Madam, - Joe Carroll, in his excellent contribution to your supplement of March 28th on the 1916 Rising quotes from the Irish Independent's editorial of May 10th, 1916 calling for the execution of "the worst of the ringleaders" of the Rising. In fact, two days later - on May 12th - there was a further editorial in the Independent rejecting "an indiscriminate demand for clemency".
Clearly referring to Connolly and MacDermott - though not, mentioning them by name - the Independent opined in this editorial that "no special leniency should be extended to some of the worst of the leaders whose cases have not yet been disposed of".
Connolly and MacDermott were shot early on the morning of May 12th, a few hours after the second editorial had gone to press; they were already dead when most people read it.
These Independent editorials are truly extraordinary - given that, by May 10th-12th, 1916, even moderate nationalist opinion in Ireland had moved decisively against the policy of executing the leaders of the Rising. As early as May 9th, the Freeman's Journal - the Independent's main commercial rival, and the organ of the Irish Party at Westminster - had written that "sympathy is being aroused with the victims (ie the executed leaders) where nothing but indignant condemnation of their criminal enterprise previously existed".
Echoing these sentiments, John Dillon MP condemned the severity of the reaction of the authorities to the Rising in a speech in the House of Commons on May 11th. In that speech, he generously - and controversially - spoke of the "courage" of the insurgents and proclaimed that they had "fought a clean fight, a brave fight, however misguided". Moreover, immediately after the first three executions on May 3rd, John Redmond MP had privately warned the British Prime Minister of the adverse consequences of further executions (as noted on page 14 of your supplement).
So why did the Independent publish those bloodthirsty editorials? Many thought that the Independent's proprietor, William Martin Murphy, was seeking to avenge Connolly's role in the 1913 lockout, but it seems that the editorials were written without Murphy's knowledge. Indeed, Murphy repudiated them in private - though not in public, apparently out of loyalty to the Independent's editorial staff.
A more likely explanation is that the Independent simply misread the shifting mood of its predominantly middle-class, Roman Catholic, nationalist readers. The evidence for this is that the editor of the Independent, TR Harrington, was quoted soon after the Rising as saying - somewhat ruefully - that "the people cried out for vengeance and when they got it, they howled for clemency" (MS 5/2, Harrington papers, National Archives of Ireland).
Whatever the explanation, the charge of having sought the deaths of Connolly and MacDermott haunted William Martin Murphy until his death in 1919 - and would haunt his newspaper, the Irish Independent, for much longer. - Yours, etc,
FELIX M LARKIN, Cabinteely, Dublin 18.