British should ‘exonerate’ executed of 1916 as part of commemoration

When Britain’s Queen Elizabeth addressed Ireland in Dublin Castle, in May, 2011, she said that the events of our mutual history had touched us all and, with the benefit of hindsight, we could all see things that should have been done differently; that in 2011 the peoples and the governments of Britain and Ireland enjoyed bonds that were based on understanding and reconciliation.

Her sentiments were warmly and widely welcomed.

In September, 2006, the British government, through the ministry of defence, issued a general statutory pardon to 300 British military personnel, including 26 born in Ireland, who had been executed for a range of disciplinary offences during the First World War — based on charges that were likely to have been influenced by the stresses associated with war, for example: desertion, cowardice and mutiny.

This pardon was to formally recognised that those executions were undeserved.

When we commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Rising, we will be remembering 15 men who were executed in callous circumstances. Their fate followed secret, drumhead, field general courts-martial, presided over by three military officers who had no legal training, on a charge of engaging in armed rebellion and the waging of war against His Majesty the King that was calculated to be prejudicial to the defence of the realm. The accused had no legal representation, nor right of appeal, and they were executed in cold blood, before dawn, within 24 hours of brief courts-martial that typically lasted no longer than 20 minutes. Such a process would contravene all current global treaties governing the treatment of military prisoners and capital punishment is, of course, no longer permissible in Britain.

Today, the combined imports, exports and investment of Ireland in Britain, and vice versa, are worth in excess of €410bn. The context of the Anglo-Irish relationship has a different strategic character and enormous economic significance. Therefore, should the Government not request of the British that they offer a general statutory declaration of moral innocence, without prejudice, to those executed by courts-martial in 1916 as an important component of our commemoration? Our collective outlook, throughout the next 100 years, might be less likely blinded by the grave and lamentable injustices of a century ago, and less likely frozen in the myopic judgement of a realm that dominated the globe in the era of the steamship and the telegraph.

Myles Duffy

Bellevue Ave

Glenageary

Co Dublin