page_title: Manchester Martyrs
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Manchester Martyrs / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Mural to the Manchester Martyrs
context_page_description: The Manchester Martyrs— William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien—were three men executed for the murder of a police officer in Manchester, England, in 1867, during an incident that became known as the Manchester Outrages. The three were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among a group of 30–40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol. Police Sergeant Charles Brett, travelling inside with the keys, was shot and killed as the attackers attempted to force the van open by blowing the lock. Kelly and Deasy were released after another prisoner in the van took the keys from Brett's body and passed them to the group outside through a ventilation grill; the pair were never recaptured, despite an extensive search.
context_section_description: Most of the British press had demanded "retribution swift and stern", not because the men were Irish, but because they were Fenians; "the public demand for the death penalty was not simply an expression of anti-Irish sentiment, but rather a product of the Fenian panic and popular feelings of insecurity and the desire for order." The Daily Telegraph, for instance, although like most of its contemporaries describing Brett's death as "a vulgar, dastardly murder", nevertheless supported reform in Ireland; "we may hang convicted Fenians with good conscience, but we should also thoroughly redress those evils distinctly due to English policy and still supported by English power."
  Many funeral processions were held in Ireland and even in a few British cities during the weeks following the executions, sometimes attracting crowds of thousands. These demonstrations of support for the three Fenians further outraged British public opinion, and "reinforced the prevailing sentiment that the Irish moral compass was somehow off-center". The executions gave rise to an enormous groundswell of feeling among Irish communities the world over. In New Zealand, for instance, seven men were convicted of unlawful assembly in a high-profile trial following a mock funeral to Hokitika cemetery; two of the seven, a newspaper editor and a priest, pleaded guilty to seditious libel, having published "a succession of very rabid articles about the Queen's Government." The viceregal government declared the holding of a Manchester Martyr funeral procession illegal. Throughout Ireland Masses, even public ones, were said for the three, although Bishop David Moriarty of Kerry prohibited celebration of Mass for them in his diocese. Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, on the other hand, personally assisted at a High Mass for them, and Cardinal Archbishop Paul Cullen of Dublin, while opposing public celebrations, instructed his priests to pray for the dead Fenians, and to say Mass privately for them.
  The day after the executions, Frederick Engels wrote to Karl Marx:
  So yesterday morning the Tories, by the hand of Mr Calcraft, accomplished the final act of separation between England and Ireland. The only thing that the Fenians still lacked were martyrs. They have been provided by Derby and G Hardy. Only the execution of the three has made the liberation of Kelly and Deasy the heroic deed which will now be sung to every Irish babe in the cradle in Ireland, England and America ... To my knowledge, the only time that anybody has been executed for a similar matter in a civilised country was the case of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. The Fenians could not have wished for a better precedent. The Southerners had at least the decency to treat J. Brown as a rebel, whereas here everything is being done to transform a political attempt into a common crime.
  The cry of the condemned men was the inspiration for the song "God Save Ireland", which became Ireland's unofficial national anthem until officially replaced by "Amhrán na bhFiann" ("The Soldier's Song"). The executions were also "incalculable" in their influence on the "political awakening" of Charles Stewart Parnell. Speaking in the House of Commons ten years later, Parnell told the House: "I wish to say as directly as I can that I do not believe, and never shall believe, that any murder was committed in Manchester."
caption: Mural in Belfast, 2007
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