Many who wrote to Cosgrave invoked the ghost of her late brother, Terence, who had died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison during the War of Independence in the words of one letter writer, “I pleaded with English people to use their influence to try and save the life of the late Lord Mayor of Cork when he was hunger striking in England. Women even protested in the grounds of Dr Byrne’s residence. The Cork republican Mary MacSwiney was notable in this regard after her arrest, and her plight in November 1922 attracted much attention and sympathy. The Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Edward Byrne, also exerted pressure when it came to the issue of the hunger strikes of republican prisoners. I see here in prison the injury done to the souls of splendid men by the reckless attitude of the hierarchy.” Happy to suffer for Ireland
BROTHER BEAR AND CIVIL WAR FREE
One republican prisoner, Frank Gallagher, publicly criticised the bishops for their “partisan excess” and a pastoral that “presses into theological use the catch-cries and terms of abuse of the Free State party. Throughout the revolution there were responses to political and military controversies that were complex and variegated. While the provisional government could rely on the support of a number of vocal Catholic bishops who were conveniently mute on the issue of executions, republicans were not without their clerical supporters at home and abroad, which meant complete alienation was never a possibility. There is, nonetheless, evidence that the National Army was instructed to treat republican prisoners being prepared for execution “with the utmost humanity”, the words used in one National Army HQ communication.
But unofficial killings occurred anyway, including those of three teenage Fianna Éireann members from Drumcondra who were arrested for putting up anti-Treaty posters and then killed. One of the arguments used by Richard Mulcahy, as minister for defence and commander-in-chief of the National Army, was that permitting official executions would prevent National Army troops from carrying out unofficial killings. The previous month 32 had been executed, and by the end of the Civil War the government had authorised the execution of 77 this was 53 more than the British had executed during the War of Independence 11,480 republicans were jailed under the public-safety legislation. Dan Breen, who led an IRA column in Tipperary during the Civil War, told his fellow republicans: “in order to win this war you’ll need to kill 3 out of every 5 people in the country and it isn’t worth it.” Official executionsĪ measure of the ruthless resolve of the National Army council was evident in its order of February 1923: “In every case of outrage in any battalion area, three men will be executed. Perhaps this realism was also beginning to affect the republican self-declared “men of faith”. It is a sad thing to say, but it is nevertheless the case” he could also be chilling in his resolve: “I am not going to hesitate and if the country is to live and if we have to exterminate 10,000 republicans, the 3 millions of our people are bigger than the ten thousand.” In February 1923 Cosgrave’s analysis was that “the executions have had a remarkable effect. This development marked the end of any faltering hopes for compromise between the pro- and anti-Treaty sides. In September 1922 the Public Safety Act empowered military courts to impose the death sentence.
Cosgrave and his colleagues remained wedded to a ruthless military and political strategy that ensured, by May 1923, a decisive win over the republicans and the end of the Civil War. In the aftermath of the sudden death of Arthur Griffith and the killing of Michael Collins, in August 1922, William T Cosgrave became chairman of the provisional government to which the British had transferred their powers after the Dáil’s ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.