Hiberno-Fascism

THE Easter Rising of 1916 is the central event in 20th-century Irish history. At noon on April 24 of that year, Easter Monday, a small group of violent separatists seized some key points in the city of Dublin and proclaimed a republic independent of Britain. After a week of bitter fighting the insurrection was put down. Most of its leaders were executed following brief courts-martial. Much of the city center had been destroyed by British shelling; 450 people had been killed and 2,614 wounded.

Though a military failure, the Easter Rising—more precisely, the British reaction to it—strengthened and, in the minds of many Irishmen, legitimized what Tim Pat Coogan delicately refers to as “the physical force tradition” in Irish Republicanism. That tradition might more accurately be called Irish fascism, with the Easter Rising as its beer-hall putsch. The consequences of the Rising, at any rate, were wholly malign. First came the Anglo-Irish “war” of 1919-21, in which the IRA (as the violent separatists were now called), under the command of Michael Collins, a veteran of the Rising, set about systematically murdering policemen and other “collaborators.” The British authorities responded with clumsiness and occasional savagery. Partition and Home Rule followed, under terms that had been available in 1914, and would have been implemented but for the outbreak of the world war. Nothing had been gained by all the carnage, except a great deal of bitterness on both sides.

About the Author

John Derbyshire

Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.

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THE Easter Rising of 1916 is the central event in 20th-century Irish history. At noon on April 24 of that year, Easter Monday, a small group of violent separatists seized some key points in the city of Dublin and proclaimed a republic independent of Britain. After a week of bitter fighting the insurrection was put down. Most of its leaders were executed following brief courts-martial. Much of the city center had been destroyed by British shelling; 450 people had been killed and 2,614 wounded.

Though a military failure, the Easter Rising—more precisely, the British reaction to it—strengthened and, in the minds of many Irishmen, legitimized what Tim Pat Coogan delicately refers to as “the physical force tradition” in Irish Republicanism. That tradition might more accurately be called Irish fascism, with the Easter Rising as its beer-hall putsch. The consequences of the Rising, at any rate, were wholly malign. First came the Anglo-Irish “war” of 1919-21, in which the IRA (as the violent separatists were now called), under the command of Michael Collins, a veteran of the Rising, set about systematically murdering policemen and other “collaborators.” The British authorities responded with clumsiness and occasional savagery. Partition and Home Rule followed, under terms that had been available in 1914, and would have been implemented but for the outbreak of the world war. Nothing had been gained by all the carnage, except a great deal of bitterness on both sides.