Anybody who is interested in Irish history should watch Brendan O'Carroll tonight at 9pm, BBC2, who is talking about his family's involvement in the Easter Rising. I've seen Carroll before on this, and he is good, not massively anti-British, but sufficiently patriotic, and full of interesting information. 3 of his relatives were involved I think, and one of them shot on his door-step by persons unknown.
It always interested me that there were approximately 1200 who took part in the Easter Rising yet less than two years earlier, about 140,000 Irishmen enlisted as volunteers for Kitchener's Army. Still, the government messed up and the execution of 14 ringleaders was a huge mistake.
Yet, I still find it a fascinating period in our history.
Back in 1912, liberal politicians in Westminster who had been committed (for decades) to Irish independence, decided to have another go at granting home rule for Ireland. Of course, the problem remained in that the protestant majority in the north did not want to live under the catholic south.
Still, the UK government pushed ahead with its "Home rule for Ireland" agenda. At the same time, the people of Ulster came together to oppose Westminster in their efforts to grant autonomy to Ireland. In 1912 nearly half a million people signed the Ulster Covenant to “use all means necessary to defeat the conspiracy to introduce home rule for Ireland”. These people were armed and in January 1913 over 100,000 formed the UVF who were ready to fight the British government in their attempts to impose home rule on them.
Parliament took a dim view of what was happening in Ulster and in March 1914, a British army based in Dublin was ordered to move north to Ulster resulting in what was pretty much an outright mutiny with a brigadier and scores of officers resigning (read about the Curragh Incident). The government sent a battle fleet to the Ulster coast with Churchill saying that they would fight to defeat any rebellion or civil war. Things were definitely getting hairy with conflict looking increasingly likely.
Of course, we’ll never know what would have happened next as the rebellion in the north came to an abrupt end when WW! broke out.
The UVF reorganised into 36 Ulster divisions and they went off to die in their thousands in the fields of France. Their actions were so heroic and the scale of their casualties was so horrific that the idea of betraying these people by imposing a united Ireland was simply out of the question.
