Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2016/Op-ed
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May the Luck of the Irish Be With Us |
- By TomStar81
In April 1916, with the British Empire preoccupied with the fighting abroad on the mainland and conscription moving into effect, another uprising occurred in the territory controlled by the United Kingdom. Unlike the British Empire's previous problems with wartime uprisings, this one did not come entirely out of left field - while the Indian Rebellion failed in part due to the efforts of espionage agents and the intervention of other Allied nations in the area, this uprising failed largely due to the British Empire's military intervention in the matter.
The rebellion broke out in Ireland, a nation whose history with the British Empire, and later the United Kingdom, has been rocky at best. British involvement in Ireland dates back to about 1691, when Ireland's minority Anglican elements who were loyal to the British Crown began undermining the Irish Catholic majority and other Irish groups progressively until the latter half of the 1700s. In 1798, about fifteen years after the loss of the United States to radical anti-British elements whose military actions successfully compelled Parliament to end the war and bring the men in red back to the mainland, Britain passed an act that allowed for Ireland to be incorporated into the greater British Empire, although it is believed that a great deal of bribery and other underhanded tactics were used to convince what had at the time been the Kingdom of Ireland to incorporate. This unpopular move served as the rallying point for the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was crushed about four months after its outbreak. In the aftermath of the rebellion's failure, the British parliament passed the Acts of Union 1800, bringing Ireland into the United Kingdom.
In September 1914, just as the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament passed the Third Home Rule Act to establish self-government for Ireland, but the act was suspended for the duration of the war. Irish nationalist leaders and the IPP under Redmond supported Ireland's participation in the British war effort, in the belief that it would ensure implementation of Home Rule after the war. The core of the Irish Volunteers' leadership were against this decision, but the majority of the men left to form the National Volunteers, some of whom enlisted in Irish regiments of the New British Army, the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions, the counterparts of the unionist 36th (Ulster) Division. Before the war ended, Britain made two concerted efforts to implement Home Rule, one in May 1916 and again with the Irish Convention during 1917–18, but nationalists and unionists were unable to agree to terms for the temporary or permanent exclusion of Ulster from its provisions.
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In April 1916, this disagreement between the rival factions over the future of Ireland lead to the Easter Uprising, one of the most significant rebellions in Ireland's history. The armed action against the British began on April 24, during what was at the time Easter Week, when the Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, and Cumann na mBan seized key locations in Dublin. Irish rebels were hopeful that some assistance would materialize from the German Empire, a Central Power whose interest in the movement probably extended no further than attempting to tie down British Army units to better their odds of making some kind of advance on the European Continent. For their part, British Naval Intelligence had picked up on the plan through intelligence intercepts from the United States, and had learned of an impending arms shipment to the Irish Rebels scheduled to arrive sometime in April. However, the intelligence groups failed to authorize action on the matter until after the uprising broke out.
Between April 24 and April 29 the Irish rebels set their plan for rebellion into motion. Rebel forces successfully seized several key locations in Dublin, after which commanders for the movement read their Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Ultimately this rebellion fared no better than the one in India the previous year. Despite a lackluster day 1 performance that saw confused and uncoordinated resistance from the Crown, the British Army would regroup beginning on day 3 and would ultimately send in nearly 16,000 troops, backed up with artillery and an armed gunboat, to put down the rebellion and restore British Authority in the area. By the time that the rebellion was brought to heel at the end of the week parts of Dublin had been reduced to rubble thanks to sustained artillery bombardment, while skirmishes and other anti-British actions in Ashborne, Enniscorthy, and Galway were put down with lower casualties and far less destruction. By the time the rebellion was judged to have been successfully put down the total casualties from the uprising stood at 485, with over 50% judged to have been civilians, while 2,600 had been injured in some form or another.
In the aftermath of the rebellion the British began a crackdown on anti-British forces in the area, ultimately arresting and executing 16 leaders of the Easter Uprising. Ireland would not find independence until 1922, while Northern Ireland would be at odds with the British Empire - and later the United Kingdom - well into the 1990s as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (better known in the US as the IRA) would conduct a guerrilla warfare campaign until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement) brought the conflict to a close in 1998, with Provisional Irish Republican Army disarming itself between 2005-07. The rebellion itself would become part of Irish history, and the anniversary of the event is celebrated in Dublin annually. Of particular note is that during the Easter rising the Irish would accept the tricolor flag as their de facto flag, which today is the official Flag of Ireland.
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