“You went on a number of Holts Tours, didn’t you?”

Yes, I did a number of their Western Front tours, went to Gallipoli, the Falklands, Dublin...

“Dublin? There weren’t any wars fought there, were there?”

You’re forgetting the Easter Rising in 1916 when a handful of rebels, despairing of seeing any progress towards self-government, seized a number of important buildings, notably the central GPO, outside which they proclaimed the Irish Republic. They held on to the buildings for almost a week, despite overwhelming numbers of British troops.

Our visit was only a few days long, but it profoundly effected me. My father was Scots, while my mother came from Northern Irish Catholic stock. As I was brought up in Scotland, and my mother died when I was eight, I only ever thought of myself as Scottish. I knew that one of my Irish uncles had some connection to Sir Roger Casement, but I had never explored my Irish side.

We began our tour by retracing the steps of the British reinforcements on their way to the City Centre after the insurrection had started. The rebels – de Valera’s men - had good sniping positions overlooking the main roads at Mount Street Bridge and the poor Tommies – half-trained young boys straight off the boat from the mainland - suffered heavy casualties.

So it started just like any other battlefield tour I had been on. There was an ‘us’ – that was the British - and a ‘them’: the Germans, Turks, or whoever.

The ‘us’ usually started things off by being slaughtered in large numbers.

The difference here was that there was more than one 'us’, but on opposing sides. The tour organisers had cleverly provided two heads, or perhaps a head and a heart..

One was the overall tour director, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army: organised, clear, fair-minded, but loyal to the Crown.

The other was Brian Moroney, teacher, historian and passionately Irish.

Our Colonel and Our Irish Guide

St Enda’s College, Now The Pearse Museum

Brian took us to the Pearse Museum, formerly St Enda’s College, the school that Patrick Pearse opened and ran from 1908.

This was a day when the sun beat down fiercely upon us, exquisitely setting off the squat but elegant school building raised up high on the little hill.

Here was Pádraic Pearse: poet, philosopher, educator, and enthusiast for the Irish language. He encouraged his pupils to think for themselves rather than trying to mould them to his own ideas, and put in place a form of pupil democracy that preceded Neill’s ‘Summerhill’ experiment.

A man who could write the following was no ordinary rebel:

‘One’s life in a school is a perpetual adventure, an adventure among souls and minds; each child is a mystery, and if the plucking out of the heart of so many mysteries is fraught with much in labour and anxiety, there are compensations richer than have ever rewarded any voyagers among treasure-islands in tropic seas’

(from An Macaomh, the St Enda's school magazine, in 1909, quoted in Scéal Scoil Éanna: The Story of An Educational Adventure)

Each time I read these words I hear them spoken in a voice like Liam Neeson's. I feel an atavistic call to a hopeless enterprise I barely understand, but it begs my support.

Bust of Patrick Pearse In the College Grounds

Sean Connolly was the first to die (at City Hall)

Next day we went to see the key places in the city centre. Of course the GPO, the headquarters of the rebels, was the big attraction. They had read out their proclamation of an Irish Republic here, but to scant interest from suspicious passers-by glancing around to see if the police were coming.

Now, in April 1996, more than a dozen of us stood opposite the GPO, huddled up together in the spitting rain in misty O’Connell Street.

The plummy officer-voice of the Colonel boomed on about the great events of 80 Easters ago.

He turned and pointed out places on roofs on the opposite side of the road where marksmen would have lain in wait. As we turned back around, we hunched up our necks ever so slightly, for this was Dublin, openhearted Dublin, welcoming to almost all visitors. But we knew we were being watched.

Surreptitious glances revealed men approaching from several directions: unsmiling men, with white raincoats. One or two of them materialised inside our group and stood there listening in with alarming concentration.

I regretted the Colonel’s bland assumption that we wanted to hear about the events from the view of the English General in charge. (This was the moment my sympathies shifted.)

The Colonel, having spotted the intruders, stopped his monologue. He was certainly not lacking in courage. Using his best voice of command, he let it be known - and in no uncertain terms - that this was a ‘private conversation’ and that they should ‘push off’. There was a standoff – and a glare-off – for about a minute, before the men in white coats vanished as quickly as they had materialised. We hoped they had marked us down as harmless.

We moved forward towards the GPO, a very formidable and impressive building. Passers-by regarded us with equal amounts of curiosity and suspicion, and so shrank away.

The Irish Tricolour Flies Outside The GPO, But Inside?

I went inside expecting to see James Connolly with his fierce mustache, at first a tower of strength, still propped up against the wall gravely wounded. And I expected to see Patrick Pearse still writing manifestos to the last, with his adoring brother Willie beside him, until they were driven out of the blazing GPO.

Instead, by a strange irony, the first thing we saw when we looked inside the GPO was a huge Union Jack. Eire was celebrating its membership of the EU and the flags of all fifteen member-countries flew inside. Some blunderer had hidden the Irish tricolour behind a column and given pride of place to the Union Jack.