Dublin Protestants and the Easter Rising

On Thursday 24 March at 1 pm the Dublin Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green is holding a lunchtime public talk on ‘Dublin Protestants and the Easter Rising’.  The speaker will be Dr Martin Maguire, senior lecturer at Dundalk Institute of Technology, who is well-known as a historian of Irish Protestantism and former speaker at the Church of Ireland Historical Society (see archive). He has published many articles and book essays on the history of Irish Protestantism, with a particular focus on the workings of social class identities within Irish Protestant culture.

This talk will consider the reaction of Dublin Protestants to the Easter Rising. While for most of them the Rising only served to confirm them in their strong unionism and loyalty to the Crown, a small number of young Protestant men and women (e.g. Harry Nicholls and Kathleen Lynn), who saw themselves as bearers of a radical dissenting tradition, participated as republican rebels.

The event is open to members of the public and is free of charge. This is the final talk of four talks the committee of the Dublin Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green is organising on aspects relating to Dublin in 1916.