Executions during the Irish Civil War
From November 1922, the pro-treaty provisional later Free State government embarked on a policy of executing Republican prisoners in order to bring the war to an end.
[1] Michael Collins, commander of the pro-treaty National Army, had hoped for a speedy reconciliation of the warring Irish nationalist factions, demanding that anti-treaty Republicans must accept the people's verdict and then could go home without their arms stating that "We want to avoid any possible unnecessary destruction and loss of life.
After the Anti-Treaty side moved to guerrilla tactics in August–September, the pro-treaty National Army casualties mounted and they even lost control over some of the territory taken in the Irish Free State offensive.
[7][8][9] At least two Irish historians in their recently published histories of the civil war have devoted a chapter each to discussing the fictitious "Public Safety Act" which is widely referenced in the academic literature.
The Republican, or Anti-Treaty, members had refused to take their seats in the Parliament and the opposition to the measures was provided by the Labour Party, who likened the legislation to a military dictatorship.
On 10 October, the Catholic Hierarchy issued a pastoral letter condemning the Anti-Treaty IRA Volunteers, ending with: "All who in contravention of this teaching, participate in such crimes are guilty of grievous sins and may not be absolved in Confession nor admitted to the Holy Communion if they persist in such evil courses.
[22] From now on, the Free State, armed with updated military courts, the support of the Roman Catholic church and of much of the Press, was prepared to treat the IRA fighters as criminals rather than as combatants.
Childers was a well-known Republican - it was on his boat, the Asgard, that the guns had been brought in during the Howth gun-running - he was a renowned columnist, novelist, and a member of the Anglo-Irish, Protestant landowning family of Glendalough House, Annamoe, County Wicklow.
[27] In response to the executions, on 30 November, Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA, ordered that any member of Parliament (TD) or senator who had signed or voted for the "murder bill" ( i.e. Army Resolution) should be shot on sight.
Historian Michael Hopkinson reports that Richard Mulcahy had pressed for the executions and that Kevin O'Higgins was the last member of cabinet to give his consent.
This department was separate from the Civic Guard, later the Garda Síochána, the ordinary unarmed Irish police force and Army Military Intelligence.
After their successful attack on Kenmare on 9 September, the Anti-Treaty IRA shot National Army officer Tom "Scarteen" O'Connor in their home on Main Street.
Five Free State soldiers were killed by a booby trap bomb, and another seriously injured, while searching a Republican dugout at the village of Knocknagoshel, County Kerry, on 6 March 1923.
This constituted the largest loss of life in a single event for the Free State forces since the Battle of Dublin at the start of the civil war in June 1922.
[42] That night, 6/7 March, nine Republican prisoners who had previously been tortured, with bones broken with hammers, were taken from Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee to Ballyseedy crossroads and tied to a land mine which was detonated, after which the survivors were machine-gunned.
The Free State troops in nearby Tralee had prepared nine coffins, unaware of Fuller's escape, and the Dublin Guard released nine names to the press, the fabrication hastily changed when they realised their mistake.
There was a riot when the bodies were brought back to Tralee, where the enraged relatives of the killed prisoners broke open the coffins[43] in an effort to identify their dead.
[47] Free State officer Lieutenant Niall Harrington has suggested that reprisal killings of Republican prisoners continued in Kerry up to the end of the war.
When questioned in the Dáil by Labour Party leader Thomas Johnson, Richard Mulcahy, the National Army's commander-in-chief, supported Daly's story.
A military Court of Inquiry conducted in April 1923 - chaired by the chief suspect Daly himself - cleared the Free State troops of the charge of killing their prisoners.
Before leaving Ballymullen barracks in Tralee, Free State officers took some of the nine Republican prisoners into a room and showed them the coffins which had been prepared for them, according to author, historian and researcher Owen O’Shea,[50] in a podcast by the Irish Times published to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre on 6 March 2023.
Dorothy Macardle in her 1924 book Tragedies of Kerry, cited both eyewitness accounts and local newspaper reports of the horrific scene of the massacre after it took place.
On Monday 12 March 1923, the five Republican prisoners were taken from the workhouse by members of the 'visiting committee' and killed with a mine in the same manner at those at Ballyseedy and Countess Bridge the previous week.
"[54][42] [44] Documents released by the Irish Department of Justice through the National Archives in 2008 show that the Free State Cabinet was aware that the Army's version of events was untrue.
The records[56] show that the victims of the killings in Bahaghs were Michael Courtney jnr, Eugene Dwyer, Daniel Shea, John Sugrue and William Riordan.
Unsurprisingly, the inquiry cleared all of the Free State officers and men of any wrongdoing and laid the blamed for the deaths on the actions of Anti-Treaty Republicans laying the mine.
[60] Giving his evidence to the Inquiry captain James Clark, Kerry Command, named colonel David Neligan as the officer who selected the prisoners who were killed.
According to historian Tom Mahon, the Irish Civil War, "effectively ended," on 10 April 1923, when the Free State Army mortally wounded IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch during a skirmish in County Tipperary.
[65] The 2006 film The Wind That Shakes the Barley climaxes with an IRA guerrilla being executed by a firing squad commanded by his own brother, who supports the Free State.
O'Rourke follows the Irish Civil War from a Republican perspective in Dublin and includes details of the reprisal executions carried out by the Free State.
