The Irish Civil War

Law, Execution and Atrocity

Seán Enright

• Publisher: Merrion Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781785372551
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

During the Irish Civil War, eighty-three prisoners were executed after trial by military court. The Irish Civil War: Law, Execution and Atrocity explores the pressures that drove the provisional government to try prisoners for arms offences by military courts, and how, at a time of great crisis, the rule of law evaporated and the new policy morphed into reprisal executions.

More than 125 further prisoners were killed in the custody of the state: kidnapped and shot; tied to landmines and blown up; shot after surrender, 'trying to escape' or even killed under interrogation. These men were killed because they were anti-treaty fighters or because they were suspected of involvement or sympathy with the anti-treaty cause. In the heat of civil war, the inquest system became part of the battle ground where the emerging state connived at the suppression of evidence and turned a blind eye to perjury and cover-up.

At the end of the Civil War, there were 3, 000 dead, over 10, 000 wounded, 13, 000 interned, and many more forced into migration. And in this period of great crisis, the bedrock of law itself had been shattered. This dark, secret corner of Irish history, whose bitter legacy affects society to this day, is uncompromisingly exposed in The Irish Civil War: Law, Execution and Atrocity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Key Events and Main Protagonists
• Author’s Note
• Chapter 1. Jock McPeake
• Chapter 2. A State in Chaos
• Chapter 3. The Origins of the Execution Policy
• Chapter 4. Military Courts and the First Executions
• Chapter 5. Childers
• Chapter 6. Spooner, Farrelly, Murphy and Mallin
• Chapter 7. The Creation of the Irish Free State and the Mountjoy Executions
• Chapter 8. Trial by Army Committee
• Chapter 9. The Rathbride Prisoners
• Chapter 10. The Leixlip Prisoners
• Chapter 11. Christmas and New Year
• Chapter 12. January
• Chapter 13. The Pause in the Executions: February to 13 March
• Chapter 14. The Kerry Landmine Massacres and the Resumption of Executions
• Chapter 15. April
• Chapter 16. Summer and Autumn of 1923
• Chapter 17. Postscript
• Note on Sources
• Select Bibliography
• Endnotes
• Index
• Plates