The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The people of Dublin at first execrated the rebels: the business community because of the destruction caused, chiefly by British shelling, during the week-long fighting; while the working class were stirred to wrath by the ‘separation women’, who were receiving separation allowances because their husbands were fighting in the war, and who viewed the proceedings as stabbing the lads abroad in the back. Prisoners were booed as they were led to the dock for transhipment to prisons in England. However, British policy soon had the effect of swinging the popularity pendulum in the opposite direction. Sixteen of the rising’s leaders were executed, including all seven signatories of the Proclamation of a Republic for all Ireland. The rising had begun with the reading of it on the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin.