Ireland from the Famine to the Partition

Marozell

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• Publié par: Onsa
• Nombre de lectures: 41
• Langue: English

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Ireland from the Famine to the Partition (1850s-1920s)     

   

 

 

 

 

research by Jackie Quarters 03 for Mr. Rozell

You can break down my door, you can even strip search me

 Never gonna take away my human dignity

 Beat me, shoot me, flame keep on burnin

 Never gonna put out the fire of freedom ~Black 47

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The Irish struggle for freedom from the British Empire has been a controversy in

Ireland for the past 800 years. This song written by Black 47 gives insight into the

troubles that the Irish Catholics have suffered because they did not accept British rule.

Even today, the Irish are going to a great extent to unite their island and to be free of

British domination.

The famine lasted over four years in Ireland. More than one million people died of

starvation and or disease and millions more migrated to the Americas. Many of the ones

that did migrate to the Americas died of mal nutrition and disease traveling on vessels

that were often called Coffin Ships. Very little help came from the British government.

Some government officials, such as Sir Robert Peel, Lord Charles Trevelyan, and Lord

John Russell tried to solve the Irish Question, but most of their ideas failed. This

period, known as the Great Hunger, left Ireland destitute with more bitterness against

the English than ever before.

In 1858, a group was formed called the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in a

Dublin timber-yard on Saint Patricks Day. These people wanted independence from

the British Empire. By 1867, the IRB had an estimated 80, 000 men who were willing to

do whatever it took to help Ireland (12). As we shall see, the IRB will play an important

role in the Easter Rising that leads to the Troubles in Ireland.

The fight between the British and the Irish went on. After the famine, prices on

food began to rise, so this was good for the Irish farmers. A reaction to this was the

 

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      owners of the land, mainly British descendants, raised the taxes. Between the years of

1877 and 1879, there was overproduction of food, which caused a drop in prices, and then

poor harvests. The landlords did not decrease the taxation on the Irish farmers,

however. Just like what had happen during the famine, many of the farmers were

evicted from their land because they could not pay their land dues and were left

homeless. These destitute farmers wanted to change laws to lessen the control of

landlords and allow Irish peasants to own land. A land-movement was lead by Michael

Davitt (a farmer from Mayo) who was willing to change things for Ireland.

Around the same time the land-movement reform began, a man named Isaac Butt

was trying to repeal the Act of Union and establish Home Rule in Ireland. Home

Rule is when a parliament would be arranged in Ireland and would govern domestic

issues. Butt did not want to be totally independent from the ruling Parliament in

London, England, but he wanted an Irish Parliament to make new laws and pass them

for Ireland. Some people thought that this could be a solution for many of Irelands home

problems.

The Home Rule party was successful in winning fifty-nine seats in the British

Parliament in 1879. Charles Stewart Parnell became leader of the Home Rule party. .

Though he was a Protestant, Parnell was able to gain the support of the Irish. He did

this by joining with Michael Davitts on land issues and his own ideas on Parliament. In

1879, a Land League was formed and Parnell became leader of it. This was to reduce

evictions and get more rights for tenants from landlords. They did this by boycotting

any peasant that filled as a replacement for a farmer that was evicted from a farm (this

was so that the landlord would not make any money on rent). The boycotts became very

 

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      violent between the years of 1879 and 1882, and this became known as the Land War. In 1881, Parliament passed the Land Act, which set up fair rate for rent to calm the

fighting. As for Home Rule, it dragged on into the twentieth century before Parliament to recognize it. But, War World I began and it was forgotten about and the Irish are still fighting for it to this day.   Declaration of Independence, or the Easter Rising (1916)

   These are some of the major Irish Republican leaders during these times. They are Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Sean MacDermott, Joseph Plunkett, and Eamon Ceannt. http://shrike.depaul.edu/~sconneel/new4.html  At this stage of Irish history, nationalist groups of Ireland began to emerge. These groups were the Home Rulers, Irish Unionists, Irish Nationalists, and the Irish Republicans. The Home Rulers did not want Ireland to become an independent country

from the British Empire, but rather have a separate Parliament and have the Act of Union repealed. Others, such as the Irish Unionists, found mainly in the North, believed that the Act of Union joining Ireland with Britain in 1707 was agreeable and wanted to keep it. The Irish Nationalists and Irish Republicans were against the Unionist. They both wanted to be a self governing nation. The Irish Republicans who wanted to go a step further wanted total independence from the British Empire. The Irish Republicans

 

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      would go to the furthest extent out of all the groups to get what they feel is right for

Ireland, including the use of violent means (war) to achieve these aims.

In September 1914, the British government delayed e the newly enacted Home Rule Bill that would have give Ireland political some measure of independence because of the beginning of World War I. This outraged the Citizen Army, an illegal army formed by two Irish Volunteers to the IRB, Jim Larkin and James Connolly. The Irish Republican group, Sinn Fein (We Ourselves), who won seventy-three seats in the British Parliament to try and gain an Irish republic, planned an uprising against the British government with the IRB. Thomas Clarke, who was part of the Supreme Council of Sein Fein, was the main mastermind of the uprising. He had help planning it by Patrick Pearse, Seán Mac Diarmada, and Eamon de Valera (who born in America) president of Sein Fein.

The Irish Volunteers held recruiting people all throughout Ireland and trained vigorously for the upcoming battle.

(NOTE: By 1916, the First World War was grinding along, and the Home Rule Bill, which would have given a measure of independence to Ireland, had been suspended in the British parliament.  

The Irish Volunteers, a paramilitary group seeking freedom for Ireland, continued to train and drill its men, as did the Ulster Volunteers, a similar organization dedicated to keeping the union with Britain.  

But a secret section within the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), had lost patience with the British and was planning a rebellion.  

They knew that with a massive British military garrison in Ireland, they would be outnumbered. But they hoped the very act of armed resistance would spark a national uprising.  

By January, the IRB hooked up with the socialist leader James Connolly and his Irish Citizens' Army, and the rebels began working towards an Easter deadline.  

On Easter Monday - 24 April - about 1,200 men and women ignored a countermanding order from the head of the Irish Volunteers not to rebel, and seized the General Post Office (GPO) and other buildings around Dublin.  

In a written proclamation, they stated that Ireland was now a republic, and guaranteed "religious and civil liberty, [and] equal rights and equal opportunities to all citizens". (Click here to read proclamation )  

 

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      The British reacted with fury, and crushed the Dublin rebellion, along with smaller uprisings in Wexford and Galway, over the following five days. By the end, 64 rebels, 132 British soldiers and 230 civilians had died; a large part of the centre of Dublin had suffered damage, mostly from British artillery fire.  

The rising did not spark a national rebellion, but the vengeful manner in which the British executed its leaders - which included tying the wounded James Connolly to a chair before shooting him - sickened most people.  

Within a short time, the participants in the rising were regarded as heroes motivated by the highest of ideals, and this paved the way for the emergence of the more pragmatic campaign of guerrilla warfare under Michael Collins' Irish Republican Army (IRA).  

In the decades since independence -- particularly during the IRA's most recent campaign in the North -- the 1916 Rising has remained a subject for debate and controversy. It is clear that the vast majority of ordinary Irish people in 1916 did not, at the time, approve of the violence of the Rising, but had some sympathy with its aims   -Seán MacCarthaigh )   Black 47 wrote in their song, Big Fellah, about what happened on Easter

Monday, April twenty-fourth, 1916 in Dublin, Ireland. I remember you back in the GPO

with Connolly and Clarke, Laughin' with McDermott through the bullets and the

sparks And when they shot our leaders up against Kilmainham wall, you were there

beside us in that awful Easter dawn.  (1). 2000 men under Pearse seized control of the

General Post Office (GPO) and other key places such as the Four Courts, Bolands Mill,

St. Stephens Green, Jacobs Factory, and South Dublin Union. The nationalists

proclaimed the formation of a new Irish republic. By Friday of Easter week, flames

overcame the GPO and Pearse ordered to surrender. 450 people died and 2,500 were

arrested, including the leaders James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, and Sean McDermott.

They were arrested and executed by a British fire squad on the Kimainham wall.

Eamon de Valera was also arrested but only received a death sentence (a year later he

was granted amnesty).

Another hero of the era was Michael Collins, otherwise known as Big Fellah who

the Black 47s song was mainly about. Collins developed an intelligence gathering and  6

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      counter intelligence network that was impossible for British agents to crack. Tactics involved primarily urban and guerrilla warfare and ambushes of British troops that became models of resistance movements throughout the twentieth century. We should note here however, that terrorist attacks at civilian targets was not practiced. Collins would be the first man to eventually force the British to the negotiating table in the British Empire since George Washington.  

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The Irish negotiating team was lead by a reluctant Michael Collins and the

founder of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffith. . Eamon de Valera did not want to go to these

peace talks because he knew that Ireland would never get total freedom from the British

Empire in that way. The British team was headed by David Lloyd George and Winston

Churchill. The treaty negotiated would give Ireland dominion or "Free State" status,

much like Canada. The status of largely Protestant counties of Northern Ireland would

be decided by a 'boundary commission", with the north to be eventually united with the

south. The Government of Ireland Act (1920) partitioned Ireland, providing for separate

parliaments- one in Belfast serving six counties in the north and one in Dublin serving

the remaining 26 counties.

 

In Dec. 1921, Sinn Fein and British officials signed the Anglo-Irish agreement,

which created an Irish Free State in the south. This was not independence-Britain would

still control matters of defense and taxation, among other things. Collins and others

agreed with the hope that full independence would someday be achieved.

  

The signing of the treaty and the partition of Ireland created much dissention and

strife among the Irish, and civil war broke out soon after. Many people did not accept the

treaty (especially with the requirement that Irish officeholders must swear allegiance to

the British crown) and followed de Valera out of the organization. The Irregulars,

followers of Eamon de Valera, and the Free State Army, Michael Collins followers,

against one another in civil war throughout Ireland. The Irregulars (Irish Republican

 

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      Army) began a violent campaign against the treaty and Collins himself was assassinated

by his former comrades in August 1922. Families were split and former comrades turned

against each other. The IRA was outlawed in 1936 by the Irish Free State, and went

underground.

 

In 1949, the British Parliament's Ireland Act granted the Irish Free State full

independence (this created the Irish Republic of Ireland in the south). Eamon De Valera

would become prime minister and later president of the Republic of Ireland, repudiating

the oath of allegiance to the British. The proposed "boundary commission" was never

created and the partitioning of Ireland became a permanent fixture of 20th century

Ireland.

The violence did subside somewhat until the 1960s, when civil rights abuses against

Catholics in the North would again stir nationalist violence.

 

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This is a map of the partioning of Ireland that occurred in 1920. E http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eamon DeValera in the 1930s.

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      Works Cited 1) Big Fellah, The by Black 47 on Home of the Brave album, copyright 1994, SBK Records. Located at Rozell, Matthew; Irish Unit, Black 47s The Big Fellah lyrics page; URL:    2) Easter Rebellion, URL: http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=0543d00 accessed January 2001 3) Famine by O'Connor, Clayton, Simenon, Reynolds from "Universal Mother" Album by Sinead O'Connor, copyright 1994 EMI Music, Ltd. Located at Rozell, Matthew; Irish Unit, Sinead OConnors Famine lyrics page; URL: 4)    Fire of freedom " by Black 47 on "fire of freedom" album, 1993 copyright 1993 SBK Records. Located at Rozell, Matthew; Irish Unit, Black 47s Fire of Freedom lyrics page; URL: http://www.hudsonfalls.k12.ny.us/HS/FAC/marozell/ireland%20songs-zombie.htm  accessed December 2000.   5)   Irelands Troubled History,   Washington Post . URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp~srv/inatl/longterm/nireland/overview.htm accessed January 2001. 6)    7)   )  History of Ireland , URL: http://www.irelandstory.com accessed January 2001. 8) Irish History on the Web, URL: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html accessed Jan/01.  

    9)   McGuiness: Weekend must be calm, peaceful, dignified and disciplined, by West, Johnathan of Out There Magazine . URL: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html accessed Feb/01. 10)   Michael Collins Web Page, URL: http://www2.cruzio.com/~sbarrett/mcollins.htm accessed January 2001 11)   Profile on Gerry Adams, URL: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html accessed Feb/01 12)   " Sunday Bloody Sunday " by U2, "WAR" album, 1982 Words and Music copyright © U2. Located at: Rozell, Matthew; Irish Unit, U2s  Sunday, Bloody Sunday page; URL: http://www.hudsonfalls.k12.ny.us/HS/FAC/marozell/ireland%20songs- zombie.htm  accessed December 2000. 13)   The Ireland Story, URL: http://www.irelandstory.com accessed Jan/01  

 

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