Martial law in Dublin

On 27 April 1916 the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, declared in the House of Commons that the government had decided that day that the authorities in Ireland should immediately proclaim martial law throughout the country. General Sir John Maxwell, who left for Ireland that same afternoon, was given full powers, and the Irish administration was to carry out his orders. In Dublin itself martial law had already been in force for two days. The British chronology of the war records it under 27 April, but it was proclaimed on the evening of 25 April, and separate proclamations for the whole of Ireland were dated 26 April. On 27 April the government in London thus publicly confirmed and extended decisions taken in the preceding days.

The first proclamation was issued by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Wimborne, as early as 24 April, the day the Easter Rising broke out. In it he warned that the sternest measures would be used against the rebels and called on the inhabitants not to go out into the streets unnecessarily. On the evening of Tuesday 25 April, while the rebels still held the General Post Office, the Four Courts and several other points in the city, Wimborne proclaimed martial law in the city and county of Dublin for a month. Residents were to stay indoors from 7.30 p.m. to 5.30 a.m., and pubs could open only from 2 to 5 p.m. The next day the curfew was confirmed by an order of the commander of the forces in Ireland, General Lovick Friend, who had returned from England. On 26 April the King signed at Windsor a proclamation suspending in Ireland the right of persons charged with offences under the Defence of the Realm Act to trial by a civil court with a jury. According to the compendium on the Rising published by the “Irish Times” in 1917, a proclamation placing the whole island under martial law for a month was also issued that same day, and on Saturday 29 April it was extended by a further month. Asquith’s words of 27 April suggest, however, that the Cabinet took the decision on the whole of Ireland only on that day, so the sources differ here by a day.

Asquith justified this decision by saying that the movement was beginning to spread, especially in the west of the island, and that the rebels were still holding important public buildings in Dublin. Only the day before he had told the House of Commons that outside Dublin the country was quiet. Meanwhile, on 27 April heavy fighting was going on in the capital. Artillery shelled the east side of Sackville Street and started great fires there, troops stormed the South Dublin Union workhouse, and James Connolly, wounded in the leg, was still directing the defence. The Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell, also arrived in Dublin, but power was already in the hands of the army. Lord Wimborne announced that day that “satisfactory progress” had been made within 48 hours and that large reinforcements had arrived from England.

Maxwell, the former commander of the British forces in Egypt, arrived in Dublin in the early hours of 28 April and replaced Friend as commander-in-chief in Ireland. In his first proclamation he announced that, if necessary, he would destroy all buildings occupied by the rebels. A day later the rebels surrendered. The government later maintained that the trials of the leaders were held not under martial law as such but under the Defence of the Realm Act. They took place before field general courts martial, behind closed doors and without defence counsel. Between 3 and 12 May fourteen condemned men were shot in Kilmainham Gaol. The royal commission that investigated the killings at Portobello Barracks later pointed out that the proclamation of martial law gives soldiers no new powers, and that the shooting of unarmed civilians without trial is murder, whether martial law has been proclaimed or not. The case concerned Captain John Bowen-Colthurst, who on the morning of 26 April had the pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and two editors shot in those barracks, and then pleaded the powers that martial law had supposedly given him.

Martial law did not end with the Rising. At the end of May a new proclamation extended it throughout Ireland “until further notice”, because of the “disaffection and unrest” prevailing there. The army arrested about 3,500 people across the country, including many who had had nothing to do with the Rising, and about 1,800 were deported to prisons and internment camps in Great Britain. Military rule, the executions and the mass arrests quickly alienated from the British even those Irish who had condemned the rebels in April.