Republicans across the island of Ireland and beyond commemorated
the 1916 Easter Rising last weekend. The online Sinn Féin events were all
exceptional and I want to commend everyone involved in producing them. The
National Commemoration broadcast in particular - including Mary Lou’s oration -
was very uplifting.
As we continue to commemorate these events, including in a few
weeks the executions of the leaders, let’s look at the disgraceful way in which
successive Irish governments have refused to preserve Moore Street and its part
in the historic events of 1916.
So where is Moore Street? Moore Street runs parallel to O’Connell
Street- Sackville Street in 1916- from Parnell Street to Henry Street close to
the GPO. It is the location of the final meeting of the Provisional Government
following the Easter Rising and the final meeting place of five of the seven
signatories of the Proclamation. It is also where the O Rahilly - a leader of
the Volunteers- was killed. The O Rahilly did not want the Rising to proceed
especially after the confusing cancellation order from Eoin MacNeill. However
when it went ahead so did he. “I have
helped to wind up the clock. I might as well hear it strike” he said.
So 104 years ago the battle around the GPO was raging. In other
parts of Dublin republican volunteers were holding off significantly larger
British Army forces. On Friday evening, and with the GPO in flames, the
embattled republican defenders evacuated the building. The O Rahilly was killed
leading the first charge. As he lay dying in a shop doorway he penned a last
note to his wife. Under constant fire his comrades later made their way to
number 5 Moore Street – Dunne’s Butchers, and began tunnelling from
house to house along the terrace.
The following morning they wrapped Connolly in blankets and with
great difficulty carried him through the holes they had forced in the walls to
number 16 – Plunkett’s, a poultry shop. It was an agonising journey for
Connolly.
In a small room Seán MacDiarmada, Pádraig Pearse, Joseph
Plunkett, James Connolly and Tom Clarke discussed the limited options open to
them, including the possibility of rushing the British Army barricade on
Parnell Street. Tom Clarke, who went to look at the situation, returned to tell
the leaders that it could not succeed. The leaders came to the reluctant
conclusion that surrender was the only choice open to them to avoid further
loss of life.
Julia Grenan, Winifred Carney and Elizabeth O’Farrell had stayed
throughout Easter week in the GPO. O’Farrell was now tasked with the dangerous
responsibility of going to the British lines. According to the book ‘Last
Words’; “When Seán MacDiarmada asked Nurse O’Farrell to provide a white
flag Clarke turned to the wall and broke down, sobbing. Miss Grenan and Miss
Carney went across to him to try and consol him but instead they themselves
dissolved into tears and Clarke comforted them.”
O’Farrell walked down Moore Street to the British barricade. She
was brought by British soldiers to Tom Clarke’s shop in Parnell Street where
the British General Lowe insisted that he would only accept unconditional
surrender. A short time later Pádraig Pearse, accompanied by Elizabeth
O’Farrell, and wearing his military overcoat and hat, left the Moore Street
headquarters of the Provisional government to meet General Lowe. This meeting
occurred on Parnell St opposite Moore St and close to where the Kingfisher Cafe
now is. In the original photograph taken of that meeting only Nurse O’Farrell’s
feet can be seen and in many of the reproductions they were airbrushed out.
After Pearse had signed the document of surrender O’Farrell was
asked to deliver the surrender to the outposts which were still fighting.
Shortly after 4.30pm the republican garrison left their Moore Street
HQ and marched to the Gresham Hotel where they were searched before being taken
to the Green in front of the Rotunda Hospital in Parnell Street. There they
were harshly treated by their British captors. Éamonn Dore a member of the GPO
garrison afterward wrote:
“The night at the Rotunda was a bit of a nightmare and water and
food did not trouble us. The officer in charge of the British military was a
maniac. I saw Frank Henderson kneel to ‘relieve’ himself about day break and
the officer snatched a rifle from a Tommy and struck him on the head, knocking
in back on the grass ... About five o’clock on the morning of
the Sunday, after the office had stuck Henderson, he took Tom Clarke, Seán
MacDiarmada, and Ned Daly into the street near the Rotunda Picture House and
stripped them down to their boots to search them... Tom Clarke had been wounded
at the elbow joint and his arm was in a sling so that he could not get his coat
off quickly. The officer pulled the arm straight, opening the wound and tore of
his coat.”
This then is Moore Street. It is at the centre
of the battlefield site. “The laneways of history” according to
former Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
In any other state in the world such places are preserved, open
to the public and are a place of pilgrimage. Ron Maxwell, a US filmmaker,
describes it well. Quoted by the 1916 Relatives he says: “Battlefields
are looking glasses into the world of our ancestors. Standing on their earth
under their skies, is to be at one with them and to viscerally understand
humanity’s connections across time. The generation that won independence lives
in the ideas we honour, the architecture we preserve and the battlefields we
can yet save.”
But not in Dublin.
14-17 Moore Street was adopted by the Irish government in
2007. Thirteen years later no work has begun. The four buildings are in a
serious state of disrepair and are closed. The government ignored the
recommendations from a consultative group several years ago and successfully
appealed a landmark court ruling that Moore Street be preserved. It has pursued
a short sighted policy which reduces the battlefield site to these four
buildings. The rest are to be demolished as part of a redevelopment plan for
the district.
Last year the Moore Street Advisory Group submitted its ‘Special
Report 2’ to the Minister for Culture. That report drew on the recommendations
of the 2017 ‘Securing History – the Moore Street report’ which accepted
that “there should be appropriate recognition of the history of the
street and its part in the Rising”. Last year’s report called on the
government to reconstitute the Moore Street Advisory Group with “representation
from the Oireachtas, Dublin City Council, representatives of all of the
participating groups on the present group, traders and an independent chair.” A
year later and this report still sits on the Ministers shelf.
In the meantime we now also know that an archaeology report for
Courtney Deery Heritage Consultancy revealed that ‘middens’ or
refuse dumps going back several hundred years were found behind 15 and 16
Moore Street. The report concludes that; “The houses and the material
assemblage are ordinary and commonplace which through happenstance and historic
events has elevated their significance to national importance... “ A
second report by Kelly Colgan Architects recommends that nos 10 Moore
Street “is of Architectural, Cultural and Social ‘Special
Interest’” and should be protected. The same report also identifies
numbers 20 and 21 as buildings of “Architectural, Cultural and Social
‘Special Interest.” And finally this report recommends that “O’Brien’s
Bottling Stores is of Architectural, Cultural and Social ‘Special
Interest” and that it too is protected.
Last month there was a fire at number 9 Moore
Street which took three fire engines two hours to bring under control. The
relatives of the 1916 Leaders are concerned that this will not be the last fire
and that without significant and speedy progress there is a real danger to all
of these remarkable buildings. Thirteen years after 14-17 Moore Street were
designated as a national monument and after years of campaigning the government
continues to resist protecting the battlefield site. What the British Army and
its shelling of Dublin 104 years ago failed to achieve this government looks
likely to succeed in destroying most of what the National Museum has described
as “the most important historic site in modern Irish history.”
So why does the government refuse to
develop this site as a historic quarter which would be of huge educational,
economic and social significance to the people of the Inner city, the capital
and the nation, as well as a fitting memorial to the heroism of the men and
women of 1916?
Call me stupid but I don’t think it’s
just because the state and the establishment are uncomfortable with the events
of 1916 or their refusal to live up to the commitments of the Proclamation. That’s
undoubtedly part of it. But it’s also because the vested interests, big
business and the developers involved see this battlefield site as a potential
source of great wealth for them. It’s all about corporate greed. In many ways
the story of Moore Street is a metaphor for the state we are in. If you want to
save Moore Street write to An Taoiseach at leo.varadkar @oir.ie or The
Dept of An Taoiseach Merrion Street. BAC 2
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