this monday will mark 70 years since the execution of Charlie Kerins ,,,,,Kerins was born in Caherina, Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland and attended Balloonagh Mercy Convent School and then the CBS, Edward Street. At the age of 13, he won a Kerry County Council scholarship and completed his secondary education at the Green Christian Brothers and the Jeffers Institute. In 1920, Kerins passed the Intermediate Certificate with honours and the matriculation examination to the NUI. He later did a commercial course and took up employment in a radio business in Tralee. Kerins was also active in the Gaelic Athletic Association and in 1939 won a county medal in football with his local team, ORahillys, now renamed the Kerins ORahillys in his honour.In 1940, Great patriots, everywhere, earn the respect and loyalty of their friends and comrades, but only the greatest win the admiration of even those who oppose them, Charlie Kerins, who dedicated his life to the age-old struggle to secure a free and united Ireland, stands in that front rank. At every stage of his life, he impressed all who knew him by his truehearted courage and generous spirit. From his youth in Tralee, during his service as Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, and until he died upon the gallows tree in Mountjoy Jail on the First Friday in December in 1944, he stands out as a sincere Irish patriot. Despite the vicious attempt to demean him by the cruel sentence imposed, even the prison governor who supervised the execution that fateful morning admitted publicly long after he had retired from the prison service: Charlie Kerins was the bravest man I ever saw die by hanging. Charlie Kerins, born on 23 January l9l8 in Caherina (sometimes spelled Caheranne), Tralee, carried from his origins and from his youth the noble and unyielding spirit of Republican Kerry. He came of a family with a proud tradition and an unbroken record of steadfast loyalty to the cause of Ireland. His father, Tom Kerins, was widely known as an authority on Irish and local history and won respect on all sides as an honorable man. In his trade as a builder if some job that he had worked on did not come up to his own high standards on completion, Tom Kerins would refuse to accept any payment for his work. Charlies beloved mother Johanna Griffin, of another well respected family, was a native of Curraghraigue, Blennerville: she died while Charlie was young. People in the Strand Road area still remember Charlie as a lively, upright and obliging young boy. In school he proved highly intelligent, first in Balloonagh Mercy Convent School and then at the Christian Brothers Schools, Edward Street, where at age l3 he won the coveted Kerry County Council Scholarship. He completed his Secondary Education at the Green CBS and later at the Jeffers Institute, where he had as tutor Fr. Donal Herlihy, who as a child had been shot and wounded when a lorry - load of Crown Forces indiscriminately opened fire on a group of school children playing on the Fair Green in Knocknagree, Co. Cork, in 1920, Charlie passed the Intermediate Certificate with Honours and the Matriculation of the National University. He later studied a Commercial Course and took his first employment with Fennells Radio Business, Ashe Street, Tralee. In 1940, soon after the outbreak of World War Two, Charlie joined the IRA. In May 1942 he moved to Dublin as a member of Head Quarters Staff. By then, the situation had become critical as the Free State Government, using the War as a pretext, stepped up its attacks on the Republican movement. They introduced coercion under the Emergency Powers Act, raided homes, censored the media and suppressed meetings. They harassed, arrested and Interned Republicans without trial in the Curragh Concentration Camp. Though claiming to act as a Republican Party, in practice they acted as a military garrison, supporting and collaborating with the British and Six-County regimes in a concerted effort to hold Ireland for England and wipe out as enemies of the state all who stood for a free 32 County Ireland. Charlie and his comrades went underground, or on the run, daily risking capture in Dublin and throughout the country as they worked night and day to keep the spirit of the Irish Republic alive. Sometimes, they cycled (petrol rationing during the Emergency meant no cars) into patrols, but Charlies quick thinking and sense of humour (he often had the guards laughing at some joke he would make) brought them out of difficulties on many occasions. During a football match in Galway, Kerrys attendant Gaffney Duggan heard a hail from the sideline from someone he first took for a Christian Brother - Charlie in disguise! Kerry people knew and loved their man. Tralee-born Guard Joe Sugrue, when asked by his superiors to go on special mission - with a promise of promotion - to hunt down Charlie, threw off the uniform rather than betray his fellow townsman. Author Dervla Murphy tells how, as a child in Lismore, Co. Waterford, she felt surprised when a young man climbed across the 8-foot wall and crossed her backyard to her house. She felt no alarm even then, she said , because Charlie looked so amiable and vulnerable. She describes him as tall, broad shouldered and handsome. He spoke in a Kerry accent, calling himself Pat Carney. He stayed some time with them, treating her with kindness, before moving to the house of her aunt, Dr. Kathleen Farrell, in No. 50 Upper Rathmines Road, Dublin. Still, many key figures got captured, North and South. That, at best, meant spending the best years of their lives in jails; those in the North faced Crumlin Road or the floating hulks; those in the South languished in Mountjoy, Arbour Hill, Portlaoise - or behind barbed wire in the Curragh. Others made the supreme sacrifice, like Tom Williams, hanged in Belfast Jail, on September 1942. That execution aroused public opinion throughout the South, even rank-and-file members of the Free State government party felt outrage at the hanging of a young freedom-fighter. A protest meeting filled Dublins Mansion House and overflowed down Dawson Street. Business premises closed and the Last Post sounded in military barracks throughout the State. Only a few months later, in November 1942, their own government showed its real agenda by having Maurice ONeill of Caherciveen shot by firing squad in Mountjoy. They went on to hang Charlie Kerins. Then. the forces of the Free State put down all protests with an iron fist. BETRAYAL AND CAPTURE Following the capture of Hugh McAteer, in October 1942, Charlie became Chief of Staff. That same month the R.U.C. arrested his Adjutant Michael Quille in Belfast and handed him across the border. In Dublin, on 4 July 1943, Special Branch men followed Jackie Griffith as he cycled along Holles Street and, without warning, riddled him with a Thompson gun. By then, with so many comrades arrested, interned and shot-on-sight, the I.R.A. had become a depleted and scattered army. With a price on his head by now, Charlie knew that he at all times risked betrayal by spies or getting shot on sight by the group of Free State detectives who hunted everywhere for him. Still, he risked his life on more than one occasion to bring his men to safety. On l5 June 1944, information came to Dublin Castle that Charlie could be arrested at the home of D r. Kathleen Farrell, in Rathmines Road. Having surrounded and trained machine-guns on the house, at 5a.m., detectives wearing bullet-proof vests removed a lock from a side door, crept in their stockinged feet through the house and went straight to the room where Charlie, exhausted, lay asleep. He awoke to find a machine-gun pointed at him at close range. A SHAM COURT & BOUGHT JUDGES CONDEMNED CHARLIE KERINS On a charge of the shooting at Rathfarnham of Detective Dinny OBrien. Charlies trial opened on Monday 2nd October 1944 in Collins Barracks, Dublin, before the notorious Special Court set up to deal harshly with Republican prisoners. During his six-day trial, Charlie bore himself bravely, with a silent dignity that shamed those who purported to act as his judges. This was no ordinary trial in a court of Justice, but a Free State Military Tribunal appointed for the sole purpose of condemning Republicans as a threat to British rule in the North of Ireland and to the collaborationist regime in the South of the country. Charlie refused to recognise the court, regarding it as a Free State junta, not properly constituted nor in accordance with the Irish Republic. He did not plead, nor call witnesses. His prosecutors had no evidence against him. They made much of a finger-print on an abandoned bicycle found near the scene of the shooting, at Bolton Hill Lodge, but did not - or could not - show that it had any connection to the event in question. Their ballistics expert, who had examined bullets found at the scene, admitted that a gun found in Charlies room was not used there. None of the people who witnessed the shooting at Rathfarnham identified him. The State Prosecutor, admitting that he had no direct identification, lamely described his victim as not only a member of the IRA but one of the higher-ups. He then read from a book outlining how an accused person could be convicted on circumstantial evidence according to precedents in the laws of England. At that stage, Charlie spoke (his only comment during the proceedings) to point out the difference between that case, before a jury, and the present arraignment before a non jury sentencing tribunal. NO CASE!” AGAINST HIM Despite their having no evidence against him, the members of this sham court went through the motions of giving him a semblance of a trial before handing down their fatal sentence. At the end of the week, the judges seemed uncomfortable with the dignified silence of their prisoner and adjourned their one-sided hearing for the week-end. On Monday, October 9th, the Court President addressed him: Charles Kerins, the Court adjourned this case on Friday in order to give you a further opportunity of considering your position. Do you now wish to make any application to the court? You could adjourn it for six years as far as I am concerned, replied Charlie, because my attitude to this Court will always be the same! Asked three times if he wished to say anything more, Charlie firmly answered: No! When pronounced Guilty and asked: Have you, Charles Kerins, anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon you? he merely said: All I can say is that if the Free State authorities are satisfied that I got a fair trial here, I hope their consciences are clear on that point. If this is an example of de Valeras justice, freedom and democracy, then I would like to know what dictatorship and militarism are. That is about all I have to say. On the following day, Sean MacBride S.C. and Noel Hartnett B.L. (instructed by Con Lehane, solicitor) moved to appeal the obviously unjust verdict. Mr. MacBride pointed out that ( I ) the Special Court had accepted inadmissible statements, (2) had relied on methods of identification previously rejected, (3) had proceeded as if the accused had shot Detective OBrien in association with another man, Michael Quille, although Michael Quille had already been acquitted by the court and (4) on grounds of general lack of real evidence. Despite all this, he was refused leave to appeal. FREE STATE TAKES EXTRAORDINARY STEPS TO PUT OUT THE LIGHT The Free State Government and its agents then went to extreme lengths to ensure Charlies execution. They pulled out all the stops. To ensure against a rising groundswell of public opinion against the execution, they imposed a ban on radio and also on all newspaper information about the event. They stopped telegrams from Dublin that mentioned a campaign to halt the sentence. When various Local Councils called for reprieve of the sentence, the Official Censor did not allow newspapers to print one word about their resolutions. When Kerry County Council called for a public meeting at the Mansion House, Dublin, detectives arrested twenty six people for putting up the advertisements of the meeting. Armed Special Branch men in squad cars went around tearing down the posters. Still, on Monday 27 November, over 5,000 people attended the Mansion House meeting, calling for reprieve. The censor barred all press reports. On 30 November, the night before the execution, baton-wielding police charged crowds of people who knelt to say the Rosary outside the G.P.O. and at Mountjoys prison gates. In Leinster House, those T.D.s who tried to raise the matter got harshly silenced and suspended. On Wednesday, 29 November 1944, the prominent Clann na Talmhan (Farmers Party) deputy Michael Donnellan, East Galway, tried to move for clemency, but the Ceann Comhairle ruled him out of order, Independent T.D. Oliver J. Flanagan said that the trial had been unfair. Kerry deputies Finucane and Spring added their voices to the protest. They were ruled out of order and not allowed speak on the subject. On the following day, Thursday, 30 November, only hours before the execution time, the same T.D.s, along with Deputy Larkin of Labour, again tried to raise the matter of Charlies execution as a matter of extreme urgency, pointing out that the public meeting called to protest at the execution had been broken up by police charges and that the censor had banned all references to the mercy pleas. Twenty or more T.D.s tried to debate the matter, leading to the suspension of deputies Larkin, Finucane and Spring. Later the government side told the deputies that they could debate the issue the following afternoon - after the execution! This cynical ruling caused uproar. The Ceann Comhairle left the chair and the government party filed out of the chamber. Still twenty-four T.D.s stayed on, despite the lights being turned out in an effort to force them out of the House. They voiced objections before they left, despondent at the treatment of their protest. Next morning, when Deputy Flanagan again protested he also got suspended, and left saying: l leave the House with clean hands. There is no blood on them today. THE FIRST FRIDAY IN DECEMBER With all protest silenced, the Irish Free State Government brought over the hangman Pierpoint from England to do the ghastly deed. Then, on the First Friday in December - 1st of December 1944 Charlie Kerins went to his death for Ireland, as did Kevin Barry twenty-four years earlier, on the gallows in Mountjoy Jail . After his execution, Dr. Farrell wrote to her niece Dervla Murphy, in whose home Charlie had also stayed: There is no need to tell you that Charlie Kerins met his death with the greatest possible courage and bravery. I was allowed to visit him on Wednesday and Thursday last and he gave me courage, too. I am more sorry that you could not have seen him - he was so proud and happy to die for Ireland that one could not feel depressed - sad indeed heartbroken - but not depressed. l spoke to the priest who heard his confession and he told me that it was a privilege to meet him and that he had no doubt whatever he had gone straight to heaven, he offered his life with Our Lord for the people of Ireland. He had no bitterness against his enemies. For the week before his execution he heard Mass and received Holy Communion every morning. On the very morning he was hanged he sang two songs for the warders, Kevin Barry and Kelly the Boy from Killane, as one of the warders said, he was the only happy man in the prison during the terrible week before he was hanged. HIS DEATH TOUCHED THE HEART OF IRELAND Irelands greatest living poet, Austin Clarke, wrote in sorrow and anger of the Free States many judicial murders of the time, ending his poem with a tribute to the last Republican who went to his death upon the scaffold high: At Mountjoy Gaol, young Charlie Kerins Was roped; we paid five pounds to Pierpoint, The Special Branch castled their plan, Quicklimed the last Republicans. Though they had, indeed, killed Republicans, they failed to kill the spirit of Republican Ireland. Four years later, when a change of administration allowed the reburial of Charlie Kerinss body in his native Tralee, huge crowds turned out to honour him. Already the members of his local GAA club (named ORahillys in honour of the gallant l9l6 patriot) called a special meeting where the members voted to include Charlies name, giving the Club its present title: Kerins ORahillys. They thought it only right and fitting to link Charlies name with that of another great Kerryman, the ORahilly, the l9l6 patriot called the Bravest of the Brave. Later, Tralee Urban District Council named a new housing estate in the area Kerins Park. These expressions prove that, at heart, most Irish people recognize the true spirit of our nation in the sacrifices of Charlie Kerins and his comrades, and can see the anti-Republican propaganda as vicious lying directed at sincere patriotism and detrimental to the interests of all the Irish people THE SHOOTING IN RATHFARNHAM OF DETECTIVE DINNY OBRIEN The British governments Divide-and-Rule tactics and the allied Free State back-up services that killed Charlie Kerins also, in its own way, claimed another victim in Detective Sergeant Dinny OBrien. One could say that it led, too, to the loss of his life - one that might have been dedicated to Ireland only for the London-Dublin collaboration. A former IRA man who had fought bravely against the Black-and-Tans and Free State soldiers in his native Tipperary, Dinny OBrien was taken in by the second Free State grouping, as they pretended to remain The Republican Party. In the early 1930s, he joined the Broy Harriers an armed militia set up ostensibly to put down the Blueshirts but gradually turned into a vicious anti-Republican force. By 1942, OBrien had become notorious for his relentless pursuing of his former comrades had ill-treated prisoners and had callously shot several I.R.A. members, including Charlie McGlade and Liam Rice of Belfast. On Wednesday 9 September 1942, near his home in Rathfarnham as OBrien drove in his car towards Ballyboden. A party of four men ambushed him. As soon as they opened fire, he jumped out, took cover and drew his revolver from his shoulder holster.. He was then fatally hit. A small crowd of people, who had gathered on hearing the shooting, saw the four men cycle away. They did not at any stage identify any of them. Near the Yellow House Bar a Special Branch detective, going to the bog in the Dublin mountains to save his turf passed by. Afterwards, he professed to recognise one of them as Michael Quille, but could not sustain his allegation when cross - examined at the Special Military Court that tried to convict Michael Quille in January, 1943. Neither he nor anyone else there mentioned the name of, or described anyone as resembling, Charlie Kerins. During searches of the area police later found a bicycle left by someone referred to as Ciaran OKelly in the grounds of nearby Bolton Hall. That bicycle had formerly been used by Charlie Kerins - though not that day - and so had on it a fingerprint used against him at his trial. A hue-and-cry immediately followed. Every police barracks had Wanted notices, giving minute details of eight men, and naming Charlie Kerins, Michael Quille, Tadhg Drummond, Harry White, Liam Burke, Frank Duffy, Tom Kealy and Hugh McAteer. The state offered a reward of f 5,000 - or over f 100.000 in present money terms - for information leading to arrests and conviction, but got no takers,. That sum far exceeded the £1,330 paid to Mrs. OBrien as compensation for her husbands death (the first ever such award made by the state). The final verdict remains that, as Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, Charlie Kerins had to die on Englands gallows tree - to appease the ruling castes in London and Dublin. CHARLIE KERINS LAID TO REST IN TRALEES REPUBLICAN PLOT On 18 September 1948, huge crowds gathered in towns and villages all along the road from Dublin, as the remains of Charlie Kerins and Maurice ONeill made the journey home to Kerry. The size of the crowds who wished to pay tribute to the patriots caused considerable delays before arrival in Tralee, at l0p.m. where a vast throng awaited. The ORahilly Fife-and- Drum Band led the procession from the town bounds at Oakpark, through Edward Street, and uniformed Fianna Eireann. Cumann na mBan, Kerins O Rahilly G.A.A. Club and I.R.A. took part in the procession. The people of the town and county, according to a report in The Kerryman, Turned out en masse to accompany the remains to St. Johns Morluary Church, where the remains lay overnight. On the following day, the funeral to Rath was one of the largest seen in Tralee for years. A guard of honour comprised of Charlies comrades, Fianna, Cumann na mBan, I.R.A., Republican bodies and ex-internees, accompanied the coffin, draped in the tricolour. As the long procession wended its way, via Boherbee to the Republican Plot at Rath, funeral marches were played by the Cork Volunteer, Scartaglen Pipers and the ORahilly Fifeand- Drum Bands. At the graveside, his comrade Michael Quille recited a decade of the Rosary, Trumpeters sounded Last Post and Reveille and a firing party fired three rifle volleys over the grave. Chief mourners were Charlies father Thomas Kerins, his sisters Mrs. Elsie OConnor and Lena Kerins, and brother-in-law Thomas OConnor. Fr. M. Stack read the burial service, assisted by Fr. Roe. John Joe Sheehy, who presided, said that Charlie Kerins had died a soldiers death and though an attempt had been made, by the manner of his death to cast odium on his name, his memory would not be forgotten by the people any more than that of Emmet or Kevin Barry. Significantly, the North-East corner of the Plot had been selected for the grave of Charlie Kerins, who had died for the restoration of the North-East portion of the country to its rightful place. In his Oration Tomas Mac Curtain called to mind both the glory and the sadness in the life and death of Charlie Kerins and added: Let us remember the greatness of his sacrifice and the ideals he died for determined that, if necessary, we, his comrades, will die as he died for those ideals”. I measc Laochra na hEireann Go Raibh Sè. On 1 December 1944, the IRAs Chief of Staff, Charlie Kerins, was hanged in Mountjoy Jail. Charlie Kerins was born in Tralee County Kerry in 1918. At the age of 17 he joined his local unit of the IRA and took part in action against the Blueshirts in the area. In 1942, Charlie travelled to Dublin to join the GHQ staff, then under extreme pressure from the Free State Government of Fianna Fáil. Hundreds of IRA members had been arrested and interned without trial or sentence. A year later, when Hugh McAteer was arrested, Charlie became Chief of Staff. He moved about the city under the name of Charles Hanley, constantly on the run and with a price on his head. These were dark days for the IRA; its ranks had been depleted by constant arrests at the hands of former comrades who had taken the Free State shilling and were now members of the Broy Harriers. One of these men was Sergeant Dinny OBrien. Dinny OBrien had fought with his two brothers, Larry and Paddy, in the Marrowbone Lane garrison in 1916; afterwards they had fought together in the Tan War and in 1922 Paddy was shot dead by the pro-Treaty forces in Enniscorthy. Dinny stayed in the IRA until 1933, when, along with a number of other IRA men, he was inveigled into the Broy Harriers on De Valeras plea that we need you to fight the Blueshirt menace. Within a few years, he was fighting and hunting his own, as rapacious as the most dyed in the wool Stater. In his time, he cut down quite a few republicans, Liam Rice and Charlie McGlade among them, shot while resisting arrest. OBrien built up his own secret network in pubs, hotels, at stations and among the news vendors on the streets. By 1942, he had turned into a vicious and determined hunter and the IRA gave the order that he was to be executed. At 9.45am on 9 September 1942 at Ballyboden, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, OBrien left his house and began getting into his car. Three IRA men, wearing trench coats and armed with Thompson sub machine guns, came up the drive and opened fire. The shots from the Thompson smashed the windows of his car, wounding him. He alighted and ran for cover to the gate but before reaching it, he was cut down by a single round to the head. Two of the IRA men then wrapped the Thompsons in their trench coats and mounted their bicycles and rode towards Dublin. The third IRA man left on foot, leaving his bicycle behind. The operation was a success, apart from the abandoned bike, which had been used by IRA men including Charlie Kerins for over two months and may have had fingerprints on it. After the shooting of OBrien, a huge police swoop began and many of the IRAs safe houses were raided. Charlie continued to move about the city re-organising the army. He took part with Jackie Griffiths and Archie Doyle in a robbery of the Player Wills factory on the South Circular Road, where £5,000 of much needed funds was taken. The three men arrived at the factory gates on bikes. When the van with the money arrived, they placed scarves around their faces and stopped it at gunpoint. The van was handed over and the three men drove away in it. With the constant raids on republican houses, it became harder for the IRA to move about the city. By 1944, the IRA had just four safe houses in Dublin. One of these was 50 Upper Rathmines Road. It was in this house that the Broy Harriers were to finally capture Charlie Kerins. On 16 June 1944 at 4am, the police raided the house. Charlie was asleep on the top floor of the house with a Thompson under his bed but before he was fully awake the police had him in handcuffs. Charlie was charged before a military court with the shooting of OBrien. He refused to recognise the court or enter any plea. He was found guilty on the flimsy evidence that one of his fingerprints was on the bicycle that was left behind. At the close of the trial, the Free State officer presiding adjourned for several hours to give Charlie time to change his plea and avoid the death penalty. But when the trial resumed, Charlie told the military judges: You could have adjourned for six years as far as I am concerned, as my attitude to this court will always be the same. The court then sentenced him to death. Over 77,000 people signed a petition for a reprieve but the Fianna Fáil Government was determined to execute Charlie. in a letter to his friend Liam Burke in Belfast. Charlie posted him a leaf of a calendar for the month of December, a month he would not see. On it he had written: What, said Cathal Brugha, if our last mans on the ground. When he hears the ringing challenge if his enemies ring him round. If hed reached his final cartridge — if he fired his final shot. Will you come into the empire? He would answer, I will not. At 8am on Friday 1 December 1944, Charlie Kerins was hanged in Mountjoy Jail by the English hangman Albert Pierpoint
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 00:45:54 +0000
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