Tom Barry

by Meda Ryan

  In July 1971 Martin O’Leary, a 20 year old Cork Republican died following an explosion at Mogul Mines, Co. Tipperary. A force of 200 gardaí walked with the hearse and ‘an estimated 500 gardaí ringed’ St Finbarr’s cemetery during the ceremonies. This was at the height of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland and there was fear of conflict. He was buried in the Republican Plot. The grave had been opened during the night ‘without the permission of the corporation’. Official IRA chief-of-staff, Cathal Goulding gave the oration. Barry, who was not present, disliked the Official IRA’s move away from traditional Republicanism and because of this ‘invasion’ he felt the Republican plot ‘was dishonoured by the inclusion of a modern [Official] Republican alongside veterans’ of the War of Independence. The incident copper-fastened his decision that the Republican plot would not be his final resting place.[10]

  In the summer of 1972 when Tom was unveiling a memorial in Kilkelly, to the memory of the men who were killed in East Mayo, the War of Independence, John Snee in introducing him spoke of the bravery and resoluteness of all those who fought for Ireland, ‘but’ he said, ‘there was only one Tom Barry!’[11]

  A group of about 24 Provisional IRA came down from Northern Ireland to meet with him and get his views. They met in the old Connolly Hall in Cork where Barry gave them a ‘good talk’ on tactics.

  Joe Cahill, IRA activist and chief-of-staff over a number of years, found Tom Barry very supportive of the northern ‘struggle for freedom’. Barry ‘believed in the justice of the cause, right throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,’ Joe Cahill recalled. ‘Whenever we took active men to meet him, he advised and encouraged them to complete the job that he and his men started. He’d get very angry at the way Nationalists in Northern Ireland were treated as second-class citizens.’

  Many men engaged in the struggle in South Armagh and other parts of Northern Ireland sought his advice. ‘His active interest in the IRA was beneficial to the men’, said Cahill, who admits that Barry gave him many tips, ‘whenever’ the two men spent worthwhile hours in discussion. ‘He always maintained that the objective was the same – the fight for freedom – though the means of achieving it had altered.’

  ‘Barry has to be admired,’ said Joe Cahill. ‘He wasn’t an armchair general. He was a military genius. In the conflict he led by example. Throughout the decades, the goal of a United Ireland in his lifetime, was his greatest wish. Not all that long before he died, I met him. He had one desire, he said. If he had the energy, he would love to get some men together and have one other go at the British establishment, to see could he achieve his aim – bring them into discussions.’[12]

  A few nights after Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972) Brendan O’Neill, Dave O’Sullivan and group of Cork men organised a mass meeting in the City Hall with Barry as the principal speaker. Thousands packed in and the overflow lined over the Lee Bridge as Republican men from each decade, the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s up to the 1970s stood on the stage. ‘The atmosphere was electric’.[13]

  As time passed Tom, concerned about the ongoing conflict in the north, had no time for stone-throwing or petrol-bombing civilian targets. In fact this ‘made him angry’.[14]‘I won’t be associated with the putting of bombs in pubs.’[15]

  He told Sighle Humphreys how he had tried ‘to get a united effort in the Six Counties ... but to no avail ... A certain man came to me and I knew they would not attend any meeting with the others who have accepted [a united effort]. Of course that is the basic cause of our 800 years subjection – no unity, discipline and the continuation of some leaders of their determination to be top dogs. If I were ten years younger,’ he wrote, ‘I’d try and write a book giving the real cause of our continuous failures. Anything that you [Sighle], Con or the others or St Peter [could do] could not get unity nowadays, so your meeting will be futile and I will not attend … I would go up to your meeting but I abhor meetings that I believe are futile’. Three weeks previously he had organised Cork signatures, he said, sent them to Dublin for political consideration, but this ‘was blocked somewhere on the line’.[16]

  Early in 1973 he had surgery in the back of his neck and his eyes as a result of a slight accident. He feared he would lose his sight. When Leslie came to the hospital after the operation he had ‘his eyes covered’. Stoically he said, ‘well, we will take this in the same way as we took life’s ups and downs since we married in 1921!’[17]Tom often described their marriage ‘as a perfect marriage’. The secret is ‘that two people understood one another and didn’t step in one another’s paths’. Each allowed the other to lead their separate lives. ‘We were individuals, but we were always there for one another’, Leslie commented.[18]

  Then another obstacle was thrown in his path. In 1973 Liam Deasy (commanding officer, West Cork Brigade, later adjutant, First Southern Division) ... published a book on the West Cork Brigade activities in the War of Independence – Towards Ireland Free. Fr Chisholm stated in his Editorial Note that he got the closest co-operation from Liam Deasy and that the facts ‘derive directly from him or meet with his approval’. However, ‘I am conscious’, he wrote, ‘that all too often it is my own style which prevails.’[19]

  When the Deasy book was published, the contents incensed Barry so much that he wrote a letter to all daily and some weekly newspapers ‘… frankly, when I first glanced through the book, I was puzzled at some of Deasy’s statements, but later I was angered at his presentation of events and his alleged informants. The omissions, of great importance, were so vital to a true picture of what occurred that it was hard to understand.

  ‘Individuals are all praised fulsomely and excessively, but coupled with that, a picture is given which denigrates the Flying Column, and if true, must show the Column Commander as a moron, incapable of commanding a single sniper, not to mention a flying column ... ’

  He went on to ask why Deasy, whom he says had the book partly written 30 years previously, did not publish it until 52 years after the events when many of those who participated were already dead. He mentions his own book, which had been published 25 years before this date in several countries, had been serialised in the Irish Press and the Southern Star and was not challenged by Deasy or any of the brigade men. He noted that the contents of the two books varied greatly. Furthermore, the major ambushes had been written by participants and published in the 1950s in Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story. ‘Their versions differ greatly from Deasy’s, yet neither he nor anyone else made one refutation or correction. Why?’ he asked.[20]Immediately he set about writing a booklet called The Reality of the Anglo-Irish War 1920–1921 in West Cork, subtitled Refutations, Corrections and Comments on Liam Deasy’s Towards Ireland Free.This was published the following year.[21]

  In his booklet he stated that ‘the onerous’ task placed on him ‘could have been avoided had the Rev. John Chisholm’ written to him and asked for his ‘comments or any statement at distinct variance with Deasy’s version.’[22]

  Dr Chisholm told me he met Tom Barry by appointment in the Imperial Hotel, Cork, with the edited manuscript of Deasy’s book which he asked Barry to read. Barry’s reply was abrupt: ‘whatever has to be said about the Third West Cork Brigade is in Guerilla Days’. Barry told me that he did not feel like reading a whole manuscript and that it was up to the editor to establish the facts. He said in his booklet that he would have clarified points if Deasy had written to him. However, Barry could have been annoyed that Liam Deasy did not approach, or contact, him personally.

  Taking the ambushes and incidents in which he was involved and which he felt were not accurately portrayed in the Deasy book, Barry analysed these and gave what he saw as the facts.

  As an example he takes an incident when Deasy says that he, Deasy, with another unarmed Volunteer, on hearing the column was in trouble, went to ‘the Dunmanway area to muster a couple of men and dig out a couple of shotguns – before going on to decimate the British, no doubt! Even every Fianna boy of that period knew that the effective range of a shotgun was
not more than fifty yards. How in the name of common sense would even a rookie lance-corporal consider sending in a couple of shotgun-men to attack the British forces with their high-powered modern weapons having twenty times the shotgun range? ... if anyone can contemplate its ever having occurred, he can place any man who thought of it and attempted to carry it out higher in gallantry and idiotic behaviour than Lord Raglan who led the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.’

  The booklet is full of bite, using such phrases as: ‘This disposes of one part of Deasy’s fairy tale’‚ ‘Deasy continued his garbled account’‚ ‘Deasy’s other hysterical statements’‚ ‘Deasy had the impertinence’‚ ‘Deasy’s final chapter is equally incorrect’.

  Barry stated that, of all the accounts, that of Kilmichael ‘angered me most’. The incorrect sectional divisions, incorrect description of the ambush, but most of all the omission of the false surrender (as already dealt with) was, he emphasised, a gross distortion of the facts. It depicted him as ‘a blood-thirsty’ commander. The omission of the false surrender was questioned by reviewers. As it had never previously been queried, Barry felt hurt, angered and compelled to respond. In his booklet he dealt ‘only with matters’ which he considered ‘to be controversial’. So, he wrote, ‘I am jumping from one incident to another.’ And he wondered if some of the material of ‘Deasy’s or Father Chisholm’s alleged history’ derived from the source given to the Bureau of Military History , because if so, this source ‘must have included some very tall tales.’[23]

  He found his ‘head reeling’ as he read Deasy’s account of Crossbarry which ‘compares our position with that of the Wild Geese before Fontenoy, and … actually quotes Davis’ lines … one really grows tired of the numerous contradictions apparent from page to page,’ he wrote. There is the story of Deasy with Barry and John Lordan in Cronin’s pub toasting a glass to the day ahead, when they didn’t even know what was ahead (Crossbarry ambush). Barry states that members of the flying column were not allowed to drink on active service. His ‘mind’ as they ‘awaited the approaching military gunfire’ was far from observing ‘daybreak followed by a beautiful sunrise that ushered the finest day we [the column] had in a long time.’[24]

  In the last page of the booklet Barry stated: ‘As for those accounts of suggestions, which he [Deasy] claims he made to me, as commander of the column, it is of interest to note a comment by one reviewer of Towards Ireland Free. That reviewer observed that he counted five times when Deasy stated: “I suggested and Tom Barry agreed” and the reviewer further remarked: “This does not sound like Tom Barry”. That Deasy never made one of those suggestions has, I think, been clearly proved by me in dealing with his version of the events of Crossbarry. Survivors of the column will know that, had he done so, he would have been told to get out of the column quickly.’[25]When Barry was appointed column commander in 1920, he undertook the ultimate responsibility of deciding what members fought in the column.

  Historian, Pádraig Ó Maidín in a review, disagreed with the Deasy ‘consultations’ and ‘council meetings’; furthermore, he listed ambushes and actions ‘which were won not by council meetings or staff consultations but by a commander who had sole and absolute command, who planned every detail in every action and won battle after battle fighting and thinking on his feet’.[26]In deciding to write the booklet Barry believed he had no option as he ‘could not allow gross inaccuracies to go unchallenged … the facts were often far less glamourous’ than the Deasy book portrayed.[27]‘In the telling of the victories, the details matter, matter very much, just as much as they mattered in the fight itself’, Pádraig Ó Maidín wrote. ‘Out of Barry’s pain and anger that moved him he has given us a deeper insight into the reality of the war in West Cork and into the men who fought it … we have, in these few pages, a major work of military history’ of the ‘qualities that made Barry a fighter, unique perhaps in our history.’[28]

  Barry’s booklet upon publication created an immediate controversy. The Southern Star took up the issue, which resulted in a series of letters to that paper. Facts were again at stake. The old IRA men were forced to take sides.

  After the publication of Barry’s book and before Liam Deasy’s book was published in paperback, a group of old IRA veterans were asked to disassociate themselves from Barry’s booklet and to endorse the Deasy book. J. M. Feehan wrote to the Sunday Independent that ‘The original letter with signatures is in possession of Mr Flor Begley’ (a signatory). Begley had been the piper at Crossbarry and in earlier years had praised Tom Barry, but in the intervening period had disagreed with him over a matter unrelated to their military activities. Dr Nudge Callanan, a reluctant signatory, did not know who initiated the suggestion.[29]

  A letter ‘to disassociate’ themselves from ‘the contents’ of Barry’s booklet and agreeing that ‘Liam Deasy’s book was a complete account of the organisation and activities of the Third West Cork Brigade’ with fourteen signatures appeared in all Irish newspapers on 11 December 1974. On 23 December, Barry wrote to all the papers pointing out that in many cases some signatories ‘were never even in the vicinity of a single one of the fights dealt with’ in the booklet, nor did they participate in an ambush about which they disagreed with Barry’s account. He listed locations where signatories were at the time of specified ambushes; therefore he suggested that ‘perhaps the signatories would like to agree to set up a small board of outside historians to decide:

  (a) Whether they were qualified to give an opinion of the brigade history covered by my booklet and

  (b) Whether Deasy’s version or mine is the correct one.

  I will gladly co-operate in any such project.

  In his letter he made it clear that he was not ‘disparaging the records of some’ of ‘the signatories who gave splendid military service’.

  Although the controversy blew over after the letters, especially to the Southern Star, petered out, some bitterness remained. Seeds of doubt had been sown because of the Deasy–Barry controversy. Though I must say that Nudge Callanan was later ‘so sorry’ he agreed to sign. In fact Tom Barry was ‘and would always be’ his hero. A photo of Barry dressed in trench coat, hair blowing in the wind, hung on the wall of his study. He had not, at the time of signing, read the Deasy book – neither had John Fitzgerald, nor had Denis Lordan, and Paddy O’Brien who was not well at the time, believed that all he was doing was agreeing with the competence of Liam Deasy.[30]

  Tom Barry in his critique stated at the outset that he was not in any way accusing Paddy O’Brien who, he wrote, ‘has been a life-long friend of mine and I still have a high regard for his long service in the Irish Republican army.’ He hoped that ‘Paddy and his family … whose life-work I admire so much, will understand I have no alternative but to tear asunder Deasy’s published account’ of the training camp and the Kilmichael ‘fight’. He hadn’t met O’Brien prior to his Deasy challenge, but had earlier visited O’Brien in hospital, as he (O’Brien) had been ill for some years. However, he was annoyed with the errors in the Kilmichael account and the omission of the false surrender.[31]

  Delivering, on location, lectures on Crossbarry and Kilmichael to the Irish army in the 1960s Barry told the men to be as critical as necessary of the commander (himself), and to point out any mistakes he had made. Criticism of his actions and decisions whether correct or incorrect was his to respond and to accept.[32]But, as he was a stickler for facts – any difference of facts annoyed him; hence his anger with the Deasy book.

  The degree of bitterness that surfaced and the sequence of events during these exchanges, tell their own sad story. Deasy who had been ill for some time, died in August 1974. Tom Barry’s booklet delivered to the publisher in January 1974, ‘long before Mr Deasy’s illness was known to either the author or publisher’, was not published until November due to ‘printing industry’ difficulties. And the signatures against Barry did not appear until December 1974, almost four months after Deasy’s death.[33]

  Barry
stated that, ‘it has not been an easy booklet to write’ because ‘one does not like to take apart the writings of one who was once an associate, even though our ways diverged sharply after he wrote this book’. He felt that he owed it to the brigade and the flying column, however, to set the record straight for future writers. There is no doubt but that this book drove a wedge between the two men. Some members of Liam Deasy’s family in West Cork felt it should not have happened, and believed that Liam Deasy would not have instigated the signatures. ‘We [the extended family] did not like the book’. They were ‘most unhappy’ about the Kilmichael ambush controversy. ‘Liam thought a lot of Barry.’[34]

  It was a sad split after an era of togetherness. Tom Barry’s batman and friend, Christy Barrett, said that ‘the general was very upset. Liam Deasy had been his friend all his life.’ They had met at funerals, commemorations and had got together on occasions, so ‘he couldn’t understand’ why the accounts of so many of the engagements in Towards Ireland Free differed from other published accounts.[35]

  The hero who lives long loses his aura; his moment passes and he is seen as an ordinary man. Only the hero who dies young remains, in memory and writing, forever young. Tom Barry, the hero, though still youthful in appearance, was growing old.

  During the latter part of his life he became difficult, especially at commemoration committee meetings, often portraying a stubborn almost intolerant attitude. There was one particular night in Dunmanway where the committee met to discuss events for the forthcoming Kilmichael ceremonies. For some reason an argument arose as to whether the horse and side car with the Bantry Volunteers came up the road or down the road towards the ambuscade (they could have come from either the Dunmanway or Macroom direction from Bantry). Several of those present mention that night as the night Barry got into a tantrum and in fact appeared to be contradicting himself. It almost created pandemonium, and indeed it was not easy to call Barry to order and ask him to wait until the meeting was over.