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'''Rory O'Connor''' ([[1883]] - [[1922]]) was an Irish republican activist. He is best remembered for his role in the [[Irish Civil War]] 1922-1923, his role in which led to his execution.

O'Connor was born in [[Dublin]] in 1883 and in his youth he worked as a railway engineer in [[Canada]].

After his return to Ireland, he became involved in [[Irish nationalist]] politics and was [[internment|interned]] after the [[Easter Rising]] in 1916.

During the subsequent [[Irish War of Independence]] 1919-1921 he was made Director of Engineering of the [[Irish Republican Army]] (IRA) - the [[guerrilla]] force which fought British forces in this period.

He did not accept the [[Anglo-Irish Treaty]] of 1921, which established the [[Irish Free State]], but which abolished the [[Irish Republic]] declared in 1919, which O'Connor and his comrades had sworn to uphold. On [[26 March]] 1922, the anti-treaty officers of the IRA held a convention in Dublin, in which they rejected the Treaty compromise and repudiated the authority of the [[Dail]], the elected Irish Parliament. Asked by a journalist if this meant they were proposing a military dictatorship in Ireland, O'Connor replied, "you can take it that way if you want".

In April 1922, O'Connor, with 200 other hardline anti-treaty IRA men under his command, took over the [[Four Courts]] building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the new Irish government. They wanted to provoke the British troops, who were still in the country into attacking them, which they thought would re-start the war with Britain and re-unite the IRA against their common enemy. [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]] tried desperately to persuade O'Connor and his men to leave the building before fighting broke out.

In June 1922, after the Four Courts garrison had kidnapped JJ O'Connell, a general in the new Free State Army, Collins [[Dublin fighting -Irish Civil War|shelled the Four Courts]] with borrowed British artillery. O'Connor surrendered after two days of fighting and was arrested and held in [[Mountjoy Prison]]. This incident sparked the [[Irish Civil War]] - as fighting broke out around the country between pro and anti treaty factions.

On the 8th of December 1922, along with three other republicans ([[Liam Mellows]], [[Richard Barrett (Irish reopublican)|Richard Barrett]] and [[Joe McKelvey]]) captured with the fall of the Four Courts, Rory O'Connor was [[Executions during the Irish Civil War|executed by firing squad]] in reprisal for the [[Irish Republican Army (1922-1969)|anti-treaty IRA]]'s killing of Free State member of parliament [[Sean Hales]]. The execution order was given by [[Kevin O'Higgins]], who less than a year earlier had appointed O'Connor to be best man at his wedding, symbolising the bitterness of the division that the Treaty had caused. O'Connor, along with the other 76 executed republicans, was subsequently seen as a martyr by the traditional republican tradition in Ireland. 

==Sources==
*Michael Hopkinson, Green against Green - the Irish Civil War.
*Edward Purdon, The Irish Civil War 1922-23.

{{DEFAULTSORT:O' Connor, Rory}}
<nowiki>
[[Category:1883 births]]
[[Category:1922 deaths]]
[[Category:Irish Republican Army members 1917-1922]]
[[Category:Irish Republican Army members 1922-1969]]
[[Category:People from County Dublin]]
[[Category:People executed by firing squad]]
[[Category:People executed by Ireland]]
</nowiki>
[[no:Rory O'Connor (1883)]]