On Saturday 29th April 1916 the rebels finally surrendered after 300 civilians, 60 rebels and 130 British soldiers were killed, with over 200 injured, Including James Connolly. On Sunday, the rebels were marched across Dublin to prison. At times they were mocked and taunted by the people of Dublin that had survived, who had seen part of their city wrecked. Damage to central Dublin totalled £2.5 million.
Shortly after the rising the Public were feeling all kinds of emotions, they were shocked, angry and becoming hostile. At first many people were outraged by the Catholics, but soon their opinions changed.
77 captured rebels were tried in secret by a military court and sentenced to death by the British government, but in the end only 15 of the leaders were actually executed. Each of the executions were spaced and shot by a firing squad. Their deaths were only publically announced after their executions. The public opinion in Ireland now turned to the rebels, they were now seen as martyrs, victims who had been killed for what they believed in. the executions were thought of as unfair and that the men involved deserved a public trial at least, and when they found out that Connolly had been tied to a chair and shot, as he had been wounded badly in the fighting and could not walk, they were horrified and sickened and thought that the British Army were revolting.
The long-term effects of the Easter Rising were the hatred of the British. They had once been seen as the good guys, but after their filthy show during the rising many people had turned against them. the majority of Catholics in Ireland saw the uprising as a war of independence and decided that the Easter Rising would definitely not be the end. The British were thought of as Barbaric savages and the people who were executed are still admired and remembered today, even heroes for some. Sympathy grew for a United Independent Ireland and support for Sinn Fein and The IRA (Irish Republican Army) grew.
After the Easter Rising Sinn Fein won 73 seats in the national election of 1918 as Irish people were sickened by the executions of the rebel leaders. Unionists only won 26 seats, and home rule only won 6 out of the 105 MP seats available. In an effort to solve the Irish Problem, the new Prime Minister David Lloyd George called everyone to discuss everything to do with Ireland. Sinn Fein refused to go, and so the leaders of the republican movement were arrested and put into mainland prisons. One man escaped, Michael Collins. He lead the Republican movement and Sinn Fein set up their own republic.
This was not accepted by the British government or Irish Protestants and their military arm, so it started the War of Independence. The nationalists of Ireland fought to become an independent country, and not to be ruled by the United Kingdom. They used Guerrilla tactics, meaning that they fought the war themselves; not using planes or bombs, and it caused many deaths. In 1920 the IRA killed 176 policemen and 54 soldiers. Officers, including the black and tans were sent to Ireland by the British to restore peace.
This was not working, and after two years of fighting there was a cease-fire in July 1921, which lead to a peace agreement called the ‘partition treaty’ that established the north of Ireland to be Northern Ireland, and the south to be The Irish Free State, now separated from England. Each country still had home rule, but they were separate. This was perhaps the most significant turning point in recent Irish History as it finally added to the peace instead of the death and destruction. The Irish people, finally agreed on something and most Catholics and Protestants got what they wanted, although the only problem is that people who live in an area of people from another religion, have a hard life, and are often bullied and attacked. The partition still exists today.
Some Nationalists thought the treaty was a good idea and saw it as being one step closer to gaining an Independent Ireland, but some Nationalists were ‘anti treaty’ and felt that this new partition wasn’t good enough. They wanted to keep fighting the war of independence and in June 1922 a civil war broke out between the Nationalists, over whether the treaty was a good idea, or bad and lasted for around a year.
I think that the Easter Rising was actually a good thing for Ireland. It was a major turning point and I believe it improved much of the fighting and violence in Ireland. Although it caused much death and destruction on the way, in the end many Irish people got what they wanted. Most Catholics live in the South, and they wanted to be free of England, the south now is so they got what they wanted. Most Protestants live in the North and wanted to stay with England, so they got what they wanted. I think some people in Ireland are still unhappy about the partition, but it has calmed a lot of people down, people that could have caused a lot more trouble if they hadn’t got what they had wanted. The Rising made the British realise just how serious the Catholics in Ireland were about having a free state, and what we know as the Easter Rising would probably have happened soon enough at a later date and time anyway, and the partition would have happened with or without it, it just made things happen quicker.
Another significant event in Irish history was the deployment of British troops in Northern Ireland. By the late 1960’s Catholics were being discriminated against by Protestants and treated dreadfully. They had tiny, run down filthy council houses if they were lucky, the worst jobs that you could get which were so low paid that they wouldn’t have been able to pay rates even if they were not being made to pay more than Protestants, hardly an education and many didn’t even get to vote. The Protestants took everything high-quality, leaving the Catholics with hardly anything, this was a major grievance for the Catholics. In parliament votes were not being counted, or extra votes were added on in the Protestants favour, so that the Catholics would never win. This was called gerrymandering.
Protestants did this to the Catholics because they were scared. They were the minority and they knew that if the Catholics got their way the catholic church would take over, which was much more strict and they wouldn’t be allowed abortion, contraception and anything that the catholic church wanted to ban. They knew that what they were doing to the Catholics (bad housing, jobs, education) would be brought back upon themselves in return when the Catholics came into power, and they were terrified.
Protestant Unionist Prime Minister, Terence O’Neil wanted to modernize the society and economy of Northern Ireland and he wanted to improve the way that Catholics and Protestants regarded and treated each other. He broke with the past by making links with the Irish Republic and the Catholics of Northern Ireland, which could have been a step forward to improving the situation of Catholics and Protestants hating each other, but Protestants feared that he was encouraging the Catholics to demand equality with them and they would lose out. They formed groups to defend protestant interests and held rallies. A lot of violence stemmed from this and the UVF made shootings and attacks on Catholics. The Catholics thought that the O’Neil reforms were moving too slowly and weren’t going far enough, but the Protestants thought that he was going too far. They thought this because he was trying to help the Catholics with issues such as their bad housing, which is what protestants were scared would happen before. They thought that this meant the Catholics would rise and take over.
In America there were civil rights movements starting against equality and discrimination at the time that this was going own. Catholics saw this and spoke out themselves, about what they were going through, and they were soon intituled to free speech, free association, freedom of belief and the right to be free of discrimination in work and social life.
The Catholics saw that civil rights was the freedom and rights of every day citizens and what they should be allowed to do. Civil rights protesters used peaceful methods, like marches and sit-ins to get their message across in a peaceful way without the use of violence. In 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was set up. It’s aims were
- Equal voting rights
- An end to Gerrymandering voting districts
- Laws against discrimination by local governments
- Fair allocation of council housing
- The scrapping of the special powers act
- The disbanding of the B specials
They were only prepared to use peaceful methods to get what they wanted. Marches in Northern Ireland are very significant as they march to commemorate past events in history, and they often get a lot of attention from the media.
In august 1968 the first civil rights march took place in Northern Ireland. About 2500 people marched from Coal Island to Dungannon to protest against the discrimination in housing. There was widespread coverage of the march throughout the media, on TV, the radio, in newspapers. This was a really good step forward for NICRA as it showed that it was possible for peaceful methods to get just as much attention on the discrimination of Northern Ireland than violence. On October 5th 1968, Civil Rights supporters arranged a march through a protestant area of Londonderry, but the government banned it. This increased support for the civil rights movement, especially when riots of police attacked hundreds of peaceful marchers, injuring 77 of them. This year was significant around the world, as 10000s of young people joined peaceful protest marches in America, France, Germany and Britain.
The year after (1969) students from Queens University in Belfast, calling themselves a ‘peoples democracy’ led a civil rights march from Belfast to Londonderry. When they reached an area called Bumtollet they had rocks and petrol bombs thrown at them, they were stoned and beaten by Protestants. They finally reached Londonderry and police went into the bogside and destroyed houses and abused the local residents. The residents built barricades to defend themselves from the police, but this only caused more drama, and riots started. Many people were traumatized and infuriated at the polices violence and disgusting behaviour. The protestant unionist government had lost control of the events in Northern Ireland. The protestant unionist government had lost control of what was happening in Northern Ireland. The Catholics living in the Bogside area of Londonderry had to build barricades over the roads to defend themselves as they obviously couldn’t trust the RUC (protestant police force) any more.
On 12th August 1969, the Apprentice Boys had a march to celebrate the Protestant victories in the past, but it turned violent. These marches happened every year, and every year the Catholics were reminded of the power they didn’t have. 1000s of Orangemen came to Derry to participate in the march, which was going to intrude on a Catholic area. The fighting went on for 48 hours, with open air petrol bomb factories being established and buildings being hijacked. This was to become known as the ‘Battle of the Bogside’. On the 14th the British Army was sent onto the streets of Northern Ireland because the British could no longer control Northern Ireland or trust the RUC. Neither side looked like they were going to back down and the army had to try and bring back the peace. Ireland was on the threshold of descending into a civil war.
This was not the only cause of troops being sent in, there was also the fact that the protestants were angry that the media said that the Catholics were the only ones that suffered hardships when quite a few protestants had been living in poor conditions and going through many hardships too. The media had added suspicion, tension and paranoia. Protestants saw the civil rights movement as a cover up for an IRA attack and thought that civil rights marches increased violence.
The troops enforced new rules and regulations to keep the fighting minimal. They searched houses freely and made a curfew for people living in the Catholic Lower Falls Area, but this caused a lot of damage.
At first the Protestants thought that the troops were there to protect the Catholics, and not to help them, so saw them as an inhospitable invading force. They felt undermined, as the British did not trust them to run Northern Ireland. Catholics, on the other hand welcomed the troops, seeing them as there to protect them. two reports were send out, the Cameron Report and the Hunt Report. The Cameron report blamed the troubles on discrimination and the police and was bias against Catholics, whereas the Hunt Report said that the RUCs should be disarmed and a new police authority set up with Catholics running it and B-specials should be disbanded and replaced with the Ulster Defence Regiment. This made the Protestants Furious.
After a while the response changed. Some reforms after the Hunt Report made B-specials disbanded and changed the RUCs. There were new jobs and attempts to end the discrimination through Northern Ireland, but the changes were too slow for the Catholics and too much for the Protestants. This caused even more suspicion and dislike of the troops as the Catholic situation was getting worse. Although the Protestants didn’t like the troops coming there at first, they were being treated a lot nicer than the Catholics were by them. There was increased support for groups like Sinn Fein and the IRA had now split into two groups, the Official IRA and the Provision IRA, who were more violent. This brought about internment.
Internment was when the British Army imprisoned people without a fair trial or even a reason, they just went to their houses and took them from their homes. The British Army had decided to ‘get tough’ because there was frequent shootings and gun battles between the Provisional IRA and the UVF and they wanted them to stop in any way that they could. On 3rd July troops went to the Catholic area of Belfast to search for weapons and ammunition belonging to the IRA. They took over, putting a curfew on residents and destroying the area. All together they only found 24 shotguns, 30 rifles and 52 pistols out of the 100000 licensed guns in Northern Ireland. One of the reasons that the British Army used methods such as internment was because in February 1971 the first British troop was killed since they had first intervened. This provoked more searches and more violence, including 3 Scottish soldiers being killed on the outskirts of Belfast.
When internment first started, gun crimes and shootings increased, killing a further 143 people. People didn’t like it and it just made many situations worse than they started off being. At first people hated internment, which increased the violence levels in these areas, but by the end of the first year the violence had started to die down thanks to the discovery of arms and ammunition. I think when internment started people were indignant and furious as many of them had done nothing wrong, and thought they were being accused.
I believe that the deployment of British troops was a turning point, as it increased the fighting, aggression and bitterness more. People were now hating the British government more than ever before as they felt that sending troops in was just aggravating the situation. Although at the start of internment there was a lot more violence and anger, towards the end it had all died down, and afterwards the violence was even less than it had been before and it looked as though the situation in Northern Ireland was finally getting better.
In spite of this, more trouble was caused on 30th January 1972, when Nationalists in Ireland had decided to protest against internment, even though it was illegal, because the Unionist government had banned all marches, as in the past they had all just lead to violence. The Army decided that the march should be dealt with in a low-key sort of way, instead of going at it head first and causing the risk of a riot. They put up 26 barriers to prevent the march from going to the Guildhall, and to contain the march to within the Bogside. They didn’t want them to go to Guildhall, as it was illegal. 3 soldiers were giving the job of the ‘scoop up’ operation from the first battalion of the parachute regiment, who were specialists in fierce attacks on enemy targets, but not crowd control. They started this operation just before 4pm.
There are so many accounts of what actually happened at the time, that no one is actually sure of the result today. For example the coroner said that the Army had ‘run amok’, shot innocent people without thinking, and that it was sheer unadulterated murder. Someone else said that it was a massacre and that the Army only shot, but that they were shooting indiscriminately. Many people said that the IRA didn’t open fire first, and it was not right to return fire into the crowds in the packed square, but they didn’t hear any bombs. Another account says that over 1000 people were lying on their faces on the floor, as the shooting continued and it was impossible to tell who fired the first shots. It was pretty amazing that throughout it all only 13 people were killed. I think that certain people were bias with the accounts, due to their religion or own status, and what people saw and heard were wrong, in all the commotion.
There was a report released after this called The Widgery Report, which said that there was no breakdown in Army discipline, the soldiers apparently identified armed gunmen and fired upon them in accordance with the standing orders in the yellow card. Some soldiers in face showed a high degree of responsibility, whereas others fired, bordered on reckless.
In March 1972, the British prime minister Edward Heath decided to take control of Northern Ireland, take away home rule, and introduce direct rule. He did this as Bloody Sunday had sparked of more trouble and the British Government feared the lack of rules, and thought that if they introduced these new rules, it would help matters and stop all the fighting and troubles.
Soon after Bloody Sunday people were outraged. This was just one of the short term consequences of Bloody Sunday. The deaths of people that were killed in Bloody Sunday, is both long term and short term, it was short term as it angered so many people and made them hate the British, but they will have forgotten about the deaths now, yet it is still long term as their families will still remember it and be angered by it. Some of the long term consequences due to Bloody Sunday are that the IRA are still in conflict with Britain, and still plant bombs here as revenge and to show that this is just what happened to them. Another major long-term consequence was direct rule, as the British Government could not trust Northern Ireland to control itself. This angered the Northern Ireland Catholics, as they wanted to be free from Britain, and British rule. The Protestants, however, that live there wanted to have their own government, but were still happy to be ruled by the United Kingdom again, as they wanted to be a part of it. The Catholics in Southern Ireland had the same reaction as the ones in Northern Ireland, as they too wanted an independent country, and the rest of the world were disgusted that a peaceful, civil rights march could turn out so vicious and appalling.
Bloody Sunday was a turning point in that helped shaped the course in Irish History because although it brought about loads more violence again, it brought in direct rule. I think that Direct rule, still would have been introduced without Bloody Sunday, but it just sped things up, like Easter Sunday did with the partition. I also think that the violence would have happened again soon even if Bloody Sunday hadn’t occurred, as another march or protest could set it all off again.
Out of these 3 significant events that have formed the route of Irish history throughout the last century, I would say that Easter Sunday was the most important. It is very hard to distinguish, which had more better points than the others and in the end they are all pretty equal. I think that the Easter rising did the best job of making Ireland better, as it separated it out into two parts, the North and South, which many people had wanted, and it solved a lot of problems. The deployment of troops was also very important, although I don’t think it was as important, as it lead to internment and without that Bloody Sunday wouldn’t have happened. Bloody Sunday was important because it brought about direct rule. Although each event helped Ireland in the end, they involved a lot of violence, discrimination, abuse and destruction. All three events increased the hatred between the Catholics and Protestants, and obviously Britain, but helped the country as a whole.