Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The Easter Rising of 1916, in which just over a thousand Irish rebels seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed the independence of the Irish Republic before being brutally suppressed by the vastly larger and better-equipped British Army, is an event whose meaning remains contested to this day. For some it represents a blood sacrifice without the hope or even the intention of success. For others, it was the first act in a tumultuous political drama played out in Dublin streets and London cabinet rooms that led to the eventual formation of an independent Irish state.
In 1916, Kieran Allen argues that this pivotal moment in Irish history has been obscured by those who see it only as a prelude for a war of independence. Emphasizing an often ignored social and political radicalism at the heart of the rebellion, he shows that it gave birth to a revolutionary tradition that continues to haunt the Irish elite. Socialist aspirations mixed, and sometimes clashed, with the republican current, but both were crushed in a counterrevolution that accompanied the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921. The result today is a partitioned Ireland that acts as a neoliberal tax haven for multinational corporations a state of affairs quite alien to both Connolly s and Pearse s vision.
Published to coincide with the Rising s centennial, 1916: Ireland s Revolutionary Tradition re-establishes the political role of socialist republican figures, offers a highly accessible history of the Easter Rising, and explores the militancy and radicalism that continues to haunt the Irish elite one hundred years later.
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Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Kieran Allen is a sociology lecturer at University College Dublin. His books include Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism (Pluto, 2011) and Max Weber: A Critical Introduction (Pluto, 2004) as well as a number of works on Irish society and politics.