Douglas Goldring: ‘An Englishman’ and 1916

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Guy Woodward

In October 1914, the English writer and publisher Douglas Goldring was invalided out of the British Army. By 1916, he had become a conscientious objector and moved to Ireland, where he lived for the next two years, witnessing the aftermath of the Easter Rising. Illuminating connections between the pacifist movement in Britain and Irish Republicanism, his writings of this period – including two Irish travelogues and a propagandist semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, The Fortune (1917) – disclose transnational and transcultural networks of resistance and dissidence, and show how the Rising and its aftermath helped to radicalise pacifist writers in London.

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Harvey Cox

THE PROVISIONAL IRA'S ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE BRITISH Prime Minister and Cabinet at Brighton on 12 October 1984, represents the most dramatic move to date in a reputedly 20-year strategy of inducing the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland and leave Ireland to the Irish. Where nonviolent Irish nationalists have aimed, most notably through the New Ireland Forum Report published in May 1984, to persuade the British that the 1920 constitutional settlement dividing Ireland is inherently unstable and must be dismantled, the Provisional IRA has no faith in this course of action. The British, they calculate, will be persuaded not by the force of argument but by the argument of force. In this they can claim, with some justification, to be the true heirs of the Easter Rising of 1916. At that time the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which was to become the basic document of Irish republicanism, declared ‘… the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible’. Since the 1916 Proclamation was ratified by the first subsequent meeting of elected representatives of the Irish people, the first Dáil Eireann, in 1919, representing virtually all but the Ulster unionist minority, and since the right and the aspiration to Irish unity have been reaffirmed by all non-unionist Irish parties ever since, it must be a truth universally acknowledged that the division of Ireland is unjust and undemocratic and that the reunification of the country is the rightful aspiration of the great majority of its people.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Michael Roper

This article assesses the contributions of Wilfred Bion and John Rickman to military psychiatry in World War II in the light of their lives and careers before the war. While Bion entered World War II with a distinguished record as a tank commander in World War I and an analysis with Rickman that was incomplete, the Quaker and ex-conscientious objector Rickman was surprised to find himself made a Major in the British Army. The creative partnership which Bion's letters to Rickman document, and which resulted in substantial developments in the understanding of groups, stemmed in part from the ways in which each was able to draw on their earlier experiences and reputations, one as a founding figure in the British psychoanalytic community, the other as a decorated veteran.


Author(s):  
David Durnin

This chapter examines the role of Ireland’s British Army doctors in treating the wounded in the three primary conflicts in Ireland from 1916 to 1923: the Easter Rising (April 1916), Irish War of Independence (January 1919 to July 1921) and Irish Civil War (June 1922 to May 1923). As part of their wartime duties within the British Army, a contingent of Irish doctors tended to those wounded in the Easter Rising, including separatist Irish nationalists. Ex-Royal Army Medical Corps officers from Ireland also became professionally immersed in the War of Independence and the Civil War. As these wars transpired, many of the Irish doctors enlisted in the RAMC on temporary commissions for the duration of the First World War demobilised and returned to Ireland. Subsequently, some of these men provided health care to wounded IRA members and, later, to the Irish National Army.


Author(s):  
Mathew Whiting

When Sinn Féin and the IRA emerged in Northern Ireland in 1969 they used a combination of revolutionary politics and violence to an effort to overthrow British rule. Today, the IRA is in a state of ‘retirement’, violence is a tactic of the past, and Sinn Féin is a co-ruler of Northern Ireland and an ever growing political player in the Republic of Ireland. This is one of the most startling transformations of a radical violent movement into a peaceful political one in recent times. So what exactly changed within Irish republicanism, what remains the same, and, crucially, what caused these changes? Where existing studies explain the decision to end violence as the product of stalemate or strategic interplay with the British state, this book draws on a wealth of archival material and interviews to argue that moderation was a long-term process of increasing inclusion and contact with political institutions, which gradually extracted moderate concessions from republicanism. Crucially, these concessions did not necessitate republicans forsaking their long-term ethno-national goals. The book also considers the wider implications of Irish republicanism for other cases of separatist conflict, and has significance for the future study of state responses to violent separatism and of comparative peace processes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-381
Author(s):  
Margot Gayle Backus ◽  
Spurgeon Thompson

As virtually all Europe's major socialist parties re-aligned with their own national governments with the outbreak of World War I, Irish socialist and trade unionist James Connolly found himself internationally isolated by his vociferous opposition to the war. Within Ireland, however, Connolly's energetic and relentless calls to interrupt the imperial transportation and communications networks on which the ‘carnival of murder’ in Europe relied had the converse effect, drawing him into alignment with certain strains of Irish nationalism. Connolly and other socialist republican stalwarts like Helena Molony and Michael Mallin made common cause with advanced Irish nationalism, the one other constituency unamenable to fighting for England under any circumstances. This centripetal gathering together of two minority constituencies – both intrinsically opposed, if not to the war itself, certainly to Irish Party leader John Redmond's offering up of the Irish Volunteers as British cannon fodder – accounts for the “remarkably diverse” social and ideological character of the small executive body responsible for the planning of the Easter Rising: the Irish Republican Brotherhood's military council. In effect, the ideological composition of the body that planned the Easter Rising was shaped by the war's systematic diversion of all individuals and ideologies that could be co-opted by British imperialism through any possible argument or material inducement. Although the majority of those who participated in the Rising did not share Connolly's anti-war, pro-socialist agenda, the Easter 1916 Uprising can nonetheless be understood as, among other things, a near letter-perfect instantiation of Connolly's most steadfast principle: that it was the responsibility of every European socialist to throw onto the gears of the imperialist war machine every wrench on which they could lay their hands.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
T. Jack Thompson

Superficially there are many parallels between the Chilembwe Rising of 1915 in Nyasaland and the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland – both were anti-colonial rebellions against British rule. One interesting difference, however, occurs in the way academics have treated John Chilembwe, leader of the Nyasaland Rising, and Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Irish Rising and the man who was proclaimed head of state of the Provisional government of Ireland. For while much research on Pearse has dealt with his religious ideas, comparatively little on Chilembwe has looked in detail at his religious motivation – even though he was the leader of an independent church. This paper begins by looking at some of the major strands in the religious thinking of Pearse, before going on to concentrate on the people and ideas which influenced Chilembwe both in Nyasaland and the United States. It argues that while many of these ideas were initially influenced by radical evangelical thought in the area of racial injustice, Chilembwe's thinking in the months immediately preceding his rebellion became increasingly obsessed by the possibility that the End Time prophecies of the Book of Daniel might apply to the current political position in Nyasaland. The conclusion is that much more academic attention needs to be given to the millennial aspects of Chilembwe's thinking as a contributory motivation for rebellion.


IJOHMN ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Kavita Singh

Our Indian education system is such that we are taught a lot about history, long fought battles, wars, invaders and kings and rulers who died when and how.  In broader sense, history does not only about dates and battles, it associates and intersperses our past and present with social, cultural, religious and traditional discourses.  Our history spanning over thousand years guide our present and future. Indian writers have given their thoughts flying colors making our history unbelievably great.  They get inspired from our enormously vast past incidents and express them according to their views and idea.  There is no particular parameter which may define the history as fiction.  Indian mythological epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata have been described and redefined in numerous different ways.  India and Indian people have suffered a lot when British army ruled us for more than 200 years.  There were many brave patriots who fought for our independence.  One of such fighters is Rani Lakshmi Bai. This paper explores her life validating history through the novel, Rani.  This novel is written by Jaishree Misra.  Indian writers have explored the life and bravery of this amazingly courageous woman who redefined the womanhood and valor in her own way making a wave for the revolutionary fight for independence.


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