Episode 1 Voices 16 - 'Rising'

-Fire!

-GUNFIRE

WOMAN: In the very early morning of the 3rd of May,

I am awakened with the sound of firing.

My heart sinks, METALLIC CLICKING

for I know the first of the executions has begun.

-MAN:

-The men with memories of our losses

seem to have no qualms as to doing the job.

Pity to dirty all these rifles.

Why can't we do him in with a bit of bayonet practice?

-MAN:

-The second, PH Pierce, whistled as he came out of the cell.

The firing squad of 12 men are waiting.

Another soldier awaits, to pin a piece of white paper over his heart.

-MAN:

-The firing party placed ten paces distant.

A silent signal from the officer.

A deafening volley.

GUNFIRE

The rebel dropped to the ground like an empty sack.

For many mornings to come,

we shall awake to that close noise of rifle firing.

All our experiences now seem to be those of a dream.

Everything that has passed in the last 12 days

now has the impression of unreality.

And I suppose it will be days before

these incidences and events attain their true perspective.

This is the story of the year that changed Ireland,

told in the words of those who lived through it.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

As 1916 dawned, Europe's superpowers had

fought themselves to a standstill

on the killing grounds of northern France and Belgium.

On New Year's Eve, they turned on to three whole battalions of ours

a perfectly hellish bombardment

of all kinds of stuff.

Everybody was standing to arms,

fingering rifles and gas helmets,

waiting to see the Hun come over his parapet.

The fire was so intense.

A war that many had hoped would last just months

was now in its second blood-soaked year.

I am very well, but, of course,

like everyone who has been out any time,

tired of it all.

Irish men from all corners of the island had joined up,

some, idealistically, to support the freedom of small nations,

some for adventure, and others simply for a job.

By 1916, the Allied forces were steeling themselves

for an all-out assault to try and break the stalemate that

had already cost the lives of thousands of soldiers.

That winter, Irish men were scattered

all along the Western Front.

-MAN:

-There are more casualties a mile or two behind the trenches

than in the firing line.

One does not get used to men being killed close by.

Despite the slaughter, and with little sign of progress in France,

support for the war remained firm.

Britain appeared calm and prosperous.

At the start of 1916, you had universal support for the war.

There was full employment

in the munitions factories, in the shipyards, in the mills,

producing shells for the war effort.

A lot of men, of course, join up into the British Army,

so it opens up more and more jobs for people.

You are starting to see an economic boom in Ireland,

and people doing quite well out of big war production.

We were living in an overwhelmingly hostile atmosphere,

surrounded by a jingoistic war spirit

and a population that had gone off the rails with wartime prosperity.

It was an orgy of big wages and spending,

of fur coats and jewellery,

and heavy drinking.

Ireland is the great bread basket of the British Empire,

so there is this sense of, "Oh, what a lovely war."

Unless it impacts on your own family.

News was coming back from the front of appalling conditions,

of dreadful deaths from the Western Front

and from Gallipoli,

and people were starting to see wounded soldiers in the streets.

It was coming home to people that the war

was not going to be short

and that the consequences of it were terrible.

Fear of conscription was growing.

In backrooms and snugs throughout Ireland, support for the war

was festering.

A secret group of militant Republican separatists

were determined to exploit this.

They wanted to undermine support for Britain

and provoke a revolution.

They wanted full independence for Ireland.

They had resurrected the old Fenian mantra

that England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity

and, by Easter 1916, they were ready to strike in Dublin -

the second city and heart of the British Empire.

Liberty Hall, the eve of the rebellion.

An air of great activity throughout the building.

After supper, madam, while handling her revolver,

lets it off accidently.

"Fortunately, there is no-one between herself

"and the dining room door, which is pierced with a shot."

Winifred Carney was a trade unionist from Belfast.

We have her own account of the Easter Rising,

written some years after the events, probably from notes.

And, very importantly, we have this telegram.

It's a key historical document on the Rising

because it's a telegram from James Connolly in Dublin,

dated 14th April 1916, to Miss Winifred Carney

of Two Carlisle Circus.

"Extremely anxious, you should come afternoon train. Connolly."

She had been summoned to the GPO to join the insurgence

on that Easter weekend in 1916.

James Connolly honoured me with his trust and confidence,

in a way he did with no other person.

Winifred's mother and my grandfather were brother and sister.

She trained as a secretary cum typist

and it was through that work that

she joined the Irish Transport Union.

It was through that then that she met James Connolly.

Connolly would tell Winifred everything

that was happening and she probably knew everything

about what was going to happen in the Easter week.

"I was in close personal contact and consultation with

"General James Connolly..."

..during all the stages leading to and during Easter Week.

On Friday, and especially on Saturday,

I was seeing a great number of volunteers

approaching the sacraments,

acting under order, as they said.

Gradually, I became suspicious that there might be

more than appeared on the surface.

I remember going to bed that night

dreading what the morrow might bring.

The rebels' plan was to strike when Britain

was at its most vulnerable, with its army strewn

all over the Western Front, preparing for a major offensive

on the battlefields of the Somme.

This is the psychological moment. They must redeem

the soul of Ireland now or lose their national identity forever.

Two years earlier, the eruption of the Great War

had changed everything.

In 1914, we get the outbreak of World War One,

which has a huge effect on the country over

the four years of its duration.

The great global conflict eclipsed the storm clouds

gathering in Ireland over the battle for Home Rule.

In 1913/1914, Ireland was on the tipping point of civil war

over this issue of Home Rule.

Up to that, the majority of the population,

the Nationalist population,

were staunch Home Rulers.

Under Home Rule, Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom

and British Empire,

but it would have its own devolved parliament.

The Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond,

had made a kind of a deal with the Liberal government

to ensure that their desire for Home Rule - a Dublin parliament -

would come to pass.

This awoke anger and fear in Unionists.

They had always been opposed in recent decades

to the idea of a Dublin parliament.

Here, in this very house, Craigavon House,

off the Circular Road in east Belfast,

this would have been the epicentre of the opposition

to Home Rule.

This building, which has decayed, sadly now, but still has

many ghosts walking the corridors.

In the years leading up to 1914, there had been rallies

in the grounds, there had been tens of thousands of men and women

and children who'd walked from the streets of Belfast

in order to hear Sir Edward Carson speak

and to offer his determination to resist Home Rule at all costs.

My name is Jack Christie.

I was born on 10th February 1898.

The Liberals had promised to bring in a Home Rule bill,

much against our wishes.

Sir Edward Carson spurred the Unionist movement

into action, pledging to use all means that may be found necessary

to oppose Home Rule.

The Ulster Volunteer Force was formed -

a militia made up of 100,000 men who had signed

the Ulster Covenant a few months earlier.

I had the feeling that something dreadful would happen

if Home Rule came in.

There was great excitement and tension

that everyone felt.

The Ulster Volunteers had been established,

the Ulster Covenant had been signed, threatening to use force

if Home Rule were to be imposed.

Well, first of all, I was in the Ulster Volunteers.

We had a number of instructors came over from England

and they were really surprised at how well drilled we were.

Ulster had opened a revolutionary door in 1912,

which Irish Republicans were determined to keep ajar.

And so they welcomed the UVF, it was like manna from heaven

to this tiny movement.

Nationalists set up their own militia - the Irish Volunteers -

to resist the UVF and ensure the British didn't renege

on their promise of Home Rule.

Eoin MacNeill, a Northerner from the glens of Antrim,

inspired the movement with an article in November 1913,

which he called The North Began, praising the UVF

as the greatest step towards defying British parliament,

the British Empire, since the days of Wolfe Tone.

Despite fierce opposition in Ulster, by 1914

Home Rule was set to become law.

The bill was passing through parliament and the Unionists

feared that the British government was preparing to quash

their resistance.

The UVF were playing a dangerous game.

In certain parts of Ulster, the Ulster Volunteer Force

was contemplating putting up a serious show of resistance

against the police, against the army, if need be,

and, certainly, against the Nationalists.

The Larne gunrunning of 22nd of April 1914

changes everything.

35,000 German guns distributed round the province of Ulster.

Sophisticated weaponry, including machine-guns.

Now, Carson's army has military dominance in Ireland.

There's even a threat to the forces of the Crown.

And there's a lot of talk about treason.

The Ulster Volunteer Force looks like it's engaging in treachery,

clearly to import guns from Germany..

..and to arm a militia.

It looks rather strange.

They were prepared to break the law in 1912

and smuggle guns into the country openly

with the agreement of the British government

and absolutely defied democracy.

Not to be outgunned, the Irish Volunteers

imported 900 German Mauser rifles into Howth.

Transporting the weapons into Dublin,

they were confronted by an Army unit.

Three civilians were shot dead.

The Nationalists draw the conclusion that it's kid gloves for unionism

and lead bullets for nationalism.

Yes, the lads of Ulster in 1914 were ready to fight.

We were the Ulster Volunteer Force of Carson's army.

These two armies, gearing up, being egged on, really.

And so by July 1914, on the very eve of the Great War,

Ulster, Ireland, these islands are on the very brink of civil war.

But little did we think

we were drilling to fight not our own countrymen...

but the Germans.

On 4th August 1914, the Great War broke out...

..overnight dissolving fears of a civil war in Ireland.

BOMBS DROP

War clouds in the air.

Depression in Belfast.

We were ready for war.

Our only fear now was would England need the Ulster Volunteer Force?

Eager to prove their loyalty to king and country,

Carson urged the UVF to enlist.

Of the 100,000 men in its ranks,

around one fifth of its strength joined up

and would serve in the 36th Ulster Division and other units.

-MAN:

-I gave my age to the recruitment officers, 19.

I was tall.

There was quite a lot of us were only 17.

It's about a sacrifice for the Empire.

And in a way it's about saying,

"Yes, we may have looked like traitors

"in the months before the war."

"Our critics may have looked at us and said,

" 'What are you doing fighting Britain to stay British?' "

But this was the answer -

"We are prepared to die for the cause."

With Home Rule now on the statute books but suspended

until after the war, Redmond called on the Irish Volunteers to join up.

Thousands heeded his call and enlisted in the Army.

They felt they were redeeming the soul of Ireland

on the battlefields of Europe.

They were winning British goodwill, they hoped,

for the achievement of an all-Ireland settlement

after the war.

But a small group of Volunteers doubted the sincerity

of the British Government and refused to join the Army.

No more than about ten or 11,000 split away.

They remained loyal to their old allegiance.

They're still led by MacNeill

and they keep the legal name - the Irish Volunteers.

But deep within the movement,

a tiny splinter group of militant republicans had little

regard for the implementation of Home Rule or MacNeill.

They're a minority of a minority within the republican movement.

And they're hatching this conspiracy

and telling others on a need-to-know basis.

Britain was seen to be very much tied up now in a world war,

busy, would have its eye off the ball.

They remained loyal to their old allegiance.

England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity.

Their plan was to stage a rebellion, starting in Dublin but supported

by Volunteers throughout the country,

with one notable exception - the North.

I suggested we would have to attack the RIC barracks

on our way through to secure the arms we required.

Connolly got quite cross at this suggestion and almost shouted at me,

"You will fire no shot in Ulster."

Connolly would have been convinced from his, you know,

trade union activities, trying to, if you like,

reconcile orange and green in a very sectarian situation before 1916,

that the danger of a sectarian conflagration was very real.

James Connolly had also been aware of the presence still

of the Ulster Volunteer Force

with its armouries...

..and with its trained men.

They're there

and they haven't gone away.

There was that sense that,

don't disturb the gossamer-thin tranquillity

that prevailed in the North.

And he added, "If we win through, we will then deal with Ulster."

With the Ulster problem now sidelined,

their plans for a rising were falling into place.

Roger Casement, the knight who had served the British Empire with distinction,

had become disillusioned with imperialism

and had committed to the rebel cause.

He was now in Germany, securing weapons from Britain's arch enemy.

The rebels had also convinced Eoin MacNeill to support

a nationwide mobilisation of Volunteers on Easter Sunday.

And with Britain engaged in a desperate struggle

for survival on the Western front,

England's difficulty had now become Ireland's opportunity.

SOUND OF LOADING GUNS

It was on Saturday morning that I heard the news of our first defeat.

A defeat before we had begun.

The landing of German guns in Kerry had gone horribly wrong.

Roger Casement, who had been their emissary in Germany

has been captured on a beach in Kerry also.

They realise that Dublin Castle are now going to start to round them up.

Hearing of Casement's arrest, Eoin MacNeill realised he had been duped.

Then, for the first time,

I learned by Pearse's admission that the rising was intended.

I told him I would use every means in my power,

except informing the government, to prevent the rising.

He said I was powerless to do so. I immediately gave orders.

MacNeill carried out his threat and issued a countermanding order.

He then placed an advert in a Sunday newspaper.

"Mobilisation of Volunteers called off by Eoin MacNeill.

"Excitement intense. The crisis is near."

As I came out of church on Easter morning,

I saw placards everywhere to this effect.

No Volunteer manoeuvres today.

Things have gone badly wrong.

Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order

has gone forth to the provinces,

sowing confusion, dissension, disillusionment.

By such an order, many others believed

he delivered to the executioner,

the flower of Ireland's heart and brain.

The plans for a rising on Easter Sunday were now in tatters.

The Bureau of Military History recorded nearly 36,000 pages

of first-hand accounts of what took place between 1913 and 1921.

There was a number of individuals that were identified as being

key participants in the revolutionary period.

Not just the military action but also members of the clergy,

members of the civilian population.

It's a history of military, social, political

and economical conditions at the time.

Witness statement 286 by Mrs Nora Connelly O'Brien.

Her identity is daughter of James Connolly.

She's also identified as the officer commanding

Betsy Gray Sluagh, Fianna Eireann, Belfast 1912

and officer commanding...

I said to my father, "Why are we not going to fight?"

He sat up in the bed, the tears ran down his face.

"If we don't fight now," he said, "the only thing we can do

"is to pray for an earthquake to come and swallow us up.

"And our shame."

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Dominus...

Early on Easter Sunday morning,

the leaders of the secret military council convened in Liberty Hall.

They knew they needed to act quickly or they would risk arrest.

By late afternoon, they had reached a decision.

The rising would go ahead, but on the following day - Easter Monday.

In their minds, there's almost a ticking clock.

There's a real rush to kind of make a stand.

None of us believed it had any prospect of success,

it was merely a declaration in arms,

which would take place, to show that there was a

body of men in Ireland who wanted separation and we'd fight for it.

Clarke, MacDermott, Pearse, fall back on the Dublin plan.

They will have a more limited rising,

with all the hallmarks of a blood sacrifice, in the Irish capital.

It was important that the revolution occurred in Dublin

and that it was successful in Dublin, in the rebels' minds.

Dublin is a loyal city. Union Jacks everywhere.

Recruiting signs everywhere. It's the nerve centre.

They hope that, by their personal sacrifice,

they will give their cause its elixir of life.

At four o'clock, the Citizen Army mobilised in front

of Liberty Hall and Connolly addressed them.

"You are now under arms.

"You will not lay down your arms

"until you have struck a blow for Ireland."

The men cheered. Shots were fired into the air.

James Connolly said smilingly,

"This is the proclamation of the Republic."

It was still wet from the press

and we all read it with wildly beating hearts.

GRAMOPHONE RECORD PLAYS

# You cheer soldier Tommy... #

The morning dawned bright and fair.

And being a general holiday, I felt glad.

That promised to be a very fine day.

# But while you are cheering the heroes... #

At the start of the week, Columbus and the other priests were very

tired because they had just come out of a particularly busy Easter.

Humanly speaking,

they were probably hoping for a little bit of rest, you know,

not too much activity,

just a gentle week to reflect on what happened at Easter.

So he was probably looking towards that.

Father Columbus Murphy was a Capuchin Friar

here on Church Street. His narrative is extremely important

because it lay undiscovered in the archives for 50 years.

It was only found in 2002.

The document itself is quite extensive, it's 42 pages long.

It's contemporary, as well,

it was only written 14 weeks after the rising, in July 1916.

As I was going to Father Matthew Hall, I met

a captain in the Volunteers.

Naturally, I was surprised to see him in uniform. I asked what was on.

He replied, that the following order was sent out.

"Full arms and equipment and one-day's rations.

"Thomas MacDonagh, Commandant."

I was sent on my bicycle to scout about the city and report

if troops from any of the barracks were stirring. They were not.

I went off with two other officers.

We passed St Stephen's Green,

where there were great signs of activity,

green uniformed figures being at the gates and all over the place.

We said, "The volunteers are having a field day today." They were.

MacNeill's countermanding order meant that

most of the volunteers did not turn up.

Only 1,600 appeared for duty in Dublin during Easter week.

Emergency mobilisation. Excited and hurried movements.

Producing a revolver from the table, Pearse loaded it

and handed it to me. "We strike at noon!"

The plan was to take the city by holding a defensive

crescent of strongpoints, beginning with the GPO.

We muster outside the hall, in front and rear of us, armed Volunteers.

At last, all the men were standing ready, awaiting the signal.

In every part of Dublin,

similar small groups were waiting for the hour to strike.

Volunteers marched from Liberty Hall to Sackville Street, the main

thoroughfare in Dublin. Their target was the GPO.

This ensured the rebellion would be observed by thousands of Dubliners.

Inside the post office, it was business as usual, because even

though it was a bank holiday, the post office never closed, because

it was the hub of communications for the whole of the country.

Mr Hamilton Norway was Secretary of the Post Office in Ireland.

The city bore its usual aspect that Monday morning.

I was still in the midst of my first letter when my telephone rang.

And Sir Matthew Nathan spoke, asking me to go up to the castle.

I locked my desk and gave the key of my room to the porter,

who was the only person on duty, the day being a bank holiday,

and left, saying I should be back in half an hour.

CLOCK CHIMES

Shortly after midday,

there would have been a little bit of a commotion outside.

Connelly giving the order and we quickly march inside.

Heads would have turned to the side to look at this.

He directs the volunteers to clear out the staff and customers,

which they quickly do.

They probably didn't think there was anything too serious at first.

I get behind the counter, behind the nice new brass railings,

where only a few short moments ago stood an unsuspecting

solemn-faced official selling postage stamps.

But then there was an air of definite menace, I suppose.

I place my typewriter and Webley on the counter.

-NORWAY:

-The office was rushed 20 minutes after I had left it.

My room being appropriated for the rebel headquarters.

Under Connelly's directions,

Volunteers proceeded to smash the windows on the ground floor

and to partly bank the opening with mail bags.

On the initial first day, of course, the defences were prepared.

So these windows here and the door, these were all sandbagged

and buttressed,

sometimes with ledgers that the clerks might have been using here.

Any sort of stuff that could be used as protection against bullets

and the onslaught that they thought was going to come.

The rebels, declaring themselves without opposition,

ranged at will about the city.

Seizing one important building after another and posting

their proclamation of the Irish Republic wherever they would.

The proclamation is read by Padraig Pearse at the General Post Office.

It sets out the aims, if you like, of the revolutionaries.

This was very much what they believed in

and it was their statement to the world.

A Republic had been declared and whatever was going to

happen during Easter week was going to happen.

There was no turning back.

In the handsome building of the General Post Office,

which I had left so short a while before,

the Union Jack was hauled down

and the green flag of the Irish Republic floated in its place.

The revolution had begun.

The rebellion was spreading.

Thomas MacDonagh had taken Jacob's Biscuit Factory,

de Valera had taken Boland's mill.

Connelly and Pearse were joined in the GPO by commander-in-chief

Tom Clarke, Sean MacDermott and Joseph Plunkett.

Other strategic buildings were also seized.

Trouble, I was prepared for.

Yes, a clash with the police or even with the soldiers was possible.

But a rebellion, let me admit

that the very thought never entered my head.

No-one is expecting a rising in Dublin in 1916.

Remember, Dublin is the capital of Ireland in 1916.

Dublin Castle is where the police are based,

where British intelligence are based, where the Chief Secretary is based.

And so, when the rising breaks out, it takes all Ireland

and indeed the British government, by surprise.

We know this from many accounts.

My dear Willie, I do not know when you will receive this,

but while events are still red hot, I want to give you a slight

impression of the state of things here.

James Mitchell, a UVF man, 38 years old,

a lecturer in Belfast Technical College, motored to

Dublin on Easter Saturday, 1916, to join the British Army.

I became a soldier of the King on Easter Sunday.

Since then, we've been through some experiences.

And he would spend the next week watching

the rising from the blockaded Gresham Hotel, as mayhem

and smoke and explosions surrounded him.

All of the windows and doors of the hotel are now barricaded.

We're practically prisoners in this building.

The rifles and the machine-guns are busy with it

and I can hear the phit-phit of bullets singing through the air.

Two horses lay dead, their soldier riders having been shot dead

and carried into the hotel. Human blood covered the footway.

Military and police were confined to barracks

and the mob had complete possession of the thoroughfare.

What I know is that I got a damn fine reception in the Army.

People are appalled at the utter unpreparedness of the government

in the face of a huge body of trained and armed men.

The authorities in Dublin Castle

really did not think there was going to be a rebellion.

There was almost a naivete to it all and it does come as a huge surprise

to the Dublin population

but also to the British authorities in Dublin Castle,

it is a huge shock.

As the rising broke out, the British had just 400 battle-ready troops

to confront roughly 1,000 insurgents.

The Irish regiments based in Dublin in 1916 are all getting

ready for what we now know as the Battle of the Somme.

So they have joined up for King and country, following the

nationalist politicians, who have encouraged them to join up.

And suddenly they find themselves fighting fellow Irishman.

GUNFIRE

26th of April, 1916, Dublin.

Dear Mother, I arrived here on Monday evening, fairly late,

and immediately took refuge in the nearest military barracks.

This is a series of letters from my uncle, Jack Carrothers,

who was in the Royal Inniskillings.

In searching through them, I discovered one letter

in particular, when he was coming home on leave,

on 26th April, 1916.

Actually, he had landed into Dublin the day

the rising or the rebellion broke out.

And he recorded every day, a 19-page letter,

of what he's seen from Dublin Castle.

"The Sinn Feiners are kicking up a fearful dust..."

Military law was declared this morning.

I'm stuck here in the Ship Street Barracks

and, like all the other officers and men,

I'm living on biscuits and bully beef.

I will hardly be allowed to leave these barracks

until the hostilities cease.

By Monday evening,

British reinforcements were pouring in from all over Ireland

and preparations were being made in England for sending many more over.

In the North, a handful of Volunteers were determined

to go south to join the rising.

I carried a six-inch revolver on my journey.

Unfortunately, I was...

..not stopped by the police.

Number 53 Glengarriff Parade, the house where my grandfather

stayed the last night of his freedom.

He stayed here after cycling down from Newry.

I doubt if the people on the street realise the historical

significance for the Rankin family this little house has.

My grandfather was well-known as a kind of a quiet man

and a gentle man.

And yet there was this other side to him that he kept well hidden.

When he died, I was handed this journal

that Paddy had handwritten and it was his witness statement.

I was brought before Tom Clarke.

He thanked me for getting through to the GPO,

but he would have been delighted and happy to have

some hundreds of his own people from the northern counties present.

The streets are by no means a healthy place to be

with the Sinn Feiners always sniping from the roofs.

My job was on the roof of the GPO.

About one o'clock in the morning, a Dublin man, who was in charge of us,

asked me to look out between the stone balustrades of the roof

facing O'Connell Street and see if there was any enemy coming.

I had only time to draw back to my position

when a bullet grazed his ear and mine.

It was a very near shave.

There have been a large number of soldiers shot last night.

Two snipers appeared at the chimney quite close

and we opened rapid fire on them.

One of them was only wounded and was brought in as a prisoner.

His coat was covered with the blood and the brains of the other sniper.

A sight like this soon puts the notion of war out of one's head.

The wider response to the rising was condemnatory.

People found it hard to go about their business.

The streets are just not pleasant places to be.

It's now got so dangerous that anybody putting their heads

outside their door or window is probably going to be killed,

be they civilian or a rebel.

One or two people were in the street.

And I happened to glance at a man in shirtsleeves.

I heard a shot, drew back

and immediately popped my head back to see the man fall.

This is the first person that I've ever seen killed

and my feelings may be imagined.

There must be an enormous amount of people killed.

For it's a fearful thing to fire even a rifle in a city,

let alone machine-guns or artillery.

As always in urban warfare,

it's the civilians who die in larger numbers.

The oldest person that we know of is 83 years old

and the youngest is six months old.

A baby named Foster was killed in its perambulator

outside Matthew Hall.

Alarmed by the firing outside, some had come to the door.

And seeing the baby covered in blood,

it is easy to picture the panic that ensued.

There's a lot of grief and bereavement and loss

going on in the city.

And most of the people who were killed were poor.

There were people from the tenements,

some of whom came in to the city to loot.

Wherever I went in Dublin in the first day of the rebellion,

I heard the strongest expressions of hatred

for the Sinn Fein movement.

The British moved quickly to isolate the rebel positions.

Lord Shaw tells me that 30,000 troops are landed at Kingstown

this morning and we hear they're amazed at their reception.

They had been told that they were

going to quell a rebellion in Ireland.

And, lo, on their arrival at Kingstown

the whole population turned out to cheer them.

The British are actually being welcomed as they arrive

from Belfast and Dublin to crush the rising by loyal Irish Home Rulers

and loyal Irish Unionists.

You know, as they arrive in the city.

Despite the influx of British troops

and the widespread public hostility to the rebels,

they continued to hold out.

There was no-one to be seen anywhere.

No sign of life.

It was a weird sensation and feeling,

as if we were in a city of the dead.

The only noise was the sound of one's own footsteps

and the incessant rumble of the firing.

This is the fifth day of the establishment of the Irish Republic.

And the flag of the country still floats from the most

important buildings in Dublin.

The British then brought heavy machine-guns and artillery to bear.

At 8am we were awakened by a great rattling and roaring.

I opened the window and looked out.

Sackville Street was enveloped in blue smoke.

A gentleman called Brigadier-General Lowe is put in charge.

They very, very quickly figure out

that the GPO is the main headquarters.

His main plan is to attack and destroy the General Post Office.

We are hemmed in because the enemy feels that in this building

is to be found the heart and inspiration of our great movement.

A boat of some kind is at O'Connell Bridge

and is evidently the cause of the loud reverberations.

In support of their infantry attacks,

the British brought a gunship, the Helga,

up the River Liffey to bombard the rebel positions.

Directing operations outside, Connelly is wounded.

He is brought in and placed in one of the beds

in what we describe as the front-line trenches

from where he directs operations.

I feel irritable and ask him why he should have exposed himself

to danger when so much depended on him.

He replies, "Do not blame me now. I must take risks like the others."

The British started to rain artillery

and incendiary shells down on the GPO.

I saw an ignited shell land on top of the General Post Office

and burst into flames.

Suddenly, we notice a small hole burning in the roof over our heads.

The roof is not bombproof.

Soon, the whole roof is a sheet of flames.

Then, I go down to tell the news.

The General Post Office is on fire.

Pearse asks me if I can find some paper that does not bear

the imprint of His Majesty's Government.

Goodness.

Here it is.

The actual instrument on which Winifred Carney

typed James Connolly's orders at the end of Easter week.

I searched the drawers.

Going upstairs, searching the desks throughout the different rooms.

But I cannot find a single sheet of plain paper anywhere.

And this typewriter came through that grime, that smoke,

the shelling of the GPO.

And it lay undiscovered really until this moment.

The GPO was in flames and the rebels were soon to decide

that, to avoid further deaths of civilians,

they had no option but to surrender.

It is tragedy in the extreme. We await our orders.

No fear.

No anything.

The rebels evacuated the GPO.

Pearse and the others would have made their way out

through a door here that went into the sorting office

and then on another few yards out into Henry Street

and across into the maze of streets that was Moore Lane

and Henry Place, around there.

And that was the end of the 1916 Rising in the GPO.

One had a splendid view of O'Connell Street.

What an appalling sight met my gaze.

There is great cheering now.

We've just been told that the Sinn Feiners have tendered

an unconditional surrender.

I suppose the 18-pounder artillery

put the fear of God into their hearts.

They were openly blamed for the destruction of property wrought,

the loss of life sustained and especially for the suffering

and inconveniences put on the people as a whole.

You have the mass surrender being marched past the poor of Dublin.

Winifred Carney remembers in her memoir a group of very poor women,

their soldiers are fighting on the Western Front.

Gaze at us in a frightened way and jeer.

This is the undertow of Dublin.

Not a great deal of support.

The women were allowed to follow our men to the barracks.

Shouting at the soldiers,

"Use your rifles on them German so-and-sos."

There's a sense of betrayal,

but also a sense that these people have destroyed our beautiful city.

Dublin is certainly ruined.

There is a heavy smell in the city.

A smell of blood and corpses.

I have seen enough of the horrors of war

without going to France to see any more.

Over the six days of fighting, almost 500 people were killed

and 2,500 wounded.

Half of the people who died in 1916 were innocent civilians

who had no interest whatever in dying for Ireland.

And weren't asked, of course, either.

Just got shot or killed in other ways.

So this was a very small group of people.

It was even more searing for Nationalists in Belfast.

Look at the RIC reports, you know.

Nationalists saw it at a stab in the back.

Unionists saw it as a stab in the back

and a sample of what Home Rule would mean, if it ever came about.

According to the Belfast police commissioner after the rising.

Martial law was declared across the whole of Ireland

as the British sought to regain control.

For the British Army in particular, this is seen as a German operation.

There is a feeling that the Irish Volunteers aren't trained

well enough to fire on the British Army.

And they're convinced that the Germans were in the GPO.

Of course, the arrival of a German spy ship

with smuggled weapons adds to this theory.

This is very much seen as treason.

News of the rising had reached the front line in France.

Parcels and papers continue to arrive safely.

Though recently, they have been a good deal delayed,

probably due to the Dublin trouble.

That has been a most disgraceful business.

Well, the news would have percolated through

fairly swiftly to the Western Front.

We know that some Germans placed placards up above the trenches

indicating that a rising had taken place back in Dublin.

Any British soldier, no matter what his background,

would have regarded what was going on in Dublin as a stab in the back.

As a form of treachery.

That shock, that sense of betrayal, sweeps the Western Front.

A sense that they are being betrayed

by a minority of pro-Germans at home.

I do hope that a lot of the ringleaders will be shot.

But doubt very much

if the government will be firm enough to do so.

The British appointed a military governor, General Maxwell,

to restore order.

Maxwell was a stern and determined man.

He unbent a little

and deplored the terrible loss of life and property that had occurred.

"Oh, we'll make the beggars pay for it," he added.

Maxwell ordered widespread arrests and internments.

The rebels were tried with few legal safeguards.

"Please allow Father Murphy to interview Pearse,

"the rebel leader, and any other rebels whom he may wish to see."

This, in a sense, is a sort of an access-all-areas pass.

The document tells not just the story in four or five lines,

but it also tells an enormous story about what the priests

were trying to do and the fact that they were available

to the side of the British leadership to be honest brokers

between the Army leadership and the Volunteers.

This is one of the contemporary 1916 passes that were given to

Father Columbus by British officers,

allowing him to travel the streets of Dublin

and also to minister to some of the rebel prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol.

I remember well MacDonagh's first question.

"What are they going to do to us, Father?"

As much to encourage him and that that was my belief at the time,

I answered, "Probably imprison the leaders and send the others home."

"I hope to God they'll do no such thing," he said.

"As we'd be the laughing stock of the country.

"And all our work will be in vain."

190 leaders within the Rising are put on trial

and Maxwell decides to execute 90 of them.

Here I ventured to quote the old phrase

about the blood of martyrs being the seed of martyrs.

Little dreaming at the time of their prophetic import.

"Are you backing them up?" he asked.

Concluding that prudence was the better part of valour,

I decided to say nothing further.

Please tell the Franciscan fathers at Church Street

that the two men they wish to see at Kilmainham Detention Prison

should be seen by them tonight.

General Maxwell was determined that the ringleaders,

particularly the signatories of the proclamation, should be executed.

There's an urgency in the friars being asked to come and minister

to Pearse and Clarke because they're going to be executed at dawn.

Tonight's the night.

Not a moment to be lost.

The executions began on the 3rd May 1916.

I felt relief.

And secretly exulted at the inglorious end

of the creatures with such mean and selfish minds.

Fire!

GUNSHOTS

As the executions grind on over those weeks in May,

you can see things beginning to change.

To my surprise, I found that the papers had the news.

And blazoned forth its horror to the world.

A thrill of horror and indignation

and fierce resentment was pulsating through the city.

It was seen as an overreaction.

Those who had been mocking the rebels,

jeering them in the streets of Dublin, were converted

to admiration of the rebels and support for their cause.

It was a complete transmogrification of public opinion

in the days and weeks after the rising.

Did they hope to beat the English Army and win through?

No, I do not believe they did.

Clarke, an old man, was not quite so fortunate.

Requiring a bullet from an officer to complete the ghastly business.

GUNSHOT

The British authorities out in England very quickly realise that

this is probably a huge mistake. And it is a huge mistake.

Connolly was so badly wounded that he couldn't stand up to face

the firing squad and was shot sitting in a chair.

They must be below our cell window.

It all sounds so near.

The cell that Winifred was in was quite close to the yard

where they executed the leaders, so she heard everything.

She heard everything.

James Connolly was the last to be executed on 12th May.

By then 15 leaders had been shot and Maxwell was coming under pressure

from Downing Street to avoid further inflaming public opinion.

It is a horrible, ghastly, disgusting, sickening...

The executions of course exerted a sea change throughout Ireland.

It had that nauseating, transformative effect

on the Irish Nationalist mind.

The British commuted the remaining death sentences on the leaders

and imposed prison sentences instead.

And if England had treated them leniently,

not with the same brutality,

I am convinced that the Rising would have been a failure.

That its true aim and object would not have been achieved.

Maxwell seems to have misjudged the situation.

The executions changed the dynamic in Ireland

and changed Irish history forever.

Interestingly, Sir John Maxwell wrote to his wife during those

weeks in May to say that if we, the British establishment,

had taken a strong line against the Ulster Volunteer Force

and nipped that particular rebellion in the bud,

none of this would ever have happened.

Yes, the soul of Ireland had awakened,

as if by magic, at the noise of those bullets.

In the aftermath of the Rising,

public opinion shifted irrevocably.

And within two years the minority voice

clamouring for an Irish Republic became the majority.

Just seven weeks after the last execution in Dublin,

Irish soldiers were preparing for an offensive

which was supposed to break the deadlock on the Western Front.

The Somme.

Among the soldiers already in the trenches was George McBride.

Well, we went up into the trenches.

There's men of an English regiment put in along with us

to teach us all the little tricks of the trench.

The hide and seek of the trench warfare.

You must remember the trenches cover thousands of miles all over France.

By mid-1916, Irish blood had been shed at home and in Europe.

Few realised that much worse lay ahead.

In 1984, I came here to Craigavon House

which was at that stage the UVF hospital.

There was a man called George McBride and I was told that he

would be very happy to talk to me about his experiences in the war.

He had been one of those who had signed the Ulster Covenant,

one of the men who had gone to the recruiting office to join up,

he'd been in the 36th (Ulster) Division at the Somme.

And then when the war was over he had been demobilised.

But his verdict on that war was that it had pitted

young men from working-class backgrounds against one other.

The whole experience that he had had

had devastated him.

It had made him question so many things.

I joined the Labour Party.

I was dissatisfied with the social conditions

under which people were living.

Well, in the Labour Party I met a Miss Winifred Carney.

I came from the Shankill Road and she was a Roman Catholic.

And she fought in the Dublin rebellion.

They had a happy marriage.

A short one, perhaps,

but an unlikely couple one might have thought

who ended up together.

They got on famously together

and even though they had arguments over what happened in Easter week.

But eventually they...

..they agreed on certain things.

She died long before him in 1943 and is buried in Milltown Cemetery.

I know that towards the end of his life

he grieved for Winnie as much as he grieved

perhaps for the men that he might have killed on the Western front

with his gun.

George died in 1988 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Clandeboye.

He was the man, George McBride, who preserved her documents,

her paper and the typewriter

on which she had hammered out Connolly's orders at the GPO.