The barrister, poet and educator
Patrick Pearse stepped out onto the steps of Dublin ’s
General Post Office just before one o’clock on a sunny April bank holiday
Monday and read aloud the proclamation declaring an Irish Republic
As news of the first shots of the
Easter Rising reached the news desks at Fleet Street in London , editors quickly realised that this
was more than just a cabbage patch rebellion. Telephone and telegraphic
communications were either cut by the rebels or by the British authorities meaning
Dublin in terms of news was further from London as the British capital was from Moscow .
Two of the three leading Irish
newspapers the Irish Independent and the Freeman’s Journal were off the Dublin streets
as the battle intensified and their offices and printing presses were ablaze
while the Unionist pro-British Irish Times were limited in both publications
and content. Journalists were in the dark and subject to the strict reporting
restrictions of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) which had been introduced
at the outbreak of World War One. There had been a crack down at the start of
April 1916 on many of the nationalist newspapers that flooded the streets of Dublin . On Friday April 1st,
the police raided the offices of the ‘Gaelic Press’ on Liffey Street from where publications
such as The Spark, The Gael and The Gaelic Athlete were published. Liberty
Hall, the headquarters of James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army was also raided
by armed police as they attempted to close the printing press there that issued
‘The Worker’s Republic’ but armed Volunteers forced the police to withdraw and
the paper was printed the next day. Other papers suppressed were ‘The Irish
Freedom’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Scissors and Paste’, ‘The Irish Workers’ and in Cork
‘Fianna Fail’.
The battles of the western front
had dominated the news cycle and front pages globally and Ireland had
almost been forgotten about. Those editors whose reporters were filing for
newspapers and the news wire agencies knew that the large Irish-American population
would be far more interested in the events in Dublin than the French frontline as in April
1916. The United States was still a neutral nation and in the midst of a
Presidential election. Trouble in Ireland would become a media event.
The first trickle of information
began to immerge from the House of Commons on the Tuesday when the Chief
Secretary of Ireland Augustine Birrell made a statement to the House of Commons
in Westminster attempting to minimise the
effects of the rebellion on Ireland .
Birrell announced that there had been grave disturbances in Dublin and that rebels were in control of
four or five parts of the city but that the situation was well in hand. The
debate in the House of Commons itself was held behind closed door and the press
relied solely on official Government communiqués which minimized the impact of
the events unfolding in Ireland.
While all reports in the UK press were copied from official Government
communiqués, the US
press were harder to control and it was done with the use of wireless
telegraphy and Atlantic cables.
Many of the U.S. newspapers
received their news from wire services. In August 1914 the British Government
created the Press Bureau with the intention to gather news and telegraphic
reports from the British Army then censor it and issue the sanitized version to
the press. The Bureau allowed neutral journalists (The US was still neutral in
April 1916) to write their own articles after providing official communiqués.
This was of major importance to American journalists. This helped camouflage
the source of the propaganda, making it more acceptable to the reading public.
The official communiqués reprinted
often without a by-line, simply a 'report from London '
began to appear on Tuesday in New York and Washington with the official line from the UK Government
which had been wireless telegraphed from Caernarvon in Wales via the Press Bureau.
There was however an interesting
piece in the New York Tribune printed on Easter Sunday, the day before the
Rising began with the paper already reporting 'disturbances' in Dublin. 'Rumours
of political rioting have reached Berlin '
began the article which had been sent on the wires from Europe
on Saturday. Despite disbelief by the newspaper in much of the news dispatched
via Amsterdam they did conclude that there was
at that stage serious rioting on the east coast of Ireland and that the areas were
under military control.
The strange aspect to the story is
that the report is attributed to the 'Overseas News Agency' which was in fact a
British covert propaganda operation run by the British in the United States . The ONA would feed
stories to the US
media especially The New York Tribune who having picked up the story would in
turn become the source for other media outlets lending credence to whatever
story the British wanted published.
Back in London Augustine Birrell when responding to a question in the
House of Commons when he said,
‘It had been necessary during the
last few days that news should not reach countries and especially our friends
in America
Hansard
House of Commons Debates
He added that he hoped that the strict censorship would be taken off
soon. But the rebellion was already front page news in the New York Times as it
hit the streets on Tuesday. In Wednesday’s New York Times their report stated,
‘According to a statement of a
prominent leader in Irish American affairs last night (Tuesday), the revolt in
Ireland has spread to a far greater extent than has been given out by the
British authorities. It was affirmed that the news had come from private
sources in Ireland and
received in Brooklyn .’
The Federal Bureau of Investigations had discovered documents in raids
in New York
In a report in New York ’s 'Evening World' on Tuesday, the General
Post Office (GPO) had been captured by rebels but had almost immediately been
retaken by British forces. The 'revolution in Ireland had been planned by the
German Government' was slanting the view and exaggerating the influence of the
Germans in the Rising. In the space of seven paragraphs the rebels were
referred to as 'rebels', 'rioters','revolutionists' and 'a mob'.
British influenced newspapers
referred to the outbreak of fighting in Dublin as ‘riots’, ‘serious riots’,
’disturbances’, ‘grave disturbances’, ‘outrages’, outbreak of alarming
character’, ‘traitorous events’ and ‘Dublin sensation’ while papers in North
America within hours were referring to ‘A Rising’ and ‘A Rebellion’.
Newspapers reported that wireless
messages had been received by Irish American organisations in New York from
Ireland but some papers countered this by stating that was impossible as
'cipher messages out of Ireland were impossible due to a strict British ban on
cipher messages'. And while many of the news reports were certainly fanciful,
rumour based and displayed a vivid imagination by some Irish Americans of
exactly what was happening on the streets of Dublin, we know now that the Ring
brothers did telegraph news of the Rising launch from the Valentia Wireless
station in the early days of the Rising before the British gained control of
Valentia.
II
Wilbur Forrest was the youngest
chief in the history of the United Press wire service. (God within the
Machine). Forrest was born in 1887 in Illinois
the son of a surgeon but rather than a medical career he moved into journalism
joining United Press in Chicago .
He had been the first wire service correspondent to arrive at Queenstown (Cobh)
County Cork France
although certainly not an admirer of the horrors of war. He said covering these
hellish sights were
‘The
glorified dissemination of Government propaganda’
In April 1916 Forrest was twenty
nine years old and was earning *$32.50 per week He had just filed a report that
‘Aristocratic
owners of England ’s
famous country estates are selling their holdings because the war has pinched
them financially. Forrest married Floss Springer in October 1914 and as he
travelled Europe delivering reports his wife
was in April seven months pregnant.
(*Spokesman Review December 27th
1957)
His employer was the United Press
news agency founded in 1907 by E W Scripps. Their main competitor was the
Associated Press that could trace its origins to 1846 New York . The AP had an advantage on its
rival as it used a modern 34 word teletype telegraph system with over two
thousand outlets using their service. The UP was still using Morse code which
required its subscribers to employ a Morse code operator in their offices to
write down the story. The third US based news agency was The International News
Service founded in 1909 by the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
All official Government traffic
would be given priority in war time for telegraphing across the Atlantic
leading to delays of up to twenty four hours to get stories flashed across the
great ocean. The AP by passed much of this log jam by using the more expensive
private telegraphs often from the west coast of France, thus also by passing
official British censorship who would have to clear every word being sent from
Britain. This was costing the news agency $2,000* per day but it was deemed
worth it as they supplied more newsrooms that their rivals.
(*www.csuchico.edu)
On Wednesday morning Forrest made
his way promptly to the UP offices on Bouverie
Street and to his editor Ed Keen who immediately
agreed with him that he should make his way to Dublin . With the words ‘go to it’ still
ringing in his ears he quickly grabbed a travel bag he kept at the offices just
for such a fast deployment and his trusted portable typewriter. He was already
familiar with the routes to Ireland
after his 1915 visit to cover the Lusitania
disaster. He hailed a taxicab and made his way to Paddington railway station to
catch the train that would take him to Fishguard in Wales
and then make his way across the Irish Sea to Rosslare in County Wexford
Once at Paddington he made his way to
the ticket office only to be disappointed as he had just missed the train and
thus his chance to reach Dublin
before any other reporters to obtain the exclusive scoop for his employers, a
journalistic gold medal.
As he stepped away from the ticket
kiosk he met a fellow reporter, the Scottish born Robert Berry from his rival
wire service Associated Press. They mused as to what to do next with returning
to their respective offices not a viable option. At this stage they realised
the folly of both of their original plan of getting a ferry from Fishguard as
this would have meant travelling northwards the ninety five miles to Dublin
through both rebel and Crown forces cordons that may have been set up around
the capital.
A look at the curtailed train timetables
as a result of the war and the military use of the railway lines, they noticed
that a train would depart shortly from Euston Station heading for the naval port of Holyhead
in North Wales . The men shared a cab the short
distance up the Marylebone Road
to Euston Station. As they arrived at the station Forrest realised that as an
American citizen in wartime London
he would have difficulty in purchasing a rail ticket to a British naval port.
But once they got inside the main concourse this problem was overcome as even
though Berry worked for an American news service, his Scottish birth and
British passport allowed his to purchase two tickets without any complicating
questioning or further delays.
They sat overlooked by the large
statue of the civil engineer and railway pioneer George Stephenson in the
waiting room passing the thirty minutes to the departure time for their train
that would transport them the three hundred miles to Holyhead. Suddenly the
station was plunged into darkness as German zeppelins approached the English
capital on yet another bombing raid. There had been three raids earlier that
same month including one the night before. For the fifty people in the waiting
area with the two reporters the minutes ticked slowly by as they waited. The
German airships would use the River Thames as a navigation tool but once they
reached the populated areas their bombs were often widely inaccurate and
therefore the chances of a bomb landing on the railway building was remote.
The British anti aircraft guns opened
up in the afternoon sky attempting to deter the German raiders. An enemy bomb
landed nearby rattling both the building and those intended passengers inside*.
Once the anti aircraft guns fell silent the two journalists nosed outside the
front door and they could see the flames and smoke rising in the aftermath of
the German attack. Despite this being news worthy story they both knew that
anything they would write about the attack would never get passed the British
censor in the War Office. They speculated if the consecutive nights of Zeppelin
raids on the east coast of England had anything to do with the events of
Ireland already aware that a German ship had been captured off the coast of
County Kerry carrying a deadly cargo of weapons and munitions for the intended
rebellion.
(According to www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk the
closest any Zeppelin’s came to London on the night of 24/25th April
was North East of London near Illford when LZ 97 commanded by Erich Linnarz)
The attack had the knock on effect
of delaying train arrivals and more importantly departures at Euston station
until the all clear was given by the military. Nothing seemed to be falling in
their favour but eventually the all clear was given and they made their way
down the platform and boarded their train. A short time later the steam engine
slowly dragged itself out of Euston hurtling across the English countryside
into Wales and eventually
onto the Isle of Anglesey and the port
of Holyhead
Once they arrived in Holyhead train
station, the two men hurried down to the pier towards a British naval destroyer
that seemed to be ready to depart. Half way down the pier their path was
blocked by a Naval Lieutenant. The two reporters explained who they were and
what their mission was.
‘If you men go
to Ireland on that destroyer
and I don’t know even if it is going to Ireland ,
you will board it without the permission of his Majesty’s admiralty in London ’
The command was delivered to the two
men in such a manner to leave them in no doubt that getting permission from London was almost
impossible.
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