By Muriel Bristol | April 24, 2019
The Irish Easter Rising began on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916 (one hundred and three years ago).
Padraig H. Pearse, President of the Provisional Government thus proclaimed, read the Proclamation from the steps of the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin on that Easter Monday morning.
The Irish rebels held strong points in Dublin for five days, against bombardments and infantry assaults by the British Royal Army, before surrendering. The British government executed all seven signatories of the Proclamation by firing squad. (James Connolly, who had been wounded, was shot while tied to a chair). Others as well.
Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) produced a reading of the proclamation for the April 2016 Centenary (or Centennial). It features various Irish people living all over the world each reading a line or two. (Similar to the annual reading of the American Declaration of Independence by NPR correspondents). You may recognize London, Boston, Sydney, Washington, China, Canada, Moscow, Hollywood, Paris, New York, India, the Netherlands, and other locations among the featured locations. (The background music is Róisín Dubh (or Little Black Rose)).
While the Easter Rising did not succeed in itself, it set the scene for events that did produce the modern Irish Republic.
POBLACHT NA h-EIREANN [Irish Gaelic for People of Ireland]
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMAN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State. And we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irish woman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government,
THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN MAC DIERMADA | THOMAS MACDONAGH
P.H.PEARSE | EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY | JOSEPH PLUNKETT
References:
Wikipedia. (2019, March 16). Easter Rising. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising
Wikipedia. (2019). Róisín Dubh (Song). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Róisín_Dubh_(song)
YouTube. (2016). Centenary: The Proclamation. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERCVSDileo0
YouTube. (2016). Declaration of Independence (1997 National Public Radio Version). Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWoxGez0AfU
YouTube. (2014, November 7). The Black Rose (Roisin Dubh), Performed by Joannie Madden. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg4pAeT_MbU
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