Shot at Dawn

Mulvany heads up the Irish branch of the international Shot At Dawn campaign, which is battling to secure exoneration for 26 Irish soldiers who were executed by the British army during World War One.
The campaign has received widespread public support in Ireland and the Irish government has made its view plain to its British counterpart stating that the men deserve to have their names cleared.
The 26, all volunteers, were executed for a variety of offenses, but mostly “desertion.”
However, that term had a very wide application at the time. It might simply mean that a solider failed to be in an appointed place at an appointed time.
It did not necessarily imply that he had fled the ranks, or the battlefield.
One of the executed Irish, Private Patrick Downey from Limerick, was shot for his “disobedience.”
Downey had refused to put on his cap but the charge of disobedience was topped up by an additional charge of refusing to enter the trenches.
Nevertheless, the official reason for Downey’s execution was listed as disobedience. He was shot two days after Christmas in 1915.
James Mullaney, a driver in the Royal Field Artillery, was executed for “striking a sergeant.”
Not infrequently, the driving force behind an execution was not so much the offense as the belief in the British military establishment that examples had to be continually made in order to maintain discipline in the ranks.
In all, the British army executed 346 soldiers during the Great War. 306 of them were shot for offenses that were no longer punishable by death 12 years after the war ended.
In addition to soldiers from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, British firing squads executed men from New Zealand, Canada and, in one case, a boy from Jamaica. Australia, in an early demonstration of independence, refused to allow the British to prosecute its troops.
The British tally for executions exceeded those for both their German enemy, and their French allies during the four years of the war.
As often as not, the courts martial was a rapid affair with execution following the morning after sentencing. If the prisoner was lucky, he would be given some alcohol or morphine just before death.
In recent years, the international campaign sponsored by Shot at Dawn has been knocking heads with the British Ministry of Defense to bestow pardons on the 306 who were shot for offenses other than treason, mutiny and murder.
Successive British governments have, however, been reluctant to admit that wrongs may have been committed by the British military during World War I.
The New Zealand government, impatient over London’s foot-dragging, eventually granted pardons of its own to five New Zealanders who were shot.
The British government has expressed “regret” over the executions. But to date it has not granted any pardons.
Mulvany argues that the executions were arbitrary and irregular.
Apart from that, the offenses with which each Irishman were charged, convicted and summarily executed were repealed by the British authorities in 1930.
Based on the files dealing with each of the soldiers, the Irish government has formally challenged the legal and moral basis for the trial and execution of the 26 Irish soldiers.
“The files describe a military system of justice that ignored clear evidence of medical afflictions and extenuating circumstances in favor of the need of the upper ranks to impose an exemplary disciplinarian regime on the rank and file in an effort to deter others from contemplating a similar crime,” Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has stated.
“Executing a soldier in such circumstances must be seen as clearly unjust, and not deserving of the ultimate penalty.”
Earlier this year the Irish government submitted its views to London in a report that alleged an anti-Irish element to the executions.
The report, details from which were revealed in a Sunday Independent report back in August, describes the treatment meted out to the Irish soldiers as variously “shocking, inconsistent, capricious and unpredictable.”
How official military history ultimately views the executed Irish could soon turn on the outcome of a case being taken in the British courts on behalf of an English soldier shot by firing squad.
Private Harry Farr was executed for cowardice but in a case taken by his descendants it is being argued that Farr, who had refused to fight, was in fact suffering from shell shock and had been treated for the condition.
After being shot Farr’s body was buried in an unmarked grave and his family was denied a military pension.
A High Court case, in which Farr’s family is seeking a conditional pardon, is currently in adjournment but is scheduled for a resumed hearing on Jan. 9.
Peter Mulvany is viewing the entire affair in words that do indeed sound like those of a military commander.
It’s building up now. They [the British government] have to give way somewhere and we’ll be keeping up the pressure from Ireland,” Mulvany said.
He take the view that it is a “disgrace” that Private Farr’s family even had to go to court in the first place.
“If they can grant pardons to people who took part in the Troubles they can pardon fellows who volunteered for their army in World War I. There is enough evidence for pardons,” Mulvany said.
But he has been long enough in the trenches of the Shot At Dawn campaign to know that even at this stage a final victory is not a lock.
“The Ministry of Defense is well used to battening down the hatches,” he said.
The British government, meanwhile, has yet to publicly reply to the Irish government’s report that calls for full pardons for all 26 Irishmen who were executed.
And they were: Patrick Downey, Stephen Byrne, Thomas Hogan, Joseph Carey, Thomas Cummings, Albert Smythe, Thomas Hope, Thomas Davis, Peter Sands, James Graham, James Crozier, James Templeton, J.F. McCracken, James Wilson, James Cassidy, John Bell, James Mullaney, Bernard McGeehan, Samuel McBride, Arthur Hamilton, J. Wishard, Robert Hepple, George Hanna, John Seymour, Benjamin O’Connell, and Patrick Murphy.