THE ULSTER CONFLICT Eoin MacNeill, a professor of Gaelic, and Patrick Pearse, a young teacher who believed in progressive teaching methods, but was also obsessed with the idea of a blood sacrifice to awaken Ireland to its national purpose and to cleanse it of corruption, also ideas that were quite current in the Europe of his day. The Irish Volunteers were almost instantly infiltrated by members of the I.R.B. who took over positions of influence, and also by members of Arthur Griffith's Sinn Fein movement which was experiencing an organizational low period. The recruitment to the Volunteers was so high that Redmond felt compelled to demand leading positions for his representatives in the command structure, and on the outbreak of the world war, he did manage to split the movement, with the vast majority of the membership leaving to enrol in the British Army, the theory behind this being that the sacrifice of southern Irish catholic lives would ensure the full implementation of Home Rule; the leaders of the Ulster Volunteer Force decided that the same process would have the converse outcome, with the result that over 5,500 members of the Ulster Division of the British army lost their lives at the Battle of the Somme alone. THE EASTER RISING Meanwhile a small remnant of the Irish Volunteers had refused Redmond's strategy, and had split away, under Pearse's and Macneill's leadership, still retaining the same name. Under the impulsion of a small inner leadership composed of I.R.B. members (Pearse was now a member of the I.R.B.) it was decided to stage a rising whilst Britain was engaged on other fronts. This was a strategy that was being separately broached by James Connolly who was one of the few European labour leaders to denounce the war as an imperialist trick and to call on workers to strike against it. Eventually Connolly, who had the tiny Irish Citizens Army at his disposal, and the I.R.B. leaders of the Volunteers got together and planned a rising all over Ireland for Easter 1916. Most of their preparations went wrong, but they still went ahead with the insurrection. On Easter Monday 1916 a group of armed men entered the General Post Office in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic "in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old traditions of nationhood". Any social aims of the "usurpation" as they called it, were 49
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