What if the 1916 Rising had not happened?

Eugene Norman

LordSutch wrote: »

It's quite tongue in cheek and good natured isn't it?

We're only surmising what might have been . . .

Not really. You need sensible counter factuals. Ireland is successful because it controls it's tax policy and to a lesser extent its education systems. London would have had no interest in industrialising Ireland. At best we would have a Northern Ireland type economy with a large public sector to keep us happy.

Eugene Norman

LordSutch wrote: »

That post #27 takes fantasy to a whole new level

1916 didn't influence 1917 probably but it did influence other independence movements. Obviously. If the empire starts to fall apart at its centre then the rest of the empire would take notice.

JeffKenna

Ireland unfree shall never be at peace

strandsman

we'd have better roads if 1916 never happened

LordSutch

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Not really. You need sensible counter factuals. Ireland is successful because it controls it's tax policy and to a lesser extent its education systems. London would have had no interest in industrialising Ireland. At best we would have a Northern Ireland type economy with a large public sector to keep us happy.

I was thinking of Qualitymark when I wrote that "tongue in cheek post".
He thinks we are becoming abusive!
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=98223423&postcount=30

Eugene Norman

strandsman wrote: »

we'd have better roads if 1916 never happened

The republic's roads are better than norn iron.

KingBrian2

strandsman wrote: »

we'd have better roads if 1916 never happened

Was it not the Helga that blasted O' Connell Street to smithereens leaving Dublin businessmen bankrupt and without holding an income!

Victor

KingBrian2 wrote: »

Was it not the Helga that blasted O' Connell Street to smithereens leaving Dublin businessmen bankrupt and without holding an income!

What does that have to do with the topic?

KingBrian2

Victor wrote: »

What does that have to do with the topic?

Pointing out the fact that the damage caused by 1916 was substantially caused by a British decision to shell the city centre. It is relevant considering the uprising became an intense battlefield every bit as bad as the Western Front.

Victor

But this is a thread about what if the 1916 Rising didn't happen.

Dyr

the 1917 rising would have happened, or the 1918 rising. It was inevitable.

Joe prim

KingBrian2 wrote: »

Was it not the Helga that blasted O' Connell Street to smithereens leaving Dublin businessmen bankrupt and without holding an income!

No, it wasn't the Helga, which was a lightly armed yacht, pressed into service in a pinch and used to shell Boland's Bakery and Liberty Hall. It never got as far as O'Connell St as it could'nt travel overland.

KingBrian2

Joe prim wrote: »

No, it wasn't the Helga, which was a lightly armed yacht, pressed into service in a pinch and used to shell Boland's Bakery and Liberty Hall. It never got as far as O'Connell St as it could'nt travel overland.

http://www.easter1916.ie/index.php/places/a-z/gpo/

On Monday afternoon the garrison repulsed a cavalry attack while with the breakdown of law and order, many of the stores in Sackville Street were looted. From Wednesday, the GPO and other buildings in Sackville Street came under artillery fire, mostly from the Helga gunboat at anchor in the Liffey. Connolly had believed the British would not use artillery in city areas. By Friday night the GPO was on fire, at which point it was evacuated.

Fratton Fred

KingBrian2 wrote: »

It is relevant considering the uprising became an intense battlefield every bit as bad as the Western Front.

Errrr, slightly different scale, by several orders of magnitude.

LordSutch

KingBrian2 wrote: »

http://www.easter1916.ie/index.php/places/a-z/gpo/

On Monday afternoon the garrison repulsed a cavalry attack while with the breakdown of law and order, many of the stores in Sackville Street were looted. From Wednesday, the GPO and other buildings in Sackville Street came under artillery fire, mostly from the Helga gunboat at anchor in the Liffey. Connolly had believed the British would not use artillery in city areas. By Friday night the GPO was on fire, at which point it was evacuated.

That version is interesting as per your link above, because... I like other posters have heard about the fact that the Helga was either incapable of shelling the GPO (due to its diminutive guns)? or that the angle from Sackville bridge was far too acute for the Helga to get a line of fire towards the GPO. Either way, if the outlaws hadn't taken refuge in Dublins premiere Post Office, then it and the rest of O'Connell Street wouldn't have been destroyed.

Victor

Artillery can fire over buildings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_fire

Other guns were set up in Trinity College.

KingBrian2

LordSutch wrote: »

That version is interesting as per your link above, because... I like other posters have heard about the fact that the Helga was either incapable of shelling the GPO (due to its diminutive guns)? or that the angle from Sackville bridge was far too acute for the Helga to get a line of fire towards the GPO. Either way, if the outlaws hadn't taken refuge in Dublins premiere Post Office, then it and the rest of O'Connell Street wouldn't have been destroyed.

Your placing the burden of responsibility on the 1916 Patriotic revolutionaries. The British continued to use Dublin as a base during the war. They decimated their own business interests by destroying the only industrialised region in the country.

Setting up a command point in the GPO was a much more preferable post than some of the other locations used including a hospital. Liberty Hall for the British would have been such an obvious target. The British also had numerical superiority the Metropolitan police and the Sherwood Foresters and other regiments against half trained ex army officers. It was the revolutionaries who kept law and order while the regiments were doing most of the shooting.

Del.Monte

KingBrian2 wrote: »

Your placing the burden of responsibility on the 1916 Patriotic revolutionaries. The British continued to use Dublin as a base during the war. They decimated their own business interests by destroying the only industrialised region in the country.

Setting up a command point in the GPO was a much more preferable post than some of the other locations used including a hospital. Liberty Hall for the British would have been such an obvious target. The British also had numerical superiority the Metropolitan police and the Sherwood Foresters and other regiments against half trained ex army officers. It was the revolutionaries who kept law and order while the regiments were doing most of the shooting.

It's my understanding that the unarmed DMP were removed to barracks once things kicked off - as for the 'revolutionaries' keeping law and order..

LordSutch

Del.Monte wrote: »

It's my understanding that the unarmed DMP were removed to barracks once things kicked off - as for the 'revolutionaries' keeping law and order..

But only after one of the DMP had been shot in the head outside Dublin Castle, by one of the Rebels.

That was the 1st shot of the Rising.

Del.Monte

http://www.garda.ie/Documents/User/Arms,%20the%20Dublin%20Police%20&%20the%201916%20Rising%20sm.pdf

KingBrian2

Del.Monte wrote: »

It's my understanding that the unarmed DMP were removed to barracks once things kicked off - as for the 'revolutionaries' keeping law and order..

When a revolution occurs opportunists take what they want. It is a indictment of the 1916 Dublin that people were not able to safely walk down the streets of Dublin with a friendly policeman.

LordSutch

KingBrian2 wrote: »

When a revolution occurs opportunists take what they want. It is a indictment of the 1916 Dublin that people were not able to safely walk down the streets of Dublin with a friendly policeman.

I do realise that we are meant to be discussing "What if the 1916 rising had not happened", so I guess we shouldn't really be on this current track ..... However, I should point out that the "Revolution" as you called it was committed by a minority within a miniority, (namely the IRB). In other words, its not as if there was a groundswell of revolution in the air, far from it at the time . . . . .

The election in 1918 was of course a different story.

recedite

Eugene Norman wrote: »

London would have had no interest in industrialising Ireland. At best we would have a Northern Ireland type economy with a large public sector to keep us happy.

The whole point of Home Rule would have been to take that kind of control from London and give it to Dublin, which we assume would have had more interest in promoting Irish industry.

Even without Home Rule there was a surprising amount of it, with all manner of manufacturing particularly in Dublin city.
In 1916 we even had world renowned arms, explosives and space exploration industries, but they all withered away subsequently.
At least the breweries survived!

riffmongous

LordSutch wrote: »

But only after one of the DMP had been shot in the head outside Dublin Castle, by one of the Rebels.

That was the 1st shot of the Rising.

And some of the last shots were the South Staffies butchering 15 civilians, as they were too impotent to defeat the rebels position they broke into nearby houses instead and took out their frustration.

josephryan1989

riffmongous wrote: »

And some of the last shots were the South Staffies butchering 15 civilians, as they were too impotent to defeat the rebels position they broke into nearby houses instead and took out their frustration.

Terrible but understandable in a battle situation when many of the rebels were wearing civilian clothing. A lot of the British soldiers were under-trained boys in their teens and twenties and many had not heard a shot in anger nor did many know how to use their own rifles. The fact that many men were mustered at short notice, crammed onto ferries and sent to Dublin, a city they were entirely unfamiliar with combined with shock of battle in an urban area, the loss of comrades, grief and terror and the strain of sustained combat - the lack of sleep, food and water - would cause even experienced soldiers to break.

The cover up of civilian deaths by the government enraged many people who had been throwing their chamber pots over the rebels. When Queen Victoria and King Edward and King George visited Ireland in the years before World War I and the 1916 Rising many of the poorest streets in Dublin were decorated with Union Jacks. When the reality of war was brought home to the inhabitants of the tenements during Easter Week many men who had enlisted in the British Army and been waved off with union jacks on their way to fight in France came home on leave to face hostility from family and friends. During the period from 1916 to 1919 when the War of Independence kicked off Irishmen in British uniform who sympathized with Irish Republicanism "lost" their rifles and revolvers and ammunition while on leave. When these men voted in the 1918 election for Sinn Féin they did so wearing their khaki uniforms.

josephryan1989

Bambi wrote: »

the 1917 rising would have happened, or the 1918 rising. It was inevitable.

Only by sheer luck (or bad luck) the 1916 Rising could have ended like the 1867 Fenian uprising. The leaders would have been packed off to prison camps for the remainder of the war and thousands of men rounded up and their arms seized.

How can you have a revolution when key organizers, agitators and other crucial cogs in the machinary of a revolutionary movement are taken out?

The men who joined the IRA after 1916 or were moved to join the revolutionaries after witnessing at first hand the brutality of the Tans during the War of Independence found a movement that was already in place.

The IRB and IRA were the direct successors of the men of 1867 and the Young Irelanders of 1848 who were in turn the successors of conspiratorial clandestine rebel movements such as the ribbonmen, the white boys and tories, jacobites, highwaymen and others going back hundreds of years.

Rebellions in the past failed when they were infiltrated by spies, leaders were killed or imprisoned or exiled and weapons seized. The rank and file had to disperse and start all over.

When the 1916 Rising happened events were set in motion that meant that if Pearse, Connolly et al did not come out, there would have been no chance for an armed revolution for another generation.

Dyr

josephryan1989 wrote: »

Only by sheer luck (or bad luck) the 1916 Rising could have ended like the 1867 Fenian uprising. The leaders would have been packed off to prison camps for the remainder of the war and thousands of men rounded up and their arms seized.

How can you have a revolution when key organizers, agitators and other crucial cogs in the machinary of a revolutionary movement are taken out?

The men who joined the IRA after 1916 or were moved to join the revolutionaries after witnessing at first hand the brutality of the Tans during the War of Independence found a movement that was already in place.

The IRB and IRA were the direct successors of the men of 1867 and the Young Irelanders of 1848 who were in turn the successors of conspiratorial clandestine rebel movements such as the ribbonmen, the white boys and tories, jacobites, highwaymen and others going back hundreds of years.

Rebellions in the past failed when they were infiltrated by spies, leaders were killed or imprisoned or exiled and weapons seized. The rank and file had to disperse and start all over.

When the 1916 Rising happened events were set in motion that meant that if Pearse, Connolly et al did not come out, there would have been no chance for an armed revolution for another generation.

And if my my aunt had balls..

It may have escaped your attention but the leaders were permanently taken out of circulation, and the participants were packed off to camps for as long as the british could hold them. Made no difference. The circumstances were favourable, it was only a matter of when the touch paper was going to be lit

josephryan1989

Bambi wrote: »

And if my my aunt had balls..

It may have escaped your attention but the leaders were permanently taken out of circulation, and the participants were packed off to camps for as long as the british could hold them. Made no difference. The circumstances were favourable, it was only a matter of when the touch paper was going to be lit

The key point you are missing is battle experience.

If the rebels were rounded up without having made a pitched fight they would have been discredited and morale would have plummeted.

After making a glorious fight in Dublin the veterans of the rising were filled with confidence and won the admiration of the apathetic and the apolitical masses who would vote for Sinn Fein in 1918, support the Republic and later the Free State and joined the ranks of republican parties in subsequent decades. The ideals of the proclamation and the fact that the rebels had the run of the city centre for a week lit a fire in the hearts of a generation of young men and women who had previously considered themselves subjects of the Crown. There simply never would have been such a dramatic change if 1916 had not occured. Yeats was right. A "terrible beauty" really was born.

The 1916 fight won global sympathy and inspired nationalists and separtists around the world. The failure of the revolution of 1867 shattered the moral of republicanism for decades. The Invincibles were reduced using knives to launch assassinations and other die hard republicans resorted to useless dynamiting campaigns. A repeat in 1916 without a pitched fight would have buried Republicanism.

neris

We wouldnt have to listen to that crony over paid fat cnut joe duffy telling us how brilliant he is for writing a book on dead chislers

josephryan1989

neris wrote: »

We wouldnt have to listen to that crony over paid fat cnut joe duffy telling us how brilliant he is for writing a book on dead chislers

Have you actually read the book? It's quite excellent and illuminates a tragic side of the Rising and indeed all wars - the deaths of innocents who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Duffy has put faces and breathed life into the dead. For us 100 years removed from what daily life was like in 1916 and what that terrifying week was like for ordinary people who lived through it, his book is does a great job.
If we only read books that are written by people we agree with politically we would make foolish ill informed comments like yours.

For the ordinary person there is no sense of the inevitability of history.
The civilians who suffered from the Rising did not see the grand scheme.
They simply experienced a sunny spring day until the arrival of strange men and women in strange uniforms taking over their native city which became a battlefield around them.