Easter, 1916—National Poetry Month 2020

Irish Volunteers on the march in Dublin in the outset of the 1916 Easter Rebellion.

Last Friday, April 24 was 104th anniversary of the day when the Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen’s Army, the 200 women members of Cumann na mBan, and a small force of Hibernian Rifles seized key buildings in Dublin, including the General Post Office and read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.  It was, by no coincidence, Easter Monday.

In the five bloody days that followed the Royal Navy shelled the city and thousands of troops poured in eventually crushing the rebellion with heavy casualties.  All seven signatories of the Proclamation including Padraig Pearce and the wounded socialist and radical labor unionist James Connolly and seven others, including men who were not even directly involved, were executed by firing squads.

Stunned crowds gather before the bombed out ruins of the Dublin General Post Office after the surrender of the Rebels.

Over 1,500 rebels were placed in virtual concentration camps where they met in secret and plotted revolution.  

The Rebellion was crushed but despite epic British repression, the flame of Irish independence and liberty was never extinguished.  Survivors of the insurrection and those inspired by the sacrifices the Irish martyrs met and organized in secret over the next years under the political leadership of the Sinn Féin party and the creation of the Irish Republican Army. The Declaration of Independence was a document adopted by Dáil Éireann, the revolutionary parliament of the Irish Republic, at its first meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin on January 21, 1919. 

A bloody and remorseless year a half guerilla war revolution followed.  By mid-1920 revolutionary forces we in de facto control of most of the country except for the capital in Dublin and majority Protestant Ulster where a particularly savage civil war was contested.  The British were exhausted by the monumental losses of the Great War of 1914-1918 public opinion was rising against continuing a war in Ireland.

In May 1921, Ireland was partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act, which created Northern Ireland. Both sides agreed to a truce on July 11. The post-ceasefire talks led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on December 6.1921.  This ended British rule in most of Ireland and, after a ten-month transitional period overseen by a provisional government, the Irish Free State was created as a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire on December 6, 1922 while Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom. 

The assassination of Michael Collins during the Irish Civil War.

But Republicans were bitterly divided over the exclusion of Ulster from the rest of the country. After the ceasefire, violence in Belfast and fighting in border areas of Northern Ireland continued, and the factions of the IRA launched a failed Northern offensive in May 1922. In June disagreement among republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty broke out into the eleven-month Irish Civil War.  Eamon DeVallera rallied forces against the Provisional Government headed by Michael Collins, IRA commander during the revolution.  Collins was assassinated August and many anti-treaty Republican leaders were also killed.  Casualties probably greatly exceeded those lost during the Revolution.  The Free State government finally prevailed.

But DeVallera and his hyper-Catholic nationalists made steady political gains over the next decade and a half while the anti-treaty or irregular IRA continued to operate on a low level in the North.   Following a national plebiscite in July 1937 a new Constitution of Ireland replaced the Constitution of the Irish Free State and adopted Éire as the new name of the country.  While Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution defined the national territory to be the whole island, they also confined the state’s jurisdiction to the area that had been the Irish Free State.

DeVallera’s Fianna Fáil party became the dominant force in the country and he became  Taoiseach—prime minister serving three times.  

Eamon DeVallera  dominated Irish politics after the Civil War  and the creation of Éire.

The dream of uniting Ireland never went away and there were periodic campaigns by IRA elements in Ulster for years.  The late 1960’s saw the beginning of The Troubles that continued for decades until 1998 when a shaky cease fire and a drawn-out peace process began.  Finally the St Andrews Agreement between the British and Irish governments and Northern Ireland's political parties in relation to the devolution of power in the region led to a final withdrawal of British troops in Northern Ireland and Sinn Féin finally agreeing to participate in Northern Ireland’s parliament.

Youths in Free Derry confront and taunt British troops duing the Troubles.  It was a dangerous game.

The ride has not been all smooth since then, but general peace has prevailed.  Brexit has threatened to erect a tariff wall between the Republic and the North since Éire remained staunchly attached to the European Union which could destroy the common economy of the island. 

On the other hand the government in the South has finally shaken domination by the Catholic Church and adopted liberal reforms allowing for divorce and even abortion which makes the South less threatening to Protestants in the North.  Even those Protestants, now on the verge of becoming a minority in Ulster, also rejected Brexit although they were dragged into it.  It is not inconceivable the Northern Ireland like Scotland and perhaps Wales could seek to leave the United Kingdom to rejoin Europe which could finally lead to the reunification of Ireland.

William Butler Yeats  regarded as one of the greatest poets writing in English of the 20th Century.

That’s a lot of history and drama.  Which makes William Butler Yeats’ powerful poem Easter 1916 seem more prophetic. Yeats, generally listed along with Anglo-American T.S. Eliot as one of the greatest English Language poets of the 20th Century, witnessed the Rising but did not participate.  In fact at first he was ambivalent at first as were many surprised Dubliners.  But he was moved by the executions of the leaders.  Easter, 1916 became a Republican rallying cry.  It is always read at annual commemorations of the Rising in Dublin.

Padraig Pearce post the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on the General Post Office with a guard of his Irish Volunteers while Dubliners went about their business on Easter Sunday 1916.

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day  

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey  

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head  

Or polite meaningless words,  

Or have lingered awhile and said  

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done  

Of a mocking tale or a gibe  

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,  

Being certain that they and I  

But lived where motley is worn:  

All changed, changed utterly:  

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent  

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers  

When, young and beautiful,  

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school  

And rode our wingèd horse;  

This other his helper and friend  

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,  

So sensitive his nature seemed,  

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,  

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,  

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone  

Through summer and winter seem  

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,  

The rider, the birds that range  

From cloud to tumbling cloud,  

Minute by minute they change;  

A shadow of cloud on the stream  

Changes minute by minute;  

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,  

And a horse plashes within it;  

The long-legged moor-hens dive,  

And hens to moor-cocks call;  

Minute by minute they live:  

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.  

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part  

To murmur name upon name,  

As a mother names her child  

When sleep at last has come  

On limbs that had run wild.  

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;  

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith  

For all that is done and said.  

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;  

And what if excess of love  

Bewildered them till they died?  

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride  

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:  

A terrible beauty is born.

—William Butler Yeats

From the IRA to Amnesty—The Long, Strange Path of Seán MacBride

Joan Baez salute Sean MacBride on his retirement as International Chairman of Amnesty International.

When Seán MacBride died in Dublin, Ireland in 1988 at the age of 84 he was the most honored human rights leader in the world.  He had taken a leading role in almost every international initiative on human rights since World War II and had founded and led several important organizations, most notably Amnesty International.  He was the only man to win both the both the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes.  But his path to those honors went through revolution, civil war, prison, and politics.

Seán MacBride was bon the son of Major John MacBride and Maude Gonne on January 26, 1904.  His father was an ardent Irish nationalist and a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who had raised an Irish commando to fight with the Boers against the British in South Africa.  Maude Gonne, most famous as the muse and obsessive love object of William Butler Yeats, was a beautiful and equally ardent nationalist who was prominent in the Gaelic Revival movement.  She had organized pro-Boer demonstrations in Dublin and encouraged enlistment it the far away war as way of “twisting the Lion’s tail.” 

Gonne was living in Paris where MacBride visited her after the war.  They wed in 1902 to Yeats’s deep anguish.  Despite the birth of their son the next year, the marriage was not a happy one.  Gonne would later confide in Yeats that there was abuse and that the soldier may have molester her 11 year old daughter Iseult.   Sean’s parents were separated in 1905 and he was raised on the continent speaking French as a first language. 

His father returned to Ireland was active in Republican circles.  But he was too well known and closely watched by British authorities so that despite his military experience, he was not included in the leadership of those planning an uprising.  When it broke out at Eastertide 1916, the Major was caught unawares.  But he volunteered his services on the spot and was appointed by Thomas MacDonagh as second in command of a contingent defending the Jacobs biscuit factory.  After his capture he was executed by the British.  

Although young Sean had not seen his father since infancy, he was a flame with desire to join the cause for which he was a Martyr.  He mother did little to dissuade him.  She sent him in 1919 to school at Mount St. Benedic’s in Gorey, County Wexford.  Although he was only 15, she must have known that he would join the new rebellion against British rule.  He joined the new Irish Republican Army (IRA), the decedent of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the remnant of the Irish Volunteers of the Easter Rebellion, in the War for Independence.

He among those opposed to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty ended the war, with the new Irish Free State still a part of the Empire and without the provinces of Ulster which remained under British rule. He joined forces IRA favoring total independence, and was jailed by Free State authorities during the Civil War. 

Upon release in 1924 MacBride took up studies for the law at University College Dublin and resumed his IRA activities.  He served briefly as Éamon de Valera’s personal aide.

In 1925 MacBride married Catalina “Kid” Bulfin, four years his senior and also an ardent Republican.  Under close surveillance by the Free State government, the young couple went abroad where MacBride worked as a journalist in Paris and London—and likely as an IRA covert agent.

He returned to Ireland in 1927 but was arrested on charges of assassinating a Free State figure.  Able to prove that he was non shipboard when the killing took place, he was none the less kept in custody and charged with subversive activities.

When finally released, MacBride became involved with an IRA faction that was becoming disillusioned by de Valera’s Fianna Fáil.  They favored a more socialist agenda.  MacBride founded the political grouping Saor Éire (Free Ireland) separate from the IRA command while remaining loyal to the army.  It and nine other groups were declared unlawful alongside of the IRA.  MacBride became the chief target of Free State security forces

Meanwhile MacBride rose in the IRA command structure.  In 1936 he became Chief of Staff.  He did not last long in that position, however.  He was replaced by Tom Barry who was given permission to launch new operations against the British in Ulster and to explore possible support from Nazi Germany, both policies opposed by MacBride.

In 1937 after the passage of the new Constitution of Ireland he resigned his commission and membership in the IRA, although he remained politically close to many old comrades. He finally passed the Bar and began a career as a lawyer.  The IRA, however kept up its low grade guerilla war in Ulster and despite his personal disapproval, Barry acted as a lawyer for many charged by the new government.  Over the next few years, into the World War II era he would become increasingly known for defending the rights of political prisoners.

In 1946, MacBride founded the republican/socialist party Clann na Poblachta in the hopes that it would replace Fianna Fáil as Ireland’s major political party. In October 1947, he won a seat in Dáil Éireann at a by-election in the Dublin County constituency. Despite his high hopes, his new party won only 10 seats in the 1948 election, in which no party emerged with a majority.  He brought the party into a coalition government under Fine Gael Taoiseach (prime minister) John A. Costello.  MacBride entered the government as Minister of External Affairs.  It was in this position that he brought his increasing passion for human rights to the international area.

MacBride stepped out in the world, and particularly the European stage, in a big way.  First, he was delighted to play a leading role in the Repeal of the External Relations Act and the Declaration of the Republic of Ireland which severed the last tenuous ties to Britain by exiting the Commonwealth of Nations on Easter Monday, April 18, 1949.

The same year he was elected as President of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which could only be considered a stinging rebuke to the British.  In that role he helped draft the European Convention on Human Rights and pressed for its adoption at Rome in 1950.  That year he was elevated to President of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe, and he was vice-president of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC.)  Although a supporter of greater European cooperation, he did not want it to come at the expense of being dragged into a military alliance with the West against the East.  He kept Ireland out of NATO.

Despite his personal popularity and the esteem in which he was regarded internationally, however, there was trouble at home.  His political party was falling apart, particularly after he forced the resignation from the cabinet of the only other Clann na Poblachta member, Health Minister and former close ally Dr. Noël Browne who was promoting the controversial Mother and Child Scheme of public health coverage for mothers and children under 16 over the voracious opposition of the Catholic Hierarchy.

In the 1951 elections, due in no small measure to the health care controversy, MacBride’s party was reduced to two seats although he won re-election.  The Multi-Party Government fell and Éamon de Valera’s increasingly conservative Fianna Fáil was swept back to power.  MacBride was reduced to a virtual back bencher, although he won re-election in 1954.

After the IRA Cross Border Campaign in Ulster began in 1956, MacBride spoke out against internment of Republican suspects by the Irish government.  He campaigned on the issue in 1957 and ’61 but was defeated both times by an electorate tired of never ending conflict and willing to back de Valera’s harsh policy. 

MacBride retired from active politics after the second defeat, and concentrated on his legal practice.  Yet his attention was once again drawn to the world stage.  He was served as Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists from 1963 to 1971then was elected Chair (1968–1974) and later President (1974–1985) of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva.

As a lawyer, he became interested in Anti-colonialism, especially in Africa.  He was called upon to help draft the constitution of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and also the first constitution of Ghana, the first of Britain’s African colonies to gain independence.

MacBride also became deeply involved in the United Nations which he served in many capacities including, President of the General Assembly, High Commissioner for Refugees, and High Commissioner for Human Rights.  As High Commissioner for Namibia he was also named Assistant Secretary-General. He was President of UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems, which produced the controversial 1980 MacBride Report which recommended democratization of communication.

But MacBride is best remembered for his work with Amnesty International.  He was a close ally of British lawyer Peter Benenson in founding the organization in 1971 and served as its International Chairman and most visible public face from 1965 to’74.

MacBride’s work was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974, the Lenin Peace Prize for 1975–76, and the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service in 1980.

His additional work for peace included the Appeal by Lawyers against Nuclear War which eventually resulted in an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear in 1996/

He was Chairman of the International Convention to investigate violations of International Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon.  The commission reported numerous violations and was harshly criticized by Israel and in America by a vocal Jewish lobby.

In the MacBride Principles he laid out a serious of standards of behavior for fair employment by American corporations doing business in Northern Ireland for Catholics who were the traditional victims of discriminated in Ulster.  The nine point plan was rejected flatly by the British government and ruling Ulster Protestants and was even criticized as “counterproductive” by the Irish government.  None-the-less the Principles were endorsed by 18 state governments and over 40 cities.  They are now considered a model for American action in support of oppressed populations around the world.

Active almost to his last days, MacBride spent his later years dividing his time between his mother’s famous estate, Roebuck House and the Paris arrondissement where he grew up with his mother.

He died in Dublin on January 15, 1988 just days shy of his 84h birthday and was laid to rest next to his mother and wife at Glasnevin Cemetery where many Irish patriots were buried.