That’s up to you.
You volunteered to engage in this discussion.
You have been selective in the posts to which you choose to respond.
You would strengthen your case in favour of Morant etc if you argued that case against those who question aspects of the Morant case rather than getting in a huff and taking your bat and ball home when posts don’t suit you.
I must be used to different standards of debate. Its not about posts that suit me or otherwise. I am not interested in those who ‘play’ the messenger. Of course I am interested in the issues and only the issues. I took this case for specific reasons. I have researched the case and its history and welcome debate as controversy is a cornerstone of the Morant saga. However, standards of review, debate, inquiry etc are not served by by personal attack and the inclusion of sad / happy faces etc. As I said, I need to economical with my time and will contribute with future updates rather than responding to blogs. You may care to listen to feedback rather than being recative and defensive to what I am trying to say.
Regards
James U. take it easy , 
I’ve read the discussion , never heard of this story before , sry, but i think i have some information on my personel database.i’ll try to find it and post it this week.
It seems James Unkles is the only person fortunate enough to have an 1898 copy of the Manual of Military Law.
The Third Edition was dated July, 1894.
The Fourth Edition was dated August, 1899.
It does beg the question of how well James Unkles knows either the historical facts of the case or the laws and practices of the time.
The details of the applicable Manual of Military Law is as follows:
Great Britain. War Office.
Manual of military law.
London : Printed for H.M.S.O. by Harrison and Sons.
1899, reprinted 1902
Military Justice
xxxv, 1024 p. : forms ; 20 cm.; CTRG97-B1436;
UK/89/78; [4th ed.]; War Office.
Fiche: 23,707-23,718
For an electronic copy of the Manual of Military Law have a look here: (I have not verified this particular copy and I suspect this is a later version from 1907):
http://www.archive.org/stream/manualofmilitary00greauoft/manualofmilitary00greauoft_djvu.txt
James Unkles I hope that you will continue to participate in this debate, please feel free to point out errors in my own reasoning (it does happen often as my other half points out regularly :)) and to provide facts that support your view.
Here are some newspaper articles from the period. I would appreciate your thoughts on these.
The story of a returned Australian:
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26565427
A letter by a returned Australian officer:
According to Major Thomas: the men were shot “under Morant’s orders”.
Here is an example of true heroism by an Australian during the Boer War that earned him a deserved Victoria Cross:
I have no doubt that soldiers on both sides would have agreed that this behaviour was worthy of recognition.
This brave behaviour is worlds appart from that by Morant and Handcock which the likes of James Unkles wants to cellebrate.
The transcript of the public hearing by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Petitions can be found here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/reps/commttee/R12891.pdf
Isn’t James Unkles description of the Court of Inquiry fascinating?
He claims the Court of Inquiry was worse than the Courts Martial… yet he prefers an untested note in an opinion, written by Colonel St Clair, following the Inquiry to the outcome of the Courts Martial, written by Colonel Pemperton and agreed to by St Clair, where evidence was subjected to scrutiny by cross examination. Does that make sense to anyone except James Unkles?
On James Unkles’ website he wrote that the Oct 2010 decision by Dr Liam Fox on behalf of the British Government “IS AN INSULT TO THE AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES INQUIRY MARCH 2010”.
Yet the transcripts clearly state that it was NOT an “inquiry”. Can anyone point me to the “inquiry” if it existed or is it just not true? Another furphy?!:evil:
By the way, I agree with Dr Craig Wilcox that James has the facts wrong right up to the end of the public hearing. It was in fact Lord Roberts who ordered the “scorched earth policy” and the concentration camps not Lord Kitchener.
Lord Kitchener is simply a “scapegoat of the conspiracy theorists”.
Justice
I think you’ve double posted with your last two posts, although they’re not identical.
If so, would you like to delete the less preferred one?
Hi Rising Sun*,
Thank you, please delete the first of the two?
I am very happy that someone is reading these:D
Done.
You can delete, or edit, posts yourself by clicking on ‘Edit post’ in the bar under the post and then selecting the delete option.
Here is a link to an article by Australian historian Dr Craig Wilcox:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/97208/breaker-morant-was-no-digger-hero
Sometimes comedians just hit the nail on the head…
Have a look at this:
Courts martial these days tend to be pretty well regulated by law. In my own jurisdiction, this involves the association of the Court Martial (a standing, if not often used court) with the civil High Court, governed ultimately by our written Constitution. This was certainly not the case around 1900, when the legal basis for the actions of a court martial was, in most jurisdictions, somewhat unclear as to legal basis and even purpose. Even in, say, the British military jurisdiction, parameters were unclear, practice and procedure and rules of evidence (to say the least) malleable, and mandatory legal qualification for any member of such a court non-existent without even the requirement that the court should have a legal adviser as “amicus curiae”.
An example in some contrast with the Morant case, but from the same period, was the court martial procedure put in place in the immediate aftermath of the Easter 1916 Irish Rebellion. This handed out death sentences like snuff at a wake; only 16 of the condemned were actually executed as British politicians realized what a public relations disaster the shootings could develop into in Ireland.
Now, don’t get me wrong. One point arguably at least in common with the Morant case was that these guys were (as Mel Brooks put it in “The Producers”) “incredibly guilty”. Almost all pleaded “not guilty”, but made no substantive defense against the various rebellion/insurrection/treason etc. related charges put to them (the dense, second-rate British officers trying them showed little or no understanding that most of the accused here “went out” expecting to be killed, and actually wanting to be martyred). Also, the use of court martial procedure in order to enforce martial law over a community (not just over members of the British military) was generally accepted at the time. Even allowing for all this, however, one would have imagined that, where “not guilty” pleas had been entered, some obligation lay on the court to adduce some proof of guilt. Er …
Most of the hearings were conducted within a very short period. Legal expertise among members of the court was entirely lacking. The standard of evidence introduced in most cases ranged from ridiculous to non-existent. The one that amused me was that in which the only evidence adduced was testimony from an officer of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) that the particular subject had spent about a year hanging around public houses (sometimes spending a long time) during which he associated with (unidentified) “Sinn Féiners”. Could surely have done better - the accused in this case was an officer of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and a prominent advocate for armed rising.
On the basis of this kangaroo court proceeding, 16 men were actually executed. One of these - Willie, brother of Patrick Pearse, a person of no influence in the conspiracy - pleaded guilty, and stated in his defence that he had only acted as aide-de-camp to his brother. This seems only to have persuaded the court, on the “witch in ducking stool” principle, that he was guilty of the high offences of which he was charged. He was shot, along with the others, in reality, for no better reason than being named “Pearse”.
What point am I making here ? Well, there is the “flexibility” of the whole procedure, its summary quality, the severe consequences for the accused, and the complete absence of any respect for the principles of natural justice. There is the additional point that these proceedings were subject to the tacit approval of politicians in London, who received prejudicial reports on the accused from the Army in advance. In the Morant case, more attention seems to have been given at least to the appearance of proper procedure, but the outcome still seems to have been determined by obscure political determination. I would ask - where a “system of justice” is so polluted by inconsistency and partiality, is the question of whether somebody should be “pardoned” at this stage, well, realistic or appropriate. My personal view is that Morant, like the 1916 leaders, “incredibly guilty”. In a way, the gross inadequacies of the procedure that ended in his execution assists people now in taking an unjustifiably lenient view of his actions. But courts martial of this period were of their time. Their verdicts might range from “morally correct” all the way over to quasi-judicial murder. Either way, arguing about “pardon” now seems like dancing on the head of a lawyer’s quibble … Yours from the Stonebreaker’s Yard, JR.
Not in Dublin in 1916.
First, one can dispute on legal and or constitutional grounds the British declaration of ‘martial law’ in response to the rebellion.
Second, courts martial are, by definition, courts which try offences by members of their own armed forces.
Third, and following from the second point, one can dispute the power of British courts martial in Ireland to judge Irish insurgents and sentence them to death, or anything else.
Fourth, the “courts” which “tried” Pearse et al clearly were not courts martial but “courts” contrived by the occupying power to exercise summary jurisdiction for the sole purpose of suppressing future rebellions and to advance the interests of the British government which wished to continue domination of Ireland. These “courts” had, perversely, more in common with the unregulated viciousness of the Catholic Inquisitions, the best known being the Spanish Inquisitons, than anything enshrined in the supposed virtues of “British justice”.
Fifth, the first to fourth points stand in marked contrast to, say, the comparatively generous treatment at the same time by Britain of captured Germans on the other side of the British Isles in a much more violent and nasty war: e.g. the Irish rebels didn’t use mustard gas, unlike the British and Germans. If the Irish rebels were enemies of Britain, they should have been treated at least as well as German prisoners of war. They weren’t, and Britain was and is shamed by its brutal treatment since Cromwell of the Irish which it had to that point always regarded as an inferior people worthy, at best, of rampant exploitation, starvation and violent oppression and semi-extermination.
There can be no better, or worse, example of the summary “justice” meted out by the British courts martial than the squalid execution of James Connolly, who was so severely wounded that doctors said he would die within a day or two but whom the British, ever concerned with their noble traditions of blind justice and the shining rule of British law, dragged from his hospital bed to put him upon a stretcher so that he could be strapped into a chair and shot by a heroic British firing squad before he succumbed to his mortal wounds and deprived Britain of its enduring glory in executing a dying man is circumstances which demonstrated how little regard Britain really had for decent conduct where the Irish were concerned.
I agree, but so far as the purported “courts martial” following the Easter Rebellion are concerned, I disagree for the reasons outlined above, and other reasons.
Be all that as it may, the unintended result of Britain’s ruthless and lawless execution of the Easter rebels was that Britain managed to convert a cause which probably had minority support in Ireland (i.e. the part down south not controlled by the remnants of Cromwell’s suppression several centuries before and subsequent efforts in the same line such as transportation to the Australian colonies for often quite minor offences) into a wider and renewed opposition to British rule.
Congratulations, Britain, on another spectacularly damaging “own goal”.
RS* - not totally clear that we are in much disagreement. The point I was trying to make (not very effectively) is that around the turn to the 19th/20th century, courts martial could be pretty “flexible” in what they did, and for what. I do not have any great problem, myself, with the “outcome” of the 1916 trials; like the Morant case. the outcomes were “incredibly” obvious. In fact, given the circumstances, there was sufficient basis for executing many more. That this did not happen was down to political considerations. The executions that were effected were, however, enough to precipitate a political disaster for the British. Again, a political failing. Best regards, JR.
We’re agreed on that.
I was pursuing the point, perhaps not with sufficient clarity that, as often has been observed tritely, courts martial are to law as martial music is to music.
The post-9/11 Military Commissions set up by the US to give the illusion of justice to the persecution of perceived enemies, generally of about private level in conventional military ranks, demonstrate that the same “flexibility” endured into the 21st century.
Oddly enough, the military commissions threw up a USMC lawyer who resolutely pursued the finest traditions of defence counsel http://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/2015/01/06/michael-mori-company-cowards-bush-howard-injustice-guantanamo-reviewed-kathy-gollan/ in the face of oppressive pressure from above in his military system http://www.cla.asn.au/News/major-mori-fights-for-his/. He is an ornament to the legal profession and happens now to practise in my country in pursuing civil justice with equal vigor. https://www.shine.com.au/meet-the-team/lawyers/dan-mori/
Here, we can agree to disagree.
My objections are based on the selectivity of the prosecutions in the context of the times.
And that is the heart of the matter, because they were not disinterested prosecutions according to law but little more than political show trials, in the same way that the US Military Commissions post-9/11 were a political corruption by the executive to bypass the national legal system which would not have tolerated the abuses and denials of rights of the accused by the military at the direction of the executive.