The year 2006 marked the ninetieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. On Easter Monday in 1916 members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret society committed to the establishment of an Irish republic, and the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, two paramilitary organizations formed in 1913, seized the General Post Office (GPO) on O’Connell Street, launching a rebellion against British rule in Ireland. They succeeded in occupying the GPO and other centrally located buildings for a week before surrendering. The anniversary of this key event in Irish history has sparked a plethora of publications, new and reissued.
Most published accounts of the Rising concentrate on the rebels themselves. This book widens the focus to include the neglected stories of post office employees, their family members, a local priest, and an onlooker. Edited and introduced by Keith Jeffery, the book brings together previously unpublished documents held in the British Post Office Archives and the United Kingdom National Archives, eyewitness accounts first published shortly after the Rising, and the tales told in The Sinn Fein Rebellion as They Saw It (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999).
Jeffery asserts that “the ‘real story of 1916’ must include the bystanders, the uncommitted, the ordinary workers in the GPO, who were suddenly caught up in the dramatic events of Easter Week” (2). The accounts in this book suggest that for many of these people, their first response to the rebellion was to try to return to duty as soon as possible. These individuals were not necessarily making a political statement by choosing to carry on with their work. As Jeffery notes, it is not surprising that many of these “stories of ‘soldiering on’ or ‘derring do’ during the Rising, and apparently against the rebels, might have been suppressed” in light of Ireland's later changed political circumstances. Yet “these stories are part of Ireland's history as much as those of the fighting men and women,” and they should be related in order to record as full and balanced a history of the Rising as possible (2).
In the second chapter Jeffery quotes the telegrams, cables, and transcripts of telephone conversations that first indicated to the British authorities that the GPO had been seized by rebels at noon on 24 April 1916. These messages read like something out of a thriller, bearing witness to the “shock and confusion of the day” (16).
The third chapter reproduces four different accounts written by Arthur Hamilton Norway, the Secretary of the Irish Post Office. His accounts were written during, shortly after, and about ten years after the Rising. The latter was written only for private consumption and provides a frank view of leading men in the Irish administration, such as the Viceroy, Lord Aberdeen (“a kindly and well meaning man, but dull”) and the Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell (“a shrewd literary critic, but a negligent and undiscerning politician”) (21).
Norway's wife Mary Louisa told the story of “her” Easter Week in a series of lively letters to her sister, which were first published in 1916 and are now reprinted in chapter 4 of this volume. The Norways and their fifteen-year-old son, the future novelist Nevil Shute, were living in the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dawson Street at the time of the Rising, having given up their memory-filled rented suburban house after the death of their elder son Fred in the war. Mrs. Norway shared her day-to-day experiences living in close proximity to St. Stephen's Green, another site held by the rebels, even venturing out to view the GPO on the day the rebellion broke out and later its burned-out wreckage. As Jeffery notes, “the most poignant feature of Mrs Norway's account concerns the fate of [her late son] Fred's belongings, … which had been stored for safekeeping with other family valuables” in her husband's office in the GPO (64).
Other accounts in the book also come from inside and outside the GPO. Chapter 5 contains the official reports of civil servants, such as the three main technical staff in charge of the telegraph service, and a rare female perspective on the event from a “lady telegraphist.” The following chapter features the obligatory rebel's tale from inside the GPO. The rebel in question was Dick Humphreys, a twenty-year-old Irish Volunteer. Chapter 7 reproduces Father John Flanagan's narrative of his time as the “unofficial chaplain to the garrison” in the GPO.
An onlooker's point of view is provided by Belfast-born St. John Ervine, a critic, playwright, and novelist who was employed as the manager of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1916. Ervine experienced the Rising on two fronts: his place of work, the theater, was close to the GPO, while his residence at the United Arts Club overlooked St. Stephen's Green. A self-confessed “Irish home ruler” at the time of the rebellion, Ervine later became a staunch Ulster Unionist.
The final chapter is based on the “Report on the Cases of Irish Civil Servants Suspended in Connection with the Recent Rebellion.” The Home Secretary, Sir Herbert Samuel, established the committee which compiled the report in response to Norway's concerns that government employees suspected of involvement in the Rising might be unfairly dismissed. The report lists the departments, names, and ranks of and decisions regarding individual civil servants.
Jeffery's editorial notes provide necessary context and explanation for the various documents reproduced. There were places, however, where a note correcting errors in the original text would have been useful. For instance, on page 165 Ervine mistakenly states that the Dublin lock-out strike and the formation of the Irish Citizen Army took place in 1911. On page 55 a letter from Arthur Norway to Sir Evelyn Murray is dated 3 April 1916, although the content of the letter indicates that it must have been written on 30 April 1916. It is unclear whether the mistake occurred in Norway's original text or is a modern typographical error.
Overall, this book offers a fascinating look at the Easter Rising from a long-neglected angle.
