Easter Rising Pearse stood outside and read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Copies of the Proclamation were also pasted on walls and handed out to bystanders by Volunteers and newsboys. The GPO would be the rebels' headquarters for most of the Rising. Volunteers from the GPO also occupied other buildings on the street, including buildings overlooking O'Connell Bridge. They took over a wireless telegraph station and sent out a radio broadcast in Morse code, announcing that an Irish Republic had been declared. This was the first radio broadcast in Ireland. Elsewhere, some of the headquarters battalion under Michael Mallin occupied St
John Redmond after 1916 was increasingly eclipsed by ill-health, the rise of Sinn Féin and the growing dominance of Dillon within the Irish Party. June 1917 brought a severe personal blow to Redmond when his brother Willie died in action on the front at the onset of the Battle of Messines offensive in Flanders; his vacant seat in East Clare was then won in July by Éamon de Valera, the most senior surviving commandant of the Easter insurgents. It was one of three by-election gains by Sinn Féin, the small separatist party that had played no part in the Rising, but was