Tom Barry

by Meda Ryan

  (1) It maintains our status as members of the British commonwealth of Nations, and therefore, purports to legislate for us as British subjects only.’

  (2) This constitution can only be voted on by the people of the Twenty-Six counties. Not alone does it not end partition but it perpetuates it by openly stating that it will only legislate for the people of the area known as Saorstat Éireann: that is the twenty-six counties … It brazenly allows not alone the de facto government of the six counties to continue in operation but it seeks to give a moral right to that British statelet to continue.

  (3) It does not even express the Irish people’s wishes that the British armies of occupation … should be withdrawn … If adopted by the Irish people [it] will ensure their remaining here until a strengthened and determined race which will first have to abrogate this document will order them to leave our shores, failing which they will attack them.[32]

  All Republican groups were united – Cumann na mBan, Sinn Féin, the Fianna, the IRA, with Tom Barry as one of the principal speakers to unite the group. This 1937 Constitution, Barry said, ‘would not give us our freedom’ in a United Ireland. ‘My name wasn’t going to this constitution. We issued a statement saying that all Republicans were to abstain. Actually if we had come out and voted against it, we would have defeated it. If we did, we would have been voting in effect for the imposed British constitution of 1922.’[33]The vote for the constitution was carried and ‘enacted by the people 1 July, 1937’. Barry disliked the situation because, he said, ‘we were still in the British empire. So my fight was to pursue my goal for the declaration of a Republic.’[34]

  At the graveside of Wolfe Tone in June 1937, where Tom Barry was the principal speaker, his words ‘spoken not read’ had, as always, the total attention of the crowd. Barry could speak for a considerable time without notes and was able to captivate any audience. In Bodenstown he told the assembled crowds that they ‘should draw inspiration from the life and death’ of Wolfe Tone – ‘namely the establishment and maintenance of the sovereign Republic of Ireland.’ He asked his listeners ‘not to look backwards into history alone’ but to take note also of ‘the current struggle’.

  From all corners of Ireland thousands formed the ‘chain of marching separatists’ who had come to listen and see the man they had heard so much about, An Phoblacht recorded. ‘Ten men cycled from Sligo. A contingent cycled from Clonmel. From Dundalk they came by lorry … Cumann na mBan, Mna na Poblachta, Fianna and Cumann na gCailiní were a colourful space … again and again the ranks were swept with applause,’ the reporter wrote. When the oration finished the reporter passed a group and over-heard ‘one [who] asked what about tea! They hadn’t the price of it … This section of the population, the men of no property.’[35]

  Some weeks later his friend, Tom Kelleher, was getting married. Barry was best man at his wedding. That afternoon Dr Ned Barrett was walking along Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork, with Jerry Crowley and Tom Barry, who was ‘on the run’. Two detectives walked up behind them. One put his hand on Barry’s shoulder and said his few words of arrest. Immediately Ned (describing himself as a violent young Republican at the time) made for the detective’s throat. Barry shouted, ‘Stand back!’ Ned took the command, and Barry was taken away to Union Quay Barracks.

  ‘It was suggested in Cork that day that we should rescue Barry. My father owned quarries and had gelignite, and though my father was not a violent man, I said to him that they’re thinking about rescuing Barry.

  ‘“Don’t be a fool,” he said.

  ‘“Will you give me the stuff anyway?” I asked.

  ‘“I appeal to you, don’t do anything foolish,” he said.

  ‘“I won’t, but give me the stuff,” I said. Anyway he agreed.’

  A meeting was held that night in Jim Counihan’s, Pembroke Street, Cork, and according to some men who attended, feelings were very high. Once they had discovered that Dr Ned had obtained the gelignite they wanted to go to Union Quay and blast the barracks to release Barry.

  In the midst of delegating people to do the job, Dr Ned jumped up: ‘Does Tom Barry want to be rescued?’ Nobody could answer the question so it was agreed that they would ask Leslie, Tom’s wife, to find out his wishes.

  No, he answered. He did not want to be rescued. It was lucky he said so, because it was almost certain a number of lives would have been lost in the attempt. Four days later Tom Barry was released.[36]

  Den Carey, Tom’s aide de camp, drove him around in an Austin mini. One night returning from a meeting in Kinsale, Barry was seated in the back of the crammed mini. At a sharp bend Carey drove straight into a wall. The car ‘folded up like a concertina’, but the men who were ‘on the run’ at the time, got out, stood on the road and thumbed back to Cork.

  Another night eight men were packed into the mini. They were ‘flying’ down St Luke’s hill. Carey footed the brakes. Suddenly he shouted, ‘Tom the brakes aren’t too good!’

  Deep from the back seat Barry yelled, ‘Jasus Den! I didn’t ask you to drive me to heaven!’[37]

  Though ‘on the run’ Barry, CS, went to Germany ‘primarily to find out and if at all, the Nazis had penetrated the I.R.A.’ because he was convinced that ‘the bombing plan’ of Britain was ‘of course German inspired and financed.’[38]It was not until ‘very late in the decade’ that Britain through their intelligence agencies, learned of ‘the IRA’s sporadic contacts with Nazi Germany’ initiated in 1935 which made them scrutinise such activities for their own security during the Second World War.[39]

  Barry could by now see that the Russell plan was gaining support. He made another effort to counter it. At a convention with Mc Garrity present (but not Russell) Barry proposed that the Dublin Brigade of the IRA ‘should march on the north that night’. The meeting, which lasted throughout the night, ended when the Russell scheme was carried by his supporters – beaten ‘by one vote’.[40]

  Hand-picked ‘delegates from Britain supported the proposal’ on the bombing of Britain.[41]It was ‘a sour pill for many of the delegates to run counter to Barry whom they looked up to, and who always spoke with an air of authority and common sense.’[42]

  Barry had said if the ‘bombing’ resolution was carried, he would leave his post. So at an army council meeting in Banba Hall, Dublin, he offered his resignation as chief-of-staff, but would remain on the army council executive. He disagreed with the bombing campaign, planned for England; furthermore, as a Cork man he wanted to return to Cork, and didn’t really want to remain in Dublin, even ‘on the run’. Accordingly, Mick Fitzpatrick took over the position of chief-of-staff.[43]

  By April 1938, at a general army convention, which met in Abbey Street, Dublin, Russell and his advocates had ploughed much ground for their cause. Delegates from country areas expressed their impatience at the in-action of the inner circle of the GHQ army council. Barry, MacBride and Mick Fitzpatrick all came in for criticism.

  The London bombing campaign was again brought to the fore, opposition to it centred around Barry who had totally condemned it as a foolish idea, ‘doomed to failure as the dynamiters of the 1880s’. He wouldn’t agree to it ‘ethically, morally or physically’. There were, he said, enough British military in the six counties for the IRA to bomb, and that was the place out of which they should be bombed, not civilians in England – such would be similar to what the Black and Tans did in Ireland. In a flurry of bombastic language he asked what the hell’s good was going to be gained from bombing cities. ‘Leave a bomb in a cloak room, leave a bomb in a hotel, and be 40 or 60 miles away with a time bomb, and you blow to pieces somebody who is working for £3.10 or £3.30 a week!’ If they wanted action, he insisted, he would be prepared to take a squad into the House of Commons or House of Lords and get the real culprits – the legislators.[44]

  At this April 1938 IRA convention, Russell’s supporters won control of the IRA. Russell, who had been court-martialled and suspended in January 1937, was now reinstated and appointed chief-of-staf
f. Five of the 12 executive members resigned – Tom Barry, Tomás MacCurtain, John Joe Sheehy, Seán Keating and Johnny O’Connor, stating that the army council was unrepresentative of the IRA, and in appointing a ‘dismissed Volunteer’ as chief-of-staff, had behaved unconstitutionally’.[45]After the formation of a new executive which had a majority committed to Russell, Barry ‘publicly walked out’ of this convention ‘over the passing’ of the ‘resolution to start a bombing campaign’, he told Sighle Humphreys as it was ‘inspired and financed by the Nazi German Band of the USA’.[46]He ‘could not be party to it as it was unethical and immoral’.[47]Moreover, he had no confidence in the new leadership and their scheme was ‘unworthy of consideration by the IRA.’[48]

  Back in Cork in May, Barry held meetings in the Thomas Ashe Hall, with Cork One (Cork City), Cork North-East, and Cork North Brigades, suggesting they refuse to give backing to the GHQ campaign. He felt they were being led down a road that would only lead to disaster.

  By this time an Anglo-Irish agreement gave Ireland possession of the ‘Treaty ports’ and the Economic War ended.[49]

  Barry, tired of being ‘on the run’ with no means of livelihood and depending on the goodness of his friends, returned to work and was not worried about recapture. During all this period of being in and out of jail, illegal drilling and continuance in the IRA, Tom Barry, though often with long leaves of absence, tried to hold down an executive position with the Cork Harbour Board, whose management was extremely tolerant. Always willing to take a chance and not miss an opportunity, he told Tim Pat Coogan that ‘he had taken in arms at Cork Harbour.’[50]

  Again he was arrested, but let go after a few days, as there was no specific charge, which could be pinned on him. De Valera may have aided the process as he knew ‘how easily Barry could stir emotions in his favour. There were still those who would die for Barry.’[51]

  This man, with rock-hard determination, was constantly concerned for the welfare of ‘his men’, all of whom were like brothers to him. He was annoyed at the ‘continued victimisation of those sentenced by the military tribunal’ to terms of imprisonment ‘chiefly in connection with the national opposition to the Blue Shirt campaign’. The 70 to 80 men who had been employed ‘under public bodies were no longer eligible for employment under those bodies’ when they returned having ‘served their sentences.’

  Accordingly, he wrote to Seán T. [O’Kelly] in October 1938 and asked him, as a member of the government, ‘to immediately take the necessary steps to remove all the disabilities at present operative’ against those men. ‘The clause that makes victimisation operative is the most damnable in a most damnable act. Men according to even all criminal law who serve their sentences have again equal rights as citizens, but here under this act, their punishment follows on and they are barred from certain employment.

  ‘Another feature is that a number of men who served in the IRA during both periods of the fight for independence are barred under this act from receiving the pensions for service to which they are entitled.’[52]He quotes the specific case of Tom Kelleher an IRA man who was asked to write for ‘pardon’ to Mr Aiken, ‘and then it might be all right.’ This, he found unacceptable. It was Barry who initially insisted that the pension board should be set-up.

  On 12 January 1939 the bombing campaign began in Britain with an ultimatum to the British government. The campaign itself was ill-conceived. With technical difficulties and several hitches, it was spread over a 15-month period with high civilian casualties. The final result added up to failure.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done the Birmingham job [bombing] if it was going to set Ireland free and flowing with milk and honey,’ Barry said in an interview in the Sunday Independent, March 1976.[53]It was a tragic failure ‘for about 100 decent young Irishmen who were misled completely’, Barry wrote to Dr T. Ryle Dwyer.[54]

  On 11 December 1939, the trial opened in Birmingham of five IRA men for an explosion in Coventry on 25 August. All five pleaded not guilty. Barry ‘tried to force the De Valera government to act’, but failed. Though he had drifted from the movement and disagreed with the bombing campaign, yet when he knew that neither Peter Barnes nor James McCormack was guilty of the crime and that they were to be executed, he addressed a massive meeting in Cork, proclaiming their innocence of the Coventry bombing.

  He had called the meeting, he said, to explain to the people that the British government did not give a damn and were prepared to hang any two men without a fair trial.

  His voice rang through the Grand Parade and the South Mall to ‘the largest assembly ever held there’ as he told his listeners he had informed the British government that he himself would go to England and would go to prison in their place while a proper trial was being conducted.

  Jerh Cronin says, ‘The British government wouldn’t have it. They had heard enough of Barry in years gone by.’

  The two men were hanged on Ash Wednesday morning 1940. According to British Records, ‘Barnes and McCormack, for our purposes must be judged as common murderers’.[55]

  In 1939 Tom went before the Service Pensions Board to obtain his pension under the Military Service Pensions Act 1934. He had great difficulty and received ‘the scandalous award’ of 5¾ years approx. Rank B. ‘He appealed and submitted statements in support of Rank and Service’ from 12 senior officers, including ‘An Taoiseach’ De Valera and Florrie O’Donoghue. These men in turn were examined ‘on oath’; moreover, ‘other men testified on oath in Tom’s case’, and Tom himself testified ‘on oath’. Barry’s ‘Rank and Service’ were again being questioned in April 1940 at which time Tom Crofts asked Oscar Traynor, minister of defence, ‘Why has Barry been treated like this? That is the question that every officer who is aware of Barry’s humiliation is asking. There is the further humiliation to all of us senior officers who testified in writing and on oath as to Barry’s rank and service.’ Crofts wondered if ‘there is any truth in the suggestion that because Frank Aiken and Tom Barry are and have been bad friends in the recent past, certain members of the board have taken up a hostile and unfair attitude in Barry’s case … He has had a rotten deal and his claim is open and above board if there ever was one.’ In all the cases that Tom Crofts ‘verified’ he was ‘never once put on oath’ except in Barry’s case.[56] (See Appendix VI.)

  It was not until August 1943 that Barry got a handwritten letter from a Mrs O’Driscoll on behalf of Cornelius O’Driscoll of Woodside New York, who was in Ireland at that time, stating that he [Tom] would receive £15 p.a. payable from 1934 but subject to restrictions of receipts of ‘Public Moneys’ and further ‘deductions’.[57]As his entitlement to a pension was not given with a good will it is understood among his friends that he never availed of a Military Service Pension. His case was ‘handled in a totally different manner to that of any other prominent officer,’ Tom Crofts wrote.[58]

  In a countrywide swoop in the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1940 a number of IRA were arrested. Active dissidents were imprisoned and detained for the duration of the war.

  During this precarious period, Barry got news that his mother had died on 5 March 1940. Though his sister Gert rang a friend of Tom’s who had a ‘phone and advised for his own safety that he should not ‘dream’ of attending the funeral, nevertheless, he took a chance, ‘a big chance!’ Looking, ‘the real business man – suitably dressed’ he took the boat to Liverpool, then to Allerton cemetery for the funeral. He was ‘cautious’, left shortly afterwards and ‘was sad that he couldn’t spend more time with his father and other family members’. Leslie daren’t travel with him because as a couple they would be easily identified. Tom was torn at this time and ‘wished the situation’ between the two countries was different.[59]

  Having had a rough passage through the forty-odd years of his life Tom Barry felt the time had come for him to bow out of turbulent activity and settle into married life. However, he was to retain his fighting spirit for years to come.

  Notes

  [1]Tom Bar
ry, author interview. There is no truth or justification in the suggestion that Admiral Somerville was shot because he was a Protestant, as in, Joseph O’Neill, Blood-Dark Track. For an account of Ireland’s difficulties at this period, see Hanley.

  [2]MacEoin, The IRA, p. 13; see also Bowyer Bell, pp. 155, 156.

  [3]Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA, p. 155.

  [4]Bowyer Bell, p. 161.

  [5]Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA, p. 150.

  [6]Den Carey, author interview 11/1/1981; also Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA 151.

  [7]Bowyer Bell, pp. 164–166; see also MacEoin, The IRA, pp. 16, 17.

  [8]Tom Barry, author interview; Bowyer Bell, p. 164, 165. For the life of Frank Ryan see, Seán Cronin, Frank Ryan: The Search for the Republic; Fearghal McGarry, Frank Ryan.

  [9]Tom Barry to Joe McGarrity, 15 March 1937, McGarrity Papers, NLI.

  [10]Peadar O’Donnell to Cumann na mBan executive, 20 April 1934, Sighle Humphreys Papers, P106/1154, UCDA.

  [11]Hanley, pp.1 56–160.

  [12]Den Carey author interview 11/1/1981; Jerh Cronin author interview 10/1/ 1981.

  [13] Jack Doheny Lynch, author interview 10/1/1981; Den Carey, author interview 14/1/1981.

  [14]Dr Ned Barrett, author interview 9/12/1980.

  [15]Den Carey, author interview 11/1/1981.