Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. The
Speaker 2: podcast is You're on episode four of it. You're on
Speaker 2: episode four of it. I'm your host, Margaret Kildroy, My
Speaker 2: guest is Katie, and the producer is Sophie and audio
Speaker 2: engineers Danel and on Woman wrote the theme song, Hi everyone,
Speaker 2: how are you doing so good?
Speaker 3: Spent so many minutes since we last chatted, I know,
Speaker 3: just absolute minutes of break where we talked about tea.
Speaker 2: We did and it was nice. So everything is in
Speaker 2: its Margaret knows how to speak, Margaret in place. Everything good,
Speaker 2: Everything is all happening, Yeah, except everything's all fucked up,
Speaker 2: much like my last attempt to say a sentence, because
Speaker 2: the Easter Rising is about to happen, but it's about
Speaker 2: to happen in a really messy way instead of a
Speaker 2: nice easy way. I mean, they absolutely still would have lost,
Speaker 2: but it would have been really interesting. So some cowards
Speaker 2: and leader ship fucked the whole thing up, and people
Speaker 2: driving at night without headlights fucked the whole thing up.
Speaker 2: When in doubt where headlights, where headlights use headlights. People
Speaker 2: are still gonna go, much like I'm gonna keep I'm
Speaker 2: just as brave as they are because I'm continuing to talk. Yeah, persevere, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because of all the fuckery and confusion caused by having
Speaker 2: a cowardy thought he was in charge. Only twelve hundred
Speaker 2: folks mustered on Monday morning in Dublin at this place
Speaker 2: called Liberty Hall. Yeah, there's not enough to govern. No,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess depends on what you do with
Speaker 2: the twel hundred people. But this shouldn't work well whatever
Speaker 2: they made it, this place called Liberty Hall, which is
Speaker 2: incidentally the first place that the Irish flag was flown publicly.
Speaker 2: Again I distrust any history. This is first time. Six
Speaker 2: days earlier, a sixteen year old girl flew the all
Speaker 2: green flag, all green with Irish Republic painted in gold
Speaker 2: on both sides. There were a bunch of flags that
Speaker 2: flew during the rising, including that green one. Also the
Speaker 2: Irish tricolor, the one that we have now, where green
Speaker 2: represents the Catholics, orange represents the Protestants and white represents
Speaker 2: a lasting truce between the two. This flag actually has
Speaker 2: been around since eighteen forty eight. It was designed by
Speaker 2: French women who were sympathetic to Irish nationalism because the
Speaker 2: Irish were all about the French revolution right, Everyone who
Speaker 2: wanted to not have a monarch anymore was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the French Revolutionist seems pretty fucking cool, am I right?
Speaker 2: And so some French women were like, all right, we'll
Speaker 2: do it to your specs and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we want like unity between the Protestants and the Catholics,
Speaker 2: which is fucking cool. And during the Easter Rising, that's
Speaker 2: when it became the flag of the Irish Republic. They
Speaker 2: flew both of those flags. They also flew the starry
Speaker 2: plow I talked about last time, and then also the
Speaker 2: harp on the green flag, which is a way older
Speaker 2: Irish flag. Lots of flag options, yes, Ireland has had
Speaker 2: a lot of uprisings, so it has a lot of
Speaker 2: options available to it. Twelve hundred people muster the Irish Volunteers,
Speaker 2: the Irish Citizen Army and the Kumin Navan, the all
Speaker 2: women's unit, and of course there was also women in
Speaker 2: the Irish Citizen Army. About three hundred women participated in
Speaker 2: the rising. I've read, but I'm unsure that if this
Speaker 2: is of the original twelve hundred, or if this includes
Speaker 2: the people who joined later in the week. Overall, the
Speaker 2: women in the Citizen Army were trained to fight those
Speaker 2: in koumen Nivan, were there as auxiliaries to like cook
Speaker 2: and record things and run messages and.
Speaker 4: All of that.
Speaker 2: But to be honest, I'm starting to doubt that this
Speaker 2: is as clear cut as most people represent it, because, yeah,
Speaker 2: like there's this one story of the secretary who shows
Speaker 2: up with a portable typewriter and a handgun, and a
Speaker 2: lot of people I think sometimes like if there was
Speaker 2: a woman, they were like, oh, they were in kumen Nivan,
Speaker 2: instead of it being like, no, they were separate. They
Speaker 2: were with the citizen Army. But then whatever, it's not
Speaker 2: as clear cut as anyone's presenting it. Armed with Mauser rifles, shotguns, revolvers,
Speaker 2: and the occasional semi auto pistol. What about they actually
Speaker 2: had enough guns for people at the beginning, because they
Speaker 2: didn't have nearly as enough people, right, Yeah, so they
Speaker 2: kind of had they had enough guns.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They fanned out through the city center and took key positions,
Speaker 2: barricading themselves into buildings and barricading the streets. There's like
Speaker 2: one scene early on where the Countess and one hundred
Speaker 2: other people are just digging up the streets to build barricades.
Speaker 2: That's my girl, I know, I know, towering over everyone else.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: James Connolly's son Roderick was there with his father. He
Speaker 2: was only fifteen years old. His daughter Nora was there too.
Speaker 2: She was the one who was like, yo, are we
Speaker 2: doing this? You know? But she was there at the
Speaker 2: very beginning. But then she was sent up north to
Speaker 2: rally more women to come down from the north of
Speaker 2: the country. And they only made it back after the
Speaker 2: later surrender six days later.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It takes time to go travel back then too.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: And then they like ran into problems of having a
Speaker 2: circumerces they did, they had adventures. Yeah, four hundred rebels
Speaker 2: took the Post Office the GPO, as their headquarters for
Speaker 2: the rising, and then Pierce stood outside and proclaimed the
Speaker 2: Irish Republic, which is fucking cool. They passed out their
Speaker 2: proclamation throughout the city, which was printed by a woman typesetter.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but
Speaker 2: here's some pretty sick parts of it. Irishmen and Irish
Speaker 2: women in the name of God and the dead generations
Speaker 2: from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood Ireland
Speaker 2: through us summons her children to her flag and strikes
Speaker 2: for her freedom. We declare the right of the people
Speaker 2: of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland. The Republic guarantees
Speaker 2: religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to
Speaker 2: all its citizens, cherishing all the children of the nation
Speaker 2: equally and oblivious to the differences carefully fostered by an
Speaker 2: alien government which have divided a minority from the majority
Speaker 2: in the past.
Speaker 4: Sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The fact that they came out the gate being like,
Speaker 2: this isn't a weird Catholic versus Protestant thing that divide
Speaker 2: was given to us by our colonial masters. They also
Speaker 2: pioneered Irish radio. The first ever radio broadcast in Ireland
Speaker 2: was them using Morse Code to announce the Irish Republic
Speaker 2: because all the like phone lines and shit were cut,
Speaker 2: you know, and it was sent out in Morse Code.
Speaker 2: And it involves someone climbing up to a radio, climbing
Speaker 2: up a radio antenna in the middle of this thing
Speaker 2: with like their snipers everywhere to fix the radio antenna
Speaker 2: to broadcast this. They could have taken Dublin Castle, but
Speaker 2: they didn't know that they could have taken Dublin Castle.
Speaker 2: They like showed up and shot the cop who was
Speaker 2: hanging outside, and then they didn't press too far in
Speaker 2: because they were like, oh fuck, we think it's full
Speaker 2: of soldiers. There were barely any soldiers there, and they
Speaker 2: absolutely could have taken it. Lots of armchair generals in
Speaker 2: the Intervening century have suggested that they should have done
Speaker 2: this or that strategically, but overall of it probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: better or if they take it Dublin Castle. Some of
Speaker 2: the rebels were sick and or disabled. One person, that
Speaker 2: guy with tuberculosis Plunket, had like an open wound on
Speaker 2: his neck from his illness and was probably about to die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, was he out there spreading it around?
Speaker 2: It is contagious. Yeah, yeah, but people don't really understand
Speaker 2: that super.
Speaker 4: Well don't Okay, Well, anyway, I was.
Speaker 2: Going with bravery here, but now I do have to
Speaker 2: think about it from that point of view.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard to forget the last few years we
Speaker 4: just lived through.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, totally. There's another one of the rebels,
Speaker 2: at least one more, I think, maybe more than another
Speaker 2: who shows up to the general muster is so sick
Speaker 2: or like disabled in a way where he can't necessarily
Speaker 2: walk quickly, so unlets the rest of the group move
Speaker 2: ahead while he slowly made his way to his position,
Speaker 2: and including these just because I think that disability is
Speaker 2: not always included.
Speaker 4: When absolutely it's important and it is brave. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: is very brave to come out and when you don't
Speaker 4: have the same mobility when you yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, and it's just like, ye people have this, Oh,
Speaker 2: these good strong men and I'm like, this is a
Speaker 2: bunch of weirdos who got together to do this thing,
Speaker 2: you know. And the first person to die in the
Speaker 2: rising was a civilian, a woman named Margaret Koch. A
Speaker 2: rebel named Dan McCarthy had just been shot and she
Speaker 2: was a nurse and she's in full nurse's uniform and
Speaker 2: she's like, well, I'm clearly a civilian. I'm in full
Speaker 2: nurse's uniform. So she runs to go save him, and
Speaker 2: the British are like, yeah, we don't care, and they
Speaker 2: shoot her and they killer well. The first fighter killed
Speaker 2: was a rebel and he was an actor in the
Speaker 2: Citizen Army. His name was Sean Connolly and he led
Speaker 2: the takeover of City Hall. He was on the roof
Speaker 2: readying to raise the Irish flag when a sniper took
Speaker 2: him down. And that's the kind of thing that's like
Speaker 2: so narrative that it feels a little convenient, But there
Speaker 2: is an eyewitness who testifies this. I've also read that
Speaker 2: the cop outside the Palace was the first person to
Speaker 2: die in the rising, And I don't know how everyone
Speaker 2: knows how I feel about first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's almost impossible to.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, someone probably knows. But I have read multiple
Speaker 2: things that contradict each other, and I'm not right in dissertation.
Speaker 2: The rebels didn't get nearly as many positions as they
Speaker 2: would have liked because the don't show up lads order
Speaker 2: had happened, you know, and an awful lot of people
Speaker 2: were at home, unsure what they were supposed to be doing.
Speaker 2: The chief medical officer of the rising was a woman
Speaker 2: named doctor Kathleen Lynn, who had spent this past several
Speaker 2: years teaching combat medicine to the rebels. And she's at
Speaker 2: the General Post Office, and it's like not just is
Speaker 2: coordinating care and providing care. Despite the low turnout of rebels,
Speaker 2: the British forces were caught off guard and whenever soldiers
Speaker 2: tried to investigate, they got shot, you know, And so
Speaker 2: at one point the first day. There's all of these
Speaker 2: different stories of the Countess and what she got up to. Right,
Speaker 2: there's this version where she shot a cop, but then
Speaker 2: there's another version where she later says, I put my
Speaker 2: gun into his belly, but I knew him, so I
Speaker 2: couldn't pull the trigger. And then there's another version that
Speaker 2: was at one point there's an eyewitness of this one.
Speaker 2: They're like trying to hold this place in the streets,
Speaker 2: and all these soldiers come running around the corner, and
Speaker 2: so she shoulders her pistol. They use these these mousers,
Speaker 2: these long barreled pistols where the holster could become a
Speaker 2: shoulder stock. They're kind of like cool. Oh, they guy
Speaker 2: called broom handle guns. Anyway, she shoulders her pistol, one
Speaker 2: of the like three pistols she brought with her. There's
Speaker 2: a benefit to being the rich lady in the war, yeah,
Speaker 2: although all with different whatever. I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: in the gun nerd stuff. Anyway, she shoots at or
Speaker 2: shoots a small squadron of soldiers and sends them off
Speaker 2: running and possibly shot two of them, but looting breaks
Speaker 2: out across the city. Once all this starts happening because
Speaker 2: starving people are like, you know, it'd be pretty cool
Speaker 2: if we had that stuff that we can now have
Speaker 2: because the police are busy, right, and they were really
Speaker 2: classy about it. Women were like stealing fans, dresses and
Speaker 2: jewelry and then like parading around in the streets, you know,
Speaker 2: and cops tried to stop them, but the looters drove
Speaker 2: them off by the classic method of shooting at the police.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then they scattered. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And everyone is like, like a lot of historians,
Speaker 2: including leftist or whatever, they're like, oh no, there was looting,
Speaker 2: as if this was like like there was like fires
Speaker 2: in the city and that's bad, right, But I'm convinced
Speaker 2: the looters were another column in the struggle, as the uncontrollables.
Speaker 3: We're just so out there, so in chaos, making it
Speaker 3: harder for the you know, everyone to respond to the rebellion.
Speaker 4: It's good, Yeah, it's good, actually, you see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the British government declared marshal law the next day,
Speaker 2: which I'm surprised it took them that long. Honestly, get
Speaker 2: your shit together. Some of the rebellion was hindered by
Speaker 2: outright misogyny from the rebels. There's this guy di Valera,
Speaker 2: who will talk more about him later, but he actually
Speaker 2: goes on to be the like one the longest serving
Speaker 2: politicians in Irish history.
Speaker 4: Of course he does, I know.
Speaker 2: And he just like there's like a bunch of women
Speaker 2: who are ready to fight, and you're like, what do
Speaker 2: we do? And he's like, I'm not giving orders to
Speaker 2: women and then leaves dumb, dumb. Yeah, fuck him. Although
Speaker 2: it's funny because he's on the oh god, Irish politics
Speaker 2: so complicated.
Speaker 4: It's messy, it's messy.
Speaker 2: He's on the right side of the civil war or
Speaker 2: the wrong side of the civil opinion whatever. So meanwhile
Speaker 2: in Galway, on the other side of the country, on
Speaker 2: the west coast of Ireland, in the Gallatact, the part
Speaker 2: that is still Irish speaking had never been fully colonized
Speaker 2: or anglicized. Five hundred volunteers show up armed with like
Speaker 2: fuck all, they did not get the rifles and they're
Speaker 2: trying to do a rising of their own with like
Speaker 2: shotguns and pistols and nothing. But they've been even more
Speaker 2: fucked by the stand down order because the actually just kidding,
Speaker 2: please rise order had a harder time reaching them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: their commander had been sent over from Dublin, and he
Speaker 2: was like, this rising is about kicking the English out,
Speaker 2: But the rank and file of the Galway Rising these
Speaker 2: are like rural poor as far as I can tell overall.
Speaker 2: And this is the side that my uncle fought in,
Speaker 2: or like several of my uncles fought in. They were
Speaker 2: pretty convinced that it was about land distribution. They were like, no,
Speaker 2: the problem is landlords, and I guess that's attached to England,
Speaker 2: you know. And so they were like they wanted to
Speaker 2: also in addition to targeting like British colonial outposts, they
Speaker 2: were like, we're going to target the largest states in
Speaker 2: the landlords, including ostensible nationalists, because the whole point of
Speaker 2: this is to be free, you know. But they barely
Speaker 2: had any rifles. They managed to blow up a bridge,
Speaker 2: capture some officers, and get into one gunfight, but pretty
Speaker 2: soon they dispersed and then a lot of them got arrested.
Speaker 2: And at some point along the way, my uncle got
Speaker 2: shot in the leg, or he got shot in one
Speaker 2: of the later wars. And my family was wrong when
Speaker 2: they told him he was shot in the rising, because
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 4: Know when they told him, did he not know.
Speaker 2: So I got told he when I met him, was
Speaker 2: one hundred years old, and he wasn't oh double communicative.
Speaker 2: I got told by the Irish family that he had
Speaker 2: been shot in the rising. That was like filtered through
Speaker 2: some people who might not have known the difference between
Speaker 2: that the Rising and the War of Independence in the
Speaker 2: Civil War that like nerds like me know about.
Speaker 3: And he's one hundred years old and not necessarily again
Speaker 3: I got ya, Yeah, totally. The fighting in Dublin back
Speaker 3: and now we're back over the East Coast. I just
Speaker 3: had to include Galway because of my family and because
Speaker 3: also because it gets left out and there's actually a
Speaker 3: bunch of other places that the Rising happened.
Speaker 4: I love Galway.
Speaker 2: I know it's the only place in Ireland I have
Speaker 2: actually been.
Speaker 4: But magical.
Speaker 2: The fighting in Dublin went on for six days, but
Speaker 2: the rebels didn't take the railways, and thousands of reinforcements
Speaker 2: from England flooded in over the rails. Sixteen thousand soldiers
Speaker 2: or twenty thousand, depending on what you read. Some of
Speaker 2: them were fresh from the Western Front of World War One.
Speaker 2: Since they're World War One soldiers, they do what World
Speaker 2: War One soldiers do They just fucking shelled everything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in artillery, there is no problem that a grenade or
Speaker 2: a mortar round won't fix. And they outnumbered the rebels
Speaker 2: about ten to one, maybe more.
Speaker 4: It's not good numbers.
Speaker 2: No, Connolly and the other leaders. They had miscalculated. They'd
Speaker 2: assumed that the English wouldn't want to destroy their own city.
Speaker 2: Dublin was like the second city of the Empire, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at the end of it. They underestimated the British Crown's
Speaker 2: appetite for destruction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, colonial.
Speaker 2: Forces like whatever, we'll just make you poor people build
Speaker 2: it for us again. Right, we don't live there, we
Speaker 2: don't care exactly. In the post office, the headquarters, and
Speaker 2: there's this woman there who is feeding everyone. And her
Speaker 2: name was Nellie Gifford, and she's fucking cool. She's a socialist,
Speaker 2: she's a friend of the countess. She'd showed up armed
Speaker 2: and ready to fight, but she noticed that no one
Speaker 2: had taken care of the food. So she used her
Speaker 2: gun in the old fashioned way to procure food for everyone.
Speaker 2: She waylaid food transport vans and got them to donate
Speaker 2: to the cause.
Speaker 4: Very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then she cooked it for everyone, and then
Speaker 2: she went around to shopkeepers to convince them to donate
Speaker 2: as well. And I think it's a mix of robbed
Speaker 2: and convinced.
Speaker 3: I'm like convinced how wielding her gun, I feel like
Speaker 3: picking things up, saying you want to donate, don't you?
Speaker 4: I know you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you care about the cause, strong armed them. Sure
Speaker 2: are some nice windows in here, right to see them broken?
Speaker 4: Yeah, shame for them to get blown out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But one of the things that actually people argue
Speaker 2: a lot about is how popular the Easter Rising was
Speaker 2: or wasn't at the time. The primary narrative is that
Speaker 2: it was not popular and that the average Irish person
Speaker 2: supported home rule kind of but was loyal and wanted
Speaker 2: the war to be won and wanted nothing to do
Speaker 2: with any of this. However, there's a lot of counter
Speaker 2: arguments to that, and primarily from the working class and
Speaker 2: the poor people were like, no, we're actually into this,
Speaker 2: and so there was a lot of support as well.
Speaker 2: So I think of what it was is people were divided. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons that Nellie give her to
Speaker 2: so interesting to me is that so she single handedly
Speaker 2: keeps morale up at the post office because they're eating
Speaker 2: well for a while, right, And it's easy as a
Speaker 2: feminist to be like, hey, women didn't just cook, they fought.
Speaker 2: But it's also important, like we are joining the patriarchy
Speaker 2: and undervaluing traditional women's roles like cooking and caring for
Speaker 2: the wounded. If we don't hold that as equal.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I think it's so important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that to me is completely under my the whole
Speaker 3: idea of feminism. To me, it's like, it's not that
Speaker 3: those roles are not important, they're vital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it's.
Speaker 4: Respected as equally important because it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Nelly fucking Rules was ready for whatever needed doing.
Speaker 2: If what needed doing was shooting, she was there to shoot.
Speaker 2: But what she realized what needed doing was feeding people.
Speaker 2: She was there to feed. And she was an actress
Speaker 2: in her mid thirties. She was fiercely Protestant. Okay, all
Speaker 2: her brothers, it's like, whenever you see this, like all
Speaker 2: our brothers did this, all our sisters did this. She
Speaker 2: had like three or four of each, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 2: different time, different place. All her brothers had stayed loyal
Speaker 2: to the crown, but all of her sisters were revolutionaries. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all of her sisters except her eventually conferred to Catholicism
Speaker 2: in order to marry Catholics who were in the revolutionary ranks.
Speaker 2: And she was like, nah, I'm good as a Protestant.
Speaker 2: I just stayed Protestant. She lived to be fucking ninety.
Speaker 2: She spent the rest of her life fighting for the
Speaker 2: rights of prisoners and looking after stray cats and dogs. Yes,
Speaker 2: fucking sounds incredible. Yeah, she sounds like my kind of people.
Speaker 2: I know, I know. And so the Rising, it is
Speaker 2: not going well. The British just massacred civilians. They just
Speaker 2: would blow up buildings and shit, know, like you better
Speaker 2: get out of here. Slowly, the British took rebel positions
Speaker 2: one after the other. However, at Mount Street Bridge, seventeen
Speaker 2: rebels held back more than one thousand British soldiers and
Speaker 2: in the process shot two hundred and forty of the
Speaker 2: British soldiers whoa only four of the seventeen rebels who
Speaker 2: held this bridge died. Wow, and that group of seventeen
Speaker 2: inflicted two thirds of the casualties that the British took
Speaker 2: for the entire week.
Speaker 4: All right, those are some impressive numbers right there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: well done. Well done, lads, well done. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And what's funny is like I've also read analyses that
Speaker 2: was like, if the British hadn't had actually cared about
Speaker 2: shit the higher ups, they would have just taken a
Speaker 2: different bridge to get where they were going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: But the leaders don't care. They're like, well, just keep
Speaker 2: sending dudes until we win.
Speaker 4: We'll wear them down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we outnumbered them ten to one. Why do we
Speaker 2: care what happens to nine of our ten guys? You
Speaker 2: know one of the founders. Actually, before we tell you
Speaker 2: about one of the founders, the British Volunteer, I would
Speaker 2: like to tell you about the foundations of our society,
Speaker 2: which is people using media to sell stuff.
Speaker 4: Such an important point, Margaret, really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I definitely would love to learn more about that.
Speaker 2: Oh you're in luck. Here they are and we're back.
Speaker 2: We're back. Okay. So one of the founders of the
Speaker 2: Irish Volunteers was this guy who was named the over
Speaker 2: Hilly And what kind of bad dos do you have
Speaker 2: to be for your name to be the instead of Michael?
Speaker 2: Like he was born Michael, but he was like, I
Speaker 2: am the And this was part of his de anglicization
Speaker 2: because the head of a clan was called them like, oh,
Speaker 2: which over do you mean? Oh? I mean the oraheely
Speaker 2: mm hmm. And this guy, he's interesting to me. He
Speaker 2: was director of arms for the volunteers, and he had
Speaker 2: overseen a lot of the military training. But he'd also
Speaker 2: been completely against the rising. He had been part of
Speaker 2: the tell people not to rise plan. But when he
Speaker 2: found out it was gonna happen anyway, he was like,
Speaker 2: and he said, and again, they don't miss with their quotes,
Speaker 2: at least poetically. They don't miss with their quotes. He said,
Speaker 2: it is madness, but it is glorious madness. All right,
Speaker 2: he's ready to go, so he joins in. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: or his friends set his own car on fire in
Speaker 2: the street at a barricade. At one point, he like
Speaker 2: brings his car. He's like, I think he's kind of rich.
Speaker 2: He like shows up and he like has his car
Speaker 2: and they use it for a bunch of stuff and
Speaker 2: then they're like, all right, we don with the car
Speaker 2: set it on fire now, yeah, and like, none of
Speaker 2: these people think they're going to survive. I think this
Speaker 2: is the guy who like he like shit makes Connolly's
Speaker 2: hand and is like, all right, I'll see you later,
Speaker 2: and James Connolly looks at me because I'm never going
Speaker 2: to see you again. Yeah, that happened with someone, and
Speaker 2: I think it was the o'reheely. I'll see you in hell, motherfucker.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like, but but you know his equals right, you know
Speaker 2: we're both gonna do it. Yeah, see you heaven, motherfucker.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And on Friday, the o'raheely leads a charge through the
Speaker 2: street and he's gunned down, and then he survives for
Speaker 2: like twenty one hours, bleeding to death in a doorway.
Speaker 2: He writes a letter to his wife while he is
Speaker 2: bleeding to death in the doorway, and it's I'm gonna
Speaker 2: just quote the whole thing. It's not very long. Written
Speaker 2: after I was shot, Darling Nancy. I was shot leading
Speaker 2: a rush up Moore Street and took refuge in a doorway.
Speaker 2: While I was there, I heard the men pointing out
Speaker 2: where I was and made a bolt for the lane
Speaker 2: way I am in now. I got more one bullet.
Speaker 2: I think tons and tons of love, Dearie, to you
Speaker 2: and the boys and to Nell and Anna. It was
Speaker 2: a good fight. Anyhow, please deliver this to Nanny Orahley
Speaker 2: forty Herbert Park, Dublin, Goodbye, darling.
Speaker 4: Wow, it was a good fight anyhow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of sweet, you know, it is very sweet.
Speaker 2: And here's just sometimes letting yourself be won over by
Speaker 2: glorious madness. If all your friends are jumping off a bridge,
Speaker 2: sometimes there's a reason.
Speaker 3: Well, I also think acknowledging that these opportunities don't come
Speaker 3: very often once in a generation, as has been established,
Speaker 3: and this is the thing that you're working towards, and
Speaker 3: acknowledging that it's not an ideal situation. But are you
Speaker 3: going to live the rest of your life thinking I
Speaker 3: should have gone out there and died with everyone else?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Right, of these characters we've laid out, I think most
Speaker 3: of them would not be living a life they want
Speaker 3: to live if they never didn't make that choice to
Speaker 3: join when push comes to shove.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and there's actually going to be a there'll be
Speaker 2: some quotes later basically to that effect. Yeah, So Connolly
Speaker 2: at the General post Office, he's the you know, sort
Speaker 2: of military commander of it all. I mean, Pierce is
Speaker 2: also one of the commanders. Right, he gets shot at
Speaker 2: least twice in the process of all of this, I've
Speaker 2: read a few accounts. Most likely he got shot first
Speaker 2: in the shoulder while doing some shit at a barricade,
Speaker 2: but he kept keeps going. Later, he takes a bullet
Speaker 2: to the ankle and it goes really bad. It goes
Speaker 2: really badly. He is unable to stand and he slowly
Speaker 2: starts dying. And the way it gets presented, they're like
Speaker 2: he led from a lying down position for days. That's
Speaker 2: one version. When I read versions that more actively and
Speaker 2: intentionally focus on the women who are involved in the
Speaker 2: rising and are less on the great man of history. Page. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was laying around in a stretcher and he was
Speaker 2: doing what he could, and command fell to the second
Speaker 2: in command, doctor Kathleen Lynn, the head of all the
Speaker 2: medical stuff. She was overseeing the headquarters of the rebel
Speaker 2: at the end well on Saturday, the rebels surrendered unconditionally
Speaker 2: because they were losing badly, and primarily they surrendered, as
Speaker 2: far as I understand, because the British kept fucking killing civilians.
Speaker 2: They thought that the British wouldn't just massacre civilians because
Speaker 2: they overestimated the ethics of their enemy. But I've read
Speaker 2: unconditional surrender, and I've also read that Patrick Pearce negotiated,
Speaker 2: you can kill those of us who signed the proclamation,
Speaker 2: but not everyone else. Yeah, one woman from the kumin Avon,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth O'Farrell, had the unfortunate honor of delivering the order
Speaker 2: to surrender to all the other positions because there's no
Speaker 2: way of communicating, right, so they had to bring her
Speaker 2: with a white flag and be like, hey, it's true,
Speaker 2: we gave up. A lot of the volunteers didn't want
Speaker 2: to give up, but eventually everyone surrendered.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As the volunteers surrender, the working class of Dublin gave them,
Speaker 2: As one Canadian reporter referred to it, an ovation. Soldiers
Speaker 2: would like have to go into the crowd to push
Speaker 2: and like shut people up. As everyone cheered on the
Speaker 2: rebels as they were marched off to jail, and the
Speaker 2: poorer the district, the more support the rebels had. Because
Speaker 2: there's this other part of the story where when the
Speaker 2: soldiers land, a lot of them are cheered on by
Speaker 2: the people of Dublin, right, being like, hey you're here,
Speaker 2: shut these weird troublemakers up, you know. Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: a very divided city in the end. Two hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty civilians were killed, mostly but not exclusively by the British.
Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty six UK forces were killed, seventeen
Speaker 2: cops were killed, and eighty two Irish rebels were killed
Speaker 2: in the fighting.
Speaker 4: How many the British did you say?
Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty six plus seventeen cops?
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: So overall the rebels killed way more British people than
Speaker 2: the British killed of them. However, the British killed a
Speaker 2: fucked onn of civilians and more Syrians died than anyone else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty gruesome strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, more than three thy five hundred people arrested, which,
Speaker 2: if you remember correctly, is more than the people who participated.
Speaker 2: Almost all of the people who are arrested, and this
Speaker 2: does not map to who did the uprising. Almost all
Speaker 2: of who was arrested was young Catholic men.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 2: Because there were just raids and roundups over the following days.
Speaker 2: Anyone who was suspected of having anything to do with
Speaker 2: it was rounded up. Ninety people were sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: Most of them don't end up being executed, Okay, fourteen
Speaker 2: or fifteen of them were executed by firing squad, mostly leaders.
Speaker 2: I'm really annoyed that I run into different numbers everywhere
Speaker 2: about this, because I think people are counting differently mm hm,
Speaker 2: because some people are counting Roger Casement, who's hanged, and
Speaker 2: some people aren't. And then some people are counting this
Speaker 2: other guy who I'll talk about in a moment, and
Speaker 2: some people aren't, James Connolly, the socialist. He's almost dead already, right,
Speaker 2: He's taken these two bullets. Doctors telling me is only
Speaker 2: a few days left. And then you have this moment
Speaker 2: where the soldiers are like, hey, is he Is he
Speaker 2: well enough to shoot yet? And the doctor like who
Speaker 2: I think was a British guy, like looked and was like,
Speaker 2: I cannot, No patient is good enough to shoot. You know.
Speaker 2: I wish I should have written actual quote down. But
Speaker 2: before he dies naturally of naturally, before he dies of
Speaker 2: bullets that were inflicted several days earlier.
Speaker 4: Before he naturally dies of unnatural causes.
Speaker 2: Right, a priest comes in and does last rites and
Speaker 2: people like to argue about this because people like want
Speaker 2: to claim James Connolly is an atheist or Catholic or
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah right, because people want to
Speaker 2: own this man's legacy and can't understand the complicated fact
Speaker 2: that he was a socialist who was culturally Catholic and
Speaker 2: possibly in some ways theologically Catholic even we spent a
Speaker 2: lot lot of his time talking shit on the church,
Speaker 2: and he believed in materialism. But he did his last rites.
Speaker 2: The colonial occupying Army of Ireland came in, took him out,
Speaker 2: tied him to a chair, and shot him. And he
Speaker 2: never saw socialist Ireland. Neither has anyone. Yet his children
Speaker 2: kept up the fight for another generation. His last words
Speaker 2: weren't a letter given to his daughter to give to
Speaker 2: the Field General for the British. And it was a complex.
Speaker 2: It starts off with a complaint about how the prisoners
Speaker 2: are treated, because he's an activist to.
Speaker 4: The end, yeah, right, right to the bitter end.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And then he talks about how you know
Speaker 2: England has no rights to Ireland, and then the last
Speaker 2: line is I personally thank God that I have lived
Speaker 2: to see the day when thousands of Irish men and
Speaker 2: boys and hundreds of Irish women and girls were ready
Speaker 2: to affirm that truth that England had no rights to
Speaker 2: Ireland and to attest it with their lives if need be.
Speaker 4: That really doesn't sound like a sentence in atheist would write.
Speaker 2: But no, I yeah, yeah exactly. Patrick Pierce wrote a
Speaker 2: farewell letter to his mother which which is and it
Speaker 2: included the line this is the death I should have
Speaker 2: asked if God had given me the choice of all
Speaker 2: deaths to die a soldier's death for Ireland and for freedom.
Speaker 2: We have done right. People will say hard things of
Speaker 2: us now, but later on will praise us. And that
Speaker 2: is fucking true.
Speaker 4: It is true, And I mean that is the crux
Speaker 4: of what I was saying before. Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 4: like I'd.
Speaker 3: Rather die a martyr, die fighting for what we believe in,
Speaker 3: for our country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My goal is to be the cat lady who
Speaker 2: lives to be ninety, but but not by having not
Speaker 2: stood up when standing up r happening exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Willie Pierce, Padrick's brother, hadn't been a leader and hadn't
Speaker 2: killed anyone in all of it. He had been in
Speaker 2: the fighting right, but he was like rank and file.
Speaker 2: They killed him too because of his last name, Oh
Speaker 2: one man, Thomas Kent. He hadn't come out to the
Speaker 2: rising because of the order to stay home. But he
Speaker 2: and his like he was from a like strong we
Speaker 2: fucking hate the English family, right, And so when they
Speaker 2: show up to try and arrest all the usual suspects,
Speaker 2: they show up to his house and are going to
Speaker 2: arrest him, and he and his three brothers resisted arrest
Speaker 2: and killed a cop in the process. He was executed,
Speaker 2: and he's part of the reason that the count is
Speaker 2: kind of messed up. But yeah, different tastes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wasn't even a part of it technically, right,
Speaker 3: He probably would have been.
Speaker 2: He absolutely would have been. Yeah, but he was told
Speaker 2: to stay home, and he did what he was told
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 4: Man, that's also sucks too.
Speaker 3: If I was somebody that was committed and then I
Speaker 3: got the other and then I missed the memos somehow
Speaker 3: and I stayed home, that would be a bitter pill
Speaker 3: to swallow.
Speaker 4: For sure.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I'd maybe I would go fuck up a cop too, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, especially if they came to arrest me for
Speaker 3: the thing I didn't even get to do.
Speaker 4: Dare you want to see me fight? I'll fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll give you something to write about. Ninety nine
Speaker 2: years after he was executed, his remains were exhumed from
Speaker 2: the prison where he'd been buried and were reburied in
Speaker 2: a state funeral. Joseph Mary Plunkett, he was the tuberculosis
Speaker 2: guy or the wound on his neck. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: he's rich. He let his family use the has, let
Speaker 2: the people use the land. Yeah, and you know, he
Speaker 2: almost died just of TB. But he was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: His fiancee, Grace Gifford, who his sisters to crap. Some
Speaker 2: of the other people that I've talked about, I can't
Speaker 2: remember right now. I think Kathleen Lynne, the doctor. Okay,
Speaker 2: So his fiance had just converted to Catholicism in order
Speaker 2: to marry him, and when she heard about her fiance's
Speaker 2: execution date, she went out and she bought a ring,
Speaker 2: and she found a priest and she showed up at
Speaker 2: the jail and was like, you're gonna let me fucking
Speaker 2: marry this man.
Speaker 4: Let me marry this tuberculous man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before you fucking kill him. A few hours before
Speaker 2: his execution, they have a ceremony in the jail cell
Speaker 2: and the guards give him give them like ten minutes
Speaker 2: together after the wedding to like talk.
Speaker 4: Like not even fucking consummate that marriage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would interrupt every minute to be like nine
Speaker 2: minutes now, eight minutes now was there a Dick Dix.
Speaker 2: She went on to become a politician for Free Ireland.
Speaker 2: There's also this whole thing where like her his family
Speaker 2: tried to cut her out of the will because his
Speaker 2: will was like I leave it all to my widow.
Speaker 2: And then they're like, oh, there weren't enough witnesses for
Speaker 2: the marriage to count or whatever.
Speaker 4: The fuck did they win?
Speaker 2: Uh, she won some money to twelve years later or
Speaker 2: like in nineteen thirty one, it's like fifteen years later. Awful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's another guy. His name's Tom Clark. He was
Speaker 2: of the older generation of revolutionaries. He had been part
Speaker 2: of that get some bombs and go to London and
Speaker 2: see what happens plan from the eighteen eighties. So he
Speaker 2: had been he was a revolutionist from you know, thirty
Speaker 2: years earlier that he was like, well, it's the best
Speaker 2: thing going. He had spent fifteen years in prison for
Speaker 2: his i mean first terrorism and he went to the US.
Speaker 2: He came back, he opened a tobacco shop. He supported
Speaker 2: unions and he wouldn't sell newspapers. That were owned by
Speaker 2: union busters. He also supported women's rights, and he was
Speaker 2: fifty eight when he was executed for his role in
Speaker 2: the rising. His last words were conveyed through his wife,
Speaker 2: and they were my comrades, and I believe we have
Speaker 2: struck the first successful blow for freedom, and so sure
Speaker 2: as we are going out this morning, and so sure
Speaker 2: will freedom come as a direct result of our action.
Speaker 2: In this belief, we die happy. He also told his
Speaker 2: wife to make sure that that asshole coward Owen McNeil
Speaker 2: would be held to account for what he had done,
Speaker 2: and said, quote, he is a weak man, but I
Speaker 2: know every effort will be made to whitewash him, and.
Speaker 4: I bet it was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, although I mean I think overall, I think people
Speaker 5: really like the rising, and so what happens is people
Speaker 5: try to take the rising and make it be about
Speaker 5: what they want it to be about.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, I guess, And mostly I mean in
Speaker 3: the immediate aftermath, the confusion of what the narrative is.
Speaker 3: But ultimately no, it's a very clearly he messed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean again, it's like impossible to know
Speaker 2: what would have happened if several different things have gone differently. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But one thing that is as certain as the fact
Speaker 2: that we will each one day die, is that this
Speaker 2: podcast will be interrupt to buy advertisers who's all have
Speaker 2: very different volumes because they speak in a very maximized
Speaker 2: volume way to get your attention and try to convince
Speaker 2: you to do things that you shouldn't do, that you
Speaker 2: should totally do with your life. We love our ads
Speaker 2: and we're back and we're back. Yes, Okay. Now I'm
Speaker 2: going to tell you about this person and you're gonna
Speaker 2: understand why she's my favorite of.
Speaker 4: All of Margaret Scott a lovely smile on her face.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, she's excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I hadn't yet told you about the lesbian
Speaker 2: bomber lady who was a sniper.
Speaker 4: Okay, saving the best for last day.
Speaker 2: See you guys like are close to us. Yeah, she survives.
Speaker 2: So I went through the people who died first, and
Speaker 2: her name was Margaret Skinner. Okay Skinnader, Yeah, okay. Margaret
Speaker 2: Skinader was born to Irish parents in Scotland and she
Speaker 2: became a school teacher. She later joined the Kumenovon branch
Speaker 2: in Glasgow in Scotland, and she was a crack shot
Speaker 2: with a rifle, and she spent her free time in
Speaker 2: Ireland smuggling detonators in her hat and testing dynamite with
Speaker 2: the girls in the hills around the city. Okay, and
Speaker 2: I think spent time blowing up British soldiers and shit
Speaker 2: in Dublin when she got bored, Like I think she
Speaker 2: was dynamiting British positions before the rising.
Speaker 4: Amazing.
Speaker 2: She dressed like a boy during the rising to run
Speaker 2: messages when she wasn't busy sniping or scouting, and she
Speaker 2: had four men under her command. She was almost certainly gay.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of like, you know, she wasn't like, hello,
Speaker 2: I am a lesbian, said she was like hello, I'm
Speaker 2: clearly a lesbian and live with the following woman.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: She was also a socialist and she was shot three
Speaker 2: times during the rising while trying to burn down some
Speaker 2: houses to stop the retreating army. Like the British were
Speaker 2: like trying to like run through some houses. So she's
Speaker 2: like fuck it, said fire to them, got shot three
Speaker 2: times for it. She survived. She wrote autobiography which I
Speaker 2: haven't read yet but has the sick and Humble title
Speaker 2: doing my bit for Ireland. Yeah, and then at the
Speaker 2: very end of it, she's gonna do one of the
Speaker 2: most cool people did cool stuff things of all. No,
Speaker 2: she doesn't represent herself in court. She does the other thing.
Speaker 2: She fucking breaks out of custody. Yes, she's in the
Speaker 2: hospital right because she got shot a whole lot of times.
Speaker 2: Is there a tunnel? Is there a tunnel? No? Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: there was a tunnel, And I didn't have a way
Speaker 2: to put it in because I wasn't as certain about
Speaker 2: it because I've read both that it happened and that
Speaker 2: it almost happened earlier. There was a part where I
Speaker 2: think Pierce and all the others are not Pierce. The
Speaker 2: people at the post office they had to escape, so
Speaker 2: they started digging an escape tunnel. Yeah, but I'm not
Speaker 2: certain whether or not they succeeded. At So there was
Speaker 2: a tunnel, and she breaks out of custody. She's at
Speaker 2: the hospital and she just like gets out past the
Speaker 2: guards and gets the fuck to Scotland. She's like, fuck Ireland.
Speaker 4: They underestimated that woman.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. They're like, this lady got shot three times. She's
Speaker 2: not going anywhere. Plus she's a lady, and she's like
Speaker 2: uh huh, After the war, she did union organizing and
Speaker 2: school teaching. She went back to school teaching and she
Speaker 2: fought for women's rights, and she's fucking cool as hell.
Speaker 2: She's a top tier margaret. Then there's this leader, the
Speaker 2: half Spanish, half irishman born in the US named Amon
Speaker 2: de Valera. He's the one I mentioned that HM wouldn't
Speaker 2: give orders to women. He wasn't executed because of his
Speaker 2: American citizenship. He was absolutely one of the leaders of
Speaker 2: the rising. The British were trying to get the US
Speaker 2: to enter the war, and so killing an American wasn't
Speaker 2: like gonna do them good, right. He becomes the third
Speaker 2: President of Ireland. Later, oh, he also does this interesting shit.
Speaker 2: He is the leader of the Well, we'll talk about
Speaker 2: what happens after the we'll talk. We'll get to that
Speaker 2: anyway along the way. Later he becomes hell a conservative
Speaker 2: or he was always hell a conservative, depending on who
Speaker 2: you ask. He's like one of the most strongly Catholic
Speaker 2: of all of the people. But in nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 2: he was the person who abolished the Oath of Allegiance
Speaker 2: to the Crown. So oh, good for him, I guess there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Countess she'd been one of the main leaders of
Speaker 2: the whole thing, and she may or may not have
Speaker 2: killed between one and three people between zero and three.
Speaker 2: She was sentenced to death, but they commuted it to
Speaker 2: life in prison on literal account of like, but you're
Speaker 2: a lady though. Okay, they were like, we can't kill you,
Speaker 2: you're a girl. Well, she had a quote in response
Speaker 2: to this, I do wish your lot had the decency
Speaker 2: to shoot me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's worse just to be in
Speaker 3: prison the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, far less lady like.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things that I've learned by reading
Speaker 2: history that does not map to any current understanding in
Speaker 2: American politics is that one of the best ways to
Speaker 2: not be in prison for a long time is for
Speaker 2: the movement that you're a part of to keep fighting
Speaker 2: really fucking hard. Because often throughout history, different governments have
Speaker 2: been like, maybe if we let their prisoners go, they'll
Speaker 2: stop blowing things up, right, right, So none of the
Speaker 2: Easter Rising arrestees are going to spend an incredibly long
Speaker 2: time in jail. Okay, Because Ireland successfully wins a war
Speaker 2: of independence early O, Well, we'll talk anyway. She goes
Speaker 2: on to become the first woman elected to the House
Speaker 2: of Commons, like I was saying, right, and then but
Speaker 2: she refused to take the role. And then later she
Speaker 2: becomes the Minister of Labor for Free Ireland as Land's
Speaker 2: first woman minister and Europe's second woman minister. Wow. But
Speaker 2: Revolutionary Ireland was a lot more progressive than after the
Speaker 2: Revolution Ireland, and it wasn't until nineteen seventy nine that
Speaker 2: Ireland gets another woman minister. The rising itself was of
Speaker 2: mixed popularity with the Irish people, but the executions were
Speaker 2: really really unpopular. They do not get through the ninety
Speaker 2: The rest of the executions are commuted out of fear
Speaker 2: of pissing people off even more except for Roger Caseman
Speaker 2: because his trial was separate and the other thing that happened.
Speaker 2: I think I mentioned this before, but during his trial
Speaker 2: he kept all these like careful hit this like journal.
Speaker 2: He kept a very careful journal of all his travels
Speaker 2: around the world, and he kept a secret other journal
Speaker 2: of all the dudes he fucked. Ooh, and he was
Speaker 2: a total size queen and interesting. So it was like,
Speaker 2: this is how big this dude's stick was?
Speaker 4: Total size queen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the British pulled out the ifuck Dudes Journal it's
Speaker 2: called the Black Journal or something, and to try and
Speaker 2: turn Catholic Ireland against him, and it's moderately successful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who are like, no, it's
Speaker 2: a lie. And then like later journalists were like, it's
Speaker 2: not a lie. Y'all are home of phobes. Yeah. Oh
Speaker 2: so he gets hanged. It's the end of his life.
Speaker 2: But he lived an amazing fucking life. Almost two thousand
Speaker 2: of the arrestees are taken a concentration camp in England
Speaker 2: and Wales where they basically and I feel like I
Speaker 2: have to bring it up every time I say it
Speaker 2: on the show, Concentration camps starts meeting a different thing
Speaker 2: after World War Two. It's still not good, but it
Speaker 2: means take all the people of the following type and
Speaker 2: put them in one place. The Japanese and Ternman camps
Speaker 2: were one hundred percent concentration camps. Yeah, so they get
Speaker 2: together and plot a rebellion while they're in this fucking thing, right.
Speaker 2: The Irish War of Independence kicks off in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 2: Only three years later, England sues for peace. The treaty
Speaker 2: offer comes and it's like you si got to swear
Speaker 2: allegiance to the crowd. And so this time, when the
Speaker 2: War of Independence had kicked off, they'd made their own government,
Speaker 2: they'd made the doll Air and the yeah, Irish government whatever.
Speaker 2: And a ton of women were in this first doll,
Speaker 2: like just a ton of them, and a lot of
Speaker 2: them were leaders of the rising, or widows or mothers
Speaker 2: of people who had died in the rising. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so it was basically like a thing that we see
Speaker 2: over and over again in history, is all of the
Speaker 2: men sort of like run to the front, get killed,
Speaker 2: and then the women do the work. The men are great,
Speaker 2: they did amazing work, but so the women keep it up.
Speaker 2: Every single one of the women in the doll voted
Speaker 2: against the treaty with England that ended the war by
Speaker 2: making Ireland subservient to England again. So if Ireland had
Speaker 2: listened to women, the Civil War would have been averted. However,
Speaker 2: they would have had to resume war with the English
Speaker 2: probably who fucking knows how that would go. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: that civil war leader of the pro treaty side was
Speaker 2: guy Michael Collins, who was in the Rising. But he
Speaker 2: has enough of a hagiography already, and I don't like
Speaker 2: like him. My uncle didn't like him, so I didn't
Speaker 2: include him.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's a long standing family grudge. Leave him out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The guy who led the other side was Aimin
Speaker 2: de Valera, the guy who wouldn't give orders to women.
Speaker 4: And became eventually president.
Speaker 2: Right, So that's like another part of his complicated legacies.
Speaker 2: Like well, yeah, you know, the Irish Civil War can't
Speaker 2: be mapped neatly left and right because you have a
Speaker 2: lot of the conservatives and a lot of the more
Speaker 2: radical folks on the side against the treaty, whereas it's
Speaker 2: more of the like centrists and like middle of the
Speaker 2: road people who are like, fuck it, I just want
Speaker 2: the fighting to be done.
Speaker 4: I mean, tale as old as time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have no idea how it would have gone
Speaker 2: if they had turned on the tree. It's possible that
Speaker 2: they would have won full independence. Possible they would have
Speaker 2: been completely subservient. Who fucking knows. How we talk about
Speaker 2: historical events always shifts. And one of the ways that
Speaker 2: people talk about the Easter Rising is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: It's probably wrong, but it's fascinating. It is both the
Speaker 2: most pagan and Catholic thing ever, and therefore it is
Speaker 2: the most irish thing ever. People call it a blood
Speaker 2: sacrifice and the ideas that the rebels knew that they
Speaker 2: would lose, and that their ideas weren't even popular, but
Speaker 2: that they spilled their blood for their country it would
Speaker 2: spur others to fight and would lead to freedom. But
Speaker 2: I buy the argument that this isn't true because they
Speaker 2: planned the whole thing. They tried to win. They didn't
Speaker 2: go out to try to die, right, They were willing
Speaker 2: to die, and they accepted blood sacrifice as a thing
Speaker 2: that was okay, but it wasn't their plan. Ireland today
Speaker 2: does not reflect what they fought for, either side of
Speaker 2: the nationalists or the socialist side. I did even more
Speaker 2: reading about Pierce in the Intervening couple of days, and well,
Speaker 2: not since you all heard this on Monday, but since
Speaker 2: last week's episodes, since we've last met. Yeah, exactly the
Speaker 2: people who matter on like those listeners, sure, yeah, are
Speaker 2: they even real except.
Speaker 4: For the ones it's looking on sponsors links?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah nada. Yeah. So he was more democratic and
Speaker 2: egalitarian in his nationalism than I had initially assumed, and
Speaker 2: he would have been against and I read this from
Speaker 2: a I think this was Kiera and Allen's position and
Speaker 2: from the book nineteen sixteen, and I tend to resonate
Speaker 2: with it. He would have been against that Ireland doesn't
Speaker 2: own its own natural resources. They're sold cheaply to international corporations. Connolly.
Speaker 2: Of course, the socialist said exactly what would happen if
Speaker 2: you don't get rid of capitalism, you don't get rid
Speaker 2: of colonialism. He had that whole quote. If you raise
Speaker 2: a green flag over Dublin, it's not going to change
Speaker 2: anything unless you get rid of the landlords. But what
Speaker 2: it did set up, I'm going to quote Kiera and
Speaker 2: Allen from that book nineteen sixteen. Easter Rising gave birth
Speaker 2: to a quote revolutionary tradition that has passed like a
Speaker 2: thread through subsequent decades. Sometimes this tradition has moved masses
Speaker 2: of people, while at other times it has been confined
Speaker 2: to the margins. Was it for this that the men
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixteen died is one of the most common
Speaker 2: sayings of the modern rabble rouser. Official Ireland tries to
Speaker 2: deal with the subterranean revolutionary tradition by canonizing and mummifying
Speaker 2: the leaders of nineteen sixteen. Train stations, schools, and hospitals
Speaker 2: are called after them, but even while their sacrifices are acknowledged,
Speaker 2: their actual ideas are gutted of anything resembling a revolutionary thought. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And one of the things that's really interesting to me
Speaker 2: too is the rebels weren't just fighting for Ireland. They
Speaker 2: positioned what they were doing in the context of the
Speaker 2: British Empire. Connolly wrote extensively about Britain's colonialism in India,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen fourteen he wrote about his desire to
Speaker 2: fight this way quote starting thus, Ireland may yet set
Speaker 2: the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn
Speaker 2: out until the last throne and last capitalism, bond and
Speaker 2: debenture will be shriveled on the funeral pyre of the
Speaker 2: last warlord. And you know it's a good poetic quote.
Speaker 2: When I have to look up a word at a
Speaker 2: venture is just like some like.
Speaker 4: Alone you Oh, okay, thank you. I did not know that.
Speaker 2: I love that you had to look ventured.
Speaker 4: That's your mark.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thinking about that, Martyorie. The thing about the deaths
Speaker 3: of the rebels, I mean, that is just such a
Speaker 3: big part of Irish culture in general, all the people
Speaker 3: throughout the all the different rebellions and risings, and uh,
Speaker 3: that they hold this mythical status. Yeah, in Irish society
Speaker 3: and to this day everywhere. Of course it's you know,
Speaker 3: especially Belfast in different parts of the country, you know,
Speaker 3: but yeah, that's baked into what it feels to be
Speaker 3: Irish and when you're in Ireland, it's it's everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's not really a point. It's just
Speaker 3: you know, thinking about all of this history and this
Speaker 3: fight that has continued and you know, in how many
Speaker 3: people have died fighting for this, and yeah, the way
Speaker 3: that the message and the realities get mutated and the
Speaker 3: outcome for the people, you know from the very beginning
Speaker 3: would probably not be very thrilled totally.
Speaker 2: You know, I would absolutely love to have a beer
Speaker 2: with the Countess and yeah, and Connolly and the I
Speaker 2: forget her name, the lesbian bomber sniper, Margaret's Skinnader. I
Speaker 2: would love to hear what they think about all of this.
Speaker 2: And I mean some of them lived long enough that
Speaker 2: they did get to write about it, and so some
Speaker 2: of it we can go and read, right, because like
Speaker 2: that's the other problem is we'll boil it down to
Speaker 2: Pearson Connolly, who are great, and I don't want to
Speaker 2: take anything away from them. You know, well great is
Speaker 2: not whatever they did an amazing and interesting thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We don't have to agree with everything that they or believe,
Speaker 2: but yeah, but we don't. I don't want to take
Speaker 2: anything away from what they did. They are figureheads of
Speaker 2: this of these movements, you know, and then there's many,
Speaker 2: many other people involved in these movements. And I like
Speaker 2: the method. I mean, I think it shows on the
Speaker 2: show where instead of taking away from the people who
Speaker 2: get put up as figureheads, is also elevating other people
Speaker 2: and being like, let's add to the roster of our heroes.
Speaker 4: Adding the context and yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So within a few years, Ireland fought a war
Speaker 2: of independence. It did not shatter the British Empire, but
Speaker 2: it showed that it could be beaten, and it also
Speaker 2: showed how to beat it guerrilla warfare. The Irish didn't
Speaker 2: invent using guerrilla tactics against the British. They themselves were
Speaker 2: heavily inspired by the Bores of South Africa, but they
Speaker 2: in turn influenced others, including the rebellious movements in Myanmar,
Speaker 2: India and Egypt, and that's part of their legacy too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's the story of the Easter Rising.
Speaker 4: It's a wonderful story. Margaret. Thanks a lot of research
Speaker 4: you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was one of those sometimes I have lots
Speaker 2: of days in a row where I wake up and
Speaker 2: work and then do that until I go to sleep. Agnada. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh it's fascinating, I mean, but yeah, it's so complicated.
Speaker 3: I've learned a lot, and I don't know, it's interesting,
Speaker 3: especially that, Yeah, the inspiration for other uprisings, other you know,
Speaker 3: movements around the world too.
Speaker 4: You forget that, yeah, or I don't know it didn't know?
Speaker 2: It makes sense well, and it's partly because like I
Speaker 2: love Irish history clearly it shows in my choice of subjects.
Speaker 2: I also love it because of my family connection, but
Speaker 2: I also love it on its own. But there is
Speaker 2: this problem where white Americans are like, oh, look the
Speaker 2: good white people the Irish, you know, and so we
Speaker 2: can be like, ah, yes, the Irish, they overthrew England
Speaker 2: and that's all that matters, you know. And I don't
Speaker 2: know shit about the Egyptian independence movement yet, not yet,
Speaker 2: you know, And like I know a little bit about
Speaker 2: the Indian independence movement. Actually, until two weeks ago, I
Speaker 2: knew more about it than I knew what the Irish wan.
Speaker 2: But I still don't know enough. I don't know enough
Speaker 2: that I couldn't just do a show on it without
Speaker 2: doing a fuck ton more research. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 2: we mythologize. I actually wrote about this in my substack.
Speaker 2: Oh here's my like a little plug. Oh good, I
Speaker 2: wrote a substack article. It will be a couple weeks
Speaker 2: ago by the time you're listening to this about the rising,
Speaker 2: and it covers the rising, but it also talks about
Speaker 2: the way that we mythologize, and the way that I've
Speaker 2: mythologized Irish rebels and all of that. And it's complicated.
Speaker 2: It's it's a you know, we want simple black and
Speaker 2: white heroes, and then you're like, yeah, they kidnapped their
Speaker 2: friend and then spread lies in order to get people
Speaker 2: who didn't know that they were about the fighting uprising
Speaker 2: to go do an uprising, you know, and they got
Speaker 2: everyone killed. And yes, the British did the shelling. Any
Speaker 2: rational understanding of British tactics would have been like, the
Speaker 2: English are going to show up here, in shell, they're
Speaker 2: just going to blow shit up, you know.
Speaker 3: But it's important to acknowledge all of it. We have
Speaker 3: a tendency, yes, to want to put our heroes up,
Speaker 3: or the people that are fighting for the thing that
Speaker 3: we believe in.
Speaker 4: We want to put them on a pedestal. We deal
Speaker 4: with presidents all the time.
Speaker 3: But the reality is we need to stop doing that
Speaker 3: in the sense that they're human beings and complicated and messy,
Speaker 3: and that a lot of choices fall into a very
Speaker 3: moral gray area regardless of your goal, how pure your
Speaker 3: goal is, how do you get there? You know, But
Speaker 3: we have to be able, we have to be able
Speaker 3: to think about things honestly that no totally.
Speaker 2: And actually it's funny you point out like and I'm
Speaker 2: like I was as you're saying that, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's not a single American president that I like. But
Speaker 2: then I'm like, then, why am I talking about these
Speaker 2: people who are like, yeah, this guy was cool, we
Speaker 2: did this thing, and then he became the president for
Speaker 2: a really long time, and he was a little conservative
Speaker 2: and he was like part of the Irish theocracy that
Speaker 2: and then I'm like, oh, so in my mind, being
Speaker 2: a politician as an example of this moral gray area
Speaker 2: of people like drifting away from the you know, the
Speaker 2: Easter Rising was like the pure rising, right, whereas the
Speaker 2: War of Independence and especially the Civil War were messy
Speaker 2: and there's not a good guy in the English in
Speaker 2: the in the Irish Civil War. Even though I have
Speaker 2: a side that I am sympathetic to, right, the anti
Speaker 2: treaty side, the more freedom side, I am sympathetic to it.
Speaker 2: Am I so sympathetic to it that I think it
Speaker 2: would be okay for me to kill the person I
Speaker 2: just fought a war of independence with. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: But what if that person is now trying to kill
Speaker 2: me because I'm saying that we shouldn't swear of oath
Speaker 2: of lee since the King, you know. And you can
Speaker 2: see how this wound is left by colonialism. You can
Speaker 2: see how the Irish versus Irish fight continues to this
Speaker 2: day because of this, And that is why Star Trek
Speaker 2: said that twenty twenty four is the year of Irish
Speaker 2: unification and shin Faine is currently I don't actually think
Speaker 2: they're going to pull this off, but shin Faane is
Speaker 2: currently coming into power in Northern Ireland, and so there's
Speaker 2: like again, this is a the meme level.
Speaker 3: As it was written, so it shall be yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: exactly cool.
Speaker 1: Canty, you got anything you want to plug for us?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Sure, why not. I have a show with Cody Johnston
Speaker 4: called Some More News. You can watch the YouTube channel
Speaker 4: on Wednesdays or you can listen to it as a podcast.
Speaker 3: Speaking of podcasts, we also have a podcast called.
Speaker 4: Even More News, which we co host and that's every week.
Speaker 4: And that's that's it. That's it, that's what I'm plugging.
Speaker 4: That's what I yep.
Speaker 2: Get your news from it instead of Twitter, and you
Speaker 2: will be a happier person.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I already accidentally plug my substack. I have a book
Speaker 2: out again. It's the one that I told you about,
Speaker 2: the kickstarter for last year, one of the ones I
Speaker 2: told you about, a kickstar for last year. I have
Speaker 2: a tabletop roleplaying game called Pan Number City. If you
Speaker 2: want to be a revolutionist blowing up various god things
Speaker 2: in a vaguely actually really kind of set around nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 2: but in a fantasy world. You can do it by
Speaker 2: playing Pa Number City with your friends, or you can
Speaker 2: do what I did as a kid and not have
Speaker 2: any friends and by role playing game books and read
Speaker 2: them and imagine playing them and yet almost as not
Speaker 2: nearly as much enjoyment, but some enjoyment out of it.
Speaker 2: And it's available for sale now because it's finally out.
Speaker 2: It came out on February second, and you can get it.
Speaker 2: Its distribution is not fully in place yet, but you
Speaker 2: can get it. So you can't go to like your
Speaker 2: game story get it yet, but you can go to
Speaker 2: Tanglebilderness dot org, or you can just type in the
Speaker 2: number city because there's not too many things named that
Speaker 2: and one of them is my book.
Speaker 4: School requested at their local game stores. Would that help?
Speaker 2: So at some point I'm going to tell people to
Speaker 2: start doing that thing once we get the distribution network
Speaker 2: in place. We've been so focused on getting this We
Speaker 2: kickstarted this book and so we were like, we're going
Speaker 2: to do so many things, and then we had to
Speaker 2: do all those things, and now we're like, we tried
Speaker 2: to get it out to the backers as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: So now we're setting up that got it.
Speaker 4: The answer is eventually, eventually, folks, eventually you'll be called
Speaker 4: into action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sophie, what do you got?
Speaker 1: We at cool Zone Media have a new weekly podcast.
Speaker 1: It is called Better Offline. It is hosted by ed Zitron,
Speaker 1: and it is a weekly show exploring the tech industry's
Speaker 1: influencing manipulation of society. As of today's episode, the trailer
Speaker 1: should be out and episode one drops on February twenty
Speaker 1: first check it out.
Speaker 4: Ooh, I'm definitely going to check that out. Sounds depressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is wickedly talented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just an amazing tech journalist. So very excited about
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 2: All right, we did it. I will see you all
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 4: NYE bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.