Tom Barry (45 page)

Arising out of these exchanges, Fianna Fáil stated ‘that they should retain control and responsibility … they could not accept any other organisations or bodies interfering.'
[19]
Barry was disappointed that the ‘advances were not received in a better spirit'. He proposed the setting up of ‘an anti-British committee comprising two representatives from each of the following in all districts – IRA, Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Labour and ex-IRA. It could be called an anti-imperialist committee.' Their tasks ‘would be to arrange meetings, propaganda, boycotting, picqueting
(sic)
of British papers, shops selling British goods and more direct action when suitable and required,' he wrote. ‘If you think that my suggestion would lead to the formation throughout the country of a strong body … to be used as a lever towards the restoration of the Republic' then he would ‘gladly' help. Most important was that ‘Republican policy will be the dominating influence'.
[20]

Barry was extremely angry with an article by Patrick Murphy in the
Sunday Express
the gist of which proffered the view that though De Valera ‘corrects' the dissidents ‘quietly he and his government pretend not to notice'. It was, he wrote ‘the real IRA … who accepted the Treaty'.
[21]
The next day Barry wrote to Moss Twomey and told him that Patrick Murphy should ‘be taken for a drive and given a dam
(sic)
good hiding … put on board' at Dun Laoghaire as his only chance – ‘deportation' and ‘burning of his paper'. The editor should be informed of his ‘scurrilous production' and boycotted henceforth.
[22]

By August 1932 Barry was happy with Fianna Fáil and believed that the party's views would concur with his own. He now wanted ‘a final effort' to ‘reunite … all Republicans – all struggling for the same goal'.
[23]
Tom worked for the Cork Harbour Board by day, but in all his spare time he was devoting his energies towards IRA activities.
[24]

In a letter to
An Phoblacht
, Barry set out to correct a report that he ‘asked young men present' at a commemoration in Dunmanway and ‘who were not volunteers to join the Irish Republican army'. Controversy arose between the reporter and others as to what Barry actually said.
[25]
Barry further clarified for Moss Twomey the comments he had made, wherein he had asked that people should get their TDs ‘to clearly understand that the people wanted the Republic restored now – not in ten or twenty years'. He wanted all ‘women and the heads of families' to boycott British goods'. The IRA ‘could only help by organising, arming, training and disciplining themselves, because in the last analysis of any situation arising out of a struggle between Ireland and England, it was the armed men who counted.'
[26]

A period of unrest, the result of a combination of the bitterness left by the Civil War and the uncertainty of the political situation, prompted De Valera to get a clear mandate from the people by suddenly calling a general election for 24 January 1933. Barry again supported De Valera and held intensive drilling operations throughout Co. Cork. With IRA support De Valera's strategy worked.

Concern that the Free State Volunteer force being established, would ‘sweep unattached youths into its ranks' had Barry proposing a motion at the March 1933 general army convention, that the IRA should notify all Fianna Fáil TDs of their objection to such a body. However, this motion was replaced by a decision to increase IRA recruitment efforts.
[27]

At this time (March 1933) Barry was concerned that banks were putting ‘pressure' on farmers. Four farms ‘in the Upton district' outside Bandon were to be seized and offered for sale. Two of the farmers were ‘ex-IRA'. The United Farmers Protection Association under the chairmanship of Tom Hales was helping them. But because of influences by others who were outside this association, Tom Barry felt the IRA should ‘take a hand in the matter'. Already he had ‘interviewed the solicitor to the bank at the request of and in the presence of the farmers concerned. I told him [solicitor] that neither sales nor seizures would be allowed and I also pointed out that he had already grabbed three farms himself, whilst acting as agent for the bank.' At a meeting of the Farmers Protection Association to be held in Cork, Barry with IRA members Tadhg Lynch and Tom Kelleher wished to attend. He informed Moss Twomey, CS, that they should ‘take the lead … as we are the only organisation who can crystallise and develop opposition to evictions', he wrote. The meeting could also be used to get ‘people to stand again behind the IRA'. Due to Tom Hales' involvement in politics, he would prefer to get Tom Kelleher elected instead of Hales as chairman of the association.
[28]

Moss Twomey told Barry, ‘we need to be extremely careful in enquiring into every separate case of trouble with the bank'.
[29]
Barry and Kelleher with other volunteers attended the meeting to ‘urge popular resistance'.
[30]
At a further meeting in Bandon where Barry was not in attendance, he heard reports that Tom Hales, TD, ‘spoke disparagingly of the IRA' and stated that the ‘present executive' was ‘a harebrained lot'. Barry wasn't sure if the events were correctly reported to him. But he wrote to Tom Hales spelling out the position – ‘if you cannot refer to the volunteers in a fair manner, omit all reference to the Irish Republican army'. Tom Hales did not attend the next meeting.
[31]

A few days later Barry wrote to Moss Twomey: ‘the banks are making offers of settlement in most cases at half the original debt. We have taken no further action … but we are watching how matters will develop.' Barry was out most week-nights and all Saturdays in IRA ‘re-organisation' in West Cork villages. He compiled a
Programme for Training Camps
. ‘One thing I am certain of is that we must now set out to show up the Fianna Fáil party for what they are'. He was organising ‘boycott' meetings after Mass, holding parades on Sunday afternoons and arranging for ‘Easter Lily sales'. (Organisation in places such as Innishannon, Ballineen, Bantry, Castletownbere, Myross, Ardfield, Rathbarry with ‘speakers' at each venue kept him working non-stop.)
[32]

Barry observed that there was ‘great disillusionment taking place in the minds of the more sincere members of Fianna Fáil.' The army council should ‘take advantage of it'.
[33]
Later in the year Moss Twomey told Joe McGarrity that the Fianna Fáil leadership suffocated the United Farmer's Association proposal to organise a conference of republicans which led to Tom Hales resigning his Dáil seat.
[34]

All of Barry's spare time was spent in IRA activity. With other Volunteers he was in Catletownbere, Bantry, Kealkil establishing training units which led to ‘40 officers and all the arms' available, assembling for a training camp. In correspondence to ‘All Units' in West Cork, Barry advised them that the training would commence on Saturday and Sunday 27 and 28 May, and he wanted arms cleaned, and assembled. ‘If any man is victimised owing to his being called up for training, notify me at once and the army will take up his case immediately'.
[35]
Moss Twomey told him he ‘should act very cautiously in this business'.
[36]
Other areas wanted instructions, including Sligo. Barry told Twomey that he was ‘sure' Twomey would ‘agree that five minutes demonstration and verbal instruction is, as far as the usual batt. TO [training officer] is concerned, worth any one week's reading of text books'.
[37]
He wrote:

We should get twenty hours training at this camp on foot drill, extended order drill, rifle drill, machine-gun drill, revolver practice, rifle-practice (each man will fire one round at a target in our last hour of camp) lectures in organisation, duties of officers, discipline and control of men, movements of troops, etc. In particular each officer will have to take his turn at drilling and moving the remainder of the squads, so as to be qualified to drill and command his own company.

He elucidated the ‘great drawback' in ‘assembling all our arms and officers without sufficient effective ammunition'. While appealing to the chief-of-staff for arms and ammunition, he wanted to know by return if he had ‘any hopes of getting this stuff within a week'.
[38]

Barry, with sights on the bigger picture of a United Ireland, first had to uproot the ‘disturbing' element to secure a strong army. Inequality in the north of Ireland led him to ‘believe there will be no real peace in Ireland until the crime of partition is ended, and until Ireland is again a united nation under one government of the Republic', he wrote.
[39]

Meanwhile, the formation of the Blueshirts gave the militant wing of the IRA something to fight about. Barry believed that, as they represented fascism and had sprung out of Free State aspirations, they should be suppressed. Now, he had a cause and an opportunity to enlist young men into the IRA; within his forthcoming training camps he intended to cement the combination of youth with men who had practical experience. He intended changing methods to suit the time. This group soon became known as the ‘New' IRA.
[40]

At the March 1933 army convention Tom Barry stated that he had a major problem with the Army Comrades Association (ACA) – The Blue Shirts – in West Cork. In outlining how they were molesting IRA, shooting, burning, creating ‘a menace' by making daily life difficult, he could find ‘no way of handling these fellows but to dump them'. He wanted the convention to instruct the army council to act. While Andy Cooney sympathised with Barry's predicament, he believed that the situation was not as bad in any area as it was in West Cork. Without doubt it was ‘very humiliating' to Barry ‘to feel that his men are being kicked about,' Cooney said. ‘If I were in charge of West Cork, I might be putting forward a proposition such as this.' Cooney opposed a blanket army council declaration ‘to dump them' as Barry had suggested but added that in doing so he was aware that ‘the prime schemers' in Dublin were allowed ‘get off scot-free'.
[41]

Disquiet had surfaced in the IRA because of the Catholic bishops' Lenten pastorals denunciation of the organisation. This was brought to the fore at the convention. Though condemnation by the Church was not new to Barry, he expressed disquiet that the Church suggested a link with the organisation and Communism, and argued that it could have an effect on IRA recruitment. Other delegates teased out the subject. But it was found that a socialist policy being pursued by some IRA members was unhelpful.
[42]
Later in the year in Bodenstown, Moss Twomey publicly denied IRA alliance with communism.

A march to Government Buildings, as a first major effort of the Blueshirts National Guard, was arranged for Sunday, 13 August 1933. The army council of the IRA decided to attack O'Duffy's marchers, so the Cork IRA men travelled to Dublin. On the eve of the march the government revived Cosgrave's stringent measures of the military tribunal and banned the parade. O'Duffy called off the parade, but Barry and his men paraded. In the heightened atmosphere of tension, police baton charged the crowd who refused to disperse, and Barry was taken away by his comrades with a deep gash in his head and blood flowing down his face.

Under the leadership of men like Eoin O'Duffy and Ned Cronin the Blueshirt movement began to gain momentum. The ensuing result was that Barry and the rank and file of the IRA, especially in Cork under his leadership, ‘threw itself enthusiastically into the struggle.'
[43]

Leading a precarious life, Barry with some of his comrades decided to take on a Blueshirt element in West Cork. He challenged a fringe group in Clonakilty one evening. He thought he had ‘shut them up', and that when word would reach their leaders their activities would be stalled. Barry, Tom Kelleher and the boys then hopped into the car to set out for Bandon. Instantly men piled into another car, followed, and began to shoot. As Barry's car tore past Ahiohill, and Ballinscarthy, through the winding roads of West Cork, Barry and Tom Kelleher with guns out the side-back windows, began to return fire. The driver kept his head. ‘It was like prairie driving' as they knocked sparks off the bumpy road, the ditches and the black car behind. They swung around bends in the road, past Manch Bridge and in the straight. Suddenly their followers hit a ditch at Manch. Barry and his comrades shouted to nobody in particular and drove through Bandon without a policeman in sight.

Jerh Cronin remembers Barry's sense of humour in the midst of the tension of this Blueshirt activity. He was explaining why he had expelled somebody: ‘Just imagine,' he said, ‘a soldier of the Irish Republican army came home half drunk and decided when he saw some old woman with a blue shirt that he'd attack her. And that wasn't bad enough but didn't the old woman beat him. A member of the Irish Republican army to be such a loser!'
[44]

Eoin O'Duffy was to address a meeting on the South Mall, Cork, on 1 October 1933 so Barry decided to have a counter-meeting. With several of the old IRA and those of a younger generation from throughout Cork city and county, he organised a gathering of hundreds, and assembled them to march towards O'Duffy's group. Fearing trouble, the gardaí stood six deep.

Jim Kearney was there. ‘Barry went up on the platform in the Grand Parade; loud and clear he spoke, “I have broken through cordons before and I'll break through cordons again … battalion! Attention! Left turn!” And he faced us right for the guards. As we marched forward, they turned white. And just as we got to them – real close – he gave us the “Left turn!”' Quick, sharp and decisive – Barry's intention was to let the guards, O'Duffy and the government know that the IRA was still a redoubtable force.
[45]

Barry went ‘on the run' again. Kathy Hayes recalls a night in Rosscarbery, during this period, when she hid him in a cupboard covered with clothes during a raid. He wore, she remembers, a bulletproof vest at that time.
[46]