GINNELL, Laurence. D.O.R.A. at Westminster; being selections from Mr. Ginnell’s Parliamentary activities (Reprint from Hansard). Before Easter week. After Easter week.

Dublin: Irish Wheelman Printing and Publishing Company, n.d. (1918). pp. vii, 621. Green cloth, titled in gilt. Previous owners library stamp. Rare.
The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) was “originally intended to meet the case of the invasion of Great Britain and Ireland by Germany”, but in Ireland it was used as an instrument of terrorism, of petty persecution and bullying. DORA was introduced on 15 August 1914 and its powers were rapidly and extensively enlarged by a series of Defence of the Realm Regulations. These were used by the army, in cooperation with the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police, to designate Special Military Areas (SMA) under a Competent Military Authority (CMA) that acted against individuals in a court-martial fashion. A press censor, with special powers, was also appointed. Laurence Ginnell challenged the Act in the House of Commons and this work chronicles all the debates on: Land Purchase; Hostility to Irish Language; Education; Recruiting; Post Office Censorship; Irish Volunteers; Military Murders; General Maxwell’s Powers; The Executions; Terms of Surrender; The Dublin Funerals; Looting by Military; Indiscriminate Arrests; Prisoners of War; Defence of the Realm Act, etc.
Laurence Ginnell (1852-1923), a barrister and former member of the Irish Party, was born in Delvin, County Westmeath into a family of small tenant farmers. He was approaching fifty years of age when he first ran for election in 1901, but was defeated on that occasion. He won the seat for North Westmeath, by a large majority in 1906. Ginnell had earned himself the name of ‘The Member for Ireland’ for his defence in the House of Commons of those who fought in the 1916 Rising and for his attacks on the Defence of the Realm Act. In July 1917 Ginnell finally resigned his seat in the House of Commons. He became the first, and only, MP to move from constitutional nationalism to republican separatism. Appointed Honorary Treasurer of Sinn Féin in October 1917, he was arrested in 1918 and in 1919 under the terms of D.O.R.A. He was a member of Dail Eireann and was appointed the first Director of Propaganda on 2 April 1919. Ginnell was the author of scholarly works on the Brehon Laws; The Doubtful Grant of Ireland, a book about the illegality of Pope Adrian’s Bull allowing for the Norman Invasion of Ireland. Shortly before his death in 1923 he wrote a book entitled The Seventh year of the Republic - A Defence of Erskine Childers

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