Books TU Dublin Grangegorman
2020

Walking through the Wars: From Grangegorman to the Four Courts.
During the War of Independance and the Civil War

Sean O’hOgain
Technological University Dublin, Sean.Ohogain@tudublin.ie

Thomas Power
Technological University Dublin, thomas.power@tudublin.ie

Collins before the treaty and the War of Independence.

Childers was tried by military tribunal and sentenced to death. It was the assassination of Collins that lead to the establishment of military tribunals under the Army Emergency Powers Resolution.
On Saturday 18 November 1922, an application for habeas corpus was made at
the home of Sir Charles O’Connor, Master of the Rolls. The following Monday, 20
November, the habeas corpus hearing was opened in the Kings Inn Hall. The Four
Courts was, at the time, uninhabitable, following its destruction at the outbreak of
the Civil War. A variety of legal arguments were advanced on behalf of Mr. Childers
over the course of a three-day hearing. It appears that the partial purpose of this
may have been to simply delay Mr Childers’ execution for as long as possible so that
clemency might be granted by the Free State government. Quite a large number of
people petitioned the Free State government not to execute Childers. At the end of
the third day of hearing, Michael Comyn, for Mr. Childers, asked that the case be
adjourned to a fourth day. Despite Mr Comyn’s assertion that he was exhausted and
could not do full justice to his client, the Master of the Rolls decided that the case
had been argued in full. He delivered his judgment immediately, by candlelight.
The application to adjourn for a fourth day was refused. Ironically Childers, an
Irish nationalist who in 1914 had imported arms for the Irish Volunteers, was
about to be executed on the orders of a provisional government which arose from
a treaty which he had helped negotiate but ultimately repudiated. An appeal was
lodged immediately, but Childers was nevertheless executed the following morning,
Thursday 23 November 1922, at Beggars Bush barracks.

The question addressed by Sir Charles O’Connor, in response to the defence, as to
whether or not a “state of war” existed thus justifying the use of military tribunals
makes interesting reading. He declared that

“I am sitting here in this temporary
makeshift for a Court of Justice. Why? Because one of the noblest buildings in this country,
which was erected for the accommodation of the King’s Courts and was the home of justice
for more than a hundred years, is now a mass of crumbling ruins, the work of revolutionaries,
who proclaim themselves soldiers of an Irish Republic.
I know also that the Public Record Office (a building that might well have been spared even
by the most extreme of irreconcilables) has been reduced to ashes, with its treasures, which
can never be replaced.
I know also that railways have been torn up, railway stations destroyed, the noblest mansions
burned down, roadways made impassable, bridges blown up, and life and property attacked
in almost every county in Southern Ireland.

If this is not a state of war, I would like to know what is”.