Tom Barry

by Meda Ryan

  On 28 April Comdt Tom Hales, on behalf of the Third Brigade issued a ‘Definite Military Order to all Battalion Commandants’ in his brigade that any ‘soldier in the area was neither to interfere with or insult any person … Even capital punishment will be meted out’ to those ‘not upholding the rigid discipline of a military force.’ In his statement he promised ‘to give all citizens in this area, every protection within’ his ‘power’. Comdt Con Connolly, Skibbereen, in a Public Notice stated that the IRA would do all in their ‘power to protect the lives and property of all citizens irrespective of creed’ and would ‘faithfully observe the amnesty proclaimed by Mr M. Collins.’[34] Sinn Féin-led Cork county council condemned the killing and asked the ‘the authorities charged with peace and order to afford protection to all classes’. This ‘resolution’ was forwarded to ‘the Protestant bishop of Cork.’[35]Tom Barry, Liam Deasy, Tom Hales and Seán Buckley travelled to Skibbereen and helped Con Connolly and the Skibbereen IRA with ‘house-guard’ protection rota administration, to back up the Bandon-Clonakilty-Dunmanway-Ballineen protection teams.[36]

  Tom Kelleher and another IRA comrade caught up with thieves, unconnected with the IRA, who, taking advantage of the climate at the time, had stolen cattle from Mr Wilson, a Protestant farmer near Bandon and were en route with them to Kinsale fair. Kelleher ordered the men to return the animals. The order was ‘promptly’ obeyed. Tom Barry’s first cousin, Paddy O’Brien, ‘appointed permanent guards to protect John Winters, a Protestant landlord’ who was in dispute with local farmers. Rather than going to the Establishment courts, Winters went to the Sinn Féin courts at the time to seek ‘redress’, and got it.[37]

  During the war of independence Macready stated that he had covered the country with spies from end to end.’[38] Florrie O’Donoghue found: ‘There were no hostile people, as far as we knew except Loyalists all of whom we knew.’[39] Much useful information was obtained for the three Cork brigades from Josephine Marchmount, a confidential secretary to Captain Webb, chief officer to Major Strickland, Cork Military Barracks.[40]

  In a captured British document Strickland wrote: ‘I want … the troops and police’ to seek out people for intelligence purposes, to get ‘in touch with the people in a friendly way, so as to enlist the waverers on our side … Remember we have two moral objectives, i.e., to hearten the morale of the Loyalist and waverer and to dishearten the morale of the gunmen.’ Money ‘is’ available ‘to pay for intelligence’. Also ‘if protection and repatriation to England are required by individuals who have given VALUABLE information’ this should be done. The document states ‘the following is a list of the flying columns of the IRA and the localities in which they are thought to be harbouring …’ (‘Valuable’ is written in bold caps.)[41] It is difficult to agree with Peter Hart’s suggestion that the IRA’s targeting of spies and informers during the war ‘had little or nothing to do with the victims’ actual behaviour’ but their religion, and that as the ‘war continued to escalate right up to the July 1921 truce ... anti-Protestant violence rose along with it’.[42]Hart states that the ‘IRA had begun to seize Protestants to use as hostages.’ As has been demonstrated, these individuals such as Lord Bandon were kidnapped (later released) under Tom Barry’s direction, because of their status and power in society and as a bargaining ploy and had nothing to do with their religion. (It is unlikely that Tom Barry or other IRA members thought of religion.) Hart has suggested that, ‘The revolution made Protestants “fair game” to any of their neighbours, whether angry or covetous.’ (In the course of my extensive interviews over the years with ex-IRA participants of the period I did not hear of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘ethnic conflict’ as Hart wrote.[43]There is no evidence that this scenario entered the equation for Tom Barry and his comrades in the Third West Cork Brigade.)

  Throughout the period of conflict up to the Truce, Seán Buckley IO successfully organised Republican courts and Republican police in West Cork so that spies or informers were not killed without a court-martial or Republican court appearance. These Sinn Féin or Republican courts also investigated ‘robberies, assaults, recovered stolen property and administered swift punishment of wrong doers.’

  Tom Barry and officers in West Cork, who allowed proceedings to be dealt with within this system, drew a distinction between Protestantism and Loyalism, when it became known to them that persons who were loyal (Loyalist) to the British monarch betrayed fellow countrymen, and formed a ‘League’. When the IRA’s intelligence department in Cork county found proof of informants at work, they dealt with the situation within the confines of the war as set out by GHQ. Religion was not a distinguishing factor. ‘Rigorous and stern action was for us a necessary duty in dealing with spies and informers’, Liam Deasy recorded. ‘This unpleasant duty was necessary when seen against the light of many noble efforts made down the ages to secure our freedom’ which ‘was defeated by English gold and Irish greed’.[44]

  Tom Barry in Guerilla Days wrote that ‘British Imperialists’ used a ‘technique of “Divide and Conquer”. They have consistently urged class against class, district against district, creed against creed … In 1920 and 1921 they fanned the flame of religious intolerance between Catholics and Protestants. Whenever one of their agents not of the faith of the majority was shot, they announced his death as Mr X, a Protestant. But, although the West Cork Brigade [during the war, in 1921] shot five Catholics who were British agents in quick succession, never once did the term Catholic appear after those men’s names in the British announcements of their deaths.’ This was, he stated, their propaganda method of making (succeeding in cases) ‘the Protestants of Ireland’ believe they would be ‘victimised’ under ‘a Republican government of Ireland’. Barry tells a story of ‘an informer’ who spoke with warped logic of the Protestant religion being under threat and felt duty bound to betray the IRA. Barry didn’t bother correcting him as he was ‘going to die’ anyway. [45] Barry, speaking of informers and spies, told Nollaig Ó Gadhra that they ‘executed 15. Incidentally, for those who are bigots – 9 Catholics and 6 Protestants! British propaganda announced him [in each case] as a Protestant landowner. But if it was a Catholic who was executed for spying – “blood money”, he was only mentioned by name, never that he was a Catholic.’[46]

  ‘They were all as guilty as hell. The Loyalists informers weren’t doing it for money … and were far more dangerous’ than the spy. ‘We had our information’.[47]

  Peter Hart also states that ‘the conspiracy theories and the terminology of hatred’ and ‘sectarianism was embedded in the Irish revolution, north and south.’[48]However, Barry told Donncha Ó Dulaing in the early 1970s: ‘We never killed a man or interfered with a man because of his religion, we didn’t give three straws, they were human beings to us and they were treated as that and there was never a breath of sectarianism, but we had to face facts … We lost men who were sold or given away – sleeping in barns and outhouses ... The informer was far more dangerous because he had intelligence and was used by the British who were clever at propaganda publicity. They used the divide and conquer principle … in the newspapers … They were no more shot because they were Protestant or Jew or Atheists or anything else. They were shot because we had in their own confessions they were doing the job, and they had caused loss of Irish Republican army men’s lives.’[49]

  When Tom Barry initially wrote Guerilla Days, he named the spies and informers (as reported in newspapers) who were shot during the war, but because the Irish Press in the serialisation of the book before publication felt this would create problems for relatives, the editor asked him to omit names and to tone down the language. Finally he agreed for the sake of the families. He said, ‘Two resided in (naming the district)’ and ‘two more resided in’ – and so on. ‘This does not add to the identification of any particular spy, but if the IP so desires this sentence could read (four came from the First Battalion, two from Fourth Battalion, etc.) … I take it there is no objection to the general refe
rences’, he wrote.[50]

  To argue in the case of Protestant informers who were shot, that it was not the fact of their being informers that determined their fate, or to go further and claim that, ‘The gunmen, it may be inferred, did not seek merely to punish Protestants but to drive them out altogether’, is difficult to agree with, in the light of the evidence now available.[51]

  Despite identifying a British Loyalist connection in the dramatic events of April 1922, ‘the fact of the victim’s religion is inescapable’, Hart wrote. ‘These men were shot because they were Protestants. No Catholic Free Staters, landlords, or “spies” were shot or even shot at. The sectarian antagonism which drove this massacre was interwoven with political hysteria and local vendettas, but it was sectarian none the less. “Our fellas took it out on the Protestants”.’[52]

  However, Brian Murphy points out that Peter Hart took that latter quotation out of context as it ‘refers to a completely different incident in the Civil War’. Denis Lordan of Barry’s flying column told Dorothy Stopford, a Protestant, that ‘the boys’ went to a Protestant house to seize a motor car, were fired on, and one was killed. Then ‘“our fellas took it out on the Protestants”. The descriptive word “Protestant” is used, but both the original motive for the raid (the stealing of a car), and the subsequent reprisal, on account of the killing of a comrade, was not occasioned by sectarian motive. Indeed, it was not even recorded if anyone was killed as part of the reprisal.’[53]

  Dr Murphy asserts that, ‘to link Lordan’s comments with the Dunmanway massacres [of April 1922] is misleading, a misrepresentation which is compounded by calling the chapter [in his book] “Taking it out on the Protestants”. Moreover, in adopting this sectarian interpretation of events, Hart rejects the opinion of one of his sources, an IRA veteran, who maintained that the massacre was the product of anarchy, and that “we had nothing against” the Protestants.’[54]

  Peter Hart speculates on a ‘plausible explanation’ of ‘at least two and possibly as many as five, separate groups involved’ in the killings, ‘probably including members of … Volunteers.’ He further writes that, ‘All of the men identified as participants were committed republicans – veterans of the Tan War who went on to fight in the Civil War … These men probably acted on their own initiative – but with the connivance or acquiescence of local units. This is demonstrated by the non-intervention of the I.R.A. garrisons in Dunmanway and elsewhere.’[55]The facts do not bear out local units ‘acquiescence’ nor ‘the non-intervention’ theory as already discussed, nor does the IRA’s veteran’s comment that he quotes, back up the theory, nor is it known who committed the killings.

  ‘These were revenge killings on many levels’ Hart records, and list reasons of probabilities of ‘the desire for vengeance’, because the ‘minority population of West Cork were seen not only as past enemies and current undesirables but also as a future fifth column in the struggle which many I.R.A. men saw coming’.[56]In a sweeping statement he writes that the ‘atmosphere of fear and polarisation provided the communal context for the massacre. One could not have taken place without the other. Protestants … were seen as outsiders and enemies, not just by the I.R.A. but by a large segment of the Catholic population as well.’[57]

  Furthermore he noted that: ‘Within this rhetoric of ethnic intolerance can be detected the quasi-millenarian idea of a final reckoning of the ancient conflict between settlers and natives. To some republicans, revolution meant righting old wrongs, no matter how old, and establishing the republic entailed the reversal of the old order.’[58]However, the action Tom Barry and other officers took to quell the disturbances together with the statements of Tom Hales, Seán Buckley, Con Connolly, Ted O’Sullivan (all Third Cork Brigade officers) demonstrate that these suggestions misrepresent the position. To consign to the pages of history an account of magnified vendetta by the IRA and by some Irish citizens as blanket intolerance against fellow citizens, in early 1922 and during the previous war does not appear to be justified, from the evidence now available. (Peter Hart has used interviews with people whom he has acknowledged in his sources with initials (e.g., CR, RG, GD, etc.). It is unknown whether these initials are exact or fictitious. Some are certainly fictitious as he has written: ‘Protestant men and women begin with a “B”’ (e.g., BB, BF, BG, BO, etc.). In any case all are anonymous. (Tom Barry was to hammer home vigilance regarding the recording of history, and insisted, as will be later demonstrated, that historiography should be above reproach.)[59]

  Dan Cahalane, IRA veteran, of Barry’s flying column said that ‘religious beliefs had nothing to do with Republican beliefs. Some Protestants were most helpful’ during the struggle. ‘Others who wanted to hold on to Imperialism were only loyal to that master’. The killing ‘of those men at that particular time was unhelpful to our [Republican] cause’. Dan pointed to where one shooting took place in April 1922. He had purchased the house later and had no idea who was responsible for ‘the awful’ killing, though he admitted to knowing ‘the names’ of informers from the Dunmanway ‘haul’. He was ‘shocked’.[60]

  Jack Fitzgerald recalled for Ernie O’Malley that in the ‘Kilbrittain district Protestants were not shot as spies, [because] they knew that the men were fighting for a principle, they said that the others – other districts around Ballineen and areas were different.’ Jack, who was in Donegal during the Civil War, found ‘the best crowd were the Presbyterians for they knew that we were fighting for a principle.’[61]This is very different from the scenario that Peter Hart paints: ‘All the nightmare images of ethnic conflict in the twentieth century are here’, and uses a sweeping statement of, ‘the transformation of life-long neighbours into enemies, the conspiracy theories and the terminology of hatred’ where ‘sectarianism was embedded in the Irish revolution, north and south. Any accounting of its violence and consequences must encompass the dreary steeples of Bandon …’[62]

  But beneath the ‘steeples of Bandon’ many men ‘on the run’ were harboured by people with limited resources. Some of these sympathetic citizens ‘ran up’ sizeable bills with Protestant merchants like Jeffers’, Goods’ and other shops in Bandon and never a word leaked out. Indeed the merchants did not put undue pressure on the individuals for payment. Many other members of the Protestant community in the area risked everything, including alienation from fellow religious, because ‘they had this desire’ to have ‘our own government’, and be ‘an independent country’. ‘Being Protestant’ did ‘not necessarily’ mean ‘being loyal to the crown’.[63]Flor Begley through his IRA intelligence work, had the names of many spies and informers. He quotes a man who worked for ‘a Protestant farmer’ being surrounded one day. Percival and his men were doing the rounds and informed the man that ‘he knew his movements’ and the rifles he had hidden in the shed. ‘I have my own intelligence service here and I know everything’. He was being transported in a tender with two other prisoners, but managed to escape. ‘Right enough’, Flor Begley wrote, ‘the information was deadly accurate.’[64]

  In questioning Peter Hart’s interpretation that there was an IRA campaign of hostility towards Protestants ‘because of their religion’, Brian Murphy asserts that ‘Erskine Childers, a Protestant, was in no doubt that there was no element of sectarianism in the Nationalist struggle for independence’. Childers found that ‘at no time’ had civilians – ‘Protestant Unionists living scattered and isolated in the south and west, been victimised by the republicans on account of their religion or religious opinion or religion’ (sic).[65]

  Because Peter Hart is selective both in his representation of facts and only partially quotes from the chosen paragraph in the official British Record of the Rebellion in Ireland, Jack Lane affirms that ‘Hart engages in trickery to try to prove his theory that the Bandon Protestants were killed because they were Protestants’ and concludes, ‘he fails’. Brian Murphy asserts that Peter Hart ‘heightens the suspicion’ that Protestants ‘were killed for religious motives’, because Hart wro
te: ‘The truth was that, as British intelligence officers recognised, “in the south the Protestants and those who supported the government rarely gave much information because, except by chance, they had not got it to give”.’ However, Peter Hart omitted (as Brian Murphy notes) the paragraph’s conclusion:

  An exception to this rule was in the Bandon area where there were many Protestant farmers who gave information. Although the intelligence officer of this area was exceptionally experienced and although the troops were most active it proved almost impossible to protect these brave men, many of whom were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss.[66]

  Peter Hart compounds this further in a footnote that he gives in editing British Intelligence in Ireland, 1920–21. Despite the recording in Sir Jeudwine Papers confirming that there was ‘an exception’ to the ‘rule’ in the giving of information by ‘Protestant farmers’ in ‘the Bandon area’, Peter Hart writes in a footnote: ‘Some condemned West Cork Protestants did give, or try to give, information but there is no evidence that they acted en masse despite this statement.’ Though dismissing this ‘evidence’ he has in his ‘introduction’ written: ‘Rarely has the secret life of the British state been so exposed to inquiry as is now possible with these confidential histories.’[67]

  Jack Lane questions the ‘moral difference between giving and trying to give information in the circumstance of the time’. Is there a ‘distinction enough to dismiss one and not the other as a deliberate act of assisting the government’s war effort to defeat the IRA?’ The report clearly states, that ‘in the Bandon area … many Protestant farmers evidence’ was supplied. To state that they didn’t give it ‘en masse’ (all together) in a war situation pushes the limits of credulity.[68]