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00:00We shall rouse the world from a wicked dream of material greed, of tyrannical power, of corrupt politics, to the wonder of a regenerated spirit and a beautiful dream that will endure forever.
00:30The greatest powers of the age are at war, suffering casualties on an unprecedented scale.
00:38This is a period of almost apocalyptic disaster for Europe.
00:45With the old world order in turmoil, on Easter Monday, a small group of Irish rebels marches into Dublin city intent on overthrowing British rule.
01:00There are a lot of revolutionary moments in history, but very few of them are actually seized.
01:08Britain quashes the rebellion, its leaders executed by firing squad.
01:17Everybody was horrified that the executions were so ruthless and carried out so quickly.
01:23The rebels are widely condemned, but the ideals for which they fought will inspire advanced Irish nationalists to rise and strike for freedom.
01:35Whatever bitterness was in your heart just welled up more and more and more, made them more determined to carry on.
01:41Against all odds, in the guerrilla war that follows, the Irish prevail.
01:48Britain finally withdraws, ending centuries of foreign rule.
01:54In years to come, Ireland's example will inspire people the world over to stand and break the shackles of empire.
02:02In my very earliest childhood, I had heard both in song and story, tales of the brutal,
02:31oppression to which we were subjected to.
02:37Ireland, in the first decade of the 20th century, a generation of young radicals comes of age.
02:46There's moments in history that are like zeitgeist moments, when a consciousness shifts.
02:51And I think the early 1900s is one such moment.
02:57Where many failed before, this new generation imagines they can achieve the impossible.
03:04Force Britain, the greatest power of its age, to surrender its control over Ireland.
03:09The revolutionary generation, this generation that progresses the Irish Revolution, that is the cradle of the ideas that underlie the Irish Revolution, they're a very interesting group of people.
03:22These young radicals dream of creating an Irish Republic, equal, equal, free and proud among the nations of the world.
03:35It was the expression of a psychological need, that man is equal of his fellows, and not to be exploited, derided or enslaved.
03:48The assertion of the British Crown's authority over Gaelic Ireland begins with the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 1100s, and continues in the centuries that follow.
04:02As land and power are granted to those loyal to British rule.
04:07With the reformation of the 1500s, Protestants gain power and privilege, while Catholics are discriminated against and gradually dispossessed.
04:15In the century that follows, extensive lands in Ulster are granted to Scottish Presbyterian and Protestant planters, making them ascendant over the defeated Irish Gaels.
04:28That plantation was an attempt to introduce British, in inverted commas, civilisation, into the island of Ireland.
04:37It involved the removal of the existing holders of the land.
04:41It was associated with the departure of the Gaelic Lords.
04:48Successive Irish rebellions fail to undo the new British order.
04:52In 1800, Ireland is absorbed fully into the British state.
04:57In the famine, caused by the collapse of the potato crop in the 1840s, a million people die of starvation and disease.
05:08Millions more are driven to emigrate, to America, Canada and Britain.
05:13While Britain thrives, building an empire that circles the world, Ireland largely stagnates.
05:23The empire offers a lot of opportunities for ambitious young Irish people, but the empire also exploits Ireland as well.
05:30But in the late 1800s, an increasingly educated Catholic middle class begins to assert itself, and among the rising generation, something begins to change.
05:45The new generation in Ireland is different from their parents. They want to make a new world.
05:54This is a period where the age of empires is transitioning into an age of nationalisms, and Ireland's story has to be seen in both that Europe and global context.
06:06The rise in nationalism, the rise in a drive for self-determination that's happening in other parts of Europe, in parts of Africa, in parts of Asia, this is a kind of a worldwide phenomenon.
06:21The revolutionary generation have been transformed by the technological changes that occur with the second industrial revolution.
06:28The fact that these people can travel around on bicycles and trains and affordable transatlantic transport means that they are a radically different generation in the same way that smartphones and the internet have changed our generation within our lifetimes.
06:46We had this huge development in interconnections between different continents, and that fed the Irish people across the globe.
06:54It also brought black information, and radical ideas that were able to spread through these systems.
07:00The Irish diaspora in North America and Britain become conduits of such ideals and change.
07:07In particular, London would have had a huge network of Indian activists and Egyptian activists, and of course, they liaised with the Irish.
07:16They exchanged ideas, they cross-pollinated.
07:18So in a really strange and unintended way, the networks of empire helped radicalise the colonised.
07:27It's a moment that a generation is made of a youth culture, which is trying to strike out in a more radical way.
07:37They're very attracted by nationalism, by the idea of the nation-state, the idea of self-determination.
07:45It's the generation of radical experimentation in lifestyle, in sexual identities, in forms of literature, famously in art, with modernism.
07:59There's a great buzzing, especially among the young people.
08:06Radical nationalists believe that Ireland's culture must be made stronger, so as to give the Irish people a cause worth fighting for.
08:13Very many in the movement looked to our past, not the real past, but an image of the future that they projected back on to the past.
08:27They were trying to create a new world that would break the links with Britain and the empire.
08:33Through new organisations like the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Abbey Theatre and the Gaelic League, activists strive to develop native Irish culture and the Irish language, which has been in long-term decline under English dominance.
08:49The attitude to it then was that it was the poor man's language.
08:55We are happy English children.
09:02We all want to conquer whatever the enemy is trying to do.
09:06England is preventing our language and our history being taught in the schools.
09:13We could start free classes to teach the children subjects forbidden in the schools.
09:19Before a year was out, we had three centres in Dublin, teaching history, Irish, music and dancing.
09:32The Gaelic League establishes branches across the country to strengthen Irish culture.
09:38Young enthusiasts flock to the cause.
09:41They're organising callies, they're organising concerts, they're bicycling all across the country, they're going to Irish college on their day off.
09:52There were hundreds there learning Irish.
09:54These great old days from these colleges were the nearest thing to heaven.
10:00In County Meath, Kerryman Thomas Ash phones a GAA club and travels to America to raise funds for the Gaelic League.
10:08In London, Cork man Michael Collins spends time off from work as a British civil servant organising GAA and Gaelic League clubs.
10:21In Cork, radicals gather to imagine a new world in the home of the writer Terence McSweeney.
10:28The empire is a bad thing.
10:30We shall show its tyranny and cruelty and give hope and encouragement to every nation fighting the same fight all the world over.
10:41You have terrible, terrible poverty.
10:47And you have slums in Dublin that are worse than slums in Calcutta at the time.
10:53To eradicate poverty and fight for workers' rights throughout Ireland, socialists Jim Larkin and James Connolly established the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and the Irish Labour Party.
11:08Within that sort of fusion of different cultural, social and political influences, the suffrage movement in Ireland really began to take off.
11:18As women demand equality and the right to vote, Irish feminism finds its voice.
11:23Fix your mind on the ideal of women enjoying the full rights of citizenship in their own nation.
11:32You will go out into the world and get elected onto as many public bodies as possible.
11:38The radical movement crystallises when in August 1913, 200 leading activists meet at the Gaelic League's annual congress in Galway City.
11:53We have this astonishing photograph which shows the delegates.
11:57And what's astonishing about it really, I suppose in retrospect, is it's almost a who's who of the Irish Revolution to come.
12:03Attending are future leaders of the rebellion of 1916 and three future presidents of Ireland.
12:13Well, it was in the Gaelic League that I realised best what our nation was and what had to be done to get the freedom that was necessary to realise ourselves again.
12:25It would be very difficult to be in the Gaelic League at that point in favour of freedom.
12:34Well, it shows the extent to which the Gaelic League and those other cultural organisations acted as almost a nursery of revolution.
12:40But despite their enthusiasm, the radical nationalists have little support for their cause among the wider Irish public.
12:53We started the Gaelic Society at that time. I think there might have been about 15 members, you know.
13:04We started the GAA club. We could hardly have a team, a football team.
13:09And I think the next thing we started was a Piper's band, which was also poorly attended.
13:13They were regarded as kind of outsiders and almost as cranks.
13:22Mainstream Irish nationalism has a very different hero.
13:26John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
13:31Since the 1870s, the Irish Party has lobbied Britain to give Ireland a limited form of self-government known as Home Rule.
13:39The Irish Parliamentary Party and its members, John Redmond, they're pragmatic, they're practical politicians.
13:46Home Rule is the limit of their ambition.
13:49Home Rule would give the Irish a subsidiary parliament in Dublin.
13:55But Ireland would remain subordinate within the United Kingdom.
13:59A solution that cannot satisfy the young radicals.
14:12In the general election of 1910, the Irish Party wins a resounding victory in Ireland.
14:18Leaving Redmond holding the balance of power in London's House of Commons.
14:21His prize for supporting Henry Asquith's Liberal government?
14:28Home Rule for Ireland.
14:30Asquith reluctantly agrees.
14:33In a sense, that should have been the crowning victory of the Irish Party.
14:38They've been struggling for three decades to achieve Home Rule.
14:40But the Home Rule Bill essentially causes a counter-revolutionary movement in Ulster.
14:51Led by Dublin lawyer Edward Carson, the Protestant community in Ulster resolutely opposes Home Rule.
15:00Ulster Unionists want to remain within the Union with Great Britain.
15:04We want the left to live our own lives in our own way.
15:13Unionists vow to resist Home Rule by all means necessary.
15:19In 1913, they form and arm the Ulster Volunteer Force,
15:23which grows to be 100,000 strong.
15:25Concerned that the British government will not face down the Ulster Unionist threat,
15:35radical nationalists form their own paramilitial force.
15:38The Irish Volunteers.
15:41In early 1914, Republican women follow suit and establish Coman Amman.
15:47When the volunteers began to organize through the country,
15:51we had started Coman Amman and hoped to make ourselves useful when the time should come.
15:57There would be a rebellion sometime.
16:01Probably soon.
16:03I knew no more than that.
16:07The movement spreads like wildfire.
16:10Thousands of people rush to join.
16:11And it spreads so fast that John Redmond eventually has to accede to it and try to take control of it.
16:18Redmond urges Irish Party supporters to join the Irish Volunteers.
16:24Its ranks soon grow to over 180,000.
16:28By mid-1914, Ireland seems to be moving to the brink of civil war.
16:33Then, with Ireland on the precipice, Germany invades Belgium.
16:44Britain proclaims that it must protect the freedom of small nations.
16:50And declares war on Germany.
16:54The First World War has begun.
16:56With the war requiring full attention, the British government postpones Irish Home Rule.
17:14Edward Carson calls on the Ulster Volunteers to enlist in the British Army.
17:18To demonstrate loyalty and ensure the future of the Home Rule project,
17:24John Redmond also calls on the Irish Volunteers to enlist.
17:31We had decided that both people, the nationalist Volunteers and ourselves,
17:36would forget our grievances in the meantime and fight for our country.
17:40In the late summer of 1914, nationalists and Unionists march together to war.
17:48But Redmond's call has split the movement.
17:52A minority of Volunteers refuse to fight under the British flag and reject Redmond's call.
17:58Remaining in Ireland, some lay plans for a rebellion.
18:05April 1916.
18:07For almost two years, Britain has been at war in Europe.
18:17They are facing an onslaught, an industrialized form of death,
18:21which is unlike anything that European soldiers have witnessed before.
18:26With Britain distracted by the war, radical nationalists in Ireland prepare for a rebellion.
18:39You know the old phrase, England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity.
18:44With funds gathered by the Fenian movement in America,
18:48the rebellion is planned in secret by the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
18:51We came to the conclusion that time had come.
19:00On Easter Monday, April 24th, a small group consisting of Irish Volunteers come in Amman,
19:07and the socialist Irish citizen army sees key buildings in Dublin's city centre.
19:17Outside the general post office, rebel leader, Pawdrick Pearce, reads the proclamation and declares an Irish Republic.
19:25Irish men and Irish women, Ireland through us summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
19:35We proclaim the Irish Republic as a sovereign, independent state and pledge our lives to the cause of its freedom, its welfare and its exaltation among the nations.
19:45It's just this incredibly dramatic moment which creates almost like a mythic starting point for Ireland's revolution.
19:54But the rising is doomed from the start.
19:59The rising in Dublin was a gesture.
20:05It was a desperation gesture when it happened. They knew it was. They knew they had no military chance whatsoever.
20:131916 was supposed to be a countrywide rising.
20:17The Cork Volunteers, for example, were one of the largest and strongest in the country and they were ready and willing and able.
20:26Three days before the rising, a shipment of German guns accompanied by international humanitarian Roger Casement and destined for the rebellion is intercepted by the British Navy.
20:38With the weapons lost, Irish volunteer leader Owen McNeil issues orders calling on all volunteers not to rise.
20:48And there's confusion in Cork, there's confusion in Kerry, there's confusion in Limerick, in Tipperary, in Clare and very well organized Irish volunteer units don't know what's happening and so they sit it out.
21:0110,000 radical nationalists were expected but amid the confusion less than 2,000 come out and the rebellion is confined mainly to Dublin.
21:15Britain ships soldiers to Ireland and cordons off Dublin city.
21:32On Wednesday night, British artillery opens fire with devastating effect.
21:37In military terms, they responded with quite remarkable efficiency and brutality.
21:50British Army had no crimes in leveling a lot of O'Connell Street.
21:54A lot of O'Connell Street.
21:58Those Japs who were sent out to stop it all, I suppose our thoughts was, well, serves them right sort of thing.
22:05They started it and so they've got what they asked for.
22:09In the course of the week, almost 500 people lose their lives, many of them civilians.
22:15To avoid further civilian casualties, on Saturday, April 28th, Padraig Pearce surrenders, to the surprise of many rebels.
22:26I didn't think the surrender was coming then, we just didn't know.
22:30In Boland's bakery, rebel commandant, Eamon de Valera, refuses to believe the surrender until the orders are validated by nurse Elizabeth O'Farrell the following day.
22:40In County Meath, having successfully captured a British barracks, rebel commandant Thomas Ash also believes the fight should continue.
22:51He said, I get the smell of victory in the air.
22:55Only after his second in command, Richard Mulcahy verifies the order.
23:01Does Ash stand his men down?
23:03The 1916 Rising ends in capitulation rather than an all out destruction of the rebel forces.
23:16And this leads a lot of the veterans of the 1916 Rising who survive to say they will never again surrender.
23:26Thousands are rounded up and marched under guard through the city.
23:29When the men surrendered after the fighting in 1916, they had to be protected by the British troops against the Dublin mob.
23:39The women whose husbands were fighting in World War One, or whose husbands had died in World War One, they were so angry about the 1916 Rising.
23:48There were such shrieks of hatred, and the soldiers luckily guarded us very heavily on each side too, on each side of us.
23:58All the G-men were unloosed on us, the G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and they went around saying you out, you out. They picked out all the leaders.
24:09The leaders are court-martialed and taken to Dublin's Kilmainham jail.
24:22This was seen as treason and treachery, and the British had to respond by shooting somebody.
24:29Party, party!
24:30Party, party!
24:31May 3rd, 1916.
24:33No!
24:34Rebel leaders Paul-Duke Pearce, Thomas McDonough, and Tom Clarke are the first to be executed by the firing squad.
24:41Eight!
24:42Fire!
24:46When these executions took place, that changed everything.
24:49Even though they might have been initially hostile or confused, people began to sort of say, well maybe there's something in this, like what did these people die for literally?
25:02As the executions continue, some of the men write letters home, before facing the firing squad.
25:10My darling wife, pulse of my heart, sentence of death has been passed, and would be carried out by shooting.
25:17So must Irishmen pay for trying to make Ireland a free nation.
25:26I thought they were awful.
25:29But I thought, well now, if a man is prepared to give up his life for something, it must be something that he wants very badly.
25:38Their hostility to the executions united the people.
25:45That brought a whole volume of support for our movement, for the cause, against and in hostility to Britain.
25:51Under mounting public pressure, Prime Minister Henry Asquith ends the executions.
26:00But the executions of 15 rebels, including poets, playwrights, socialists, and prominent Gaelic leaguers, has shocked the Irish people.
26:10In response to that rebellion, the government arrests some 3500 plus people, many of whom had absolutely nothing to do with the rising.
26:28This radicalizes the situation.
26:30Those arrested are deported and interned in prison camps, like Frangok in Wales.
26:39Frangok Detention Camp became known as the University of Revolution.
26:45There are classes, there are discussions, there are lectures, and there's discussions of the lessons of Easter week.
26:58I can see that they spend their time talking about history, talking about politics, planning the future state,
27:04and perhaps most importantly, kind of creating a shared sense of identity.
27:07Frangok is the first time that most of these people have seen each other.
27:12They come from different parts of the country, and they're suddenly pulled together.
27:17So, it allows leaders to emerge.
27:20The emerging leaders of the movement include Terence MacSweeney, Thomas Ashe, Eamon de Valera, and Michael Collins.
27:28Who would have known a Michael Collins before Frangok?
27:31He's a nobody.
27:32After 1916, the Republican movement is basically kind of decimated and falls apart.
27:45And the Republican women then step into this breach, and set up this Volunteer Dependence Fund.
27:52The Republican women of Cum and Eamon establish the Irish Volunteer Dependence Fund,
27:58to support families affected by the rising.
28:00De Valera's wife was living in Wicklow with a number of small children, and suddenly her husband was gone,
28:05his teaching salary was gone, so money had to be raised to help these families.
28:11Immediately after the rising, Cum and Eamon arranged masses.
28:16And that was the beginning of bringing the Republicans together.
28:20Those masses become occasions of demonstration against the policy of the British government, because all other demonstrations are forbidden.
28:30But you cannot forbid people to go to mass.
28:33In addition to raising funds, the women organized protests across Ireland, demanding the prisoners' release.
28:39The first kind of manifestation of Republicanism as a popular political movement, is actually a true movement to free the prisoners and to support the prisoners.
28:50As war in Europe intensifies, the Battle of the Somme leaves a million and a half dead and wounded.
29:06The Loyalist, 36th Ulster Division, suffers more than 5,000 casualties.
29:16There was hardly a family in Ulster that wasn't affected in some way, either by the loss of fathers or brothers or cousins or elders of some kind.
29:24And really there was a cloud of sorrow over the whole province.
29:32Unionists come to equate their sacrifice at the Somme with the rebel sacrifices of 1916.
29:39Unionists see the 1916 Rising as essentially a stab in the back at a time of Britain's military difficulty.
29:47As pressure from Irish nationalists, including Irish party leader John Redmond, increases in December 1916,
29:58new Prime Minister David Lloyd George releases some of the prisoners who had been interned.
30:04Six months later, the rest are set free.
30:09When we were deported, I don't recollect a cheer or a smiling face at all.
30:15We were spat at and jeered, but it was different when we came back.
30:23There's a credibility, a glamour attached to these people.
30:27When they go off to fight in 1916, some of them are kind of nobodies.
30:32They were turned home as heroes.
30:37Prisoners who were in jail, they were astonished when they came home.
30:40It was just a supremely extraordinary experience to have the country ready to make them welcome.
30:49Some of the greatest cheers are for Countess Constance Markovic.
30:54Socialist, feminist and rebel leader.
30:57Eamon de Valera, one of the few senior leaders to have survived the rebellion, stages his return from Franguac to make a statement.
31:09When they arrive into Dun Laoghaire, de Valera orders the men to give three cheers for Ireland.
31:15And he then marches them down the gangway in military formation.
31:20So he sent in a message.
31:22These men are a disciplined body.
31:25These men are soldiers.
31:26And these men are led by Eamon de Valera.
31:34The freed prisoners breathed new life into the movement and set to work reviving the Irish Volunteers.
31:39When we came back to McCroom, the volunteers had died down in the meantime.
31:47The bunch who remained behind had simply marked time.
31:51And then we started our recruiting campaign again.
31:55And the reaction was entirely different.
32:00Thousands of new volunteers joined their ranks, particularly in the province of Munster.
32:05It's a period of intense recruitment, drilling and preparation, even in terms of arms acquisition.
32:16Authorities in Dublin Castle are alarmed by Irish volunteer activities.
32:20But they perceive no immediate threat to peace in Ireland and stop short of an outright ban.
32:26It was principally composed of shop assistants, clerks, artisans, labourers.
32:32It was piloted by failures in various walks of life.
32:39But the radicals have no clear strategy.
32:43Should they prepare for another rebellion or exert political pressure on the British Crown?
32:53Then, in 1917, opportunity knocks.
32:56Three by-elections must be held to fill seats left vacant by deceased Irish parliamentary party MPs.
33:05To contest the elections, the radical nationalists need a political party of their own.
33:11They find it in Sinn Féin, a tiny political entity founded a decade earlier by the advanced nationalist Arthur Griffith.
33:19Sinn Féin at the start of 1917, nobody really knows what it is.
33:26Sinn Féin was this small ginger group which existed in Dublin, led by Arthur Griffith, who was talking nonsense about dual monarchies and things like that before the Rising.
33:38Sinn Féin approaches Éamon de Valera to stand in the East Clare by election.
33:41Every vote you give now is as good as the crack of a rifle in proclaiming your desire for freedom.
33:54They managed to take the glamour of the violence of Easter 1916 and divert it into a political programme.
34:00The fledgling Sinn Féin party gets to work.
34:05With Coman Amman, Gaeli Cliegers and the Irish Volunteers, they travel the country canvassing for support.
34:12Veterans of the 1916 rebellion like Countess Markovic and Thomas Ash campaign for Éamon de Valera.
34:18In East Clare, de Valera had always appeared in his volunteer uniform to make the link with 1916 explicit.
34:30While embodying the image of radical revolutionary, the pragmatic de Valera also aligns himself with the Catholic Church.
34:36Father Scandam is a melodramatic kind of fellow and de Valera was sitting beside him and he said,
34:45Valera, give me your hand.
34:50And he turned to the people and he said, Valera, you have given me your hand.
34:55In return, I give you the hearts of my people.
34:57And they have a very clear message, which is full sovereign independence out of the Empire, Irish self-determination.
35:06In other words, a government without a monarch, a government without subjects, a government of citizens.
35:14Through Sinn Féin, the movement's radical message of an independent, egalitarian Gaelic Republic begins to find support.
35:22While for the first time in decades, John Redmond's once-dominant Irish party starts to lose its grip on Nationalist Ireland.
35:31We are all inclined to be what's called extreme nationalists.
35:36For the simple reason, you see, the Redmondite party was quite estranged from the youth.
35:43In shock results, Sinn Féin candidates win all three by-elections.
35:47George Plunkett, father of executed rebel leader Joseph Plunkett, takes North Roscommon.
35:551916 veterans Joe McGuinness and Eamon de Valera take South Longford and East Clare.
36:04I regard my election as a monument to the brave dead.
36:08Proof that what they fought for, the complete and absolute freedom and separation from England, was the pious wish of every Irish heart.
36:25Sinn Féin's success in the three by-elections of 1917 worries the British establishment.
36:30Authorities in Dublin Castle decide to suppress the radical nationalist movement.
36:36Newspapers are shut down.
36:38Activists are arrested for making speeches.
36:41The flying of the Irish flag is banned.
36:45Volunteers start to be arrested for pretty petty offences.
36:49Things like singing rebel songs, shouting slogans, up with the rebels, down with the king.
36:55In the British crackdown, Thomas Ash is arrested.
37:01Jailed in Dublin's Mountjoy prison, he goes on hunger strike.
37:05Prison authorities attempt to force-feed him, but the operation goes wrong.
37:11Ash dies days later.
37:14His death becomes a catalyst for the movement.
37:20You had the body lying in state at the city hall.
37:36You had the funeral procession winding its way through Dublin with thousands of mourners in the procession.
37:41All the shades of nationalism are united because, again, of the circumstances of his death.
37:51And it rekindles the idea of the self-sacrifice of the 1916 leaders.
38:01It handed the Irish the last thing the British wanted to hand them at that key point.
38:06It handed them another martyr for the cause.
38:07And, of course, armed volunteers escorting the coffin to Glasnevin.
38:18And the person chosen to do the graveside oration is none other than Michael Collins.
38:23You have the volley of shots fired over the grave of Ash by armed volunteers.
38:36Collins steps forward to make his speech.
38:41He said, that volley that we have just heard is the only proper tribute that one should give over the grave of a dead Finian.
38:52The symbol that Michael Collins is sending out at the Ash funeral is that the time for violence is now.
39:02And the gun is now how we speak to British authority in Ireland.
39:06In a sense, it's a call to arms, a call to battle.
39:13But in 1917, only the most militant nationalists want another rebellion and the bloodshed that it would bring.
39:23Sinn Fein has riven with people who have very different views about whether violence is acceptable, what kind of violence is acceptable, and what it can achieve.
39:29With tens of thousands of their countrymen fighting at the front, Irish people have had enough of war and killing.
39:40Women are wearing black, men are wearing black armbands.
39:45After some big pushes, you'll see entire streets with the blinds down, the black crepe on the door.
39:51Death notices and telegrams were visited on almost every family or somebody knew someone who died in the First World War everywhere on the British Isles during this period.
40:03The First World War opened a lot of nationalists' eyes to the flaws in the imperial system.
40:10All of a sudden, the realities of going to war and being part of the British Empire was very real and very visceral.
40:15To counter the advance of the radical nationalists, Britain decides to strengthen moderate nationalism by bringing home rule back to the top of the political agenda.
40:34In June 1917, Irish political groups are invited to Dublin's Trinity College for discussions.
40:45Sinn Fein, wanting nothing less than full independence, refuses to take part.
40:52The Irish Labour Movement also abstains.
40:56John Redmond and the Irish Party, Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionists, and I'm with representatives of Southern Unionism, attend.
41:04But when the talks begin, Unionists reject the idea of an All-Ireland Home Rule Parliament.
41:12Irish nationalists failed to appreciate the fierce determination of Ulster Protestants, Unionists, not to be ruled by Catholics in Dublin.
41:22Negotiations focus instead on a solution of two Home Rule Parliaments for Ireland.
41:27One for six of the nine counties of Ulster and one for the remaining 26 counties.
41:34Ireland would be partitioned, a solution neither party initially wants.
41:39Nationalists don't want it because to them represents the mutilation of the island of Ireland.
41:49For Unionists, partition represents a division of the Unionist movement on the island of Ireland.
41:55But after months of talks, the Convention ends in failure.
42:02Before it concludes, John Redmond, leader of Irish nationalism for two decades, dies of heart failure.
42:09With Britain straining on the battlefields, the United States comes to its support and joins the war effort in April 1917.
42:22American President Woodrow Wilson calls for self-determination for all nations.
42:27National aspirations must be respected. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action.
42:40Wilson's rhetoric raises hopes among nationalists in Ireland and across the world that America may support their struggles for independence.
42:48In October 1917, buoyed by its by-election victories, Sinn Féin elects American-born Eamon de Valera as its party president.
43:01Sinn Féin seems unstoppable and then is stopped in three by-elections.
43:05The first three elections held under de Valera's leadership, Sinn Féin is defeated.
43:10The Home Rule Party wins and feels that it is on the rise again, that it has a chance of fighting back.
43:15And then the British introduced conscription.
43:21Compulsory military service has been operating in England, Scotland and Wales since 1916.
43:28But fearing a political backlash, Ireland has been excluded by the British government.
43:35When it moves to extend conscription to Ireland in April 1918, its worst fears are realised.
43:41Sinn Féin really used the conscription crisis incredibly well to gain popularity. It's as important as the Eastern Rising. It's the second wave of bringing people into the movement.
43:53Sinn Féin leads the broad-based nationalist opposition to conscription.
43:57Come on Eamon and the Irish Trade Union Congress organise mass petitions and protests.
44:05In April 1918, the Labour movement launches one of Western Europe's first general strikes, shuts down almost the entire country.
44:13The Irish Times declared that today is the day that Labour discovered its power.
44:18Crucially, the Catholic Church also endorses the anti-conscription campaign.
44:26The bishops want to give the impression that they are the arbitrators of public opinion in Ireland.
44:32It is the radicals who set the agenda and the church has to throw in its lot with the radicals as a means of keeping influence in Irish society.
44:44As the protests sweep Ireland, membership of Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers swells.
44:51The first parade that I had after conscription was announced, my parade of nine jumped to 180.
45:01The first parade was on the meeting.
45:04Desperate to regain control of the Irish situation, authorities arrest leading Republicans, including Eamon de Valera.
45:09All political meetings and public assemblies are banned.
45:15But the ban is defied by the Irish people.
45:19The Gaelic League holds large festivals.
45:22The GAA organises Gaelic Sunday.
45:261,500 games are played and attended by 100,000 people on the same day.
45:37After four months of social protest, the London government concedes.
45:41Conscription is not extended to Ireland.
45:44Three months later, November 11th, 1918, the First World War draws to an end.
45:5615 million soldiers and civilians are dead.
46:00Much of Europe lies in ruins.
46:04With American support, Britain has won, but at a terrible cost.
46:10Irish nationalists who fought in the war now return to a very different country.
46:18About 150,000 to 200,000 Irishmen fight in the First World War.
46:23They go off thinking that they're going to win glory and they come back
46:28and they're seen as having made really a bad choice
46:31because they've gone off and they fought for a government
46:34which during the course of the war has lost its legitimacy.
46:40With the war's end comes a general election.
46:46For the first time, women over 30 and all men over 21,
46:50regardless of economic position, are enfranchised,
46:54so tripling the electorate.
46:57The Irish Labour Party decides not to contest the election.
47:01It wants to leave people free to decide which form of nationalism they favour.
47:06John Dillon and the Irish party's home rule are Sinn Féin's fully independent republic.
47:15Sensing a rising tide, Sinn Féin sends armies of canvassers across the country
47:20to proclaim the ideals of their manifesto.
47:25Sinn Féin stands for the right of the Irish to sovereign independence.
47:30We stand for equal rights and equal opportunities for all citizens.
47:36We stand for making use of any means to render impotent the power of England
47:42to hold Ireland in subjection by military force or otherwise.
47:46We stand for the establishment of Ireland as an independent nation.
47:54When the votes are counted, the election of 1918 delivers a transformed political landscape.
48:02With 26 seats, unionists express a clear no to a 32-county Irish national state.
48:09Winning just six seats, the Irish party is decimated.
48:13For Sinn Féin, however, with 73 seats across Ireland, this is an historic victory.
48:20Almost half its successful candidates are in prison, including Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera,
48:29and the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament, Constance Markievicz.
48:36The 1918 general election gives to Sinn Féin the one thing it has lacked, which is a mandate.
48:42The mandate is overwhelming. They have legitimised the republican movement.
48:47It's the point at which the Irish electorate says,
48:52we're not happy with Home Rule anymore, we want independence, we want a republic.
48:56Now, what had been a relatively small voice has become a generalised voice.
49:04For the Irish to strike for self-determination and do so in a pretty public way inspires people around the world.
49:14And the Irish are part of this new voice of people seizing their own destiny,
49:20taking it to their own hands.
49:21But despite Sinn Féin's clear mandate, Britain rejects the democratic will of the Irish people.
49:36The Sinn Féin representatives proceed regardless.
49:40On the 21st of January 1919, they meet and establish their own parliament in Dublin's Mansion House.
49:47Here, they declare an Irish Republic and prepare to stand for their rights against Britain, whatever that may bring.
49:56We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion.
50:03On this, the last stage of the struggle, we have pledged ourselves to carry through to freedom.
50:09To freedom.
50:10To be continued...
50:40To be continued...
51:10To be continued...
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