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TEACHING THE IRISH A LESSON . . . OR NOT
By Dr. Paul A. Thomsen
Even the Vikings found Ireland hard to hold.
Since the dark ages, residents of Great Britain have sought to control and consolidate the neighboring island of Ireland. In the early twentieth century, the rulers of the British Empire thought they had finally succeeded. On April 24, 1916, a small group of dissident Irishmen seized control of key points around the Irish city of Dublin. The British army’s poor response invalidated their presumptions and changed the course of history.
Throughout modern European history, Irish nationalists have fought English/Irish Protestants for control of Ireland. In ages past, England attempted colonization and the confiscation of land. These didn’t work. During the reign of Cromwell, England tried extermination. That also failed. Later, in the nineteenth century, elements of the British Parliament tried another tactic: deference to British royal heritage in exchange for “Home Rule.” This legislation scared many groups among the populace—the minority Protestant hard-liners, the firebrand Irish nationalists, and the more traditional House of Lords—equally. It twice failed to pass Parliament. In 1914, a third Home Rule bill, milder in tone and aided by the cost of occupation with a war in Europe looming, narrowly passed Parliament with a proviso that it would not be enacted until after the war. It seemed like peace would finally be had in Ireland.
On the contrary, the delay in the law’s enactment gave the extremists just enough time to test the limits of Britain’s tolerance. The Protestant minority, fearing a soon-to-be Irish-Catholic regional government, formed a paramilitary organization called the Ulster Volunteers. In response, a band of Irish intellectuals and professionals organized a sixteen-thousand-strong island counterforce of civilians, called the Irish Volunteers, to oppose Ulster. The challenges were symbolic and ineffective. However, unknown to most participants, a third secret group was in charge of the nonpartisan Irish Volunteers, the very independence-minded Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). While Ulster was a problem, the IRB saw the new Home Rule law as the real threat, believing that under its authority they would never be rid of British influence. They also had a plan to achieve independence, hinging on the traditional British mistake of using overt force when facing any real or imagined resistance. If their long-shot plan worked, everyone, they hoped, would rapidly assume that the British army never intended to protect the Irish unless doing so was in its own interests; Home Rule would become a moot point, and Ireland would soon be a free and independent state.
On April 24, 1916, the clandestine IRB leaders hatched their plan and marched 1,500 Irish Volunteers into Dublin, detailing them to seize strategic points throughout the city. Shortly thereafter, Patrick Pearse, an IRB spokesman and the operation’s leader, ordered two Irish republican flags raised over the general post office as he read a proclamation declaring the island an independent republican state. By occupying British property, the act could not have been more provocative to the Dublin-garrisoned British army. General John Maxwell, commander of Dublin’s three battalions of 2,400 British soldiers, responded by making the worst mistake he could make. He immediately declared martial law and mobilized the soldiers in four city barracks to quash the insurgency, turning the puppet Irish Volunteers instantly into martyrs for the cause of Irish independence. There would be blood in the streets, just as the IRB had planned.
Although the notion might have seemed like folly to General John Maxwell in 1916, the British army could have foiled the IRB’s plans with a defter hand and a longer view. Centuries of British military tradition dictated that riots and insurrections were best handled by the well-trained and well-equipped British army. Swift and strong responses were also key to preventing further acts of aggression. Although Ireland was still legally an occupied territory until war’s end, the IRB’s martyrs were not, however, a mob and should have fallen under the purview of local civilian governance. Their initial acts were orderly, deferential to civilians, and decidedly nonviolent until they were fired upon by their opposite numbers.
Yet, as a career officer, Maxwell saw his position through experience gained in the Boer War, the Western Front of the First World War, and in the 1914–1915 defense of the Suez Canal from Ottoman raids. The green of the IRB’s flags and uniforms made him see red and act rashly. After all, the insurgents did eventually surrender because of the siege’s drain on their resources—and the belief that the uprising would continue elsewhere. Furthermore, Maxwell’s eventual offering of fair terms to the Irish prisoners, later reneged on, shows that he was capable of attaining a larger perspective. Had he acted more wisely, the Easter Rising, like so many other Irish revolutionary plans, would have failed and Ireland would have become an island dominion akin in status to Canada.
Instead, the Irish Republic, paradoxically, owes General Maxwell a debt of gratitude for his part in the execution of the IRB’s plans by making things worse for the Dublin occupiers. Initially, the British army surrounded the Irish pickets and fired on the enemy. When that failed to move the resistance, the British charged the Dublin positions in repeated waves, attempting to dislodge their recalcitrant foes through the application of cold steel. When this, too, failed, they fired artillery to bring the British-owned buildings down around the Volunteers’ heads. The rebels simply stood their ground as each violent British act, chronicled over several days by international newspaper coverage, showed the British army as first impotent, then incompetent, and finally, mad. The army demonstrated that England was willing to destroy British infrastructure in order to save it. As a result, on April 29, 1916, the Irish surrendered the Dublin Post Office, victorious.
The debacle was, indeed, a public relations nightmare for the British Empire. When the dust settled, the Volunteers who surrendered were discovered to be a cross section of Ireland’s populace. Instead of hardened criminals and foreign fighters, the defenders were revealed to be led by schoolteachers, laborers, and poets who had withstood four days of attacks by the most lethal infantry in the world. Moreover, there was no promised fair public trial for those who surrendered. Most of the ringleaders were imprisoned, given summary military trials, and executed at Kilmainham Gaol by a British army firing squad. For many Irish, the aftermath strengthened the feelings stirred up by the Dublin siege. The British, they believed, would never change. Thanks to General John Maxwell’s ill-thought-out actions, the British had to go.
Without an Easter Rising, Ireland and English history would have been fundamentally different. Initially, the third Home Rule bill would have been grudgingly accepted by the Irish people. There would have been no Irish Free State or republic. There would have been more money and more seasoned British veterans to fight both world wars. In World War II, Irish ports would have grown in influence, handling much of the international shipping trade and American military matériel used to defeat Nazi Germany. Conversely, Germany would have made the island suffer, targeting those same facilities. And the British Empire would have felt more willing to handle India and refuse the partition of Pakistan in 1947 and the 1948 divestment of Burma, preferring to “settle” matters as they had in Ireland. America’s Irish communities would also have grown as important fund-raisers for a much longer and more violent IRB-inspired guerrilla war. Two-thirds of the island of Ireland would likely still be gripped by bombings and mass shootings from continued extremist attempts to bleed each other into submission. Today, Ireland would be as much red in color as emerald green.