Come Here To Me!

By this point of 2013, many people are perhaps suffering from Lockout fatigue.

The so-called ‘Decade of Centenaries’ however is only in its infancy, with the anniversaries of historic moments like World War I, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War all still ahead of us. Throw in the fact that next year will mark a thousand years since the Battle of Clontarf, and you can only come to the conclusion that ‘commemoration’ is a word we will all be hearing plenty of for the foreseeable future. For all the controversies in the press around how 2016 should be marked, it must be remembered it is a relatively easy affair for the state to commemorate events that are so distant from us in there here and now.

All of which got me thinking, how was the Easter Rising marked in Dublin in the years immediately after the event? In particular, how was it marked in 1917? A year on from the rebellion, and before the outbreak of the War of Independence, was the event marked at all, or did authorities prevent any marking of the painfully recent past? With much of Sackville Street still in ruins, and some prisoners still in English jails, did the republican movement seize the anniversary as a propaganda opportunity? Looking at newspaper reports, as well as the testimony of some participants in events, they certainly did.

Postcard showing the intense damage to Sackville Street, issued in 1916.

On 6 April 1917, a proclamation was issued by General Sir Brian Mahon, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Ireland, and posted at the different police barracks in Dublin. It was a clear attempt at preventing any commemorative gatherings in the city during the week marking the anniversary of the uprising. It noted that “between Sunday, the 8th day of April, 1917, and Sunday, the 15th day of April, 1917” any assembly of persons for the purpose of the holding of meetings would amount to to a breach of the peace and would likely serve to “promote disaffection”. Under the Defence of the Realm Regulations, Mahon’s proclamation made it clear there would be no tolerance for unapproved gatherings, ending with the words ‘God Save the King’.

Easter Sunday 1917 was reportedly very quiet in Dublin, with The Irish Times proclaiming that, if anything, there were fewer people on the streets of the capital than on a regular Sunday. This was not attributed to appalling weather conditions. An exception to the rule was Glasnevin Cemetery, where it was noted an “exceptionally large number of persons” had been attending the graves of some who had died a year previously. The paper noted that remembrance wreaths and flowers had been placed on some of the graves, though it is unclear if these graves were predominantly of republican participants or civilians who had died.

On Easter Monday itself, all eyes were firmly on Sackville Street. It was reported in the following days newspapers that small crowds had gathered on the street from early in the morning anticipating something, and The Irish Times reported that:

Towards 9 o’clock in the morning excitement and speculation were aroused by the discovery that the Sinn Féin flag had been hoisted surreptitiously on the staff which stood on the south-east corner of the General Post Office before the rebellion, and survived the effects of bombardment on that occasion. The flag floated at half mast.

The flag fell down the pole at one stage, but by twelve noon a larger crowd had gathered on the streets and there was an incident that attracted the attention of all gathered, as a man walked across the parapet of the General Post Office and raised the flag once more. The paper reported that this was a signal “for an outburst of cheering, and various other demonstrations of approval on a wide scale.” The raising of the flag over the General Post Office once more was followed by another highly symbolic act, as republicans raised what was also reported to be a “Sinn Féin flag” from the top of the Nelson Pillar. The monument, erected to one of the heroes of the British public, had long been detested by republicans, and Nelson himself took a bullet or two during the Easter Rising. A police constable removed the flag from the Pillar, but the focus of the crowd shifted to other sites in the city as the day went on, and it was reported that some made their way down Middle Abbey Street towards Liberty Hall, which was still badly damaged as a result of firing from the Helga warship a year earlier.

The viewing platform of the Nelson Pillar, seen from the General Post Office. A repubican flag from flown from here in 1917.

Defiantly, some Dubliners wore symbols of commemoration upon their own clothing. Black bands were reportedly worn by some in the crowd at Sackville Street, while others wore “ribbons of the Sinn Féin colours.”

It was noted that the rubble of the rebellion was used by some youths to attack the police, with stone-throwing on Sackville Street from about 4 o’clock, and an Inspector and Superintendent were reportedly struck. A number of young men, “wearing republican badges”, appealed to youths to desist in throwing stones, but they continued for some time, even smashing the windows of a military guard passing through Abbey Street. This kind of behaviour was condemned by The Irish Times as “the lower element seeking to let itself loose in honour of Easter Week.” As a result of clashes between youths and police, it was reported that eight civilians and four police men were treated for injuries at Jervis Street hospital. The newspaper also reported that “young roughs” had attacked the Methodist Church in Lower Abbey Street in the melee, breaking a number of windows and doing considerable damage.

Helena Molony, a participant in the rebellion, recalled that the production of the flags that were raised in 1917 was carried out by female republicans. She herself, as well as Winfired Carney, secretary to James Connolly a year earlier, were part of a small core group of women at Liberty Hall behind the making of the flags. She recalled that:

We made the flags-three, measuring six feet by four and a half feet. There was a very nice sailor from Glasgow called Morran, who looked at the flagstaff in the G.P.O. and said: “We could get a flag on that. I will do it, and they won’t get it off in a hurry”.

Molony had ambitions of raising similar flags at other locations which had been occupied by rebels, such as the College of Surgeons. It had been taken by members of the Irish Citizen Army during the uprising, in the aftermath of the disastrous decision to occupy Stephen’s Green, which was open to fire from neighbouring tall buildings. Michael Mallin had been in control of the men and women who were positioned there, and the building today still bears very clear damage from the firefight of 1916. She remembered:

Madeleine French Mullen and I went to the college of Surgeons for the purpose of hanging out a flag there. Our difficulty was to carry the flag, without being noticed. Madeleine had a loose tweed coat on her, and, being rather slim, she wrapped it round and round her. I. was rather slim too, but had no loose coat. As we were coming by Clarendon Street, Madeleine thought she felt the flag getting loose. I said: “Hold on. We will go into the Church” – Clarendon Street Church. We went in, and, with a few safety-pins, we made it secure. I think it was a false alarm anyway….We could not get into the College of Surgeons. We went into a lady’s flat in the house opposite, and put the flag out. She was one of our sympathisers, but I forget her name now. We did not take the same precautions with that flag. If we succeeded in putting it out the window, and if it hung for an hour, we felt it would be all right.

The symbolic raising of tricolour flags was not confined to Dublin, as the Freeman’s Journal reported similar scenes in Cork and Mullingar. In Cork, “300 or 400 persons” reportedly marched through the streets of the city, saluting at City Hall where the municipal flag had vanished in favour of the tricolour. The commemoration in Dublin was not restricted to the raising of flags however, as there was also an organised reprinting of the 1916 proclamation. Helena Molony alleges that some of the type print used for the 1916 proclamation was used in a 1917 equivalent, noting:

Having decided to post up the proclamation, we got facsimiles of it made. We got that printed by Walker, the Tower Press man. I did all the ordering for that. When Walker was printing the proclamation, he was a bit short of type, and he came to me. As is well known,the proclamation of 1916 had been printed in Liberty Hall. In the subsequent destruction of Liberty Hall, the type had been all smashed up, and thrown about. Nobody had cleared it up. I said to Walker: “There may be some type in the corner here”. He came down with his son; and he picked up a number of letters that he was short of. They were actually used in the 1917 proclamation.

The 1916 proclamation, which was reprinted in 1917 by republicans.

A very interesting blog post on the website Typefoundry has looked at the 1916 proclamation in some detail, and includes the words of Joseph Bouch, who wrote a study of the proclamation and the printing of it in 1936. Bouch wrote of the 1917 proclamation in some detail, and his story fits with regards to the recollections of Molony:

Mr. Walker (senior) and his son Mr. Frank Walker, employees of Mr. Joseph Stanley, a well-known Dublin printer, were the actual printers of this rare publication, and the order was given, by one of these women, for a re-issue which should bear more than a close resemblance to the original. Here again these two men had to work through the whole of Good Friday and part of Saturday, in the workshop at Upper Liffey Street, to fulfil their promise to carry out the order in time to allow of its distribution and posting. Such type as remained in the workshop at the rere [sic] of the “Co-op.” in Liberty Hall was collected, and it is of undoubted interest to relate that the same old fount was here again used for the second occasion. Naturally all the type sent out by West of Capel Street in the first instance could not be collected, but as much as possible was gathered and handed over to the printers. As results turned out they succeeded very well.

Molony and others posted the proclamation around the city, with flour paste made from glue, jam pots of which were used by teams of willing republicans all over the city. Molony remembered that “one poster in Grafton Street stayed up for six or eight months”

This was a task not limited to female republicans. Edward Dolan, a member of the Hibernian Rifles, recalled taking part in the same act, as well as raising the tricolour flag over the headquarters of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Dublin. The Hibernian Rifles were a small armed group who partook in the rebellion the year previously, affiliated to the A.O.H, a strictly Roman Catholic political association founded in the United States by Irish migrants in the 1830s. Historian Padraig Óg O Ruiarc has correctly noted that the A.O.H, still active today, could be described as a “sectarian, conservative, Catholic and nationalist body.”

Dolan, in a statement to the Bureau of Military History, remembered his role in Easter 1917:

Some time in the latter part of 1916, I joined the remnants of the Hibernian Rifles at the headquarters of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (Clan na Gael), 28 North Frederick Street. On the anniversary of the Rising in Easter 1917, I was mobilised and remained on duty that night in North Frederick Street. I assisted in the posting up of copies of the 1916 Proclamation and the erection of the Tricolour on the roof of No. 28.

Dublin Corporation marked the anniversary of the Rising in its own way, by passing a motion calling for an amnesty for Irish prisoners. Easter Week passed off relatively quietly on the whole, but female activists were to the fore in commemorating the anniversaries of executions in its aftermath, and bringing the issue back to the fore. On 12 May, the anniversary of the execution of James Connolly, a banner was hung across Liberty Hall in commemoration of the Edinburgh socialist.

Once again Helena Molony participated in this act of defiance, joined by Rosie Hackett and others. Hackett, whose name has recently been chosen for the new bridge spanning the River Liffey, remembered this evident in her own statement to the Bureau of Military History:

On the occasion of the first anniversary of Connolly’s death, the Transport people decided that he would be honoured. A big poster was put up on the Hall, with the words: “James Connolly Murdered, May 12th, 1916″.

It was no length of time up on the Hall, when it was taken down by the police, including Johnny Barton and Dunne. We were very vexed over it, as we thought it should have been defended. It was barely an hour or so up, and we wanted everybody to know it was Connolly’s anniversary. Miss Molony called us together- Jinny Shanahan, Brigid Davis and myself. Miss Molony printed another script. Getting up on the roof, she put it high up, across the top parapet. We were on top of the roof for the rest of the time it was there. We barricaded the windows. I remember there was a ton of coal in one place, and it was shoved against the door in cause they would get in. Nails were put in.

Police were mobilised from everywhere, and more than four hundred of them marched across from the Store Street direction and made a square outside Liberty Hall. Thousands of people were watching from the Quay on the far side of the river. It took the police a good hour or more before they got in, and the script was there until six in the evening, before they got it down.

It’s clear from looking at these events in Dublin that the question of just how the Easter Rising should be commemorated is one people were asking themselves even before the first shots of the War of Independence were fired. As politicians gather on O’Connell Street at 2016 to pay lip-service to the events and individuals of a century ago, I think I will take the chance to stand on the Rosie Hackett bridge and think of her actions in 1917.