The Rising, the Great War and my family’s dinner table stories about 1916

“Wrap the green flag ‘round me boys,

To die were far more sweet,

With Erin’s noble emblem boys,

To be my winding sheet…”

As you drive across nationalist areas over Easter week one can’t help but notice the oversized tricolours fluttering from lampposts.

It’s a commemoration of a seminal and heroic defeat which changed the course of Irish history.

The Easter Rising was no military success but the British government’s over-reaction to it, the destruction of the city of Dublin and the barbarity of the execution of the leaders of 1916 mapped out an irreversible trajectory of travel for the Irish nation.

The start of the 20th century was one of turmoil as the old European empires fought each other and started their long journey into decline. It was a time of violence and a time of oppression but for those under the yoke of imperialism it was an opportunity.

Some politicians debate, with the benefit of hindsight, that perhaps, the insurrection of 1916 didn’t need to happen. Certainly, the late John Bruton of Fine Gael was such a person. And, for a time, this writer too. After all, Home Rule was on the statute books.

It’s too easy to dismiss John Redmond and to curse his name. Redmond was every bit as much an Irish nationalist as the then leader of Sinn Féin, Arthur Griffith, who proposed that a self-governing Ireland could become part of a dual monarchy under the British Crown.

Read more: Reading out the 1916 Proclamation again will change nothing. Understanding it might be a start

Many of the quarter of a million Irish volunteers who fought on the British side in the Great War were in their own way (or in their understanding) as patriotic about Irish self-government as those who manned the GPO.

This division runs deep in my family and within the touching history of my grandfather, who bounced me on his knee.

Tom Kelly fought, was imprisoned and decorated for his part in the Irish War of Independence, whilst his own father, Michael, fought, was gassed and also decorated for fighting in the still ongoing Great War.

I often wondered what their dinner conversations must have been like. Certainly, as the oldest child in our family and way too precocious, I can recall clashes of opinion with my own father. But these were mainly about wanting to go out later to places or keep company he would rather I avoid – nothing as fundamental as arguing the national cause.

Easter 1916 was not avoidable, even if the brutal and heartless consequences for the leaders should have been. Magnanimity has never been the strong point of the British governing classes – not when they ran an empire or even now when they don’t.

There was something heroic and magnificent about the high-mindedness behind the Rising of 1916. It should never be forgotten. But nor should it be used to justify indefensible actions by militant republicanism in subsequent generations. The Irish War of Independence was a war and yes, it was in the main a guerrilla war.

These days the annual commemoration of the Easter Rising mainly serves to highlight the many splinters and splits which run across latter day republicanism

Unlike the campaigns of the 1940s, 50s 60s, 70s 80s and 90s it had widespread support from the vast majority of Irish people. The Irish Civil War was bloody and divisive; and whilst it left deep and long lasting scars in its wake, it also dampened any further thirst for militancy or violence amongst Irish citizens.

The recent growth in Sinn Féin on the island of Ireland is more grounded in the here and now than in 1916. They’ve been propelled by populist policies and meticulous attention to bread-and-butter issues.

These days the annual commemoration of the Easter Rising mainly serves to highlight the many splinters and splits which run across latter day republicanism.

Today’s generation don’t need to flag wave or wear a lily – in their hearts they proudly cherish the courage and idealism which lit the way for building of a nation. The men and women of 1916 belong to all.

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