The Sinn Féin Rebellion? Arthur Griffith’s Easter Week 1916, The Irish Story, published 5th April 2015.
‘The Sinn Féin Rebellion’ became a popular, though paradoxical, term given to the 1916 Easter Rising during its aftermath.
A commemorative photographic album published by the Irish Times after the insurrection is one such example of how this name was cemented in the popular imagination of the Irish public – and likely even further in the eyes of an unimaginative and confused British administration in Ireland.
The Easter Rising was popularly termed the ‘Sinn Féin Rebellion’ but what was the real role in it of the party and its leader Arthur Griffith?
However, though the Sinn Féin party had certain leadership figures and other combatants amongst its ranks, as an organised body it had absolutely no involvement in the planning or fighting on the rebel side. By the time of the Rising, over a decade since its founding, Sinn Féin was regarded as miniscule, separatist movement on the fringe of Irish nationalist politics; public support mainly given to the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party.