Source H, is perhaps the most useful of all the sources because it quotes Patrick Pearce as he was speaking at his court martial. He is saying that they have not lost because they will become martyrs if the British execute the rebels. He also indicates that even though what the rebels had attempted to do may not have won the Irish people freedom from the British. However, the cause would live on and the children of the rebels will win the Irish people freedom in the end.
It is debateable whether this assortment of sources has sufficient indication of why the Easter Rising took place. The information, quite expectedly lies within the sources, which were written before the Easter Rising took place, and by the people who planned the Easter Rising. Source B indicates that the rebels were planning to be martyrs; Source H proves this, as Patrick Pearce says that reason he did it was to become a martyr. Therefore they knew that the people of Ireland might not like it at first, but if the English killed them the way they eventually did, the public opinion on the matter would swing in their direction. The other reason the sources (Source A) state that the rising took place at this time is because the war was going on in Europe and England’s armed forces were preoccupied with fighting the Germany. This of course meant that the task the rebels were attempting to accomplish would be a lot easier to complete. These are two reasons why the Easter Rising took place, and they are found within the sources. This provides a fairly strong explanation of why it happened. However, these sources do not accommodate all of the reasons as to why the Easter Rising took place, but they do give an account. Consequently, it is debateable whether the sources include enough evidence to explain fully why the Easter Rising took place. However, the concluding statement must be that there is not enough evidence within these sources to explain fully the whole truth behind the Easter Rising.
1b) During the time directly after the Easter rising, the rebels were considered to have failed. This was because the public support was aimed in the direction of the government who had sorted out the problem of the rebels. The public did not like the rebels because innocent civilians had been killed in the fighting between them and the government troops. The government saw this as a great victory against the nationalists. The public were finally sided with the English. The English made a great mistake though, as they executed the rebels without a trial whatsoever. The rebels were also extremely mistreated and brutalised during these executions. The Irish public saw this as a great miscarriage of justice.
In the time after the executions of the rebels, the government lost the support of the Irish people at a rapid pace, in favour of the Revolutionary Nationalists, which at that time were Sinn Féin. The reason for this is that the people of Ireland saw the rebels as martyrs who had died to help bring Ireland freedom. Before this they had seen them as thugs who had killed civilians and not got Ireland any further forward in the quest for freedom.
Before the English unwisely made martyrs of the rebels, the parliamentary nationalists in Ireland had been gaining ground. They were planning to share power with England, known as ‘home rule’, the Irish controlled Irish affairs from a government in Ireland, but the English controlled external affairs that went on between Ireland and the world from England. After the Easter Rising, England found that Ireland no longer considered ‘home rule’ a suitable way of dealing with the situation. The Irish wanted complete separation from England in all parliamentary affairs, and everything else for that matter.
The reason that Ireland wanted complete separation from England at this time is because it saw what the English did to the rebels as unfair, excessive and cruel. In fact they saw the English as a country of cruel people at this time. This happened solely because of what the British government had done to the rebels. They did not want anything to do with a country that did things like that, never mind be ruled by them. Source F shows how much the Irish worshiped the rebels now. They called the English rule slavery and said that the rebels had gone to fight it in this folk song. Source G indicates perfectly that the opinion changed. John Dillon says that in the space of ten days the population of Ireland had gone from being bitterly opposed to the rebels to being infuriated against the executions that the English had carried out on the rebels. One could say that this was the ultimate moment for revenge, although this is a debatable statement.
The British and Unionist perspective on the executions was that the rebels deserved what they got. As we know from what happened, they should have listened more carefully to what Patrick Pearce said on his court martial (Source H). They should have realised that by killing the rebels they would be creating martyrs that had more power over the Irish population dead than alive.
The Nationalist perspective on the executions, which has already been discussed, was one of disgust. They thought that the way that the rebels had been treated was awful. They thought that the British were savagely radical and unfair to do what they did.
To conclude, the outcome of the Easter Rising has been interpreted in so many ways because of events that followed. Before the executions people thought of the rising as a failure simply because it appeared that way. The Irish people thought of the rebels as awful people because they had killed so many civilians in the process, as source E indicates. But after the executions people rapidly changed their minds about the rebels. They had after all risked and lost their lives in the pursuit of freedom from the politically and morally insane British government. At this point the people thought of the rebels as heroes and the British as the morbid failures who had been trying to conquer Ireland for so long but never really succeeded. The outcome of the Easter Rising was interpreted in two different ways, a failure and a success. The reason for it being interpreted differently is due to at which time it was interpreted and also very importantly, who the Easter Rising was interpreted by.
2) Dates are important in Ireland. This section will analyse critical dates, each of which represents a major lurch in the already unstable chronicle of Anglo-Irish relationships. What follows, therefore, is not an abbreviated history but an attempt to identify a succession of themes.
In the beginning, the British wanted control over Ireland because if left alone, it would provide a pathway for Catholics from Europe to invade the Protestant England, If they left it unguarded, it would be a national security threat for the British.
More than a century after the Norman Conquest of England, Henry II of England claimed and attempted to attach Ireland to his kingdom. He succeeded in establishing control in a small area around Dublin known as the Pale. Over the next four centuries this area was the beach-head for the kingdom of Ireland, adopting British administrative practices and the English language and looking to London for protection and leadership. A number of attempts were made to extend British control over the rest of Ireland, but the major expansion of English dominion did not take place until the sixteenth century. For the Irish clans who disputed the rest of the island with each other, Britain became the major external threat to their sovereignty and customs. By the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, military conquest had established English rule over most of the island of Ireland, with the principal exception of the northern province of Ulster. The Ulster clans, under Hugh O'Neill, had succeeded in overcoming their instinctive rivalries to create an effective alliance against Elizabeth's armies. After a long and damaging campaign, Ulster was eventually brought under English control and the Irish leaders left the island for Europe. Their land was confiscated and distributed to colonists from Britain. By 1703, less than 5 per cent of the land of Ulster was still in the hands of the Catholic Irish.
The Plantation of Ulster was unique among Irish plantations in that it set out to attract colonists of all classes from England, Scotland and Wales by generous offers of land. Essentially it sought to transplant a society to Ireland. The native Irish remained, but were initially excluded from the towns built by the Planters, and banished to the mountains and bogs on the margins of the land they had previously owned. The sum of the Plantation of Ulster was the introduction of a foreign community, which spoke a different language, represented an alien culture and way of life, including a new type of land tenure and management. In addition, most of the newcomers were Protestant by religion, while the native Irish were Catholic. So the broad outlines of the current conflict in Northern Ireland had been sketched out within fifty years of the plantation: the same territory was occupied by two hostile groups, one believing the land had been usurped and the other believing that their tenure was constantly under threat of rebellion. They often lived in separate quarters. They identified their differences as religious and cultural as well as territorial.
The British wanted Northern Ireland to grow as a part of Britain outside of Great Britain. The Irish remained in Ulster but they were excluded from anything that the British did. The Irish were banned from the British towns and villages and they were also banned from the countryside they once owned. The differences between the two parties were mainly religious, the natives were Catholic and the settlers were Protestant.
The British initiated a parliament in Ireland. This was just like the British parliament in how it worked. However, there were numerous of penal laws enforced against Catholics as well as the standard set of laws. In 1801, this parliament was abolished due to the British parliament wanting more direct control over Ireland. They would now control Ireland from Britain. This rule from Britain was called the Union. Various factions and individuals attempted to overthrow this parliament many times. The Repeal movement in the 1840s and the Home Rule movement from the 1870s were parliamentary. Other movements, like the Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, were planning to overthrow the Union by means of revolution. The home rule act could have succeeded if there had been no world war. In the war an armed rising in Dublin, at Easter, 1916 took place. The rising appeared to have failed, as the British arrested and prosecuted the leaders of the revolution. The Irish people were in favour of this. However, the British made a grave mistake. They executed the leaders and this created sympathy by the Irish towards the rebels. The northern Protestants were very unhappy when it seemed there was the possibility of home rule, they were uneasy with being ruled by the southern Catholics.
In 1921 Ireland was partitioned and Northern Ireland was created, which was to be ruled by Britain. EIRE was the other part of that remained after the partition. It was to become a separate country. The partition was only intended to be temporary, until the tension cooled in Northern Ireland. The IRA still saw a problem though; they had not yet got the united Ireland they were trying to create. Therefore, they proceeded with terrorist campaigns through the 1940s to 1960s.
In the 1950s the Catholics of Northern Ireland had decided that they would settle for equality in Northern Ireland rather than it being incorporated into Ireland. A civil rights campaign was initiated. The campaign was influenced by the civil rights campaign in the USA, involving marches and protests. The British were no longer able to control the unrest, and in 1969 sent in the army to control the situation. At first they seemed to help the Catholics, but they soon appeared to be on the other side. The IRA began attacks on the army. By 1972 the government was unable to handle the situation. Westminster took over control of Northern Ireland at this point. However, the situation continued into the 1990s. The civil rights marches were a success it seemed, although the violence still continued to grow until it peaked in the mid 1970s, when over 400 people were killed in one year. Since then the mortality rate of those being killed as a result of terrorist activity has been below 100 on average each year.
There are many groups in Ireland who all want very different things; Unionists are the successors of those who opposed Home Rule in the nineteenth century, and eventually settled for the state of Northern Ireland. The main unionist parties are the Ulster Unionist Party (OUP), which formed all governments from 1921 to 1972; and the more recently established Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is more populist, more anti-nationalist, but less popular in electoral support. Both are opposed to the involvement of the Irish Republic in Northern Ireland, and are unwilling to share executive power with non-Unionist parties. They also share a suspicion of Britain's commitment to the union. The DUP holds all these positions more extremely than the UUP, and also is more preoccupied with the power of the Catholic church. In 1994 the leader of the UUP was James Molyneaux, and Ian Paisley led the DUP.
The basic tenet of nationalists is the aspiration to unify the island of Ireland. The main constitutional party is the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), which contests the nationalist vote with Sinn Féin, generally accepted to be the political arm of the IRA. The SDLP campaigns for internal reforms, and has accepted that unity must await the support of the majority in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin argues that force is necessary to remove the British presence, and that its mandate is historical. Sinn Féin has refused to condemn the IRA, and has not been included in any official political talks. John Hume led the SDLP in 1994, and Gerry Adams Sinn Féin.
The Paramilitary groups in Ireland believe that the only way to rid Ireland of the British and their Protestant religion is through revolutionary means. In other words: violence. The republican paramilitary organisations, of which the IRA is by far the most important, believe that only force will remove the British from Ireland. Initially they saw themselves as defenders of the Northern Catholic minority, but later spread their military activities throughout Northern Ireland, Britain and Europe. There is disagreement about whether loyalist violence is essentially reactive, but certainly the pattern of loyalist violence has shadowed republican violence. There has been a major shift in the form of violence since 1990, with loyalists for the first time killing more victims than republicans. It has been speculated that this rise in loyalist violence may be connected to the failure of recent political talks.
There are also Unionist paramilitary groups, but they are less in numbers. They still, however, manage to fight the IRA and other nationalist factions. The British are also a party in Ireland; they control Northern Ireland but not Ireland.
The final major party in Ireland is the Republic of Ireland. They are southern Ireland; they have barely any say in the affairs of Northern Ireland, however they are entitled to some input.
The major reason for conflict in Ireland is because of Britain. If they had not taken over Ireland in the manner they did, i.e. planted Protestants, they would have had a far easier task to restore Ireland to what it should be like when the troubles began. They also made many stupid mistakes later. If they had acted in a better manner during the Easter Rising and not executed the rebels but instead given them proper trials, they could have controlled Ireland with the support from most of its people.
Also, on another note, neither one of the different factions in Northern Ireland are willing to give any way whatsoever to let one another govern in their own way. Because of this steadfast resolution by all the parties involved, there is bound to be conflict. It would be the same all over the world, only the Irish are the society that needs a resolution to their crisis because it hit them first. All one can do is hope that someone gains the courage to say that they will give way for the other factions and are willing to come up with a resolution so that in the end, Ireland may become a free state and all past differences are put aside.
One can also speculate over whether it would be a good thing to actually restore Ireland to one united country because the separation has been going on for so long that the whole idea has become institutionalised into the lives of the population of the whole of the Irish island. Therefore, it would be very hard for people to adapt and fit in with the new rule, did unification occur.
There are many fundamental facts to consider in making decisions regarding the problems in Northern Ireland and hopefully this essay has helped produce a clearer picture of the situation.
