Remembering the Past - 100 years ago
• (clockwise from top left) Patrick Doyle, Frank Flood, Bernard Ryan, Thomas Whelan, Patrick Moran and Thomas Bryan
» Mícheál Mac Donncha
100 years ago the British regime executed six IRA Volunteers in Mountjoy Jail, Dublin. They were hanged on the morning of 14 March as tens of thousands of people, including their families, gathered outside the prison and as hundreds of thousands of workers staged a half-day general strike in protest.
The six men were tried by the British Army at Field General Courts Martial in the Council Chamber of Dublin’s City Hall. The City Hall had been seized by the British Army the previous December because the City Council had pledged allegiance to Dáil Éireann and the Irish Republic. Now in a callous and calculated act, the very chamber where the Council met was used to put on trial six soldiers of the Republic, their judges being officers of the Army they had fought against.