Public Affairs

Perspectives on 1916: The Easter Rising

Local historian, and former Lord Mayor of Belfast, Tom Hartley has put together a series of talks of different perspectives on 1916. The first series of 10 talks on the Easter Rising will be held in the Falls Library in Belfast 21 to 25 March and a series of talks on the Battle of the Somme will be held 8 to 11 August. The details of the first series on the Easter Rising are detailed below.

All the events will be chaired by Swedish-born Dr Jessica Blomkvist who is Policy and Administration Officer with the Belfast Conflict Resolution Consortium and will be free to attend.

 

Ireland, India and Easter 1916

Falls Library, Mon 21st March, 1pm

Dr Kate O’Malley is a Research Associate of the Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin, an Assistant Editor of the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, and the author of Ireland, India and Empire. She will speak about the impact the Easter Rising had on the Indian nationalist movement, how it influenced radicals and inspired the Chittagong Armoury Raid of 1930, but also taught Britain certain lessons about its decolonisation process which informed its attitude towards Indian independence.

 

Ireland’s forgotten few: The Unionists left behind

St Mary’s University College, Mon 21st March, 7pm

Quincey Dougan is a historian, historical consultant and weekly columnist with the News Letter. He is the author of Leitrim: A County at War and The Armagh Brigade: The Formation and Sacrifice of the Ulster Volunteer Force in the Orchard County. Quincey will speak about the impact of partition on the ‘abandoned’ unionists of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan when the Ulster Unionists decided to pursue a Six-County state within the union. Stranded in the Free State, Quincey looks at the reactions and experiences of those Unionists who found themselves ‘stranded’ in a Free State, a scenario that challenged their very identity, and in some cases their physical existence.

 

CumannnamBan: The women of 1916 and after

Falls Library, Tues 22 March, 1pm

Dr Margaret Ward is the former Director of the Women’s Resource and Development Agency and currently Visiting Fellow in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University. She is the author of a number of books, including biographies of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Maud Gonne. Margaret will talk about the early years of Cumann na mBan, their role in the Easter Rising and its aftermath, with special mention of activities undertaken by members of the Belfast branch.

The Shame of Easter Week? Unionist Responses to the Easter Rising

St Mary’s University College, Thurs 22nd March, 7pm

Jason Burke is a Modern History Masters student of Queen’s University, currently managing the East Belfast & the Great War Research Project. Jason is also the author of We Must Prepare: Unionist Militancy in East Belfast 1911-1914. Jason will explore the response of unionism and Edward Carson to the Rising (who referred to “the shame of Easter week”) and the executions of the republican signatories to the Proclamation.

Republican icons or complex Protestant Irishmen? Roger Casement, Bulmer Hobson and Jack White

Falls Library, Wed 23rd March, 1pm

Philip Orr has written on a range of local topics, including contemporary loyalism. His work on the Irish experience of the Great War includes titles published by Blackstaff Press in Belfast and Lilliput Press in Dublin and he has addressed a number of international conferences on this theme. This talk will show that some of the key figures in the republican iconography of this period are far more complex than has been acknowledged in nationalist narratives. “To install them only as Irish revolutionaries is to rob them of their individuality and their dissenting instincts as Irish Protestant thinkers,” says Philip.

Staging Rebellion: Culture and Politics in Revolutionary Ireland

St Mary’s University College, Wed 23rd March, 7pm

Dr Fearghal McGarry teaches history at Queen’s University. He is the author of The Abbey Rebels of 1916. A Lost Revolution; The Rising. Ireland: Easter 1916, and published biographies of Frank Ryan and Eoin O’Duffy. Fearghal will examine the role of culture and, in particular, theatre in the formation of the 1916 revolutionaries and focus on the lives of seven rebels associated with the Abbey, including Peadar Kearney, author of Amhrán na bhFiann.

Ulster women and the Rising

Falls Library, Thurs 24th March, 1pm

Dr Marie Coleman is a Lecturer in Modern Irish History at Queen’s University. Her books include The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923. Marie will examine the contribution of women to the Rising, focusing on the Irish Citizen Army and Cumann na mBan, including Ulster women activists. It will also examine the fallout from the Rising on the wives, widows and other dependants of men who were killed, executed or imprisoned.

“Shells for us and pianos for them”: Class war and the First World War in Irish writing

St Mary’s University College, Tues 24nd March, 7pm

Dr Michael Pierse is a lecturer in Irish Literature at Queen’s University, specialising in the writing and cultural production of Irish working-class life. He is the author of Writing Ireland’s Working-Class: Dublin After O’Casey and is the editor of the forthcoming A Cambridge History of Irish Working-Class Writing. Michael’s subject is about how writers represented the class divisions that WWI often intensified and exposed and how this representation relates to the 1916 Rising and its legacy with reference to writers like James Connolly, like Seán O’Casey, Patrick MacGill, Margaret Barrington and Liam O’Flaherty.

 

Reporting the Rising: ‘No terms of denunciation that pen could indict would be too strong’

Falls Library, Fri 25th March, 11am

Ciarán Galway is a politics graduate from Queen’s University who wrote his dissertation on The Catholic Church and the 1981 Hunger Strike and his MA thesis on British Security Policy in South Armagh. Ciarán will look at contemporary Dublin and Belfast media reactions to the Rising and how they contrast; the ownership and distribution of newspapers, and the social composition of their readership. Please note: This talk at the Falls Library begins at 11am on Friday 25 March.

From Belfast to Dublin: The Dungannon Club Network and the Easter Rising

Falls Library, Fri 25th March, 1pm

Dr Marnie Hay is a lecturer in history at St Patrick’s Campus, Dublin City University and is the author of Bulmer Hobson and the Nationalist Movement in Twentieth-Century Ireland and many articles on Irish nationalist youth culture in the early twentieth century. Marnie will explore the connection between leading republican activists in the Belfast Dungannon Club and the future Easter Rising. Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough formed the club in 1905 to promote the Sinn Féin policy in Ulster and beyond and to drive Dublin activists back on the advanced nationalist track.

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