Fighting and Writing: Journalists and the 1916 Easter Rising

Abstract

The relationship between journalists and the Irish rebellion of Easter 1916 is a complex one. While the Rising was led in large part by a miscellany of poets, editors and journalists (many of whom feature prominently in the Rising’s historiography) many lesser-known journalists acted as planners and participants in the insurrection. As well as assessing the contribution of these lesser-known journalists to the events of 1916 and the Rising’s impact on journalistic life in Dublin, it explores how a representative organisation—the Irish Journalists’ Association—acted as a cover for the clandestine insurgent-related activities of many journalists. It finds that the IJA played a key role in facilitating the expression of radical views by this cohort of journalists who could not express their radicalism through their everyday posts on the mainstream media and, by so doing, it played a key, though hitherto unacknowledged, role in the events of Easter 1916.