In 2012, the Irish government appointed a number of historians to an Expert Advisory Group (E.A.G.) in order to advise on how the state should commemorate the centenary of the Irish revolutionary decade. This author is one of the members of the E.A.G. and this article seeks to provide a broad personal reflection encompassing an overview of the commemoration of the centenary of the 1916 Rising. It refers to the role of the E.A.G., as well as drawing on ideas that were generated by the author’s involvement in the commemoration as a professional historian who contributed regularly to public debate through newspaper articles, broadcasts and public lectures in the run-up to and throughout the period of commemoration, and thus offers the perspective of both critic and participant.

One of the first tasks of the E.A.G. was to fashion a mission statement, which, after various drafts, was finalised to include the following: ‘The advisory group is, first and foremost, a collection of individual professional historians with individual research interests, interpretations and institutional affiliations. What unites us is a desire to make a contribution to meaningful and informed commemoration in the form of advice to the government on official commemorative events.’Footnote ¹ The E.A.G. saw its advice as being particularly relevant in relation to historical context and expressed the view that a comprehensive commemorative programme should ‘not only address the key events in Ireland but also enhance the understanding of the wider United Kingdom, European and world context in which they took place. The aim should be to broaden sympathies, without having to abandon loyalties, and in particular recognising the value of ideals and sacrifices, including their cost.’ It also saw it as necessary ‘to ensure that significant events are commemorated accurately, proportionately and appropriately in tone’ and insisted ‘there should be no attempt to contrive an ahistorical or retrospective consensus about the contemporary impact and legacy of divisive events’. Moreover, it asserted that ‘the state cannot be expected to be neutral about the events that led to its formation’.Footnote ²

The E.A.G. was also keen to stress the opportunities the commemorations would provide

Following the centenaries of the home rule crisis, the 1913 Lockout and the outbreak of the First World War, it was accepted that the main commemoration challenge facing the state was how to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Neither an executive nor policy-making group, the E.A.G. experienced a long wait for a 1916 centenary programme from the government that it could offer advice on. It was not until 31 March 2015 that Taoiseach Enda Kenny launched the Ireland 1916 programme. Even with the appearance of this public framework it was regarded by one member of the E.A.G., Eunan O Halpin, as ‘less a new plan than a codification of steps already in train at national and local government level, and within the cultural institutions, the universities and other public bodies, to engage with the centenary of 1916’.Footnote ⁴

The Ireland 1916 programme was outlined in a substantial 64-page booklet, 1916/2016: Clár comórtha céad bliain: centenary programme, highlighting seven programme strands: state and local ceremonial; historical reflection; the living language; youth and imagination; cultural expression; community participation; global and diaspora. John Concannon, seconded from Fáilte Ireland where he worked to promote tourism, was appointed by the government to co-ordinate the programme, with the official title director of the Ireland 2016 centenary programme.

It was clear that the framework was designed to confront some of the blind spots of previous commemorations, with a focus on multiple layers of experiences, including the civilian experience, and the involvement of women, accompanied by an unambiguous assertion, largely elided in previous commemorations of 1916, that ‘there was hardly a family in Ireland in 1916 that was not affected by the First World War’.Footnote ⁵ The programme also underlined the importance of military ceremony in 2016, a reminder that the Rising was first and foremost a military event, and that the Irish army would be centre stage in any commemoration. There was a stated commitment to key capital projects, or what the programme referred to as ‘The Permanent Reminders’, including the G.P.O. Interpretative Centre, restoration of parts of Richmond barracks, where the 1916 leaders were court-martialled, a tenement museum in Henrietta Street in Dublin, refurbishment of Kilmainham Gaol and a new purpose-built military archives building. Specific engagement with local authorities was also prioritised.Footnote ⁶

Some cynicism was generated by the plan to ask school children to write their ‘Proclamation for a new generation’. John A. Murphy was critical about the popular appetite to tear the proclamation from its 1916 context and paste it on to a host of contemporary causes, including, in 2015, the marriage equality referendum. In University College Cork, in January 2016, Murphy implored that the proclamation be left as a historical document, not as a ‘living holy writ’ and wondered if children during the centenary would be encouraged to deconstruct it, identify its bogus claims and contrivances and be made aware that its most quoted phrase – ‘cherishing all the children of the nation equally’ – was not a reference to children as understood today, but the idea of equal recognition of unionists and nationalists in a new republic.Footnote ⁷ Murphy’s argument was countered with the contention that the proclamation was a ‘living’ document that no longer belonged to its authors as it was bequeathed to the republic for its citizens to make use of as they saw fit, depending on the beacons of different times.Footnote ⁸

This focus on new proclamations, however, proved popular, as did the ceremonial presentation by the Irish army of tricolour flags to schools, with an explanation of the origins of the flag and the singing of the national anthem. When President Michael D. Higgins presided over the presentation of proclamations to school students at Croke Park in March 2016, he asserted that the Rising ‘can, in many ways, be described as a stunningly ambitious act of imagination’.Footnote ⁹ Higgins was reasserting what has been maintained for decades; in the words of F.X. Martin in 1967: ‘It was imaginatively planned with artistic vision … the revolt was staged consciously as a drama by its principal actors.’ The article Martin wrote in 1967 was titled, ‘1916: myth, fact and mystery’.Footnote ¹⁰ Untangling that web remained a challenge to schoolchildren and their teachers during the centenary, but attempting it was a worthwhile endeavour as it underlined the need for a knotty narrative and the extent of the ‘conflict in loyalties’ in 1916.Footnote ¹¹

I

The 2016 centenary programme outline also contained the erroneous assertion that the commemorations in 2016 ‘will belong to everyone on this island’.Footnote ¹² That declaration seemed to reach back to the section of the 1916 proclamation that stated the republic then declared was ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past’. It was far from that simple, either then or in 2016. As Joe Lee has observed, the 1916 proclamation was ‘hopelessly out of touch with reality in its view of Ulster unionist resistance to home rule, which Pearse romanticised just as he did so much else in Irish history. The issue is brushed aside … the rebels might be “oblivious of the differences”, unionists were not.’Footnote ¹³ Nor were they in 2016; when interviewed by Jude Collins in 2012, Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, characterised the 1916 leaders as ‘murderers, because they weren’t regular troops, acting under the protection of a state of war … if I were invited to participate in the Easter 1916 commemorations, I think you can assume 100% I would not be there’.Footnote ¹⁴ Northern Ireland’s First Minister, the D.U.P. leader Arlene Foster, made similar assertions and, in January 2016, described the Rising as ‘an attack on democracy’.Footnote ¹⁵

It would have been naïve to believe or expect that the centenary of the Rising would not be affected by contemporary politics; history illustrates that this has always been a factor. As far back as 1935, the United Ireland newspaper, a publication that supported Fine Gael, insisted in relation to commemorating 1916 that Fianna Fáil’s sole aim was to make political capital for itself and editorialised: ‘It is always unseemly, if not indecent, for political parties to engage in a figurative scramble for the bones of the patriot dead.’Footnote ¹⁶

These enmities, fuelled by Civil War loyalties, lessened from the 1940s to the 1960s. The fiftieth anniversary of the Rising in 1966 was marked on a grand scale but was not as simplistically triumphalist and one dimensional as sometimes asserted; the most dramatic development was ‘not in monument but in anti-monument’, with the blowing up of Nelson’s Pillar, the gesture that effectively provided the iconic moment of the golden jubilee.Footnote ¹⁷ The Troubles in Northern Ireland completely sidelined state commemoration of 1916 from the 1970s to the 1990s. The republic’s formal, annual military parade to commemorate the Rising was abandoned and as the Troubles endured, much of the commemorative focus in the 1980s was centred on the idea of condemning ‘senseless violence’ with an insistence that to solve the northern crisis ‘physical force is out of the question’. Relatives of those executed in 1916 expressed disappointment that the government was seemingly not interested in marking the seventieth anniversary of the Rising in 1986 and that the families had to hold their own ‘fitting commemorative events’.Footnote ¹⁸

By the end of the 1980s and towards the seventy-fifth anniversary in 1991 there was some resentment of what Declan Kiberd termed the ‘elephant of revolutionary forgetfulness’.Footnote ¹⁹ As a result of the peace process and moves towards power sharing in Northern Ireland, state commemoration of 1916 in the republic resumed; the annual military parade was reintroduced in 2006, for the ninetieth anniversary, but this also reflected the dynamics of contemporary politics in the republic, a Fianna Fáil government being determined to prevent Sinn Féin from usurping the 1916 flag for its exclusive benefit.Footnote ²⁰

But the peace process and dramatically improved Anglo–Irish relations were also factors that could complicate commemoration and this was apparent in the run-up to 2016. In 2013, Tom Dunne observed: ‘when the event commemorated has clear implications for ongoing conflict and attempts at reconciliation, historians can come under intense pressure to prioritise contemporary political concerns over their primary duty to engage critically with the sources’. He was writing in relation to his experience of the 1798 rebellion bi-centenary commemorations in 1998, when the complexity of the period was too often ignored in favour of an embrace of a ‘United Irish Revolution’ in order to trumpet the significance of ‘shared history’ to add momentum to the peace process.Footnote ²¹

Dunne’s observations were also relevant to commemorating the Rising in 2016. Controversy about the idea of a royal presence in Dublin in 2016, in the context of such ‘shared history’, was one version of this. When speaking to the British–Irish Association in Cambridge in 2013, tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs Eamon Gilmore had suggested: ‘if we are true to the lead’ that President Mary McAleese and Queen Elizabeth II demonstrated during the queen’s state visit to Ireland in 2011, ‘then I would hope that we can host representatives of the Royal Family and the British government, along with the leaders of unionism, in Dublin in three years time in remembering the Easter Rising’.Footnote ²² Gilmore, it seems, was flying a kite without any consultation with the public or the E.A.G., and his suggestion caused tension. He insisted in his speech that people have ‘a responsibility to prepare and carry out our commemorations in a way that gives no offence and is mindful of the sensitivities of all citizens’. That appeared a dutiful and sensible aspiration, but there was also the responsibility to do justice to the intricacies and legacy of the 1916 Rising by not making the royal presence a main focus in 2016, with the inevitable security focus and heightened tensions it would create. At a public consultation meeting organised by the E.A.G. in 2014, its chairman Maurice Manning, at the suggestion of this author, stated: ‘Our job is not the job of the peace process’, and that in relation to commemoration, ‘we have a duty to prevent hijacking by the government or anyone else’.Footnote ²³ This resonated with one of the original assertions of the E.A.G.: ‘There should be no attempt to contrive an ahistorical or retrospective consensus about the contemporary impact and legacy of divisive events.’Footnote ²⁴

In endorsing the suggestion of a royal presence in 2016, the Irish Times editorialised in 2014 that the possibility of it distorting historical understanding was ‘a legitimate concern’, but that ‘the royal presence is the wrong target’.Footnote ²⁵ An alternative argument was that the royal focus would bolster the priorities of those who saw the Rising as unnecessary and wrong – it had already generated calls that Ireland should re-join the Commonwealth, suggestive of a postcolonial inferiority complexFootnote ²⁶ – and that commemoration would be better served by a concentration on ordinary lives as lived and lost in 1916 due to a variety of different allegiances, and the meaning of the proclamation of 1916. Such reflection would not have to exclude those who served in crown forces; the republic was well past the stage of a one-dimensional, heroic, nationalist narrative of Irish history, and the state was committed to remembering the Irish who served and died in the First World War. It had formally commemorated the battle of the Somme for the first time in 2006.

Senior Irish politicians had also participated in a number of commemorative events for the First World War and, at the end of 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Taoiseach Enda Kenny spent a few hours together in the fields of Flanders in Belgium, visiting war graves, laying wreaths and paying homage to the dead. It was the first joint visit by a taoiseach and prime minister to honour the British and Irish men killed in that war as soldiers of the British army. When he made the first official state visit of an Irish president to Britain in April 2014, President Higgins also took the opportunity to underline the historic ties that bind the two countries as a result of the war by quoting Tom Kettle, one of the best-known Irish victims of the battle of the Somme. Higgins suggested that Kettle had died ‘an Irish patriot, a British soldier and a true European’.Footnote ²⁷ Such joint gestures and language marked a complete transformation in the attitude of the Irish state.Footnote ²⁸

Notwithstanding the rhetoric of inclusiveness, certain tensions were apparent within Fine Gael about the 1916 centenary. Former Taoiseach John Bruton, who had consistently criticised the Rising as a mistake and who articulated his belief that Irish parliamentary leader John Redmond and his colleagues were ‘realists’ in contrast to those who replaced them, was reminded by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in October 2014 that Fine Gael was also a ‘party of the rebellion’. At the Fine Gael ard fheis, in February 2015, Ronan Fanning was insistent there should be a ‘shameless celebration’ on the centenary of the 1916 Rising, and ‘we should insist that whatever government will be in power, must unwaveringly lead the nation at home and abroad in unabashed celebration of the seminal moment in the birth of the Irish Republic’. In contrast, in a peace process framing of the centenary, minister for foreign affairs, Charles Flanagan, chose, at the same event, to emphasise the need for reconciliation: ‘we cannot allow the centenary commemorations themselves to become a divisive issue’, and he emphasised ‘quite frankly’, that there was a ‘nervousness across many political representatives and community leaders in the North about the centenary’.Footnote ²⁹

Tensions were also evident in 2015 about how relatives should organise for the centenary; the main relatives’ association witnessed the resignation of its chairman and secretary, the former, David Gilmartin, referring to ‘ongoing petty squabbles and personality clashes regarding the direction of the organization’ and the latter, Una MacNulty, because ‘I can no longer be a member of a committee that I believe to be undemocratic and opaque’.Footnote ³⁰ The group had also boycotted a government centenary programme launch event in November 2015. Along with the main 1916 Relatives Association there was a separate group headed by James Connolly Heron, the great-grandson of James Connolly. The larger group, established in 2014, claimed a membership of 900, working on a voluntary basis and with no resources: its mission was to ‘create a non-political and focused association that encourages understanding of the events of 1916 and that develops and supports involvement of relatives in centenary commemorations … we are not involved in commentary on current events or historical events after 1916’.Footnote ³¹ A specific relatives event was held in the R.D.S. in March 2016 with an estimated 3,500 relatives present, including many from overseas. Addressing the crowd, President Higgins emphasised the role of lesser-known volunteers in 1916 and the role of relatives in ‘humanizing’ the events of 1916.Footnote ³²

President Higgins was exceptionally visible as head of state throughout the commemoration and made a number of speeches that sought to strike a balance between celebration, historic context and his own passions; he took the opportunity to stress the significance of working class history, the ‘ethical appeal of egalitarianism’ and the extent to which it could be argued that the labour movement was ‘the living pulse’ of the revolutionary movement.Footnote ³³ He also made pointed reference to Britain’s priorities during that era and its ‘supremacist and militant imperialism’,Footnote ³⁴ or as the Irish Sun put it more crudely, ‘President Michael D Higgins slams Brit jingoism’.Footnote ³⁵

II

Whatever about national politics, it was communities, local groups and educators that led most commemorations. This was encouraged and centenary programmes were devised in individual counties under the auspices of the county councils. Kerry County Council, for example, was keen to stress the extent to which ‘from 1915, Kerry was central to plans for the Rising … Thomas Ashe, a native of Kinard, was arguably the most successful commandant of the rebellion’. But local pride was mixed with a stated determination to be proportionate: ‘Community consultation in Kerry showed a strong desire to ensure the commemorations are an honest reflection of life in Kerry at that time. People who attended the meetings want future generations to understand the context which brought about the Rising.’Footnote ³⁶

Was such a balance achieved given the resurgence of nationalist sentiment generated by the centenary commemoration? Perhaps inevitably there was a degree of simplistic jingoism and piety, but what was different from previous commemorations was the focus on primary source material. One of the notable aspects of the centenary was the degree to which archives, libraries and museums were to the fore, with an emphasis on the evidence provided by original sources so that people could take control of remembrance by exploring the documented experience of communities during revolutionary times. There were a number of initiatives which made that possible, such as the pivotal role of local libraries in encouraging county-based research and the government’s commitment to funding the Century Ireland website, which made an abundance of primary source material accessible.Footnote ³⁷

The digitised, phased release of the voluminous Military Service Pensions Archive, containing the pension applications of veterans of the revolutionary decade (1913–23), was another transformative effort in relation to archival material. There was a revolution in the accessibility and volume of historical information available due to the Internet and digitisation – ‘a rich tapestry of historical records with all of their flaws, ironies, truths and deceptions’Footnote ³⁸ – providing an opportunity to humanise and contextualise those involved in the revolutionary period and enhance an understanding of their motivations and their delusions.Footnote ³⁹

Because of its reach, television was also of paramount significance. In the Sunday Times, acerbic and penetrating television critic Liam Fay noted that in 2016, ‘RTE’s schedules were colonised by programmes marking the 1916 centenary’, a response that amounted to ‘overkill’. His verdict was that ‘Individually, many of the documentaries were smart and informative, posing usefully awkward questions. Cumulatively, however, the fog of war and smog of piety became suffocating.’Footnote ⁴⁰ That was not an unfair conclusion. R.T.É.’s leading effort, Rebellion, a six-part drama exploring the Rising through fictional protagonists, scripted by Colin Teevan, was far too dominated by contemporary concerns, which involved a contrived placing of women centre stage which was historically inaccurate and left an obvious question: was the 1916 rising not dramatic enough without having to take such liberties with history? Writer and playwright Gerry Stembridge legitimately maintained that with precise characterisation and plotting, ‘it is not impossible to fashion a drama that is both historically accurate and entertaining and create a sense of what it was like to be there’. Rebellion failed that challenge; it indicated an appetite to respond to inclusive narratives of the Rising but its approach was so artificial it lacked the very drama it was supposed to showcase.Footnote ⁴¹

Bríona Nic Dhiarmada’s 1916 was regarded as more satisfyingly traditional, with a ‘voice of God’ narration by actor Liam Neeson. To its credit, R.T.É. did respond to the challenge of a complicated centenary narrative by broadcasting other documentaries rooted in the research of new sources, including Catríona Crowe’s revealing excavation of social history in Life before the Rising. T.G.4.’s output was very impressive, including the musical satire Eipic which was strikingly original.

Another notable aspect of the commemorations was the prioritisation of culture, so much so that after the military parade on Easter Sunday, ‘the dignitaries were bussed up the Liffey Quays to join 1,100 singers and an avant-garde poet rapping about the prehistory and afterlife of the idea of a nation. To put it mildly, this was not like previous anniversaries.’ This was about, in the words of Fintan O’Toole, ‘the centrality of art in the centenary programme … the State gave artists the floor and left them to their own devices’.Footnote ⁴² O’Toole was referring to poet Paul Muldoon chanting One hundred years a nation to music by Shaun Davey, played by the R.T.É. symphony orchestra and sung by 1,114 choristers.

There was also, inevitably, a staging of Seán O’Casey’s The plough and the stars at the Abbey Theatre, which provided a reminder that the much trumpeted ‘new perspectives’ on the Rising were not all new. What O’Casey dramatised in 1926, was what in many ways was returned to ninety years later: ordinary lives as they were lived and lost in 1916 due to a variety of different allegiances or none. O’Casey had complicated the Rising’s narrative at an early stage, which is precisely why the play was regarded by some as subversive.Footnote ⁴³

The Abbey Theatre’s role in 2016, however, became more associated with the drama offstage, and specifically the Waking the Feminists movement, as a result of what the theatre did not do: include enough women in its centenary programme. Waking the Feminists was a grassroots campaign that ran from November 2015 to November 2016 calling for equality for women across the Irish theatre sector.Footnote ⁴⁴ On 12 November 2015 testimonies were read from the stage by thirty women working in various roles across the theatre sector in Ireland, with further comments and testimonies from members of the audience; another meeting was held in Liberty Hall on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2016.Footnote ⁴⁵ In November 2016 its final event was hosted by the Abbey (‘we would like to extend our thanks to the Board of Directors of the Abbey for the use of the venue, and to the staff of the theatre for their support’). Research was also commissioned into gender equality across the country.Footnote ⁴⁶

Many publications of 2015 and 2016 showcased recently released archival material, including witness statements and personal testimony from 1916. The runaway bestselling book of the centenary was R.T.É. broadcaster Joe Duffy’s Children of the Rising: the untold story of the young lives lost during Easter 1916. The book rectified a long-standing neglect. Approximately forty children were killed during the Rising; Duffy portrayed them as ‘collateral damage’ along with the other almost 300 civilian casualties, and humanised the most vulnerable casualties, using census records, death certificates, Bureau of Military History (B.M.H.) statements and compensation claims. As well as the severe poverty and poor housing in Dublin, Duffy also offered a sense of the multiple ties and allegiances of the era; two-year-old Seán Foster, for example, who was shot in the crossfire, was the son of a man who had been killed fighting with the British army, while his uncle fought with the Volunteers during the Rising.Footnote ⁴⁷

There was also a notable historiographical departure in relation to ‘material and performative culture’ in and around 1916, and the networks that sustained rebels involved in cultural life, including the Irish arts and crafts movement, and the Abbey Theatre. Fearghal McGarry highlighted how the personal histories of the ‘Abbey rebels’ could be traced through the B.M.H. statements and the military service pension archives; his book’s subtitle, ‘A lost revolution’ was a reminder of the post-Rising disillusionment. In the words of one of the friends of Abbey actress Ellen Bushell, describing her old age, ‘she was but another of the forgotten rank and file who had answered the call of Cathleen ni Houlihan’.Footnote ⁴⁸

Other, more polemical, accounts of 1916 sought to focus on the theme of ‘blood sacrifice’ in 1916 and its contemporary relevance. Ruth Dudley Edwards provided illuminating, nuanced and rounded assessments of the seven signatories of the Proclamation, but then chose to crudely marry different eras of Irish history as if they were seamless. What the leaders’ actions amounted to was ‘dangerous egocentricity and narcissism’ and ‘by courting death for a cause that had no popular support, were the seven different from Bobby Sands and his comrades who committed suicide by starvation? Or from the Jihadists who these days joyously sacrifice themselves in suicide bombings?’ These assertions failed to do justice to context or the lights of different times or the role of British imperialism, eschewing the complicated narrative that the events and sources demand.Footnote ⁴⁹

The place of 1916 in the wider scheme of things was considered in Keith Jeffery’s impressive 1916: a global history, not only pointing out that in the same week as the Rising, units of the 16^th Irish Division suffered 570 killed and 1,400 wounded in the Pas-de-Calais region of France, but also that some of the British reinforcements sent to Dublin actually thought they were in France. The destruction of Dublin during the Rising was often compared to that of Ypres or Louvain. In relation to the draconian measures adopted in Ireland to suppress dissent, Jeffery suggested ‘in this way the situation in Ireland was very similar to that in other belligerents with grumbling national or sectional minorities such as Austria–Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire’.Footnote ⁵⁰

There were, however, justifiable criticisms that ‘the international context did not resonate all that much’,Footnote ⁵¹ suggesting that one of the main points made by the E.A.G. was not really taken on board to the extent it might have been. It was also fair to assert that ‘in all the talk about the Rising, the religious faith of the Rising’s leaders seemed to be getting sidelined’, the observation of Greg Daly who edited 1916: The church and the Rising (Dublin, 1916). This was launched by the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, in April 1916; Martin stressed the ‘deep spiritual inspiration’ of some of the leaders and acts of ‘great courage and sensitivity’ by individual priests during the Rising, whilst acknowledging that anti-clerical views were also current.Footnote ⁵²

The admirable O’Brien Press series ‘16 lives’ provided a biography of each of the men executed after the 1916 Rising. Although the biographies are of uneven quality, collectively the series succeeded in charting new ground, revising and updating, and they showcased some of the archival gems informing new perspectives. Inevitably, the series was also a reminder of the extent to which some of the leaders left behind scant archives and others much more substantial collections.Footnote ⁵³

A special edition of The Stinging Fly – a title which has existed since 1997 to publish quality new Irish and international writing – edited by Seán O’Reilly, included contributions from forty-three writers who were asked to ‘re-read and respond’ to the Rising and its legacy ‘in whatever way they wanted, in any shape or form’, the aim being to provide an ‘alternative space’. Weaving through these pages are annoyance, humour, anger, spikiness, wistfulness, contemplation and raw emotion, in the forms of fiction, memoir, poetry, history and play. Evelyn Conlon maintained ‘this time around different things will be talked about. It will not be such a shock if some smart-arse girl remarks that de Valera wouldn’t allow women into his battalion.’Footnote ⁵⁴

III

The centenary also generated controversy about what could be considered sacred sites of the Rising, especially Moore Street. As a slogan, ‘Save Moore Street’ seemed compelling and urgent and was adopted by protestors who insisted that not enough was being done to preserve the street where the 1916 leaders made their final stand.

In 2005, Shaffrey Associates Architects, specialists in the conservation of historic buildings since the 1960s, compiled a dense report for Dublin City Council to assess the architectural and historical importance of no. 16, most likely the last H.Q. of the Rising. The report found that no.16 retained much of its original mid-eighteenth-century fabric and character, and while recognising that other Moore Street buildings were of significance due to the events that took place within them, pointed out that nos 20–1 ‘have been altered extensively since 1916 and retain little of the character of this time’ but that ‘the substantially intact no.16 takes on a greater significance and the importance of its protection becomes more relevant’. No. 16 is part of a group of buildings within the central terraced block on the east side of Moore Street, which comprises nos 14 to 17 inclusive ‘and which forms a coherent streetscape of substantially intact mid-18^th-century buildings’.Footnote ⁵⁵

In 2006, nos 14–17 were designated a national monument by the government and a preservation order was placed on them in 2007, a move welcomed by the National Graves Association and the Save Moore Street committee. Shaffrey Associates and archaeologist Franc Myles compiled another detailed report in February 2012 for Chartered Land, owners of nos 14 to 17. This report was in response to a request for additional information after the company applied for ministerial consent to carry out works at nos 14–17. The report concluded: ‘the most significant survival is the row of 18^th century houses which constitutes the national monument’, nos 14–17. It also referred to ‘the perception that much of the historic streetscape and fabric survives intact, although this is clearly not the case’.Footnote ⁵⁶

Dublin City Council chose not to acquire nos 14–17 in 2014, when offered them in a land swap by the National Asset Management Agency (N.A.M.A), which took control of Chartered Lands’ loans. The government then bought the buildings from N.A.M.A. for €4 million to bring the national monument into public ownership and ensure their restoration.

Amidst the controversy over preserving Moore Street, not enough space was given to refined analysis of the practical problems of preserving intact large historic sites. References to planned shopping centres and the desecration of sacred sites generated a sleek narrative of shameful and recent philistinism, ignoring the consequences of decades of inactivity, land speculation, and the failings of Dublin City Council which approved planning permission for large commercial development in Moore Street. The council, rather than the government, remained the development authority for the street. But in March 2016, the high court accepted, in full, the last ‘battle site’ of the Rising narrative of Moore Street in deciding that all of the buildings on the east side of the street as well as the laneways leading into it collectively constitute a national monument.Footnote ⁵⁷ Mr Justice Max Barrett’s ruling ran to seventy-three chapters over 399 pages, and the judge ‘clearly entered into the spirit of things as the centenary of the Rising is about to be commemorated, capturing the zeitgeist. Like Judge Liam Hamilton in the equally contentious Wood Quay case years earlier, Mr Justice Barrett visited the Moore Street site before hearing the case, and it made a deep impression on him.’Footnote ⁵⁸ In describing the room in no. 16 where the 1916 leaders decided to surrender, he wrote: ‘The stark simplicity of the room . . . resonates with history … to think that Connolly once lay wounded in the far corner, with other members of the provisional government, all of them signatories to the Proclamation, gathered around him for a council of war sends a chill down the spine.’Footnote ⁵⁹

Reflecting the Rising, organised by R.T.É. in partnership with Ireland 2016, and billed as the largest public history event ever undertaken in Ireland (and it was building on the success of a similar venture, the Road to the Rising event the previous April), was held in Dublin city centre on Easter Monday, 28 March. The organisers promoted it as a ‘free family event’, with talks, music, film, walking tours, performances and the participation of President Higgins in a panel discussion in the Mansion House after he delivered a keynote. Over 300 events were spread across the city centre.Footnote ⁶⁰ Reports suggested up to 700,000 attended (after an estimated 500,000 had attended the previous day’s military parade) and it culminated in a spectacular stage show – Centenary – at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. The Irish Independent made the rather curious claim that it was ‘the largest cultural event since the Pope visited nearly 40 years ago’.Footnote ⁶¹

Given the Republic’s lack of a formal independence day, the commemoration of 1916 raised the prospect of Easter Monday becoming an annual occasion to mark the Republic’s independence under the title Crinniú na Casca (Easter gathering), an initiative unveiled in 2017. Another development arising out of the 2016 commemoration was the Creative Ireland programme, with the stated aim to bring culture to the fore ‘for the strengthening of our society’ and to ‘improve access to cultural and creative activity in every county’. One of the positive aspects of the 1916 commemorations was what Enda Kenny referred to as ‘the interdependency between culture, identity and citizenship’, and he declared the government’s ambition to build on that, to ‘make every local authority a dynamic hub of cultural creativity’.Footnote ⁶² Laudable as this was, it also seemed in 2017 that marking the anniversary of the Rising under the Crinniú na Casca banner would be more about ‘free family fun’ than history or commemoration, which were much diluted in the 2017 programme compared to 2016.Footnote ⁶³

IV

There was a positive focus during the centenary on education and historical reflection, and the Ireland 1916 programme included a stated aim to ‘generate additional interest and enthusiasm for the revolutionary period’ in the second-level history curriculum, with a new Leaving Certificate subject to be piloted in a number of schools under the title politics and society ‘to ensure that 2016 promotes a legacy of interest in politics and active citizenship’.Footnote ⁶⁴ This, however, also highlighted an elephant in the commemoration room and a missed opportunity to reverse the plan to drop history as a core, compulsory subject for the Junior Certificate. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment proposed changes to the Junior Certificate programme, described as radical and seismic, in November 2011 under the title Towards a framework for Junior cycle. These were endorsed by Ruairi Quinn, minister for education and skills, in October 2012. Under this programme, history and geography are no longer compulsory subjects; instead, history is alluded to under a statement of learning, to the effect that a student would value ‘local, national and international heritage, understand the importance of the relationship between past and current events and the forces that drive change’, by means of an optional ‘short course’ or ‘learning experience’ which could also be fulfilled by a range of other subjects, including Chinese or religious education. History, it was clear from these proposals, was not going to be taught under this curriculum in a systematic, thorough or meaningful way and can be ignored if that is the choice of the school. Not tackling this, at a time when the government’s programme was trumpeting the importance of commemoration and memory, and the intrinsic contribution of a historical knowledge to citizenship, was disturbingly ironic.Footnote ⁶⁵ It was left to second-level history teachers, third-level historians and some senators to lament the marginalisation of history as a school subject. In January 2017, Senator John O’Mahony, a former history teacher, noted: ‘It would be ironic in 2017, after the very dignified and respectful commemorations of 2016 and of the First World War, if we were to have any dilution or reduction of the priority given to history in our schools and in our educational system … history should not be lost as a core subject in our education system.’Footnote ⁶⁶ This was a particular pity given that the 1916 centenary generated what has been described as ‘unprecedented and sustained public engagement’ with history and the avoidance of ‘a renewed wave of revanchism’ regarding Northern Ireland.Footnote ⁶⁷

Overall, the 1916 centenary commemoration was characterised by pride, dignity and considerable depth of research and analysis. It raised interesting challenges for the public historian, especially in relation to the need to create concern about a meaningful and considered state programme, to suggest content for that programme, and to highlight and expose political abuses of the commemorations, or propaganda and selectivity masquerading as history. The commemoration also offered a reminder that condescension on the part of the historian in the commemoration process is misplaced because of the degree to which, in the words of Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, ‘professional historians are every bit as much people of their own generation as any other body of citizens. They cannot escape, any more than anybody else, sharing in the assumptions, concerns, preoccupations of their own time and place.’Footnote ⁶⁸ The commemoration underlined how public historians can confront that reality by being deliberately ‘self conscious’ of such contemporary impulses while at the same time being vocal about the primacy of evidence and sources as much as possible.Footnote ⁶⁹ That task was in many respects made easier by the avalanche of such source material into the public domain, but such volume can also be overwhelming, allowing the public historian to stress the need for it to be mediated and contextualised; such reminders were frequently highlighted and allowed to breathe during the commemoration. There was also a welcome resistance to attempts to bully pride out of the commemoration frame.

In 2014, the novelist Roddy Dolye had suggested of the 1916 leaders ‘there should be questions so that we give back these people their humanity. Let’s see human beings making these decisions, flawed and all as they were.’Footnote ⁷⁰ The 1916 centenary commemorations embraced such an approach, meaning that there was frequently a laudable determination to accept the revolutionary generation on its own, complicated terms. What was dispensed with, and rightly so, was a corrosive cynicism and suffocating judgementalism that Richard Evans, the renowned Cambridge historian, has characterised as wishing a personality change on the generation of a century ago and ‘lecturing the people of the past on how they should have done better’.Footnote ⁷¹ The challenge now is to sustain a measured approach as commemoration of the War of Independence and Civil War loom.