Volume 18 , Issue 13

Walking With Sweet Silly Sadie

Woof! Woof! It has been 100 years since Ireland experienced the Easter Rising. Researching the 1916 Irish Rebellion (Easter Rising) of April, 1916, and the Sinn Fein, an Irish republican political party active in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland gives us another view as Ireland marks the centenary of the Easter Rising against British rule amid fears of an upsurge in dissident republican violence.



The name is Irish for "Ourselves" or "we ourselves." It was frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone." The Sinn Fein organization was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. Sinn fein was founded on 28 November 1905, when Arthur Griffith outlined the Sinn Fein policy, "to establish in Ireland's capital a national legislature endowed with the moral authority of the Irish nation."

The Sinn fEin contested the North leitrim by election, 1908, and secured 27% of the vote. Both support and membership fell. At the 1910 Ard Fheis the attendance was poor and there was difficulty finding members willing to take seats on the executive.

It was in 1914, Sinn Fein members, including Griffith, joined the anti-Redmond Irish Volunteers (Redmondites) and others as the "Sinn Fein Volunteers." Griffith himself did not take part in the Easter Rising of 1916, but many Sinn Fein members and the Republican brotherhood did. Government and newspapers dubbed the Rising "the Sinn Fein Rising." After the Rising, republicans came together under the banner of Sinn Fein, and at the 1917 "Ard Fheis" the party committed itself for the first time to the establishment of an Irish Republic.

The Easter Rising, also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during eAster week, 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in World War I. It was known as the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion 1798.

It was organized by seven members of the Military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, beginning on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and lasted for six days. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 members of Cumann na mBan, seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic.

Almost 500 people were killed in the Easter Rising. About 54% were civilians, 30% were British military and police, and 16% were Irish rebels. More than 2,600 were wounded. Many of the civilians were killed as a result of the British using artillery and heavy machine guns, or mistaking civilians for rebels and many others were caught in the crossfire in a crowded city. The shelling and the fires it caused left parts of inner city Dublin in ruins.

Woof! Woof! I have a dream! A future to believe in!
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