Rising from the records

A new book by Annie Ryan, that uses witness accounts from the Bureau of Military History gives a new insight into the 1916 Easter Rising, writes Diarmaid Ferriter

By far the most interesting event that marked the 89th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising last week was the appearance of a fascinating new book by Annie Ryan. Witnesses: Inside the Easter Rising (Liberties Press), gives a detailed overview of the Rising from the files of the Bureau of Military History, which consist of 1,770 statements from people involved in the events of the period 1913-21.

The work of the Bureau commenced in 1947 following expressions of concern that many of those involved in the Irish revolution would take their memories and secrets to the grave, and criticism of the ignorance that existed on the part of a new generation about the events of this crucial period. The project was run by the Department of Defence and there was a significant input from contemporary historians, such as Robert Dudley Edwards, who sat on the committee that advised the Bureau.

The Director of the Bureau, Michael McDunphy, was resolutely independent in exercising his role as protector of the documents, and rejected the advances of historians who pushed for premature access to the Bureau's files on behalf of themselves and their students. His defence was that the Bureau would lose all credibility if the fundamental promise that underpinned the project – witnesses had been informed that their statements would be kept confidential – was not kept.

The work of the Bureau was wound up at the end of 1957 and in March 1959, 83 steel boxes were locked into the strong room of government buildings, containing the 1,770 statements as well as collections of contemporary documents, press cuttings and photographs. What had not been resolved was when the boxes could be opened; there is no record of a formal government decision as to when the files would be released, an issue which led to frustration on the part of historians. In 1967, historian FX Martin bemoaned the "official iron curtain…cutting off the findings of the Bureau from all outsiders…The papers of the Bureau have now become a miser's hoard".

Despite his fulminations, the Bureau's files were not released until March 2003. The issue had been reviewed every couple of years from the 1980s onwards, and it was eventually agreed that when the last recipients of the Military Service Pension had died, the statements could be released.

Since then, Annie Ryan, best known as a tireless campaigner for the rights of people with mental-health problems, has devoured the statements relating to 1916, no doubt intrigued by the fact that her father, Tom Harris, who took part in the Rising, was one of the witnesses interviewed in the 1940s.

Unsurprisingly, there is a huge variety of statements; some short, some long and some containing implausibly detailed recollections, but most of them are measured, sober and perhaps most importantly, are from the rank and file members of the many groups involved in the Rising. As Margaret Mac Curtain points out in the foreword, "Her book demonstrates that Easter Week 1916 does not belong to any one group exclusively – the Irish Volunteers, the IRB, Cumann na mBan, Sinn Féin, the RIC or British public opinion – but defies co-option".

The statements give strong sense of what motivated them, what they did (and did not do), the extent to which they believed they were part of a national revolution and the degree to which they triumphed and suffered. Never before has such a range of firsthand experiences of the Rising been collated and analysed. Ryan has succeeded in illuminating the sheer diversity of human experiences in 1916, and in particular has highlighted the role of women in the Rising. She gives more insight into the re-organisation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood prior to the Rising.

It also reveals the extent to which individuals like Ernest Blythe were prepared to travel the length and breadth of the country in order to organise the Irish Volunteers, formed in 1913, to protect the implementation of home rule, which had been suspended for the duration of the First World War. He found himself in Dingle one week and on the shores of Lough Neagh the next.

Most of the witnesses were very young at the time of the Rising. There was a strong sense of social and political exclusion in Ireland during the War. Of course, thousands had enrolled in the British army, and it would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that the majority of Irish people felt remotely revolutionary in 1916, but there did exist an expanding group of young and politicised dissidents.

Trade Unionist and member of the Irish Citizen's Army, Helena Molony, was one of them, and she recalled resentment at Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin movement, with its emphasis on passive resistance, and the sort of home rule Ireland envisaged by them:

"The social ideas of Sinn Féin did not appeal to us. They wished to see in Irish society (as their official organ once expressed it) 'a progressive and enlightened aristocracy, a prosperous middle class, and a happy and contented working-class'. It all sounded dull, and a little bit vulgar to us."

The book also captures the sense of confusion and bewilderment created by Eoin MacNeill's decision to countermand the order given to the Volunteers to assemble on Easter Sunday, after the organisers of the Rising had deceived him. Some felt in the loop; others outside. Paddy Browne, a member of the staff at Maynooth College, recalled that "I had not the slightest notion that anything was going to happen, I did not know anything about dispatches going around the country", whereas Min Ryan remembered "a sort of seething undercurrent" of anticipation.

She, along with many other women, found herself in the battle zone, "carving, carving" the abundant food that seemed to exist for the fighters, who on the evidence in this book, fought the British empire on full stomachs. But their nominal Commander-in-Chief, Patrick Pearse, was shooting nothing except the breeze. According to Min Ryan, "Pearse spent most of his time in the front part of the Post Office…on one of the high stools, and people would come and talk to him". Not an armchair, but a high stool revolutionary!

This book is also valuable due to the light it sheds on less well known military episodes of the Rising, including the battle of the Marrowbone Lane Distillery, recalled in great detail by Robert Holland from Inchicore, whose nineteenth birthday fell on the second day of the Rising. After the surrender, native Dubliners jeered the rebels, and "the British troops saved us from manhandling…I was very glad as I walked in the gate of Richmond barracks".

This is a statement which resonates with much hurt: "little did we think that the Dublin citizens would ever go so far as to cheer British regiments because they had as prisoners their own fellow citizens – Irishmen and Irishwomen – just as they were."

Not for the first or last time, however, British government ineptitude ensured that the mood of the Irish public was transformed. The decision to execute the rebel leaders and arrest 3,400 suspected sympathisers in May 1916 ensured that the Rising was the prologue to a much more prolonged and effective Irish War of Independence.