An interesting look at the Mac Neill cancellation and on Mac Neill in general as well as, in passing, the politics of the reorganised Sinn Féin party in 1919. The comment about Irish Murdoch’s novel is also interesting.
The common view has it that Eoin MacNeill, the head of the Irish Volunteers at the time of the Easter Rising, was not let in on the plans for a rebellion. He only found out on its eve and put an advertisement in the Irish Independent on Easter Sunday, cancelling the manoeuvres under which rubric the rebel leaders had planned to launch the rebellion. As the Irish Times website section on the Rising puts it, “The militants had to deceive their own official leader, Eoin MacNeill. MacNeill’s position was that the Volunteers should resist, by force if necessary, any attempt to disarm them, but that aggressive action could not be contemplated unless it had a real chance of success.”
For historians, political figures and commentators opposed to republicans, this all shows the lack of morality of the rebel leaders and becomes part of the indictment of the Rising and its…
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