarke.

Clarke and the IRB need an army for the rebellion,

but the purpose of the Volunteers is to ensure Home Rule,

not to rise against the British state.

Clarke infiltrates the Volunteers with IRB members,

and enlists Padraig Pearse to rally the Volunteers

to support their cause.

Pearse brought a degree of originality

to the way he used culture,

in terms of instilling a sense of identity and idealism.

He was fashioning with words a weapon which would,

in many respects, rouse more people than all their attachment to guns.

But in the end, of course,

he decided a culture without guns wasn't enough.

"We must accustom ourselves to the thought of arms, to the use of arms.

"Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing."

By the early 1900s,

Dublin, a city once known to be among the greatest

of the British Empire, has stagnated.

Many live in abject poverty.

Social justice was necessary.

Everybody with any position or money or anything

thought that God had given it to them

and that he had refused it to the others.

By the time we get to 1900, Dublin is the biggest slum in Europe.

26,000 families living in tenement housing.

So you will often have three generations of people

living in a single room.

Dublin city is fertile ground for the socialist thinking

advancing across Europe and America.

In 1913, a major strike breaks out, led by radical socialists

Jim Larkin and the James Connolly.

20,000 workers are locked out of their places of employment

because they refused to renounce membership

of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union.

The strike fails, but it makes a hero out of James Connolly,

who sets up the Irish Citizen Army

to protect workers against future police attacks.

Connolly was born in Edinburgh, reared in poverty.

He represented the intermeshing of Republican separatism

with a more internationalist, socialist view.

Namely that the revolution of self-determination

needs to be a total revolution.

That Ireland, in order to be really free,

would have to be an egalitarian place,

that it needed a social revolution

as an integral part of the major revolution that was coming.

When the Ulster Volunteers lands 20,000 rifles in Larne,

in County Antrim,

the British authorities fail to intervene.

The Irish Volunteers also begin acquiring arms

with help from networks abroad.

Guns sourced in Germany are sailed on a yacht

called the Asgard to Howth, near Dublin.

Ireland is now militarised on all sides.

The description, "The brink of civil war" has frequently,

and with much justification, been applied to Ireland

in the summer of 1914, when you consider the gunrunning,

when you consider the determination on the part of Ulster Unionists

to resist, by whatever means necessary,

the imposition of Home Rule,

when you consider the determination of the Irish Volunteers

to defend Home Rule by whatever means necessary,

this is the language of the era - that is a language of civil war.

EXPLOSION

EXPLOSION

Then war breaks out.

War breaks out, in which the whole context

in which Britain is dealing with Ireland is changed.

In which the calculations of Ulster Unionists and of Home Rulers,

and, indeed, the Fenian conspirators are all changed.

With the outbreak of World War I,

Britain immediately postpones implementation of Home Rule.

The Unionist response to the war is swift.

The Ulster Volunteer Force will fight for King and Empire.

Anxious to demonstrate Ireland's loyalty

and ensure Home Rule is enacted when the war ends,

John Redmond calls in the Irish Volunteers to enlist also.

90% of the Volunteers, upwards of 170,000 men,

answer Redmond's call.

Meanwhile, a core group of Irish Volunteers

led by Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill

believes that to fight for the British Empire

is a betrayal of the nationalist cause.

The split that follows presents the Irish Republican Brotherhood

with an opportunity.

Now, in the thousands of Irish Volunteers who stay in Ireland,

the IRB may have the army for their rebellion -

but if they are to have any chance against Britain,

they will need a major supply of weapons.

We've all heard the statement

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

John Devoy saw the possibility

of an alliance between the Germans and the Irish.

And then Roger Casement goes to Germany

and begins to have meetings with the Germans

over the assistance that they might render for the Rising.

Which is a pretty straightforward form of treating this activity,

if you see things from a British imperial point of view.

While Casement is conspiring with the Germans to supply arms

for the rebels, tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen

are bogged down in an increasingly horrific war on the Western Front.

People begin questioning,

in private, and also in public, what is this war for?

It's not going to be a short war any more,

and it is also going to be a war of very, very high death rates

and injury rates.

And that had a real impact on the climate within Ireland

and the kind of people who will coalesce around the Rising,

because now what they can paint is an imperial British war

which is just killing and bleeding Irish men.

"All these mountains of Irish dead,

"all these corpses mangled beyond recognition.

"All these shivering, putrefying bodies of Irishmen and youth

"are all the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire.

"A piratical enterprise in which the valour of slaves

"fights for the glory and profit of their masters.'

Watching the working classes of Europe and Ireland

slaughter one another in the war,

James Connolly is close to despair, and feels compelled to act.

He starts planning a rebellion with the Irish Citizen Army.

But counting only hundreds in their ranks,

such a rising would be quickly and easily defeated.

News of Connolly's plan reaches the IRB's Military Council.

Fearing that a unilateral action by Connolly

will alert the British authorities to their own plans for an uprising,

Clarke and Pearse approach Connolly.

In secret negotiations, agreement is reached.

The Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers

will join forces in rebellion.

A date is set.

Easter 1916.

The strategy for the rebellion is drawn up by the mystic poet

and journalist Joseph Plunkett.

The rebels will seize key public buildings in Dublin's city centre

and also major towns across the country...

..but several influential Irish Volunteer leaders

are opposed to this approach,

including Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill...

..and two of the Volunteers' original founders - The O'Rahilly,

and Bulmer Hobson.

Well, my feeling was that if there was going to be a fight,

that a guerrilla fight gave you the opportunity...

..of never coming to a decisive engagement -

of keeping the thing going,

if necessary, for years.

Whereas, seizing the public buildings in Dublin...

..you could do nothing but sit there till you were shot out of them.

Hobson and MacNeill's protests fall on deaf ears.

In manoeuvres on Saint Patrick's Day, 1916,

5,000 members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army

marched through Dublin.

The rebel conspirators are overjoyed.

With numbers like these, a rebellion might succeed.

Immediately, Pearse announces further manoeuvres

for the coming Easter weekend.

It is a perennial mystery that the British authorities,

at various levels, have information coming in

right, left and centre.

Quite apart from the obviously rebellious behaviour

of the Volunteers and the Citizen Army,

who are more or less practising having a rebellion in March,

on Patrick's Day, when they occupy the city.

It's a racist view, I guess, of the Irish.

"There may be some scuffles in the street, but it'll all be over."

This is part of the British official mind in Dublin,

that not only can the Irish not run a government,

which was part of the whole

argument against Home Rule,

but they can't organise anything.

By and large, most of the Volunteer leaders outside Dublin

didn't know what was being planned -

and, of course, some of them didn't feel that the idea

of an unprovoked insurrection was a good idea.

But by the time you get to Good Friday,

increasingly the word is out,

and people have realised that it's not just a mobilisation,

and rumours are spreading.

And as soon as this happens, figures like Eoin MacNeill and Bulmer Hobson

begin to organise themselves

to stop the rebellion taking place.

Realising that the mobilisation is, in fact, a cover

for full-scale rebellion,

MacNeill tells Pearse that he will do everything

to prevent the Rising -

short of informing the British authorities in Dublin Castle.

But Pearse, Clarke and Connolly are convinced the time has come.

All they need now are the guns.

With only two days to go before the Rising,

Casement is finally on his way from Germany on a U-boat.

Following close behind is the Aud, a cargo ship

carrying 20,000 rifles

and a million rounds of ammunition for the rebellion.

Bad, utterly cock-up communications.

They were not met, and arrived off the coast.

Casement, coming in his submarine,

likewise arrived unannounced.

He was arrested, and the captain of the Aud, on being discovered,

scuttled the ship.

So the ship and the arms were lost,

and the British were alerted that something was going to happen.

Hearing the weapons had been lost,

MacNeill is now convinced that the Rising has no chance of succeeding.

On MacNeill's orders, The O'Rahilly drives to Cork,

Kerry and Limerick to spread the news that the Rising is off.

The next day, Easter Sunday, April 23rd -

the very day the Rising is set to begin -

MacNeill publishes a countermanding order

in the Sunday Independent newspaper.

More than half of the Irish Volunteers

who had been expected to mobilise stay home.

Gathered in Liberty Hall,

the rebel leaders are dismayed by MacNeill's order.

The mood, it seems, was extraordinarily low

in terms of morale, despair,

utter devastation, silence...

There was mobilisation, of course, because large numbers

of the Volunteers didn't see the counter-order.

You had large numbers in different parts of the country

turning up, not knowing what they were to do next.

But as Sunday wore on, the despair of the morning gave way

to an urgency - and, some said, a certain eerie exhilaration.

I walked over to Liberty Hall...

..when I went in, there was my father.

He looked at me...

and I said to him, "Daddy, are you not going to fight?"

And he turned to me and two big tears roll down his cheeks.

He says, "If we don't fight, Nora...

"..we can only pray for an earthquake to come

"and swallow us and our shame."

It wasn't planned to be a gesture.

It was planned to be as effective, militarily, as it was possible

to conceive in the circumstances.

But if it had to be a gesture, then so be it.

Striking a losing blow is better than striking no blow at all.

In Liberty Hall, the Proclamation,

which has been drafted by Pearse,

with contributions from Connolly, Clarke, MacDonagh,

and others on the Military Council, is being printed.

The Rising...

will go ahead.

Easter Monday, April 1916.

Early morning. The streets of Dublin are quiet.

Most people are at home enjoying the public holiday.

Others, among them government officials and British Army officers,

have already left the city for the races at Fairyhouse in County Meath.

Around the city, dispatch riders cycle furiously

from house to house, spreading the word.

The long-awaited rebellion is about to begin.

We knew something was going to happen

because there was... that feeling in the air.

From all over Dublin, small groups comprising the Irish Volunteers,

the Irish Citizen Army, and the women's organization Cumann na mBan

are moving toward the city.

Due to the countermanding order,

only 2,000 men and women have answered the call.

At least 4,000 had been expected.

The countermanding order has caused so much confusion

around the country that the Rising will be confined mostly to Dublin.

The poet Patrick Pearse

and the socialist leader James Connolly

lead 200 men and women out of Liberty Hall,

headed for the GPO -

Dublin's General Post Office - on O'Connell Street.

The company of Volunteers came up the street,

and as soon as they came opposite the Post Office,

they got the order, and wheeled left into the Post Office.

Round about midday, the door was banged open and a number of men -

round about 20 - came into the room

dressed in green uniforms,

with rifles in their hand.

They ordered everybody to get out immediately.

Now cleared of staff and customers,

the GPO becomes the headquarters of the rebellion,

with Pearse as acting president,

and Connolly as commander in chief of military operations.

On hearing that the Rising is going ahead

regardless of his efforts to stop it,

The O'Rahilly drives to the GPO to join the fight.

Having helped to wind the clock, he is now determined to hear it strike,

and reaches the GPO to witness Patrick Pearse emerge

to read the Proclamation reclaiming the foundation of an Irish Republic.

"Irishmen and Irishwomen.

"In the name of God and of 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.

"In every generation the Irish people

"have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty,"

"and we declare the right of the people of Ireland

"to the ownership of Ireland."

"The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty,

"equal rights, and equal opportunities to all its citizens."

There's no question that Connolly and Pearse,

after the shenanigans of the previous few days,

that they were damn glad to reach the day

that they were actually there.

At long last, the curtain is opening - we're on stage.

Beidh cuimhneamh ar an la seo -

this day will be remembered.

The rebels spread out and take control

of several strategic buildings across the city centre,

including the Four Courts on the banks of the River Liffey,

and Boland's Mills to the south.

The plan is to lock-in, wait for the British to attack,

and resist for as long as possible.

They know the longer they can hold out,

the greater their chance of galvanising Irish and world opinion

to the cause of independence.

As they move towards their positions,

a small detachment of the Irish Citizen Army,

led by well-known actor Sean Connolly,

and radical feminist Helena Molony, approaches the centre

of the British administration in Ireland - Dublin Castle.

We went right up to the castle gate...

..and then a police sergeant came out.

When Connolly went to go past him, the officer put out his hand.

Connolly shot him.

GUNSHOT RINGS OUT

The man Connolly shoots is sergeant James O'Brien.

He is the first fatality of the Rising.

O'Brien is an Irishman from County Limerick.

Inside Dublin Castle, the most senior British official in Ireland -

Matthew Nathan - is reviewing security

with his head of intelligence, Major Ivor Price.

He is completely unaware that the rebellion has started.

I ran to see a policeman lying in a pool of blood,

and half a dozen Volunteers in green coats dashing about.

I fired a few shots from my revolver.

GUNFIRE

Soldiers fire,

and Connolly takes the Irish citizen army out of Dublin Castle

and the castle stays intact.

Dublin Castle in 1916 was defended by six soldiers.

It would have been a shout

that goes round the world, "Dublin Castle has been seized."

Maybe they felt there was too many people there,

but that raises the question, was there any reconnaissance done?

Did anyone go out and spy out the lie of the land?

Led by British Army veteran Michael Mallin,

the Irish Citizen Army begins to fortify St Stephen's Green,

commandeering vehicles,

barricading entry points.

Once Stephen's Green has been taken by the Irish Citizen Army

they do two main things - they start building barricades,

secondly they start digging trenches,

which speaks to this military innocence in a way.

If you want to hold the green

you would take the rooftops of those buildings,

you would not build trenches in the green.

Later in the day they're joined by Constance Markievicz,

wealthy socialist and prominent radical nationalist.

When they march off to begin their revolution,

somebody asks Countess Markievicz

if she's taking part in a rehearsal for something.

And when the first copies of the proclamation are stuck up

by Sean T O'Kelly on lampposts with flour paste,

somebody passing by says, "Is that a playbill?"

Which I always think is rather emblematic

of what is a very theatrical production.

An old man tries to retrieve his cart from a barricade

in Stephen's Green.

After repeated warnings, he is shot dead by one of the rebels.

GUNSHOT

After some odd adventures, I got as far as Jacob's

and, by God, there was a hostile crowd there,

calling on the lads inside, "Come out you lot of effing slackers,

"if you want to fight, go out and fight in France," and all this.

They were waving Union Jacks and God knows what.

There are 25,000 Dubliners serving in the British Army

during the First World War.

One in five of them are killed.

There are, of course, going to be those hugely angry for that reason.

You also had the Separation Women,

who were in receipt of allowances through the post offices

from their husbands who were fighting in World War I,

and they were enraged by the fact that they couldn't get their money

because somebody wanted to die for Ireland -

they had no interest in dying for Ireland,

they wanted their money to rear their children.

On O'Connell Street, reports of a disturbance

brings a company of British Army Lancers onto the street.

It was obvious they were going to

have the cavalry charge down the street.

And suddenly there's this volley of gunfire,

horses are taken down, men are killed -

the Rising has moved into a real stage where

there's no turning back now.

Isolated at the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park,

the Viceroy, Lord Wimborne, is in a state of panic.

Convinced by intelligence reports

that the Germans are behind the rebellion

and that worse is to come,

he declares martial law in Dublin for the first time in 100 years.

He appeals to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in London

for immediate military support.

The initial response is surprisingly muted.

Earlier in the day, the Germans launched Zeppelin raids

on English cities in Kent and Essex,

while their battleships bombard towns on England's coast.

It takes time for events in Dublin to capture Asquith's attention,

but when Britain's response finally comes,

it is massive and resolute.

Late on Tuesday night, thousands of soldiers arrive at Liverpool docks

and board ship, bound for Ireland.

Early Wednesday morning, thousands of British soldiers

land at South Dublin's Kingstown Harbour.

Among them are two battalions of Sherwood Foresters,

young infantrymen so raw they have to be shown

how to load and fire their guns on the pier.

Some even think they've arrived at the Western Front in France.

The Sherwoods are split into two groups,

one marches towards Dublin through the leafy suburb of Ballsbridge.

The rebel commander at Boland's Mill's garrison,

Eamon de Valera, a mathematics teacher, has set up outposts

covering Mount Street Bridge and Northumberland Road.

We knew that number 25 was being held by only two men,

Michael Malone and Jim Grace.

Around about one o'clock in the day we heard the noise of marching men

and looked out and here we saw, as we thought, the whole British Army

coming in, and they were marching along, quite unconcerned...

..and the men in number 25 waited until they got

to the junction of Haddington Road and Northumberland Road.

SHOTS FIRE

When they came under fire it was complete chaos.

Clearly nobody knew what to do.

A lot of soldiers are killed on the spot

and they had no idea where the firing was coming from.

The sound echoes across all the surrounding buildings,

you just can't tell where it's coming from.

Well, we thought there were probably 200 or 300.

Their fire was so good and so accurate

that they misled the troops as to the numbers.

From their outpost at Clanwilliam House on the far side of the canal,

the rebels will have any soldiers

who reach Mount Street Bridge in range.

When they came in our view then we opened fire.

They charged about seven or eight at a time

across the bridge, but they never crossed the bridge.

Eventually the British traced the sniper fire

in Northumberland Road to the upper floor window of number 25.

It would have been between half past six and seven -

it was still bright - when they made an almighty rush

and they got up the steps

and they threw a bomb at the door and we heard an explosion

and we saw a bright light and we knew it was the end of those two.

In the end 230 British soldiers are dead or wounded.

The rebels lose just four men.

By now, four 18 pound field guns stationed by the British

at Trinity College have begun shelling the city.

After a couple of very bruising encounters,

it's clear that the British forces will not attempt a frontal charge

on any of the fixed positions of the Volunteers.

Instead what they will do

is they will draw a ring of steel around them

and basically tighten that ring...

..so that the rebels will eventually see that they have no option

but to surrender or die.

The British sail a gunboat, the Helga, up the River Liffey,

and begin shelling O'Connell Street and the GPO.

EXPLOSIONS

EXPLOSIONS

The assault intensifies

as the British systematically close down the city.

Outside the GPO, as Connolly tries to link with an outpost,

a sniper's bullet rips into his ankle.

With some difficulty he manages to drag himself back inside the GPO.

Fire spreads rapidly from building to building

on the densely-packed commercial street.

As far as we could see, the sky was just one enormous mass of flame.

Tremendous, enormous mass of flame.

And we felt that the whole centre of the city

was being destroyed by fire.

With parts of the GPO already on fire,

Volunteer Eamon Dore has a meal with some fellow rebels.

The post office was, of course, completely on fire at the time,

it hadn't come quite down to our room

but it was all around us, though.

I asked Tom Clarke, I said, "What would you do if we won?"

Well, he said, "We won't win this time."

I said, "IF we won, what would you do?"

He said, "I'd get a small cottage with a big wall round it

"and I'd grow flowers."

At 2am on Friday morning,

the newly appointed military governor of Ireland,

General Sir John Maxwell,

sails up the Liffey into Dublin.

"It looked as if the entire centre of Dublin was in flames.

"When we got to North Wall, bullets were flying about -

"the crackle of musketry and machinegun fire

"breaking out every other minute.

"I think the signs are that the rebels have had enough.

"I will know for certain tonight."

The garrison in the Four Courts under the command

of 25-year-old Edward Daly has been surrounded.

Daly and the Volunteers are involved in fierce fighting

with the British along North King Street.

Days of fighting have cost the British dearly,

with the loss of 11 men and 32 wounded.

When they finally gain control of the street,

their retaliation on some local residents is merciless.

"The men were brought into the back.

"We heard poor Christie pleading for his father's life.

" 'Oh, don't kill Father.'

"Shots rang out."

That night, in houses along North King Street,

British soldiers execute 15 innocent civilians.

Pearse ordered the garrison be assembled in the main hall

of the GPO on Friday afternoon.

We knew that the end was near and he said, then, that...

"Win it we will, although we may win it in death."

By Friday evening it is clear that the GPO must be evacuated.

The O'Rahilly volunteers to lead in advance party down Moore Street,

to set up a position to provide cover for the next wave of rebels

abandoning the GPO.

But the British are waiting.

They waited until the last of us came around the corner

from Henry Street, and then they let it all loose on us.

Incessant heavy fire.

An awful lot fell near me - three or four of my friends.

Lieutenant Paddy Shortis -

I had chummed up with him only the previous day -

we were friends for a very brief duration,

he was shot dead beside me, and two or three others.

Myself and about six others veered to the left-hand side of the street

and The O'Rahilly was well in front and was shot there.

I saw him fall on his face

and the sword fall out of his hand.

And I saw him then turn on his left side,

he was in great pain and he made the sign of the cross.

When Pearse and the remaining rebels evacuate the GPO,

they, too, come under heavy fire

and are forced to take cover in houses in Moore Street.

By daybreak on Saturday,

the commander of the British forces in Ireland, Brigadier-General Lowe,

has effectively cordoned off the city centre.

The noose has closed.

In a building on Moore Street, Padraig Pearse sees something

that finally convinces him to end the fight.

On the street outside three old men lie dead...

..holding white flags in their hands.

This, according to Sean Mac Diarmada is the moment that Pearse decides

to save the lives of further civilians

by calling an end to the Rising.

At 2:30pm, Pearse meets Lowe at the top of Moore Street,

presenting his sword, and with it the formal, unconditional surrender

of the Provisional Irish Government and the Irish Republican Army.

The Irish Republic has lasted for just six days.

Though sporadic resistance continues,

by Sunday, all the main rebel garrisons have surrendered.

Gravely injured, Connolly is moved to a hospital ward in Dublin Castle.

The other leaders, along with many of the rebels,

are taken to Richmond Barracks.

Hundreds of us, very dishevelled men, I remember.

Unshaven, soiled, tired-looking

but a marvellous spirit of defiance.

It seems very eerie going down such a silent O'Connell Street.

There was hardly a sound, and at the GPO, smoke still rising from it.

I thought to myself, that's like our dreams, in ruins now.

As the smoke rises from the devastated city centre

the immediate cost is clear.

65 rebels and 140 British troops are dead...

but by far the largest group of casualties are Dublin civilians.

At least 300 men, women and children have lost their lives.

The word chivalry has often been used

in relation to the conduct of the fight.

I don't think you can make a sweeping assertion

about the conduct of the fight -

particularly when you consider that there were in the region

of 40 children killed over the course of Easter week 1916.

Those children did not ask to die for Ireland.

There was a whole series of demonstrations

while we were marched down.

Some of the women there shouted all sorts of expletives at us,

told the soldiers to "shoot the bastards".

So I can say this much, definitely, that the Rising in Dublin

was not popular in 1916.

Mainstream nationalist Ireland deeply disapproved.

Not only was the action condemned as a stab in the back,

a treachery, irresponsible and worse,

but there were further calls

for the most severe penalties to be meted out to the ringleaders.

By now Ireland is being governed under martial law

by British General Sir John Maxwell.

Maxwell is in no mood for mercy.

He rounds up the rank and file of the Irish Volunteers

and the Irish Citizen Army and sends them to prison camps in Britain.

The leaders would be court-martialled.

Asquith's eldest son, his most brilliant son, Raymond,

he was killed in the Great War.

Many of his cabinet ministers had lost sons by 1916,

and, therefore,

what's the execution of the Irish leaders in 1916,

when people are being killed

in their hundreds, their thousands, every day?

And that, I think...

it coarsens the British reaction to 1916,

it blunts their political antennae.

The first to face Britain's justice

are Padraig Pearse, Tom Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh.

All three are found guilty of rebellion against the Crown

and sentenced to death by firing squad.

Transferred to Dublin's Kilmainham Gaol,

they were informed that they will be shot at dawn.

Their families are to be allowed one last visit.

But neither the Pearse family nor Muriel MacDonagh

receive the news in time.

A Capuchin priest, Father Aloysius, is allowed to visit.

"The bare cell was lighted from a candle

"at a small opening in the cell wall.

"I had barely light to read the ritual,

"but the man, Pearse, as he lifted up to receive his God,

"seemed to beam with light.

"The same description would apply to Thomas MacDonagh.

"Both assured me they were happy.

"I left Pearse and MacDonagh in the most edifying disposition.

"Pearse was anxious that his mother should get a letter

"he had just written."

"My dearest mother,

"I had been hoping that it would be possible to see you again,

"but it does not seem possible.

"I have just received Holy Communion.

"I am happy, except for the great grief of parting from you.

"This is the death I should have asked for

"if God had given me the choice of all deaths -

"to die a soldier's death for freedom.

"Goodbye, dear, dear mother."

That same night in a nearby cell

Thomas MacDonagh writes a note to his son.

"Don, darling little boy, remember me kindly.

"Take my hope.

"You will recognise, I think, I have done a great thing for Ireland...

"..won the first step for her freedom.

"God bless you, my son."

Only Tom Clarke's wife, Kathleen,

herself a prisoner in Dublin Castle, gets there in time.

We got about an hour.

Well, even then we didn't talk about anything about ourselves,

we talked about the future.

And the future of the country.

And he said...

"We, all of us that are going out tonight," he said,

"believe that we have saved the soul of Ireland...

"..that we have struck the first successful blow to freedom,

"but between this and freedom," he said,

"Ireland would go through hell."

"But," he said, "Ireland would never lie down again."

Three days after the Rising, the British authorities announced

that three leaders, Clarke, MacDonagh and Pearse

had been executed.

The population of Dublin were not aware of what was going on,

because the court martials were held in secret...

..and hearing volleys of shots from Kilmainham prison

was not calculated to appease the concerns

of those who knew that hundreds of people had been rounded-up

and, for all they knew, hundreds of people were going to be executed.

In the following days, the executions continue.

On Wednesday 4th, Edward Daly, Michael O'Hanrahan,

Joseph Mary Plunkett

and Pearse's younger brother, Willie, face the firing squad.

May 5th, Major John MacBride is executed.

May 8th, four more executions -

Conn Colbert, Eamonn Ceannt,

Sean Heuston and Michael Mallin.

"My darling wife, pulse of my heart...

"..this is the end of all things earthly.

"I enclose the buttons off my sleeve.

"Keep them in memory of me."

Machiavelli used to always say if you had bad news

you should get it all over in one go.

If they were going to execute, they would have been much better off

carrying out the executions one day, bang - that.

Instead of which, nobody knows what's happening,

there's very strict censorship -

and the impact upon Irish public opinion

has been well likened to watching

blood slowly seeping from under a locked prison door.

Irish politician John Dillon,

a senior figure in the Home Rule Party,

delivers an angry speech in the House of Commons

that provokes shock and outrage.

His target - the British government and its policy of retribution.

"You are letting loose a river of blood.

"It is the first rebellion that ever took place in Ireland

"where you had the majority on your side.

"It is not murderers who are being executed, it is insurgents

"who have fought a clean fight - a brave fight, however misguided."

In America, people are beginning to pay attention.

What's interesting about the coverage of the Easter Rising

in American newspapers is the extensive nature of it.

The New York Times devoted 14 days

to coverage of the Easter Rising on its front page.

Then you see American public opinion swung in favour of the Irish

and against the British.

So that you would have monster meetings,

gatherings of Irish-Americans

and those who were supporting Irish independence,

and the then ambassador from Great Britain to the United States

is watching very closely,

and right after the executions

he says that, "When they look our way,"

meaning the Irish in America, "they have blood in their eyes."

With Irish and international pressure mounting,

many rebels, including three prominent leaders,

Eamon de Valera, Countess Markievicz

and WT Cosgrave are taken off the execution list.

For the two remaining signatories of the proclamation, however,

there will be no mercy.

On 11th May, James Connolly and Sean Mac Diarmada

are court-martialled and sentenced to death by firing squad.

James Connolly is still in the Red Cross Hospital in Dublin Castle,

being treated for his wounds.

About midnight Connolly's wife, Lily,

and daughter, Nora, are brought to see him.

Well, we got ready, and we went down and we were taken in a...

an army lorry, coming down through O'Connell Street and all the...

You still smell burning and all...

they still had that

horrible smell of burning.

So when we got in to my father, he said,

"Well, Lily," he said, "I suppose you know what this means?

And she said, "Oh, no. Oh, no, not that."

He said, "Yes, Lily."

She broke down, then, and she said,

"But your beautiful life, James," she says, "your beautiful life."

He said, "Wasn't it a full life Lillian, isn't this a good end?"

And she broke, but she still cried, so he says, "Look, Lily,

"please don't cry," he says, "you'll unman me."

So she tried to control herself.

I was trying to control myself, too.

And he was trying to plan our life for after he was gone, and...

Then they told us...

time is up, and we'd have to go,

he was to be shot at dawn, you see.

On May 12th, James Connolly and Sean Mac Diarmada

are the last of the leaders to be shot by firing squad.

Having been found guilty of treason on the 3rd of August,

Roger Casement is hanged in Pentonville Prison in London.

Casement's death brings the executions to an end...

..but it also marks a beginning.

I think that Pearse imagined execution as, in fact,

a great weapon, a great rebel weapon.

"Yes, they'll kill us,

"but our fame will live on."

Execution means drama.

You might almost say, it is great theatre -

except it's great theatre where the losers die.

But the way they die,

and what they leave after them, then resonates with those to come.

Violence polarises situations, and when ordinary Irish nationalists,

people who had been hostile to the rebellion,

have to choose which side their sympathies are with,

it's not for the execution squads of the British Army

but for people who are, after all, their own blood.

People began to see the rebels differently,

they began to understand and get ideas of self-sacrifice

and heroism and courage and they began, as a result of that,

to try and understand what it was that drove them

to this extremity when it was clear that they couldn't possibly win.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What effect did the executions have on you?

The same as it had on everybody else,

made me completely and absolutely pro them,

and I became a political Irishman from that day.

The executions of the leaders did a lot of political damage,

but the arrests of a lot of ordinary people

did at least as much damage and spread it wider.

The British forces went into areas which hadn't seen an insurrection

and arrested large numbers of people in the weeks after the Rising.

They brought together people who'd never met each other,

and had no public influence before, nothing in common.

By doing so they greatly broadened the new revolutionary elite.

Late in 1916, most of the internal prisoners are set free.

The rest are released the following year.

In the months that follow, in a remarkable change of heart,

the majority sentiment comes to support the cause

for which the rebels of 1916 had fought and died.

When the Great War ends tens of thousands of Irish soldiers

return to a transformed Ireland.

Having fought under a British flag, some find themselves ostracised.

Their sacrifice at the front line no longer valued.

Others joined the republican cause

and devote themselves fully to achieving Irish independence.

In the general election of 1918, Sinn Fein,

the political party that rejects Home Rule

in favour of separatist republicanism,

wins a landslide victory,

gaining almost three quarters of the seats.

One third of the newly elected Sinn Fein representatives

had fought in 1916.

Significantly, this is the first time in Irish history

that women are given the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

In the north of Ireland,

Ulster Unionists are by far the most successful party,

setting the scene for the future partition of the island.

Refusing to take their seats in the parliament in London,

on the 21st of January, 1919,

the elected Sinn Fein representatives not imprisoned

gather at Dublin's Mansion house,

where they declare an Irish Republic,

establishing the first independent Irish parliament,

which they name Dail Eireann.

The Irish people have asserted their democratic right

to govern themselves.

Ireland's future,

as she takes her place among the free nations of the world,

will involve a protracted and, at times, disillusioning process.

It will bring a guerrilla war...

..negotiations,

compromises...

..a bitter civil war...

..and the partitioning of Ireland,

with six counties of Ulster to be called Northern Ireland,

remaining within the United Kingdom.

The rebellion leaves behind

a complex and, at times, contested legacy.

And yet, with 1916, the decisive step had been taken.

Its historical significance would reverberate around the world,

providing a catalyst for the irreversible dismantling

of old colonial powers throughout the rest of the century.

You can almost feel, in 1916,

the clock of civilisation is beginning to turn.

The old British Empire is beginning to come apart at the seams...

..and part of that is the 1916 Rising. Why?

It's the first time since America in 1776

that, almost at the heart of their Empire, there's a resistance.

And the rest of the 20th century the sound of the globe

is of bits of the Empire falling off and the huge British dominance

across the globe beginning to shrink back to its old island basis.

100 years on, the ideals that animated the men and women of 1916,

ideas of freedom, equality and civil and religious liberty

continue to exercise, challenge and inspire us today...

..and may well resonate among the generations of the future.

"The Proclamation, it lives.

"From minds alive with Ireland's visit intellect it sprang.

"Such documents do not die."

"We have done right.

"People will say hard things of us now

"but later on they will praise us.

"Do not grieve for all this.

"Think of it as a sacrifice which God asked of me...

"and of you."