How the Easter Rising Began in Secret

Simon Carver

So, if you walk down Parnell Street in Dublin today, it’s all- all bustling shops and traffic, but back in 1910, at number thirty-five Great Britain Street, there was this tiny, dusty tobacconist shop. And behind the counter is this frail-looking, quiet fella, Tom Clarke, who’d already spent fifteen years in- in British prisons. He’s just selling clay pipes and newspapers, but if you knew the- the secret handshake, well, you were actually dealing with the brain of a revolution.

Billy Galligan - Author

Ah, Parnell Street. I know it well, Simon. And Clarke, you see, he wasn’t just selling tobacco; he was- him and young Seán MacDiarmada, they were rebuilding the Irish Republican Brotherhood from the chassis up. A completely secret network, right under the nose of the Dublin Castle G-Men. It’s like- it’s like trying to rebuild a bus engine while the passengers are still sitting on it, you know? Completely in the dark.

Simon Carver

And what’s wild is that the- the general Irish public didn’t even want a war. They were- they were looking at Home Rule, this legal, parliamentary path. But Clarke and MacDiarmada, they- they didn't buy that for a second. They wanted complete, absolute separation. And then, August 1914 hits. The outbreak of the Great War. Britain is suddenly fully distracted on the continent.

Billy Galligan - Author

1914. That was the green light for them, Simon. The old maxim, you know, "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity." It sounds cold, but to these lads, it was- it was pure physics. Britain was sending hundreds of thousands of troops to the Western Front. If the IRB was ever going to strike, the timetable had to be now, while the British state had its back turned.

Billy Galligan - Author

But look, you can't have a revolution with just- just high ideals and poetry, you know? You need iron. You need rifles. So this secret Military Council they set up—Pearse, Plunkett, Ceannt—they look to Berlin. They negotiate with the Germans for a massive shipment of weapons to land in Kerry.

Simon Carver

Right, and we're talking twenty thousand rifles. That was the magic number. Twenty thousand captured Russian rifles, loaded onto this disguised merchant ship called the *Aud*, commanded by a German named Karl Spindler. It’s April 1916. But the Royal Navy has broken the German codes. They intercept the *Aud* off the coast of Kerry, right by Tralee Bay, on Good Friday. Spindler has to scuttle his own ship. Twenty thousand rifles go straight to the bottom of the sea.

Billy Galligan - Author

Down to the lobsters. Absolute disaster. I mean, imagine steering your yellow chariot through a massive detour, only the road has completely collapsed into the ocean. And- and it gets worse. Eoin MacNeill, the chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers—the big public militia—he had no feckin' clue this secret IRB council was planning an actual shootout. He thought they were just parading!

Simon Carver

He finds out on Thursday night, right? MacNeill realizes his men are being used as, uh, basically canon fodder for a secret coup. He’s furious. He goes straight to the office of the *Sunday Independent* and publishes a notice: "All orders for Easter Sunday are hereby cancelled." He literally stops the revolution in the Sunday morning papers.

Simon Carver

It is the ultimate administrative nightmare. Easter Sunday morning, Liberty Hall. Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Clarke, MacDiarmada... they're sitting in this room, and their entire plan is- is completely in tatters. No German guns, and the national mobilization order has been publicly cancelled by their own chief of staff.

Billy Galligan - Author

You’re sitting there, looking at a broken-down engine on Easter Sunday, and you have to make the call. Do we go home, pack up our bags, and wait for the British G-men to come round and arrest every last one of us? Or do we... sure, why not? Do we push the wreck over the hill anyway? Connolly and Pearse, they- they choose the hill. They decide to go on Monday instead.

Simon Carver

But why? I mean, mathematically, it’s suicide now. No Kerry guns, no country-wide uprising. Just a few thousand volunteers in Dublin. Pearse starts talking about this- this concept of "blood sacrifice." That even if they lose—and they know they will—the sheer act of dying for the cause will wake the country up.

Billy Galligan - Author

It’s a hard thing for a modern mind to grasp, Simon. "We are going out to be slaughtered," Connolly apparently told one of his lads on the way out of Liberty Hall. It wasn't military strategy; it was- it was theater. Myth-making. And because the British authorities saw MacNeill’s cancellation in the Sunday paper, they thought, "Ah, grand, the crisis is over," and they all went to the Fairyhouse races on Easter Monday.

Simon Carver

They completely let their guard down. So when Monday morning comes, and these- these columns of volunteers start marching down Sackville Street toward the GPO... the British army doesn't even have its officers in Dublin. It’s an awkward, tragic, beautiful mess that changed everything.

Billy Galligan - Author

A detour that rewrote the map. Anyway, let's grab a tea. I'm absolutely knackered.