Unarmed civilians and "Irish rebels" were shot during the 1916 Easter Rising on British orders not to take prisoners, according to War Office files released at the Public Record Office in London yesterday.
The files, which were closed under the 100-year rule but revealed now as part of Labour's policy of open government, provide details of soldiers shooting civilians, suspected of taking part in the Rising, without trial.
In a report written in June 1916 to the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, the permanent secretary to the Home Department, Sir Edward Troup, observed that the source of "mischief" was the military order not to take prisoners. "This in itself may have been justifiable - but it should have been made clear that it did not mean that an unarmed rebel might be shot after he had been taken prisoner . . . still less could it mean that a person taken on mere suspicion could be shot without trial."
Sir Edward also referred to the shooting of James Moore outside a house in Little Britain Street in Dublin. Moore was killed by a shot fired by a group of British soldiers in the street, but the soldiers' senior officer, "Serjeant Flood," went to the house after the shooting to express his regret. Sir Edward told Asquith that Moore was "probably a perfectly innocent person, and his being shot must be regarded as an accident. I have no doubt, however, that if the evidence were published there would be a demand that Flood should be tried for murder."
Legal advice given to the government in 1917, when Asquith had been replaced as Prime Minister by David Lloyd George, warned against publishing the proceedings of courtsmartial, many of which were held in camera in the days after the Rising when martial law had been declared. "There are one or two cases in which the evidence is extremely thin."
A legal official adds: "Nor do I think it would be wise if, for example, we were to publish the evidence in the case of Edmund Kent and we had to publish the fact that he summoned as one of his witnesses Thomas McDonagh, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, and we had to state that Thomas McDonagh was not available as a witness as he was shot that morning."
Eamonn Ceannt was executed on May 8th, 1916.