Brendan O'Carroll: My Family at War

This programme contains some strong language.

Hello, ladies. Can I just slip this on for a second?

My show Mrs Brown's Boys and the character of Mrs Brown

are deeply rooted in the city of Dublin.

Agnes Brown is a true Dubliner, as am I.

One, two.

And ours is a city with an extraordinary tale to tell.

Exactly 100 years ago, in Easter week 1916,

a band of Irish rebels

seized control of prominent buildings in inner Dublin.

For six days they held out against the might of the British Empire

before they were shelled into surrender.

The Easter Rising sent shock waves through the Empire

and signalled the birth of today's Irish Republic.

My relationship with the 1916 Rising is personal.

Three of the rebels who held Dublin city that week

were my uncles - Liam, Peadar and Jim, who was just 17.

The funny thing is that nobody in my family

really spoke about what my uncles did in 1916.

Oh, I knew about the Rising and I learned about the Rising, but...

..I never knew anything about my family's part in it.

So on this, the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising,

I'm going to retrace my uncles' steps

and in doing so tell you the story of 1916.

And it's an extraordinary story,

a story of subterfuge, of violence,

of cockups, catastrophes...

..but also one of idealism and sacrifice.

# ..the foggy dew. #

Dublin is my home town.

I'm always delighted by the warmth of the reaction I get here.

-It's like this is unreal.

-Isn't it?

-Yeah. Oh, my God. Meeting you!

At the moment, the centenary of the Easter Rising

is absolutely everywhere.

And just when you think you can get away from it

by going into a shop to get a bit of chocolate... Uh-uh.

They've got Easter Rising chocolate, as well.

-When somebody says 1916, what do you think of?

-The Easter Rising.

Are you excited about celebrating it?

Yeah, I think we should be celebrating it.

And, do you think, was it an important time?

Aye, it was very important.

Oh, for sure, yeah. We have to celebrate it.

Yeah, especially all the happenings that went on and everything.

Do your family ever talk about the Rising? Your grandad or your...?

My grandad, yeah. Quite a bit.

His, er... His dad was in it.

It's worth marking because it was a pivotal moment in our history.

Given its popularity today,

the remarkable thing about the Easter Rising is that,

militarily, it was an absolute failure.

It only took off in Dublin,

not the rest of the country.

And within six days,

the British authorities were back in complete control.

Another extraordinary thing is that, at the time...

..it wasn't even popular with ordinary Dubliners,

never mind the rest of the country.

A lot of people thought that the rebels themselves were mad.

So the question is this...

How did a rising with such little popular support

and even less chance of success

get started in the first place?

And then, how did that go on to become central

to the heart and soul of modern Ireland?

Oh, and...what part did my family play in it?

TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC

-David.

-Yes, punter.

Er...

A pint of dark.

Our story begins four years before the Easter Rising,

in the autumn of 1912.

At the time, my father and his family

were living above the O'Carroll hardware shop in Dublin's Northside.

This is the family, my family.

That's my dad.

That's my grandparents.

The ones we're going to concentrate on mainly are Liam, Jim and Peadar.

That's Micheal.

He was too young during the Rising to really take part.

Well, they say too young. But I just don't think his mammy would let him.

But the other three did.

For generations, my family had been committed rebels.

Unlike today, the Ireland they lived in

was all part of the United Kingdom.

But my family came from a long tradition of Irish nationalists,

who wanted Ireland to be an independent country.

Ireland was first invaded by England as far back as the 12th century.

Irish nationalists believed that

the 700 years of British rule that followed

had been bad for the Irish people.

They had collective memories

of the native Catholic population being oppressed,

of the poor being forced from their homes in land wars

and a million people starving

in the Great Famine of the mid-19th century.

Over the centuries,

the Irish had staged repeated failed rebellions,

and though their leaders had become martyrs

to the cause of Irish freedom,

Britain remained firmly in control.

Or so it seemed.

Nothing represented British power in Ireland more than this...

Dublin Castle.

I'm here to meet Fintan O'Toole,

who knows just how the Irish felt about British rule.

-Fintan, how are you?

-Hiya, Brendan. How are you?

-Good to see you.

-You, too.

Well, here we are.

-Yeah.

-The site of the power of Britain.

I'm trying to get some context on this journey I'm going to start on

in retracing my uncles' steps.

Was there a genuine feeling by Irish people of being under the yoke?

Oh, yeah.

The people who were running this show...

-You have the Lord Lieutenant, the Viceroy, he's always English.

-Yeah.

The Chief Secretary, who's really like the Prime Minister...

-TOGETHER:

-Always English.

So it feels like an English administration.

It's like, you know, how would English people feel

if London was being run by all these Paddies going over

and who were not just digging the roads and the tunnels,

but were actually running the show?

Technically, Ireland was exactly the same

as England and Wales and Scotland.

It was all part of the United Kingdom. We were all equal.

It didn't feel like that.

I mean, for a lot of Irish people,

being part of the United Kingdom just wasn't working.

If you were to walk five minutes from here,

you have the worst slums in Europe.

This was a city of really appalling poverty.

There had to be huge resentment.

There's a deep resentment.

You know, and it's kind of under the surface a lot of the time.

But it's always there.

Despite the discontent, there seemed little chance of another rebellion.

And most people saw independence as a pipe dream.

Instead, the majority of Irish people took a pragmatic approach,

backing a long campaign

to run more of their own affairs through self-government.

Or Home Rule, as it was called.

In 1912, MPs in Westminster finally agreed.

But Protestants in the north of Ireland,

who saw themselves as British,

felt threatened by the prospect of Home Rule.

A new parliament in Dublin would have a Catholic majority.

They decided to oppose it and formed a militia to resist the change -

the Ulster Volunteer Force.

The rest of Ireland was outraged.

Their goal of Home Rule was in jeopardy.

To defend Home Rule, in the autumn of 1913, Eoin MacNeill,

a history professor in Dublin, founded another militia...

..the Irish Volunteers.

Decades after the Easter Rising,

the Irish government took eyewitness testimonies from those involved

in the fight for independence,

including my uncle Liam.

His account begins with the first meeting

of Eoin MacNeill's Irish Volunteers

in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin.

I know my uncle Liam was at that meeting

because of this account he left.

Now, I know a bit about my uncle Peadar

and a bit about my uncle Jim's involvement in 1916

but, really, because of this account,

I know most about uncle Liam.

So it's him I'm going to follow most closely.

Eoin MacNeill and the other organisers of the Irish Volunteers

were astonished when 8,000 people turned up for the first meeting.

Historian Diarmaid Ferriter will tell us what happened that night.

-How are you?

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you.

Thanks for this. I appreciate it.

So you've got the 25th November, 1913.

Tuesday evening.

What's it looking like to you? What's happening here?

I would say the atmosphere here was fervent. It's electric.

There's a bit of tension around.

There are people banging, trying to get in.

Some of the speakers can't be heard above the din.

And there's constant requests to calm down.

-There was music.

-There was music?

-There was music, yeah.

There was a brass and reed band here.

-St James' brass and reed band.

-I love It!

There was a special gallery reserved for women.

-I could have done a gig.

-You could have done.

"I know you're going to have a revolution,

"but here's one or two jokes I want to tell you before you start."

You had that, as well. It is a fervent atmosphere.

OK, my uncle Liam was a 19-year-old young man.

So would he have been of the view,

are people in general here of the view,

-that what they were starting here was a rebellion?

-No.

Not at all. This is not about starting a rebellion.

This is about defending what has been promised - Home Rule -

the idea that, because the Ulster Volunteer Force

has been formed to resist Home Rule,

we have to have our own organisation in the south

to defend the imposition of Home Rule.

Somebody like your uncle, who's thinking,

"Right, is this the beginning of something special?

"Could I be a part of something new?"

Even the whole idea of getting a Volunteer uniform...

-Oh!

-..which eventually comes a couple of months later.

-And marching and...

-And marching and parading

and then the prospect, maybe, of getting arms.

-I mean, that's a very exciting thing for young people.

-Yeah.

But the reality is that the atmosphere

has really got tense

and Ireland is on the verge of civil war,

because what you have now,

with the establishment of the Irish Volunteers,

are two militia organisations.

They don't have arms yet,

but they're going to have them within the year.

What are the British doing?

What are they doing about these two armed militias in,

well, part of the Empire?

The British government is doing very little.

-I could put it in a ruder way.

-Yeah, do.

What the British government is doing is sweet FA.

But there are understandable reasons for that.

If you're going to move against either the Ulster Volunteers

or the Irish Volunteers or both,

what kind of carnage is going to ensue?

And will it be worth intervention?

But before things came to a head, the First World War was declared.

Home Rule was shelved.

Britain now had much bigger problems than Ireland.

Irish men, including those who had joined the two opposing militias,

were urged to enlist in the British Army.

Over the course of the war, 140,000 joined up.

Among those who did not enlist were committed Irish nationalists,

including my uncle Liam and his younger brothers.

They chose to remain in the now depleted Irish Volunteers.

Just a month after the declaration of war,

the seeds of the future rebellion were sown.

Unbeknownst to the leader

of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill,

there was a tiny group of men within his organisation

who had a secret agenda.

As well as being in the Volunteers,

these men were also members of a clandestine society

of extreme nationalists called the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Their aim was to achieve not Home Rule

but a wholly independent Ireland.

On the 9th September, 1914,

they attended a top-secret meeting in Dublin.

Present at the meeting that night were people whose names

were to go on to become famous in Irish history.

Patrick Pearse.

Thomas Clarke.

James Connolly.

But that was all in the future.

For now, a decision had to be made.

At that meeting, they decided to stage a rising.

Some might think it was terrible, even treacherous

to plan an insurrection when England was at war.

That wasn't the mind-set of these men.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood had an old adage...

"England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity."

That meant that, given their vastly superior strength,

the only real time Ireland could strike for independence

was if England was distracted.

The European war was the ultimate distraction.

To these men gathered,

doing nothing would be shameful.

The conspirators believed that,

if they could stage a dramatic revolt,

it would win the support of the Irish people

by reigniting the age-old dream of an independent Ireland.

A military council was formed, consisting ultimately of seven men,

among them poets and playwrights.

This somewhat unlikely group, operating in extreme secrecy,

would plan the Rising.

Their aim was to use Eoin MacNeill's Irish Volunteers

not against the Ulster Volunteer Force,

but as a rebel army against the British.

But knowing the more moderate MacNeill

would never support an unprovoked revolt,

they would have to go behind his back.

Their plan for the Rising was bold.

On Easter Sunday, 1916,

the Volunteers would be instructed to launch a surprise attack

across the whole country.

In Dublin, they would garrison

prominent buildings and surrounding areas,

in a ring around the city centre,

then wait for the British to counterattack.

To ensure secrecy,

the Volunteers would not be told of the planned rebellion

until the very last moment.

THE CHILDREN RECITE FROM A BOOK

At the heart of the conspiracy was a headmaster - Patrick Pearse.

He's now a national hero in Ireland and the school he ran is a museum.

Pearse was a passionate advocate of Irish culture

and the Irish language.

Hello, girls.

-GIRLS:

-Hi, Mrs Brown!

HE CHUCKLES

How are you doing? So what do you know about this place?

We know that Patrick Pearse ran the school first and then his sister.

-Do you think he was an important man, Patrick Pearse?

-Yes.

If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have this country,

because he fought for Ireland and he taught the children in Irish.

Pearse's school reflected his nationalism and his idealism.

Brian Crowley is the curator of the museum.

Pearse was very anxious that his school

would be very different than other schools.

Like, for him, education should be an inspirational experience.

He doesn't exactly sound like the kind of man

who's sitting down to plan a war.

Erm, no.

I think he was probably, in some ways,

a very unlikely kind of military figure.

But if you read his writings,

there is this kind of idealisation of military sacrifice,

of being a revolutionary.

It's a very kind of romantic, theatrical idea

about what that might be like.

And he's very much aware that every generation, nearly, in Ireland

made some gesture towards revolution

and that if his generation didn't do that,

then that generation would be the ones that have let go

of this kind of dream of an independent Ireland.

I think Pearse felt that this was his moment,

this was his moment of destiny.

Pearse, who had a key role in the Irish Volunteers

as Director of Military Organisation,

gave public speeches.

My uncle Liam, who by now had an inkling a revolt was being planned,

remembered hearing him speak.

My uncle Liam spent quite a bit of time

taking notes as Pearse was speaking.

And I think Liam would have followed Pearse anywhere.

You do get a sense from those who kind of knew him

that the idealisation, almost, of Pearse that they have

really seems to be very characteristic

of his effect on people.

This is a person that people will follow.

But the Military Council needed more than Pearse's charisma

to give the Rising a chance of success.

They needed weapons.

And this was a serious problem.

Arms had been smuggled into Ireland,

but nowhere near enough for all the Volunteers.

Some were training with pikes and hurling sticks.

Only one third had real guns.

The armoury at the National Museum of Ireland

holds many of the weapons that remain from that period.

Lar Joye is in charge of them.

Liam mentions in his account,

"We had a number of Howth guns."

Howth guns, yeah. You find this one here, this is a Howth rifle.

A German-made gun. Probably made around 1870.

An antique, in many ways. A single shot.

So you're loading every single time. You have to load, fire, load again.

So compared to what the British Army would have had at the time,

which was a Lee-Enfield rifle,

-which could fire 16 or 17 rounds...

-This is a Lee-Enfield?

This is the famous Lee-Enfield, which the British Army were using.

An amazing sniping weapon.

I know the Volunteers had some Lee-Enfields.

In his account, Liam said they often bought guns from British soldiers,

and in fact he said that his father, my grandfather,

they had a shop in Manor Street,

and he used to buy guns off the soldiers.

They'd come in with a package

-and he'd give them a few bob.

-No, that's very, very common.

I mean, the Volunteers are desperate to get weapons.

They're trying to import them.

And that's the problem of being on an island,

you're always having to import them.

But the organisation in Ireland

that has ready availability of these weapons is the British Army.

-Were the British not worried about this?

-This was a big problem.

They were trying to stop it.

But the reality is, soldiers in the British Army,

they're looking for money.

I mean, that's how guns were circulated around the city.

A few black-market guns weren't enough for a rebellion.

So the Military Council approached Britain's adversary...

Germany.

Two weeks before Easter, the Germans dispatched a ship to Ireland.

On board were 20,000 rifles, ten machineguns

and one million rounds of ammunition.

It was due to arrive just before the Rising.

In Dublin, Patrick Pearse issued a mobilisation order,

calling all Volunteers to parade on Easter Sunday,

billing it as an important but regular training session.

Then disaster struck.

The British captured the boat bringing the guns from Germany.

And worse, the secret plans for rebellion leaked to Eoin MacNeill,

Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers.

MacNeill set off to confront Pearse.

The two men had known each other for years.

MacNeill could scarcely believe Pearse had been plotting

to use the Volunteers behind his back.

At two o'clock in the morning on Good Friday,

MacNeill stormed up to Pearse's school.

MacNeill arrives here in Pearse's study.

Pearse comes clean about the rebellion.

And MacNeill is furious at being used.

A huge row breaks out.

MacNeill tells Pearse he will not back any rebellion

that could lead to such loss of life.

And he says, "I will do everything I can to stop it."

The next day, MacNeill issued a countermanding order.

"Volunteers completely deceived.

"All orders for tomorrow Sunday are entirely cancelled."

Couriers set off to carry the message all around Ireland.

The following morning, Easter Sunday morning, the 23rd April,

the date set for the Rising...

..it became clear that MacNeill had gone one step further

than just sending out couriers with messages.

He took an advert in the Sunday Independent.

"No parades.

"Irish Volunteer marches cancelled. A sudden order."

It certainly was!

"Owing to the very critical position,

"all orders given to Irish Volunteers

"for tomorrow, Easter Sunday,

"are hereby rescinded,

"and no parades, marches or other movements of Irish Volunteers

"will take place.

"Each individual Volunteer will obey this order strictly

"and in every particular.

"Signed Eoin MacNeill, Chief of Staff, Irish Volunteers."

Well, Uncle Liam was just as confused as everybody else.

In his account he writes,

"On Sunday morning, there was general confusion..."

Uh-huh!

"..because the position was that we had orders to mobilise.

"We got the contradictory orders in the Sunday Independent

"and nobody knew what to obey.

"I went here, there and yonder

"to try and get some definite information."

He's running around the city trying to find out what's happening.

This extraordinary chain of events

meant that any hope of a major mobilisation was now gone.

Effectively, the revolution had been cancelled

by an ad in the newspaper.

I swear, you couldn't make it up!

Devastated by the ad, the Military Council had a crisis meeting.

The German arms were lost, the mobilisation cancelled,

but even now they never considered abandoning the planned rebellion.

For them, the point of the Rising was to rise.

They'd chosen Easter as the perfect time

to resurrect the Irish people's desire for independence.

They resolved to go ahead with the revolt the following day...

Easter Monday.

Easter Monday, 1916, dawned bright and sunny.

So here we are - Stoneybatter.

Stoneybatter in Dublin. Cowtown they used to call it.

My family lived here for years, generations.

It's a busy street now,

but that Monday morning,

Easter Monday in 1916,

it would have been dead quiet.

A courier came and knocked at number 92.

He bangs on the door.

Grandad is heading for the door, but they're not looking for him.

They're looking for the three boys, because the order is in...

"Stand to arms. Today's the day."

After the disappointment of the previous day,

I don't know whether they were excited or...

..or scared.

My dad was five or six years of age, thereabouts.

So he probably was just kissing them goodbye or waving them off.

If anybody had been standing on this side of the street...

..they would have saw three soldiers walking out that door.

But on the other side of the door, my grandad saw his three sons...

..heading off and not knowing if they're going to come back.

Easter Monday, 1916,

whatever way we look at it, it was a big day for the O'Carrolls.

Through the smiling, sun-drenched bank-holiday crowds,

my uncles made their way to their designated meeting points.

Jim went to join his unit, while Liam and Peadar,

who were both in the same company,

headed to their drill hall.

They arrived to find

that only one third of the battalion had turned up.

Because of the confusion of the previous day,

many Volunteers had missed the new orders to muster.

In charge of the battalion was Commandant Ned Daly.

Helen Litton is Ned Daly's great-niece.

Lovely to meet you and thanks very much for meeting me here.

So, Helen, your great-uncle Ned

stands up in front of this depleted group.

How did he address them? What did he say to them?

Well, Ned addressed his men and told them

that they were going out to fight,

that this was not just a drill or an exercise,

that they were about to fight for Ireland's freedom

and that they should be ready to go out and fight

the greatest empire in the world and we were starting now.

Quite a lot of them were taken by surprise.

They'd joined the Volunteers for the crack.

-To hang out with the lads.

-Exactly.

But they didn't necessarily see themselves giving their lives.

-Ned offered them the opportunity to leave.

-He did, did he?

-He did, yes.

-Oh, yes.

-And some left?

-And some left. Yes.

-How old was Ned?

-Ned was 25.

That's young.

I just can't even picture what it's like to be 25 years of age

and have the lives...of 300 men in your hands.

Well, he'd always wanted to be a soldier.

He was very young to be a commandant.

But clearly, he had proved his worth,

that he could command the men.

And one of them wrote, "He never raised his voice,

"but you wouldn't disobey him."

I think Liam and Peadar were in good hands.

Well, I think so, yes. He knew what he was doing.

I can't imagine what it would have been like in a hall like this

with these guys in formation

and then a 25-year-old man tells them

that we're about to go out that door now

and take on the British Empire.

Not only that, but with only a third of the men

they were supposed to have.

They shouldered their guns and they marched out the door

to a rising that surely they must have known had no chance of success.

Oh, well, when you're young, you don't think that way, I think.

They were young and enthusiastic and optimistic.

-Invincible.

-Yes, exactly.

Meanwhile, all around the city

other ordinary members of the Irish Volunteers

also became rebels by agreeing to take part in the Rising.

The largest contingent, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly,

marched down the main street, past Dubliners who had no idea

a rebellion was about to kick off.

They were heading for the General Post Office.

At 11:45, James Connolly gave the order to charge the GPO.

The Volunteers rushed into the building.

They secured the building. And then they hoisted two flags...

..a green flag with a gold harp reading "Irish Republic"

and the then little-known green, white and orange flag.

The GPO now became the headquarters of the Military Council,

where the leaders of the Rising declared themselves

the Provisional Government of the new Irish Republic.

Once the building was secured,

Pearse, who would have relished the drama of the moment,

came out and read the proclamation...

the document declaring an Irish Republic

and laying out its aspirations.

It was, in fact, a poetic call to arms.

"Poblacht na h Eireann."

People of Ireland.

"The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic

"to the people of Ireland.

"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 this supreme hour, the Irish nation must,

"by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children

"to sacrifice themselves for the common good,

"prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which Ireland is called.

"Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government,

"Thomas J Clarke, Sean MacDiarmada,

"Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse,

"Eamonn Ceannt,

"Joseph Plunkett

"and James Connelly."

I'm actually getting more attention here today

than Patrick Pearse got in 1916,

because nobody had a clue what he was doing.

Hi!

LAUGHTER

Standing at Pearse's side was James Connolly,

a trade union leader who commanded a workers' militia,

the Irish Citizens' Army.

They'd joined forces with the Irish Volunteers for the rebellion.

His great-grandson is Jim Connolly Heron.

What must your great-grandfather have felt at that moment?

Well, after Pearse had finished reading the proclamation,

he turned to him, shook his hand and said,

"Thanks be to God, Pearse, that we've lived to see this day."

What do you know about what was going on inside?

Well, when the Volunteers arrived,

the first act of the occupation was to take the first floor,

because that's where the telegraph office was.

Try and stop communications?

Trying to stop communications going out to the British Army.

And then the Volunteers knocked out the windows with their rifle butts

and create a fortress here.

For the rest of that week, this became the headquarters

of the 1916 Provisional Government of the Irish Republic.

And during the course of that first day,

word started filtering back from the other garrisons

that the other great buildings were now held

in the name of the Irish Republic.

The British were caught completely off-guard.

A revolt in part of the United Kingdom at a time of war

was an outrage.

In London, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith declare that

the first duty of government was to restore order

and stamp out the rebellion with all possible vigour.

Little did he know Britain's vigour would ultimately turn victory

into something a lot more like defeat.

At the start of the Rising,

there were 4,000 British soldiers stationed in barracks

in and around Dublin.

These were the first to be mobilised.

And many thousands of reinforcements

from other parts of Ireland and Britain were soon on the way.

The 1,600 rebels were massively outnumbered.

In Stoneybatter,

Uncle Liam had been put in charge of his company,

including his younger brother Peadar,

and instructed to build barricades.

I've brought my sons Danny and Eric

to see where my uncle Liam led the men.

He's 22 years of age, he's your age.

His commanding officer doesn't turn up

so he's now in charge of A Company.

A Company's supposed to be 120 men but only 28 turn up.

With 28 men they head off

-to march against the biggest empire in the world.

-Jeez.

Now, this would have been all small, tiny cottages at the time.

So, he halted the men, he'd have to have stopped here.

"We erected a double barricade across the street."

There was one this side and one this side of Red Cow Lane.

And ordinary Dubliners were kind of going around going, "What? What?

"Mate! What's the story with the barricade?"

"British!"

"What?!"

"We're rebelling!" "Oh, right!"

Er, what kind of guns were, like, the rebels up against?

Like, what guns did the British have and what guns did the rebels have?

They were outgunned from the very start.

Some of the guys were standing at these barricades with a pike.

-So they could...

-What?

-A pike. A pole with a spike on the top of it.

Not even a... It was kind of like... "Come on.

"Bit closer.

"Closer!"

So in one breath it's foolhardy.

And then the others...

I'm talking about these young men standing with

a pike at a barricade...

-A lot of courage for them to just stick with it.

-It's great.

I love it. It's amazing to think there was a war here.

100 years ago, Easter Monday,

your two great-uncles stood right here. And remember this.

We're no more than a half a mile away

from the house they left that morning,

leaving their mam, dad and my dad behind, as a young kid.

And they're holding a barricade. Their parents can hear the gunfire.

-Wow.

-Yeah, they must've been...

They must've been terrified for them.

I can't even imagine what that would feel like.

If that was you boys...erm...

Well, I don't have to tell you, I'd be there standing in front of you.

Erm...

CAR SOUNDS HORN REPEATEDLY

How you doing?

You'll sell no ice cream at that fucking speed! Er... LAUGHTER

I can't even imagine what that would be like.

Just one of you walking out the door would... I'd be screaming, hanging on to you. I'd hope you wouldn't go.

In the first 48 hours of the rebellion there were sporadic

actions across the city.

But in general the British were assessing rebel positions

and assembling reinforcements.

So many of the rebels found themselves

waiting for the action to begin.

And they had an audience.

Astonished Dubliners turned out to watch the spectacle.

If the rebel leaders' goal was to reawaken people's patriotism,

the first signs were discouraging.

Most Dubliners were hostile.

The wives of men serving in the British Army

ridiculed and taunted the rebels on the barricades.

It was a dispiriting start to the Rising.

On the third day, events gathered pace.

The British imposed martial law on the whole of Ireland,

even though the rebellion had only really taken off in Dublin.

And more troop reinforcements from Britain began to arrive.

The Sherwood Foresters disembarked at Dun Laoghaire Port

and started their march into the city.

They were mostly young, inexperienced recruits

from Nottinghamshire who had joined up to fight the Germans.

Some even mistook Dublin for France.

As they marched through the affluent suburbs, they were greeted

warmly by residents with cheers and cups of tea,

like an army of liberation.

But when they reached Northumberland Road the atmosphere changed.

John McGuigan knows the full story.

-John, how are you?

-Mr O'Carroll, good to see you.

Thanks very much for meeting me here.

OK, John, the Foresters would have marched up here in formation

and got to this junction here.

There would have been lines of troops on both sides of the road,

but as they were crossing this junction, er...

Grace and Malone, two Irish rebels

that had barricaded themselves into this house, opened fire.

GUNFIRE

And suddenly everything changed. Ten Foresters fell in the junction.

Some were dead, some were wounded.

And they didn't know where the shots had come from.

Grace and Malone couldn't miss.

All they had to do was stick their guns out the window and blast away.

GUNFIRE

For the Sherwood Foresters the horror had only just begun.

Number 25 was an outpost.

Worse awaited them further up Northumberland Road.

The main body of the rebels are in Clanwilliam House, which used to be

a Georgian terrace with a commanding view

all the way down Northumberland Road, all the way along Percy Place.

There were seven rebels in there and they poured shots upon the British.

And the British started doing frontal assaults,

like they were on the bloody Somme. Frontal assaults, charging...

-Well, that's what they were trained for.

-Charging up,

on the sound of a whistle, up Northumberland Road.

And they were just being wiped out.

You then find columns of troops

crawling along on their bellies and being shot

and the man behind them climbing over the one in front

and him being shot.

Northumberland Road was wet with English blood.

And troops coming along here had to hide behind this low parapet.

-This here?

-Yes, that's it. Er...

The rebels could see their haversacks moving along.

-That's 18 inches tall.

-That's right.

The residents of the houses were appalled at the casualties

and they came out with blankets and sheets

and started carrying the wounded into their houses, and the rebels

- fair play to them - stopped firing while that was going on.

But as soon as it was over, opened fire again, and they could not miss.

So they're pouring across this bridge,

they're determined to take this bridge.

Now, John, there's a bridge just there,

Baggot Street Bridge is just there. Why didn't they just...divert?

The general said, "No! You must take this bridge at all costs."

Of course, it was no cost to them, but to these working-class lads

it was a heavy price to pay, a heavy price to pay.

Now, the seven rebels that were there, what happened to them?

Well, eventually, towards the end of the evening, the British had

a machinegun which was pouring fire into Clanwilliam House.

That was keeping rebel heads down to a degree.

They managed to get some men across the bridge,

heroic actions crossing the bridge - one of the officers was awarded

the Military Cross for getting across the bridge

and throwing bombs through the window of Clanwilliam House.

The hand grenades burst the gas pipes

and Clanwilliam House began to burn.

It was overwhelming firepower that brought the end to those...

brave rebels, and I say brave rebels

even though they killed many of my countrymen.

The engagement became known as the Battle of Mount Street Bridge.

At its end, over 200 British soldiers lay dead or wounded.

A small group of rebels had held an army brigade for over nine hours.

I've passed this memorial so many times...

..and never knew what it was for.

It's a memorial dedicated to the memory of the men who held

this bridge, those of them that lost their lives.

It's nice to see it here, but I hope somewhere...

somebody's remembering the... the young, raw recruits

that got off a boat in Dun Laoghaire,

thinking they were going to fight the Germans,

and ended up dying... on Mount Street bridge.

By now the centre of the city was shaking with gunfire.

The British vessel the Helga

was shelling rebel garrisons from the river.

Dublin was a warzone.

And civilians were being caught in the crossfire.

British Army strategy was to form a cordon

isolating the key rebel positions,

the rebel leaders' headquarters at the GPO

and Commandant Ned Daly's area of command,

where my uncles Liam and Peadar were stationed.

Ned Daly's centre of operations was at the Father Matthew Hall.

Helen, how are you? Good to see you. How are you? Good to see you.

I'll tell you what I want to see.

First of all, we're two or three days into the Rising now.

-The boys, Ned, Liam, they probably haven't slept.

-Oh, no.

They must be exhausted. And they must be running out of stuff.

But I noticed in Liam's account, he said that Mills bombs,

home-made grenades, medical supplies,

the greater portion of this was brought down by members

of the family and friends to the Father Matthew Hall.

My uncle Liam and Peadar's younger sisters, brother, mother, father

-are zipping through bullets.

-They are, yes.

-To bring down supplies.

-It was desperately dangerous. They were ducking bullets the whole time.

And a lot of people died just crossing the street

-because somebody took a shot at them.

-This was a hive of activity?

This was absolutely the centre of operations here,

with messengers going backwards and forwards.

They would have snipers in the upper windows.

-I can picture me granny with the go-kart and my dad in the pram and...

-Yep, stuff underneath.

-..Mills bombs underneath the pram and...

-They used to do that.

It was great camouflage. But it was a very dangerous operation.

-And still they came with food and supplies.

-They did, yes.

-That's incredible.

-Amazingly brave.

By now, Ned Daly had ordered Uncle Liam to join

the garrison at the Four Courts.

After the GPO, this was the most prominent building in rebel hands.

The only information that Liam's and other garrisons had

about the general state of affairs were rumours, often wild rumours.

Massed ranks of volunteers from all over Ireland

were said to be marching on the city.

Thousands of Germans were coming to the rescue.

Two German warships had arrived in Dublin Bay.

Of course, it was all nonsense.

I don't know what Liam thought about the rumours, he doesn't say.

But he does mention one incident that happened

when he was garrisoned here.

This is interesting, because it's the only time Liam

describes his own part in actually attacking the enemy.

Liam said he was sent up to a group of men

who were covering the Medical Mission.

That's the Medical Mission building there, I can see it,

but you wouldn't cover it from here.

There must be another entrance or somewhere else I can see it from. Ah.

Hello?

Hello, excuse me, it's an emergency!

Oh, my God.

So he says that he found the group of men,

that the men informed him that they saw something suspicious happening.

It appeared that there was British soldiers

trapped in Charles Street.

Now, Charles Street you can't see there

but you can just about see a bit of it.

This building wouldn't have been here at the time, that's new,

but beyond that would be Charles Street.

So they have a straight line...

of view from here down to Charles Street.

Now, this is interesting.

"I gathered the impression that a hand grenade was being thrown."

Because they saw an arm swinging.

"I ordered the men to fire.

"The body collapsed out of sight.

"And the hand grenade dropped."

It's just interesting that he says "arm".

And he refers to this British soldier all the time as "the body".

But it wasn't a body, it was another person.

It's like he's trying to divorce himself from the horror

of having to kill someone...

or maim them.

On Thursday, day four of the Rising,

in London, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith,

announced that a new commander-in-chief was being

sent to Dublin to take over the British forces.

The following morning, General Sir John Maxwell arrived in the city.

He had been granted sweeping powers to suppress the rebellion

and now had an impressive 20,000 troops at his disposal.

He declared he would not hesitate to destroy all buildings within

any area occupied by the rebels.

The rebel headquarters at the GPO was now

isolated by the British cordon.

Commander Patrick Pearse was frantically writing dispatches.

His comrade, James Connolly, who'd been seriously wounded

the day before, was still managing to give orders.

Things in the GPO were now very different from the way

they were at the start of the week.

The British had started to bombard the building.

It was crumbling, it was on fire.

By Friday evening the top two floors were ablaze, an inferno.

The rebels were killed trying to move explosives

away from the flames.

They needed to get out.

The exhausted men and women of the garrison prepared to evacuate

the building into the chaos of the adjacent Henry Street.

Lachlan Collins can pick up the story.

On Friday night at about eight o'clock

they have to evacuate the GPO because it looks like the roof

is going to cave in on them, which it eventually did.

There are about 450 men and three women in this evacuation.

They come out in small groups.

I mean, there's a machinegun down the end of Henry Street,

so Patrick Pearse is going to signal them when it's safe to do so.

-He's raising his sword up and down, OK?

-"Go!"

So you go, you run across from there over to here.

-At least this laneway is relatively safe, OK?

-OK.

So they come down here. James Connolly, he couldn't run down here.

No, no. James Connolly had been wounded in the shoulder and the ankle

so he couldn't walk at all, but they had a stretcher,

and the lads are running down with him.

So I'm just trying to get this picture in mind.

-Smoke, shrapnel, flames, bullets, all the...

-Yeah.

-And these group of men and women carrying a stretcher.

-Yeah.

With a man with a sword.

Had they any idea where they were going? Were they just running?

They absolutely knew where they were going.

They were heading towards, erm, a new headquarters.

But the problem was that they were hopelessly

-surrounded by British soldiers at this stage.

-Where did they go next?

Well, I mean, there's great danger, and the bullets are flying

all over the place, so that's why they decide to occupy the buildings.

Now, their Provisional Government and many of their officers

-and the women as well end up in number 16 Moore Street.

-Erm...

-The now-famous Moore Street.

-Well, I used to work in it when I was a kid.

-You did work here.

-It's the home of Mrs Brown.

-Yeah, of course.

-I love this fucking street.

-Ah, it's great, it's great.

This is where the Provisional Government ended up

on the Saturday morning, trying to decide what they could now do.

So are the British right down the end of Moore Street or halfway up or...

At the very end of Moore Street, where they're at a barricade.

The Provisional Government have a council of war, essentially,

and Pearse and the others decided upon surrender.

At this stage they were so hopelessly surrounded,

there was little point for the GPO battalion to fight on,

so nurse Elizabeth O'Farrell came out of number 15 with a white flag,

-walked down to the British barricade at the end, and when she got...

-Hold on, let me take that picture in.

Machineguns down there, British troops, and she walks towards them.

She's an incredibly brave woman.

Like all the women who fought in the Rising, she is incredibly brave.

She said to the officer,

"General Pearse is ready to surrender to General Lowe."

General Pearse.

It's over.

A British Army photographer recorded the moment

Patrick Pearse surrendered.

Once in custody, Pearse signed a general

order of surrender to be sent out to the other garrisons.

My uncle Liam was with his battalion commandant, Ned Daly,

when Pearse's order to lay down arms arrived at the Four Courts.

-Helen, how are you? Good to see you.

-Lovely to see you.

Well, here we are again, this time in the Four Courts.

And a very different flavour of the week than when we started.

Liam says in his account,

"The order arrived to Commandant Ned Daly to surrender," Liam says.

"I know he was very reluctant to do so."

Yeah. Oh, no, he really didn't want to surrender,

and at least two accounts say he was in tears.

Apparently Edward Daly was planning just one more sortie,

planning that night to sort of burst out of the gates at the Four Courts

and to go down in a blaze of glory.

But he obeyed his orders.

Several men were very angry and said, "We could go on fighting," didn't want to give up their arms.

Er, but he called them to order and said, "Look,

"this is Patrick Pearse's order, we must obey.

-"We are soldiers, we must obey."

-The commander-in-chief.

-Exactly.

-And he marched them down O'Connell Street.

-Chest out, head up?

Yeah, absolutely. And apparently they were singing.

And he drew them up in military formation in O'Connell Street

and handed them over formally to the British officer in charge.

They were making a point, that this was a proper army, that they

had done their best and that their country would remember it.

-How right they were.

-Yes.

After only six days, the Rising was over.

If ordinary Dubliners had been hostile to the rebellion

at the start, the deaths of 254 civilians

and the destruction of the city fuelled their anger.

As rebel prisoners were led through the streets, crowds gathered

to jeer at them.

At that moment,

it must have seemed that the Rising had been an utter failure,

that the rebel leaders' dream

of rekindling the people's desire for independence

had failed completely.

Few could have foreseen how British actions over the next weeks

would totally transform the hearts and minds of most Irish people.

British commander-in-chief General Maxwell was determined

to make an example of the rebel leaders.

He ordered that Patrick Pearse

and the others were court-martialled in secret.

They were sentenced to death.

It was here at Kilmainham Gaol that they were sent to face

the firing squads.

Pearse spent the last night before his execution in this cell.

In his final hours, he wrote a last letter to his mother.

"Goodbye, dear mother.

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

"This is the death I should have asked for,

"to die a soldier's death for Ireland and for freedom.

"We have done right.

"People will say hard things of us now,

"but later on they will praise us.

"Don't grieve for all this,

"but think of it as a sacrifice which God has asked of me

"and of you."

Most of the other leaders were kept in this block too.

They got visits from their families to say goodbye.

They wrote letters, letters that they knew would be published,

saying how proud they were to die for Ireland.

The executions started on 3rd May, just five days after the surrender.

One by one, 14 condemned men were brought to face the firing squads,

two were executed elsewhere.

To the end, they had faith that the Rising would be vindicated.

Each man was taken from his cell and marched down to this spot.

His hands were tied behind his back, he was blindfolded

and a soldier would come

and pin a little target just here.

And then the order was given.

"Ready,

"aim..."

GUNSHOTS

Patrick Pearse was executed on the first day,

Ned Daly, my uncle Liam's commander, on the second.

James Connolly, who was badly injured, was the last to be killed.

They carried him to a chair just at this spot here.

They strapped him to the chair.

A priest anointed him, as he did all the others.

And the priest asked Connolly,

"Do you forgive those who are about to take your life?"

And Connolly said, "I respect every man who does his duty."

The executions had a dramatic impact on public opinion at home

and abroad.

While many thought the sentences justified,

others viewed the men as prisoners of war and were appalled.

In London, alarmed with the publicity,

the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, wrote to General Maxwell

to express concern, but Maxwell continued with the executions.

Across the Atlantic, Irish Americans denounced the killings,

bad news when Britain needed America's help in the war.

And then on 12th May, the same day James Connolly was shot,

Asquith arrived in Dublin in person to visit the rebel prisoners

and order an end to the killings.

Too late.

There was a transformation already under way in the Irish people.

Reports of how bravely rebel leaders faced the firing squads,

mixed with the publication of commemorative mementos,

finally struck a patriotic chord.

The general British crackdown made things worse.

3,500 people were arrested,

many of whom had no involvement in the Rising at all.

Almost 2,000 were deported to Britain and interred without trial.

For the Irish people, old resentments began to stir.

My uncles Liam and Peadar

were among the Irish prisoners deported to Britain.

At first the men were scattered around various jails.

My uncles were in Knutsford, Cheshire,

but then, in what was to prove an extraordinary own goal,

the British authorities decided

to bring them all together in one place.

After about three months in Knutsford, Liam says

he was transferred here to Frongoch internment camp in Wales.

The camp has long been demolished, but in its day it played

a critical role in reigniting the Irish revolution.

Lyn Ebenezer knows the story.

What was here?

-Give me an idea of the layout.

-There would have been around 30 huts,

each one holding about three dozen prisoners.

There's something I want to ask you.

-It intrigues me about Liam's statement.

-Ah, right.

When he's talking about Frongoch,

"I think it could be safely said that a considerable number

"of prisoners who got there through accident,

"rather than their activities..."

So people were arrested who weren't rebels at all.

"..left Frongoch confirmed rebels."

I would quite agree with him there.

-We hear a lot today about radicalising people.

-Yeah.

Well, this is exactly what happened in Frongoch.

The prisoners had their own curriculum -

Irish, the Irish language, Irish history,

but most important of all, military tactics.

The more experienced people taught the less experienced people,

they taught others, they taught them under the noses of the guards.

Morse code they taught.

My uncles weren't in a prison really,

-they were in the university of guerrilla warfare.

-Exactly.

It couldn't have worked better

if the Irish had organised it themselves.

This was the cauldron, if you like,

where they were all thrown in together and came out united.

So the British took the people away...the prisoners away here

in the belief that this was the end of things?

It was only the beginning, or a new beginning, I should say.

They went from here refreshed, ready for the next fight.

We see that mistake being made time and time again.

You put prisoners in one place, innocent or not,

-and they'll all come out as rebels.

-It's still happening.

-Yeah.

-When will they ever learn?

-We never will, we never will learn.

Shall we sing that?

# When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? #

We're here every Thursday night.

Liam, Peadar and most of the other detainees

were released by Christmas 1916.

When prisoners returned to Ireland, they were greeted as heroes.

The British may have crushed the Rising,

but the executions and crackdowns that followed

inadvertently delivered everything the rebel leaders had dreamed of.

The idea of an independent Ireland

had gathered widespread popular support.

Soon Volunteer units were reforming

and a new phase in the revolution had begun.

This time it would be more successful.

While six counties would remain part of the UK

to create Northern Ireland,

in 1922 the other 26 counties became the new Irish Free State.

The leaders' bodies still lie where the British put them

after those executions in 1916.

They buried them in a mass grave, quicklime grave,

in an out-of-the-way place, so it wouldn't become a shrine to martyrs.

Didn't work.

You know, the leaders have been called dreamers.

Well, that little-known green and white and orange flag

that they raised over the GPO that day,

it now flies as the emblem of an independent Irish Republic,

and the proclamation that Pearse read out

in front of the bemused Dubliners,

that's engraved here on the wall behind their resting place

and continues to this day to inspire Irish people and the Irish nation.

Dreamers?

I'm really proud of my uncles.

I don't know what it was that got three young men

to march out of their house to a rebellion

on Easter Monday morning, 1916.

Was it youthful folly, was it genuine idealism?

But I know this, if anybody asks me where I come from,

I get to say, "The Republic of Ireland".

I thank them for that.

# And the world did gaze with deep amaze

# At those fearless men, but few

# Who bore the fight so that freedom's light

# Might shine through the foggy dew

# Might shine through the foggy

# Dew. #