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DURING the early months of 1916 nearly 100 Irish rebels secretly left the cities of England and Scotland in ones and twos and travelled to Ireland.
They had heard that the uprising, for which they had planned and hoped, finally seemed to be approaching.
Several dozen caught ferries from Liverpool and Glasgow and slightly fewer went from London. The histories of some of these are well known — the most famous traveller from London being the ex-post office clerk Michael Collins.
The stories of most of the others are more obscure and, until now, the histories have made no mention at all of any contingent going from Manchester or Stockport.
This has always seemed hard to understand. My father-in-law used to tell stories of his cousin from Stockport who was in the Dublin GPO which served as the Rising’s headquarters during the Easter Rising.
His stories also claimed that this man, Willie Parr, played the pipes for Eamon de Valera, that he died young as a result of hiding in ditches and that the IRA came to his funeral and turned it into such a major event that some family members were astonished and not pleased.
For a long time we were tempted to dismiss this as an unfounded family fantasy. However, recent access to Irish government pension files have revealed this not to be the case.
All the people I have been following applied for Irish government pensions, so that their service in the independence struggle has been recorded and many hundreds of the Volunteers had their memories transcribed in witness statements preserved by the Irish Bureau of Military History.
They have now been released and provide an unparalleled archive of grassroots memories of a 20th-century revolution. They show that four men from the Manchester area actually did take part in the Rising, one of whom was Willie/Liam Parr.
What began as a family history detective story might have interested no-one but the immediate family. We all know what it is like to be bored by someone else’s family tree. But I soon discovered that we had found something much more fascinating. Here was a wonderful cache of eyewitness accounts of the experiences of growing up in working-class Ireland and England, living through turbulent times and choosing to be at the centre of one of the 20th century’s earliest and most iconic insurrections.
We have all read and argued about the events of history as told to us by the “experts.” It is an entirely different matter to hear the story from the rank-and-file rebels, who had no idea how posterity would see them.
The events become so much more real when we can hear the participants recounting the “unimportant details” such as eating an extra big breakfast before climbing on the roof to face snipers or having to serve food with bayonets. To be told of a man stuffing his handkerchief in his mouth so his commanding officer would not hear his teeth chattering makes his experience feel very real.
I also found that studying the lives of just a handful of ordinary volunteers showed the world what the Easter Rising grew out of and helps put it in context.
The eyewitness accounts do not just tell the story of Irish nationalists but show committed socialists who had campaigned for Jim Larkin and James Connolly and were to also work on behalf of conscientious objectors and the “Hands off Russia” solidarity movement following the Bolshevik Revolution.
It now became possible to see the Easter Rising as part of that age of rebellion.
I was also pleased to discover the developing role of women in what had been a very traditional society. I enjoyed hearing women in the GPO arguing with Padraig Pearse when he told them to leave the burning building before the men. “You told us we were all equal — what about women’s rights?” they demanded of an obviously shaken Pearse.
We don’t often have the opportunity to hear the story of our ancestors when they stood up together and took on the might of the most powerful empire in the world and, as well as my relative Wille Parr, the book focuses on three other Manchester rebels, Gilbert Lynch, Larry Ryan and Redmond Cox.
Included too is the story of Sheila O’Hanlon, whose life and experiences played an equally important part in the making of history. She served throughout the Rising, the War of Independence and the civil war as a member of Cumann na mBan, the women’s organisation parallel to the Volunteers, and was a close family friend of Willie Parr. During Easter Week, he introduced her to Gilbert Lynch and they subsequently married.
Of these five, only the latter wrote his memoirs and there are no diaries or reminiscences to help us chronicle the lives of the others. This is usually the case with members of the working classes and it is a tragedy that there are so few published biographies of the ordinary rebels or soldiers to set amidst the shelves of those of the leaders.
The book tries to relate their experiences as they saw them, rather than to give an analysis of the strategy of their leaders, as examined by a 21st-century historian.
Thus, wherever possible this is the story of the Manchester rebels, told in their words, or those of volunteers who were with them.
I hope it captures some of the emotions, excitement, fear and exhilaration of those who participated in such momentous times.
These were people who made history but whose role was subsequently completely forgotten.
And it is an attempt to return a few of the extraordinary “ordinary” people to their rightful place in the chronicle of the 20th century.
I hope it does them justice after all these years.
- Hidden Heroes of Easter Week: Memories of Volunteers from England who Joined the Easter Rising is written and published by Robin Stock. Copies are available from hiddenheroesofeasterweek.wordpress.com or from the author, address: 399 Wakefield Rd, Denby Dale, West Yorkshire. HD8 8QD.
