Podcast: Assassination and Execution, Ireland December 1922

Sean Hales, a picture taken not long before his assassination.

Cathal Brennan interviews John Dorney on the assassination of Sean Hales and the reprisal executions of Rory O’Connor, Dick Barret, Lam Mellow and Joe McKelvey in December 1922.

December 1922 was dark time in Ireland, with the Irish Civil War raging. On December 7 1922, two anti-Treaty IRA gunmen shot two TDs Sean Hales and Padraig O Maile, killing Hales.

Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey and Dick Barret, executed December 8 1922.

The following day the government of the Irish Free State decided in reprisal on the most effective, albeit totally illegal, reprisal, the execution of four leading anti-Treatyites, whom they had captured the previous June at the Four Courts.

Here John Dorney and Cathal Brennan discuss this traumatic chapter of Irish history.

See also John Dorney’s recent book on The Civil War n Dublin.

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