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1916

1916

Kieran Allen

(2016)

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Book Details

Abstract

A few minutes after noon on the 24th April, 1916, Patrick Pearse stepped outside the newly occupied GPO on Sackville Street with a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Reading aloud, he declared a strike for Irish freedom against the world’s greatest imperial power.

The Easter Rising, as the six days of intense, bloody fighting that followed came to be known, set the course for the next 100 years of Irish history; the ‘Heroes of ‘16’ becoming a national cultural and political touchstone down the generations. But today, canonised and mummified, the radical visions of Pearse and the socialist James Connolly are an awkward encumbrance on an Irish state that has its roots in the counter-revolution of the civil war, and which has emerged as a haven of economic neoliberalism.

In this fascinating alternative history of modern Ireland, Kieran Allen follows the thread of 1916’s ‘revolutionary tradition’ - an uneasy marriage of Socialism and Republicanism - as it has unravelled across the century.

From the strikes, boycotts, occupations and land redistribution that accompanied the war of independence; to the ‘carnival of reaction’ that followed; all the way up to the current movement against water charges and austerity, Allen reveals the complexities, ruptures and continuities of a revolutionary tradition that continues to haunt the establishment today.
'A vivid and vital account of how class shaped the national movement which arose in the wake of the Rising - and thus shaped the Ireland we live in today'
Eamonn McCann, Irish journalist, and author of 'War and an Irish Town' (Pluto, 1993)
'A fluent, indignant book'
Neil Hegarty, Irish Times
'An essential and unparalleled joy to read'
Socialist Review

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Contents v
Preface vi
1. Ireland Turned Upside Down 1
2. 1916: Armed Insurrection 27
3. The Irish Revolution 60
4. Republicanism and Counter-revolution 82
5. A Most Conservative Country 110
6. The Rise and Fall of Radical Republicanism 135
7. From the Ashes a Phoenix is Born 162
Conclusion 192
Notes 197
Select Bibliography 216
Index 220