We are coming to the end of our Irish History module and this week in class we have been looking at the passing of the Home Rule Act of 1912 and the 1916 rising. We also went to visit the Asgard Exhibition at the National Museum Collins Barracks. The Asgard was used to smuggle weapons and ammunition into Ireland for the nationalist cause in July 1914. The action was designed to imitate the Larne gun running and other arms smuggling which the unionists in Ulster had undertaken. The nationalists were not as succesful as the unionists, however. While the arms were unloaded by the Irish Citizen Army with relative success, Dubliners lined the streets to jeer the soldiers who had been attempted to stop the unloading of the arms. This prompted the soldiers to open fire on the assembled crowd. They shot dead three and wounded thirty-eight Dubliners. As well as the ship, the exhibition has footage of the returning soldiers as they made their way up the Dublin Quays and of the funerals of those who were killed.
The ship is a wonderful piece of tangible history. My favourite part of the exhibition (a part from the Asgard itself) is this wonderful image of the ‘Home Rule egg’ which shows the building tension in Ireland from 1912 when it became clear that the Home Rule bill would pass into law. The Ulster Covenant signed on 28 September 1912 showed that while the bill had passed through parliament, a sizeable portion of the Ulster population were prepared to do everything in their power to stop the introduction of Home Rule. It’s amazing how such a simple image can capture the complexities of the politics of the day. It also fits nively with our next visit which will be to see the Hugh Lane exhibition ‘Revolutionary States: Home Rule and Modern Ireland’
Cultural and Heritage Studies Course at the National Print Museum 