The idea that 1916 was a simple blood sacrifice or a romantic and spontaneous uprising by a group of fanatics will be parroted out to no end in the coming months. It doesn’t help that this is a revisionist myth. The reality is the Easter Rising was a product of certain conditions, conditions which the Establishment certainly won’t want admit today. The question must be asked, what makes 1916 different from other uprisings like 1798, 1803, 1867? All showed grand feats of heroism and sacrifice. All failed from a military point of view. However, 1916 stands out because it ignited a series of events afterwards – the rise of Sinn Féin, the 1918 election and the first Dáíl, the Tan War and Civil War. Collectively, these events can justly be called the Irish Revolution. However, it would be ridiculous to say a revolution can be caused by the executions of 16 individuals. 1798, 1867 and others  all had executions  and in their own way inspired other uprisings, but yet they did not lead to revolution. But why? It wasn’t that 1916 stood apart in terms of its egalitarian demands – “cherish all the children of the nation equally” and so on. It could be argued the Fenian Proclamation of 1867 was superior to the 1916 proclamation in terms of its social radicalism, demands for the end of the exploitation of labour, appeals to English workers and so on. The firm reality is that  1916 did not set off a revolution;  rather it was itself an event in a wider revolutionary period, in Ireland and Europe. 1916 could not have happened were it not for the Gaelic Revival which began as far back as the late 1800s. This led to a new-found pride in the...