Talk of the Town: A preview of what was long overdue

The Richmond Barracks are quite far from the General Post Office in downtown Dublin, both in distance and in terms of what they represent.

The post office, of course, was the epicenter of the 1916 Easter Rising. First, it served as the headquarters for the poets, teachers and labor advocates who led the rebellion against the British, and five days later, it became the focus of the Brits’ bombs that would break the back, but not the spirit, of the insurgence.

The yard at the jail where the Brits executed the rebels.

Now the GPO, as it’s called, is the slick interactive tourism HQ for all things Rising-related. Its touch screens synthesize documents and characters. Its movie simplifies the action and rebels’ decisions being made inside the building’s proud granite shell. It’s a museum dedicated to the Rising’s leading men.

The Richmond Barracks, on the other hand, sit a half-hour bus ride away amid the Inchicore neighborhood – one hill over from the Kilmainham Gaol (jail), where the British executed the

Rising’s leaders. The barracks became a holding cell and courtroom.

It’s a stark place even now. All stone and bare floors. But its expansive space focuses attention on the minimalist, yet powerful, exhibit of the rebels Ireland almost forgot about: the women.

Eadaoin Ni Chleirigh, the energetic and enthusiastic executive chair of the 2016 Richmond Barracks exhibition, on June 21 welcomed several wayward Americans who had wandered up to the barracks unaware that the exhibit wouldn’t open for another six days.

“You’re from Kentucky? Well if you’re from Kentucky, you must come in,” she said. Her tone overflowed with Irish hospitality and she insisted on giving them a tour.

Eadoaoin Ni Chleirigh points to the Countess Markievicz panel on the quilt at the Richmond Barracks exhibit.

The main chamber of the barracks, where the 22 rebel leaders were taken after their capture Saturday, April 29, now features displays detailing the contributions of many of the women who helped carry out the rebellion, such as Rose McNamara (who became vice-commandant at the rebels’ outpost at the Marrowbone Lane Distillery), Winifred Carney (top aide to Joseph Connelly) and of course Countess Markievicz, who was a catalyst for the Rising and is the most well-known of the women involved.

A French paper snapped Markievicz being taken by ambulance to the jail.

In all, 77 women are honored on squares of a quilt that hangs in the back of the barrack’s main room.

“Some of these women only had a sentence or two written about them before this,” Chleirigh said.

That made researching them difficult. Chleirigh initially drew Bridget Hegarty to investigate. That meant tracking down family members. It turned out they knew little about her role in the Rising but became so intrigued that Hegarty’s grandniece then took over the research and design of Hegarty’s quilt square.

“When the family discovered what she’d done,” Chleirigh said, “they were so proud of her.”

This exhibit becomes more important because it brings to the surface what 20^th Century Ireland seemed hell-bent on burying. Shortly after the Rising, the women began getting shoved aside. Even the male poets who sought to underscore the Rising’s importance breezed past the women’s contribution. In one of the most well known pieces, W.B. Yeats’ “Easter 1916,” Yeats alludes to Markievicz but does so in a way that seems to diminish her – as if her participation in the rebellion somehow sapped her beauty.

“That woman’s days were spent

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?” 

In this case, the words of Markievicz might deserve to outlive those of the famous poet. As Markievicz gave her official statement to the British judge, she said, “We dreamed of an Irish Republic and thought we had a fighting chance.”

Then she broke down and sobbed, the judge recalled. It was as if she were crying on behalf of her nation. 

Object of offering, object of ire

The Yank's offering at Collins' grave.

A few times a year, an American woman calling herself “The Yank” visits the Glasnevin Cemetery to deliver a bright red flower, an American flag and a one-sentence note at the monument to Irish patriot Michael Collins.

Her offerings and pilgrimages to Collins’ grave are noteworthy but not extraordinary because the Irish are constantly refreshing the plot in which Collins is buried with potted plants and bouquets. Nearly 100 years after Collins was assassinated, he still commands loyalty and admiration.

A few sections of the cemetery away sits the grave of Eamon de Valera, Collins’ contemporary who became a longtime leader of Ireland.

De Valera’s grave, in contrast, was sparse. No flowers. No flags. Just gravel and a modest stone cross that was meant, initially, for his child before it became his grave marker too.

Some of us wondered why it was so understated for someone who spent 10 years as Taoiseach (or prime minister) and 14 years as Ireland’s third president.

My theory is that perhaps de Valera didn’t think he’d ever need a grave because he was a survivor. 

He was the only male leader of the 1916 Easter Rising to escape execution. I say male because women played a huge role in the planning and fighting, and seemed at the time to be moving rapidly toward equality. 

The Countess Markievicz was a key leader.

As we have learned, the Proclamation of the Republic is the first such document in the world to specifically reference women. It starts: "Irishmen and Irishwomen ..."  And many of the Rising’s commanders, such as labor leader James Connolly, were feminists. “Win the women to your cause and your cause is secure,” Connolly famously said.

The British refused to kill the women who participated in the six-day-long uprising. But the other 14 rebel leaders were shot. (The Brits didn’t consider the 25-year-old Collins, who was aide de camp to Joseph Mary Plunkett, enough of a threat, so they sent him to a prison camp in Wales.)

De Valera was a political survivor as well. Because he was the highest-ranking rebel still alive, he filled the power vacuum after the Rising and heading into the Irish War for Independence in 1919. The Irish guerrilla tactics proved so effective against the more powerful British, that the two sides set out to negotiate a treaty in 1921 that would effectively split Ireland creating a free country across most of the island but leaving six counties in the north under British rule (or "continued occupation" as our tour guide at Glasnevin Cemetery put it).

The treaty wasn't popular but did pass.

Here’s where de Valera showed what kind of political survivor he was. Instead negotiating a treaty that would inevitably involve concessions, de Valera sent Collins to do it.

And Collins paid the price with his life. The treaty sparked a civil war, and de Valera gave himself cover by denouncing the treaty’s terms. Collins, in August 1922, was assassinated in an ambush while leading a patrol in his home county of Cork.

De Valera would go on to play a key role in undoing much of the gender equality that many of his fellow rebel leaders sought because he allowed the church to essentially set social policy. 

The grave of the well-mourned Collins.

First it was a slow recession of rights – women, who briefly served as judges during the “shadow” government before independence, suddenly were excluded from juries and high-level government jobs, as Dr. Mary McAuliffe, University College of Dublin gender history professor, told our class. As the church and government blended, “respectability” became the standard and radical women were “demonized,” McAuliffe said.

Throughout our studies and travels, we've heard repeatedly that the Ireland of the 20th Century likely didn't resemble what the 1916 Rising leaders seemed to envision. And that brings us back to the note that “The Yank” lays at Micheal Collins’ grave. Our tour guide at Glasnevin said it contains a simple message that piques the imagination:

“Michael, who knows what might have been.”

When writing isn't quite enough: The lessons of Joseph Plunkett

It seems like the most obvious place to start with Joseph Mary Plunkett is at the end – his last day in Kilmainham jail.

That’s where Plunkett, one of the seven signatories on the Proclamation of the Republic, married his fiancée Grace Gifford in the jail’s chapel the night before his execution. It’s a tragic story, one that has been immortalized in legend and song.

But like many great stories, the ending isn’t the most important part – just the last bit we get to. There’s so much more to Plunkett than the way he died or even the cause for which he died.

Born into a well-off Catholic family (his father was a count), Plunkett benefited from an elite education in England that laid the groundwork for his writing skills and taught him several languages. (While setting up the scaffolding for the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, he used those language skills to solicit support from other Europeans.)

Plunkett also suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life and, by 1916, was dying. Still, he pulled himself off his deathbed to help plan and command the rebellion. For Plunkett, I get the sense that the term “cause” is too simple. This was a matter of being liberated from a government that was not theirs – was not Irish. And so if it took a declaration of independence, gunshots and the price of their own blood to wake their fellow Irish men and women from their complacency, then so be it.

“I am very happy I am dying for the glory of God and the honor of Ireland,” Plunkett said just before facing the firing squad.

Plunkett's second book of poems was published posthumously.

Perhaps what is most fascinating to me, though, is Plunkett’s progression of activism. He started as writer and poet. And as he was becoming more fiercely nationalist, he got more involved with The Irish Review, a poetry and literary journal his friend and fellow proclamation signatory Thomas MacDonagh had helped launch in 1911. When he became its editor, Plunkett made the journal more political. I imagine he thought he could show his neighbors a path to civil rebellion through the power of writing facts and opinions.

By happenstance, I found in a Galway store Plunkett's final book, published in 1916. It ends with an essay called “Obscurity and Poetry,” which he wrote for the February 1914 edition of The Irish Review. In it, he gives us a glimpse of his philosophy of how influential he believed art and writing could be.

“The artist's task, however, is make others see; for all Art is revelation. This he does chiefly by the great instrument of inspiration, Choice. He chooses the portion or phase of Truth that he is to reveal, and he chooses the veils that he must impose in order to make that truth visible.”

I always believed, as a journalist, the most powerful right was that of a free press to inform the masses and allow them to figure it all out for themselves. But I’m increasingly coming to the realization that, alas, information is not always enough. It certainly wasn’t for Plunkett and the others. They believed they had no other choice but to act on their principles – not just plainly state them – and then defend them fiercely.

- Ryan Alessi (to see more of my musings, adventures and misadventures from Ireland, I am posting on my travel blog, "Gone to the Winchester".)