If all went to plan, what sort of Rising might it have been?

Professor Joe Lee ponders how different things might have been but for so many mishaps in 1916

To speak of the ‘planning’ of the Rising may seem a contradiction in terms given that hardly anything that the rebels envisaged actually worked out the way they had originally planned.

In fact, the actual Rising was a highly improvised one, cobbled together at a day’s notice in the crisis meeting of the rebel leaders in Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday. It took place after the publication in that morning’s Sunday Independent of Eoin MacNeill’s countermanding order of the Irish Volunteers “manoeuvres” which the Irish Republican Brotherhood had planned for that day, Easter Sunday.