Irish istory snopsis: 1900 to Easter Rising Part 1[page 1-4]

Irish History Synopsis 1900 to Easter Rising

On January 22 1901 Queen Victoria died at 6:30 PM. She was given a military State Funeral at her own wish with bands and marches fully armed and the streets lined with her much reduced ignorant and poor subjects. Her coffin in which her small frame was placed was lined with her fvorite bobbles and posesssions. The gun carriage bearing the body was followed by her son King Edward VII, Kaizer Wilhelm II, King Georges I of the Hellenes, King Carlos of Portugal. In the procession the Crown Princes of Rumania, Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweeden and Siam.
The Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovith, The Tzar of Russia, ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand Emperor of Austria all in uniform and feathered hats presiding over countries even more repressive and poverty sticken than Victorian England ; these lived under totalitarian, autocratic regimes who were also cruel coloniaal masters in Africa and Asia.

In her last days the Queen ate from gold plate including a gold plated egg cup. The Boar War between The British Army and the Dutch Boer settlers went on with no advance by the great Imperial British force over the teanatious Dutch settlers.
Edward VII the eldest child of Victoria took office as King of England.
By 1902 the Boer war was brought to a close under Edward who was known as the Peacemaker with dimunition of British power in South Africa.

By 1901 56 % of the Irish tenant farmers were living in adequate housing with 5 or more rooms.
In 1903 the Wyndham Bill provided for land purchase by tenants, a realization of peasant ownership.
Poverty in Ireland shifted from the mud cabin in the countryside to urban ghettos.
Dublin than was one of the most appalling slums in Europe Lacking water ,heat or plumbing. Where workers were poorly paid and cruely treated.
100,000 of the city's 300,000 lived in one room apartments.Desease was rampant.
Each acre of the city contained 38.5 persons. Malnutrition a constant companion.
The city's governement in the hands of industrial barons and land lords believed, in true Calvanistic tradition, that these downtrodden people were sent their condition by the Almighty as punishment of their sin.

While in the countryside impowered as tenant farmers my grandfather among them, were able to acquire purchase of their holdings on easy terms.

At the same time culture and literary works were being discovered and revived, ironically by the Anglo Irish prodistant elite.
This rediscovery of Irish folklore ,history and language which had been scorned as backward and barbaric since the 12 century and Henry II became a rage and vogue not only in Ireland but as well in the cultural ethos of England and the US.

Material was gathered from Workhouses and rural farms and presented by the Asendancy on the stages of NY and London.
The ancient legends of heros such as Cuculainn were translated and Lady Greagory with William Yeates wrote Cathleen ni Houlihan in 1902 ,a play in which Maude Gonne stared to rave reviews.

When she recited the closing lines;

They shallbe rememberd forever
They shall be alive forever
They shall be speaking forever
The people shall hear them forever

the audince rose to its feet cheering and broke into the Thomas David's young ireland ballad

Let Ireland long a provence
Be a nation once again.

Arthur Griffith in that audience was inspired and being a follower of Charles Stewart Parnell he formed a political consept and party called Sinn Fein[ourselves] that professed self governement for Ireland and self sufficiency without help from the outside world. But an Ireland within the sphere of the Monarchy and a Commonwealth.

In 1904 he wrote a pamphlet published in his United Irishmen newpaper on the history of Hungary discribing the passive resistance of Francis Deak leading to the rescue of Hungary from the Austo HUngarian Empire.
This pamphlet became a best seller and was a favorite amongst Young Irish who had been schooled in the Irish cultural revival. However the main Irish party was the Irish Parlimentary Party was under John Redmond.
Well financed with Irish American Money from the United Irish League and slogginga long with 82 members of the London Parliament to achieve Home Rule.

1900 to easter pg 2
Augustine Burrell was President of the Board of Education in 1906, Chief Secreatry of Irleand in 1907 when he introduced the Irish Council Bill to establish local elections and councils in Ireland.
In 1908 he established the National University of Ireland and Queens University in Belfast.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians flourished all over Ireland after the clerical ban against it was lifted and it became a powerful catholic political force.

By 1905 clubs were forming to consider and encourage Irish nationality and republicanism called the Dungannon Clubs.
One of the founders Bulmar Hobson of Antrim and a close friend of Roger Casement started a new paper called The Republic.
These people in close conjuntion with John McBride's IRB and John Devoys Clan N GAel in America worked tirelessly on behalf of national republicanism.

In America the emigrant Irish continued to struggle in tenament conditions shunned and dispised by older more established America as stupid, deceatful, drunk, filty, and barbarous.
Desease was rampant among them with an infant mortality of over 27%.
It was an era of streets filled with horse manure. uncollected garbage, communal outhouses overflowing with excretment and hordes of filthy unkempt children runing amuck.

When a case of typhoid appeared in upper class Oster Bay Long Island it was traced to a cook in the household named Mary Mallon an emigree of deprivation and hunger from Tyrone County Ireland.
This fiesty lady refused cooperation with public health authorities but was eventually captured by them , tested and found to be a carrier of the deadly bacillius.
She was confined to an East River island at Riverside hopital against her will bcoming know in the press as 'Typhoid Mary'.
By 1909 Mary was again associate with an outbreak of Typhoid at Sloan Medical Center in NYC where she had again been employed as a cook. This lead to her reincarceration at Riverside where she remained the rest of her life dying on November 11, 1938 at age 69.
She had been involuntarily incarcerated for 32 years of her life by the NYC Department of Public Health having only one
petition brought for her by an attorny Goerge O Neill.
Judge Erlandger found for the Public Health even though typhoid was known not to be contagious except by the carrier handling food.
NY city subsequently passed legislation requiring typhoid testing as a pre requisite for all food handlers but allowed thousands of carriers freedom to live and work in other professions.
Mary was chosen as an example and a scapegoat.Whether because of her Irish fiestiness or of her beginning in Hells Kitchen will never be known.
The city of NY as did all Amercian cities remained a sespool of filth, desease, extreme poverty and outrageous slums with the rich and sucessful entrenched in outer suburbia in mansion style homes acquired by exploitation of Americas immigrants and its natural resourses.

Social Injustice in this society was the norm.


In 1908 Lord Asquith becme Prime Mininster with Winston Churchhill Secretary of the Board of Trade.
They were free traders.

An Old Age Pension Bill was passed by the house of Lords and became law allowing a British subject of 70 years and a resident for 12 years to recieve a pension of 31 pounds.

On May 7 1910 Edward VII died after being King only 9 years.
He was suceeded by George V ,the second son of the dead king Edward and grandson of Victoria. Goerge was elected King because his older Brother Albert had did in 1892.



1900 TO EASTER PG 3

In 1912 a 3rd Home Rule Bill was introduced in the House of Commons.The veto of the house of Lords had been voted out of power under the rulership of Edward VII, who had implimented the Parliamentary Reform Bill the year before.

The Liberal Party being dependant on the Redmond Irish support of all their measures inspired the new HR Bill for the Irish support in the critical elections and the Budget Bills of 1910.

In Ireland a new threat to diehard Unionists expressed by the Orange Lodges had come into being amongst Unionists in the idea of devolution inspired by the Irish Reform Association was spurned by the Earl of DunRaven. This Movement so frightened the Ulster Unionists as to revive the Defence Associations and Ulster Unionist Council with an amrament fund.
The Unionist Council selected their leader a Dublin University Solicitor Conservative Sir Edward Carson. At 55 Carson a desendant of Ulster prodistant settlers from 1690 was a devoted Irishman as equally dedicated to the country and union with Great Britain.
He was an orderly and disaplined man who believed in firm government.
Educated at Trinity College Dublin he was elected as a Parliamentary representative for Trinity as a Liberal Unionist. He blieved in woman sufferage and catholic education. He was anti Home Rule believing it was not in the best interests of Ireland to separate from Great Britain.
He desired sacrafice and force to resist Home Rule writing to a fellow Parliamentary member James Craig a wiskey millionaires son and founder of the Belfast Stock Exchange.
Craig had served and been wounded in the Boer war and was an Empire Loyalist. He organized Ulsters determination against Home Rule at Craigavon, 2 miles from Belfast in 1911; two months before the bill was even entered before the Commons.
50 thousand Orangemen and Unionists assembled.
Carson spoke to hold their districts and create a government of Ulster. The Orange had marched to Craigavon in formation four abrest, disaplined and drilled.

These authorizations to drill had been obtained from local Justivce of Peaces to help maintain rights and liberties of the UK constitution.

By April 1912 before the home Rule Bill had been introduced a definate miltary flavor had been added to its opposers.
100,000 men marched below a large Union Jack on a 90 foot pole at Balmoral, a Belfast suburb.
Bonar Law the conservative seat of Ulster announced
'there will not be wanting of help from across the Channel when the hour of Battle comes.'
The cause of Ulster he invisioned was the cause of the Empire.

The spirit of war and rebellion was in the air.
The conservatives od England and the Liberal Unionists of Ulster stood united against Home Rule and the already implimented Local Government Act.
On September 28 1912 Ulster Unionist gathered to sign a Solomn League and Covenant,some 250,000 people. Some signed there name in blood.
The Ulster Unionist Council completed its development of the Ulster Volunteer Force [UVF] for January 1913 and with support from high Army officers in Britain a provisional government for Ulster was organized and a coup plan secretely organized among them.

Carson was opting for the exclusion of the 9 Ulster counties under devolved separate government. The idea of excusion of 4 of the Ulster counties had been proposed on February 12 when Churchhill and Lloyd Goerge formerly submitted to the Britsh Cabinite the proposal of Partition of 6 of the 9 counties which were not exclusively catholic.
The Nationalists under Redmond felt the Unionist of Ulster were bluffing however in the end Redmond aquised to a 6 year opt out of Home Rule by the north on an individual county basis.

On January 16 1913 the HR Bill passed Commons by a vote of 367-257.
On January 30 it was regected by Lords 326-69.

Carson claimed a moral right to do anyting necessary even using force to remain a citizen of the Imperial Parliament and indicated that the North east of Ireland would accept a foreign government over a nationalist Parliament in Dublin.


1900 to easter page 4


Eoin MacNeill fearing pograms against the NE catholic minority by the UVF force organized a south National Vounteer Force to resist the building paramilitary force in Ulster so addamantly opposed to HR.
The National force was promptly taken up by Redmond.The volunteers were upheld and taken over by the Irish Parliametary Party.
This usurpation was opposed vorciferously by Sinn Fein in the Irish Freedom newspaer.
An additional Union/Labor malita force was created by Jamesn Connoly called the Citizens Army.

In May 1914 the HR Bill was finally passed with out the amendment allowing a county opt out for 6 years only.
The planed Ulster Rebellion did not materialise because on August 4 1914 World War I began putting HR on ice.

Redmond pleged the National Volunteers to the cause of Great Britain in September 1914.
The Volunteer ranks split in two those following Redmonds commitment around 150,000 and those opposed to fighting for Englands wars around 10,000 now forming the Irish Vpolunteers and represnting the IRB element with a central executive of O Neill, Hobson Rahilly, McDonagh and Joe Plunkett.
These anti war Irish Volunteers flourished while the National force declined through enlistment in the English Army.
It became alligned with Sinn Fein and was pro German.
They stood against conscription and war taxes and were almost exclusively sons of farmers.

At the same time, Dublin was aroused by a strike called by its much oppressed workers putting in a 70 hour week for 22 shillings or sometimes 10 shillings leaving them in dire poverty.
James Larkin from Liverpool had founded th Irish Tansport and General Workers Union in 1913 asking for better working conditions and better wages.
Employers being unsucessful in breaking the union imposed a general 'lockout' of the workforce throwing some 25,000 people out of work.
Confrontations with police who were sided with the employers caused the founding of a union malitia called the Citizens Army.

This general 'lockout' brought the plight of the working poor to the attention of the cultural nationalist movement, bringing in such luminaries as Maude Gonne, and Countess Gore-Booth Markievicz who became a lieutenant in the Citizens army and served at her post during the Easter Rising.
She was spared hanging because she was a woman.
A New light in British Army policy as none of famine/eviction females had been spared the collection by the grim reaper.

Padraig Pearce a follower of Gaelic League's Douglas Hyde's revival of the gaelic speech declared a time had come for physical force tactics and the use of arms to create a new Ireland.He viewed bloodshed as a clensing santifying process.
This mystic conspept became an idea of a group of republicans assocated with Tom Clarkes toabacco shop in downtown Dublin and the IRB in Ireland , consiting of about 2000 which was infiltrated in the Natiolnal Volinteers toward its dream of revolution.

Unionist Churchhill in 1914, First Lord of the Admiralty charged Carson and his Ulstermen with a treasonable conspiracy provoking the government to create a garrison in Ulster to act against the UVF force and enforce Home Rule.

When an order to do so was sent to the Curragh commander Brigadier General Gough ,he and 60 of his officers resigned rather than move agains their fellow adherents in Ulster.
The government backed down to the Currah Mutiny.

A month later in April the UVF brought 25,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of amunition purchased in secret from Germany and delivered to Larne harbor where they unloaded and secured this hoard within 24 hours as it continued its trek towards civil war.