From 1900, John Redmond was leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), leading demands for Home Rule for Ireland. The issue had dominated Irish life for half a century, and had a major influence on British politics too. By 1912, the ruling Liberals depended on support from Irish nationalists, ensuring Home Rule was top of the agenda.

Shortly before a Bill was brought before the Commons, the IPP staged a show of strength in Dublin city centre. It was a remarkable rally, with 150,000 people packed into Sackville Street.

The editor wrote: "Yesterday's demonstration was impressive in its proportions; it was still more impressive by reason of its representative character ….. bringing together nationalists of all shades of opinion to proclaim their adhesion to the principle of Irish Nationality."

Before the rally, Redmond visited the Mansion House, but the event was marred by scuffles outside involving Suffragetteswhile the activist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington showered women's suffrage leaflets from an upstairs window.

The Independent sent along one of the most respected journalists of the era, Jacques McCarthy, 'Jacques' conveyed much of the excitement of the day: "The most dramatic moment was the resonant salutation which followed the singing of A Nation Once Again. The spectacle of this exulting multitude moved by its own poetic and patriotic fervor grasped one's imagination like a great drama. This incident of A Nation Once Again was history made audible - past, present and future ringing down the ages."

In an "unusually short" speech of 19 and a half minutes, Redmond addressed the unionist minority, saying "they might repudiate Ireland, but Ireland would never repudiate them."

There were dozens of speakers on four platforms around the street. They included Professors Eoin MacNeill and Tom Kettle, and MPs John Dillon, Willie Redmond and JP Nannetti. Down on Platform No 3 at the corner of Abbey Street, a little-known Gaelic League activist called Patrick Pearse made a speech in Irish in support of the Home Rule Bill, but warned, "If we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and I am one of them, that will advise the Gael to have no counsel or dealing with the Gall but to answer henceforward with the strong arm and the sword's edge… If we are cheated once more there will be red war in Ireland."

The Bill was moved 12 days later, and opposed by unionists and Sinn Féin. Debate raged for two years, but just before the King was to sign it into law the Great War broke out and the deal was shelved.

Just four years after his speech, and just across the street, Pearse read aloud the Proclamation that heralded the Easter Rising. He was executed days later. In March 1918, nine months after his brother Willie was killed fighting in Flanders, John Redmond died "broken-hearted".

March 31, 1912

Sixty-four special trains headed toward the capital from every corner of the country, bearing somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people into Sackville (O’Connell) Street.

They had come for the "monster meeting". The third Home Rule Bill was before Westminster, and after forty years of constitutional agitation, near-misses and betrayals and the wreckage of Parnell, it actually looked like it might pass. 

Four platforms had been erected along the street. At the platform nearest the freshly unveiled Parnell Monument stood John Redmond leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, the man who had done more than anyone alive to keep that monument relevant. 

Redmond spoke for just under twenty minutes. He invoked O'Connell, the only Irish politician whose crowds could match this one in scale. O'Connells monster meetings of the 1840s were the ghost this gathering had been summoned to outdo. He told the crowd that no meeting in the modern history of Ireland had been as vast, as orderly, as unified, and as representative as this one. 

However fatally, one section of the country was not represented. In the northeast of the island, Ulster unionists had already been organizing against the Bill with a fervor that was matching, and in some ways exceeding, the nationalist movement's own. 

On the third platform that day in Sackville Street stood a schoolteacher, poet and cultural nationalist named Patrick Pearse. He was there with reluctance. His nationalism at this point was more cultural than political. 

But he said "I should think myself a traitor to my country if I did not answer the summons to this gathering," he told the crowd, "for it is clear to me that the Bill which we support today will be for the good of Ireland and that we shall be stronger with it than without it."

Then the warning."Let the English understand, he said, that if Ireland was cheated once more, there would be red war".

August 1915 at the funeral of Fenian leader Jeramiah O’Donovan Rossa 

-The defenders of this realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us, and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything. They think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

April 24th 1916, Pearse would stand on the steps of the GPO, on the same street, and read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The Home Rule Bill had passed. It had also, thanks to the outbreak of the First World War, been suspended indefinitely. Ireland had been cheated once more.