Republican News · Thursday 28 November 2002

Civil War executions begin

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MÍCHEÁL MacDONNCHA begins a series of articles marking the 80th anniversary of the Civil War

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The winter of 1922 was one of the most tragic in the entire history of Ireland as the bitterness and destructiveness of the Civil War deepened and casualties increased. One of the main reasons for the escalation was the Provisional Government's policy of executing republican prisoners of war.

On 10 October the Catholic bishops had issued a Joint Pastoral putting their full weight behind the Free State and condemning the IRA's actions as "morally only a system of murder and assassination". Five days later the Free State government established Military Courts. Republicans were offered the choice of surrendering to the Free State army with their arms or facing sentence of death if captured in possession of arms or ammunition.

Erskine Childers was secretary of the Irish delegation in London which negotiated the Articles of Agreement (the 'Treaty') a year earlier. He opposed the Treaty and was a close confidante of de Valera. He was also a friend of Michael Collins and it was a small automatic pistol given him by Collins that was to seal his fate. Captured in County Wicklow, Childers was put on trial by the Military Court on 17 November. The press and public were excluded from the hearing.

Childers was an object of particular enmity on the part of both the Free State and British governments. He was a brilliant publicist for the republican cause during the Tan War, exposing the atrocities of the British forces to a world audience. He edited the republican newspaper Poblacht na hÉireann during the Civil War. He was seen by the British establishment as 'one of their own' who had betrayed them. When he was arrested, Winston Churchill described him as "the mischief-making murderous renegade, Erskine Childers".

Because he was part of the London delegation and had brought his critical analysis effectively to bear on the Treaty in the Dáil debates, he incensed Arthur Griffith, who described him as a "damned Englishman". Childers was Irish and accepted as such by his comrades during the Tan War. The use of the term Englishman as an insult was repeated in the Free State parliament by Kevin O'Higgins on the day of Childers' 'trial'.

That same day, 17 November, the execution policy commenced. Four Volunteers of the IRA's Dublin Brigade were executed for possession of revolvers. They were Peter Cassidy, John Gaffney, James Fisher and Richard Twohig.

O'Higgins told the Free State parliament that they had chosen to begin the executions with rank and file Volunteers because if they chose "some man who was outstandingly wicked in his activities, the unfortunate dupes throughout the country might say that he was killed because he was a leader, because he was an Englishman". This was while Childers' sentence had yet to be confirmed. Because the court was in camera it was not known publicly that the only charge against him was possession of a weapon. O'Higgins had given the impression that the charge was much more serious.

Childers was executed by firing squad in Beggars Bush Barracks on 24 November while an appeal on a writ of habeas corpus was pending in the High Court. The judge expressed shock a few days later when told that the prisoner had already been executed.

"I have fought and worked for a sacred principle, the loyalty of the Nation to its declared Independence and repudiation of any voluntary surrender to conquest and inclusion in the British Empire," wrote Childers in his last statement. Many others were to pay the same price. Volunteers Joseph Spooner, Patrick Farrelly and John Murphy were arrested near Oriel House at the top of Westland Row, the headquarters of the Free State Criminal Investigation Department, which was notorious for torture of prisoners. The three Volunteers were executed on 30 November 1922, 80 years ago this week.