A hundred and ten years from the historic Easter Rising, Irish people everywhere will pause with a quiet solemn act of remembrance. It was Easter Monday 1916 when a small band of brave fighters – teachers, writers, poets, trade unionists – stepped forward in Dublin and dared to declare a republic free of 700 years of British colonial rule. They seized the General Post Office and other buildings, raised the tricolour, and read the Proclamation that promised to cherish “all the children of the nation equally,” Protestant, Catholic and other. Their stand lasted just a few days before overwhelming British violence – “Britannia’s Huns with their long range guns” – crushed it. Yet something shifted forever in the Irish soul, and bells tolled across the Empire: your days are numbered.

The executions that followed — 16 leaders shot, including the wounded socialist and workers’ leader James Connolly tied to a chair — turned military failure into a moral victory. Although the Rising had initially elicited widespread opposition among the Irish people, including in Dublin, the vengeful cruelty of the empire’s response backfired. A quiet rage spread across the country. What began with a brave few grew into the War of Independence, the push for freedom, and the eventual breaking of direct colonial rule over most of the island. 

Their courage reminds us that empires can tremble when even a handful refuse to bow.

Threads of international solidarity

That spirit of defiance never stood alone. From the very beginning, Ireland’s fight found quiet echoes and hands of friendship in distant lands fighting the same empire.

In the 1890s, long before the Rising, Irish votes played a major part in a........

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