Tom Barry (59 page)

Against the background of what became known as ‘The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, especially in the 1970s, Tom Barry in a frank interview elucidated his personal views:

‘Basically I'm a physical force man. If violent methods are used, you can only counter them with violence. What's the use in turning the other bloody cheek? Yes I discovered that long ago. But, I would only agree with bombing military targets, and military targets only. The fight to get the British out of Ireland forever is the right of every Irish person, but the killing of non-military personnel in the northern part of our country is something I abhor. The IRA have every right to attack the occupying forces, but nobody, and I emphasise the word
nobody
has the right to bomb civilian targets. The lives of the ordinary citizens must be protected, and I have always made that quite clear.'

It was a warm mid-April day in 1979. We sat on a bench in the Mardyke, Cork. Tom looked out over the mown lawn, past the shrubs towards the blue sky beyond. His words were measured, as always. He admitted he had gone to the north of Ireland during the early 1970s on the invitation of the IRA but said he found too many opposing forces of opinion on policy, and too many splinter groups, thus making difficult a united effort of tactics against British domination. Therefore he felt he couldn't be of much help.

He also admitted that many IRA leaders called on him from time to time, but he said he ‘told them to their face' he disagreed with any ‘ruthless bombing which sapped the lives of innocent people.'

When the column occupied Lord Tom Kingston's house before the Burgatia engagement he felt sorry, mainly for the man's wife and family. ‘My family were gone to Liverpool; it was their decision. And when Lord Tom pleaded with me to let him go to England I consented. Mind you if it was proved that he had been responsible for getting even one of my men killed, I'd have shot him. He went off and didn't trouble us again. I always believed in abiding by the code of war except when those Essex savages committed barbaric deeds, then I ordered that they be shot at sight.'

He laughed when he thought of the soldiers in Skibbereen to whom he gave a good time, but anger rose when mention was made of the deaths of Galvin, Begley and O'Donoghue. ‘The marks on their bodies showed treatment conducted by savages who called themselves soldiers of the British king.' Torture or ill-treatment was not war but savagery to him, and he referred again to incidents in the north. Torturing anybody, no matter whom, or killing civilians, was wrong. ‘I fell out with the IRA because of the bombing campaign of Birmingham, and I do not agree with using places like restaurants, bars or any other public buildings as a target, or such incidents as a means of gaining a United Ireland.'

He went back over the pains taken in his guerrilla days to protect innocent civilians. Before the Toureen ambush he had ordered the Roberts family to be taken, under guard, to a neighbour's house and kept there until after the ambush. At Crossbarry, before occupying Beasleys' and Harolds' farmhouses on the roadside near the area, he had ordered the occupants to be removed and held under guard at neighbours' houses. The guard was necessary in case of informants. Drimoleague Barracks' attack was a risky venture, as it meant removing several families who lived across the road from the quarters; this had to be done piece-meal for fear of detection.

‘It had to be done. I would never, if I could help it, put the ordinary people at risk. The men of the column who volunteered were taking a chance, but they knew they were gambling with their lives. This was always made quite clear to them. They had volunteered – though I was aware of this, my heart bled at the loss of one of them.

‘Yes, I put them at risk. We were all at risk, but that's what war is about – the necessary war for a nation's freedom ... I agree there is perhaps a conflict here. You push them forward to do a job, to kill and perhaps be killed. You can't think too deeply about them then. Afterwards, when they get killed, one cannot but feel the loss.'

Did he see a link between the fight in the north today and the fight in his day?

‘Well! They are fighting for the same objectives as the men of 1916 did and as we did. They want the British out. It's an ongoing fight, but the means to gain it have changed, not for the better, I might add, because the Provos have polarised the people against them. That was where we gained, we had the majority of the people behind us – not at first of course, but we won their confidence. They are not doing that. They are putting their own people, even down here south, against their aims.'

He regretted not being able to experience a United Ireland in his lifetime. ‘Thinking back on it, we would have been better off, the country would have been, if we had no Truce, though I was all for it then; but I only wanted a temporary break, a tester, but the negotiations messed things up – that dastardly Civil War and everything … Even in the 1930s if I had my way then, the climate was right to go up north and get the people behind us; we might have a different Ireland today. Each generation now has its own fight to fight and no matter what people say, it will go on until Ireland is united.'

The failures of past generations he claimed were due to lack of unity. ‘Take Owen Roe, left alone after his victory at Benburb; Sarsfield left surrounded at Limerick until he surrendered; the men of Wexford and Wicklow left unaided in the 1798 Rising; and those brave 1916 men left to their military defeat while the rest of Ireland kept quiet. Also we have to remember that the achievement of unity is coupled with planning and leadership, and this required discipline and organised effort. If the Irish could remember this, forget their squabbles, co-operate and unite, then perhaps they could make a fresh start with a reasonable hope of success.'

Had he any suggestions as to how the problem in the north could be solved?

‘It's up to the commanders to make their own decisions. It's not for me to say what the Provos should do. I only know I would handle it differently, but each commander has his own way of doing things. I back the Provos right to get the British out, but they need better planning, and the targets should be military targets only … Yes, negotiations should be more progressive now in this generation … I don't know why they're not successful. . . I cannot see why the northern Protestants would not be happy in a United Ireland. Surely we have reached a point in civilisation when people should work together. Why shouldn't Protestants and Catholics work together in a united effort, in a United Ireland? We have a great bloody country if we'd only pull together and work it properly ... '

As he turned a softness crept across his face.

‘It's strange, you know, there's always money for war and defence. Yet when money is wanted for houses or education there is none. Human beings are peculiar, there's no doubt about it. Look at England, and what it is costing them to hold on to the six counties – those things seem to be taken for granted.

‘Yes, all wars are foul,' he said, ‘but the war of freedom has to be fought. If the mighty power will not release its grip otherwise, then the release has to come around by war.'

He dismissed the insinuation in some books that the War of Independence was a ‘glorious war'. ‘There is no such thing. You fight because you have to and you do the best you can – that's what we did. All you have to do is kill more of them than they kill of you.'

‘People said you had no fear,' I said.

‘Of course I was afraid sometimes. I don't think the man is born who has no fear. I conquered it I suppose. I needed bravery to command. I would never send a man to do any task which I wouldn't do myself because of fear. But let history be my judge!'

There was such gentleness about this man one wondered how he could kill a spy. But it was all part of the war: ‘You did what had to be done.' After a thoughtful pause the next sentence came like a bullet from his colt: ‘We didn't kill half enough of the British bastards!'

Suddenly he leaned close and whispered into my ear, ‘I'll take some secrets to the grave with me.'

Some stories he told were shocking; one could almost feel the blood rising. Some were strange and sad, and others were funny – all based on a myriad of experiences from the man who said he was happy and contented with himself.

The man who fought in three wars before his twenty-fifth birthday – the First World War, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War – was a little dissatisfied with the Ireland, which had emerged. Another IRA Kilmichael veteran put it thus: ‘We fought for Ireland, we died for Ireland and now we won't work for Ireland.'
[1]

In an
Irish Press
interview Barry said, ‘nowadays people tend to be money-mad; everybody seems to be concerned with money, money, money. We all like to have a few bob in our pockets to spend, but it is gone to ridiculous lengths now.'
[2]

The man who who told me that he wouldn't place a wreath on the grave of a famine victim, because they didn't mobilise to stick a pike in a few landlords despite the fact that they would have had the backing of the majority of the Irish people, took the filter tip of his smoked cigarette from its holder, put it into his match box which went into his left pocket and put the holder into the top pocket. Everything he did was exact. He rubbed the flecks of ash from his trousers, and as he got up and turned, his well-polished shoes shone beneath the rays of the sun.

He lifted his soft, grey hat in a polite gesture before we parted on the understanding of another meeting.

The May flowers were in bloom as Tom Barry walked with me down the narrow path in the grounds of Fitzgerald Park in the Mardyke, Cork. It was a sunny Saturday morning.

The cane with a silver top – a general's cane – was placed across his legs as he sat. Was he a proud man?

‘How do you describe pride? If you mean proud of what I have achieved in life, the answer is yes; but if you mean vain, I don't think so. I hope not. Most of us try to do the best we can with our lives. Some don't do a damn thing of course. When I think of my wife and all that she has done for people, and she's left lying there.'

He paused, getting lost in his thoughts for a moment.

In a
Sunday Independent
interview he had said, ‘I see goddamn rapists and exploiters and robbers and murderers go out in their sleep. Why does she have to get it like this?'
[3]

A sadness crept across his face, so we changed the subject.

There was a touch of sadness, not to be lingered upon, at the fact that his family was not around him – that his parents were buried in England, that his father was buried without his being present. His older brother was killed when struck by a train in America, a sister went to Australia and married there, another sister followed, other members of the family were now dead ...

Tom and his wife Leslie had no children, but ‘the good Irish people' were their family. ‘This pair had given their time, energy and money to the people of Ireland'.
[4]
They really held no worldly possessions, never owned their own house, but lived for most of the latter part of their lives in a rented flat over Woodford Bournes at the corner of Patrick Street, Cork.
[5]

Tom had admiration for many of the great men who fought for Irish freedom down through the ages. He liked to talk about them: the men of Wexford, the Fenians and ‘Tom Clarke, a man who had to eat his food in the filth of an English dungeon with his hands tied behind his back. The spirit of that man, whom one would say had had enough, came back a middle-aged man and fought in 1916. And after all that he faced the execution squad bravely. All for Ireland!'

Eamon de Valera was a man he admired, even though he was jailed by him many times. ‘Sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong.'

Michael Collins should have lived, but then it was that horrible ‘fight between brothers that brought it about. He wanted peace, just as De Valera did, as some more of us did ... Collins did so much for Ireland ... '

He showed me a copy of a letter to his solicitor in which he said he wanted a strictly private funeral. His plot for himself and his wife would be close to the Republican one but not in it. As he carefully folded it he grinned, then laughed, ‘‘Twill be all over before anybody knows about it.'

The sun had shifted high in the sky when suddenly a dark cloud obscured the golden rays. He rose, looked around, ‘Light and shade,' he said. ‘A mirror of the facts of life!'

We walked in silence towards the bustle of city traffic, towards his flat over Woodford Bournes.

He put his hand gently on my shoulder, bent towards me and whispered, ‘If you write something about me and I'm still around I'd like to see it. If I'm gone, it doesn't matter a damn!'

A warm shake-hands was followed by the raising of his hat, and we parted. (The flat was gutted to make way for a fast-food outlet. Tom and Leslie's papers and letters were mixed up in the rubble. But a concerned builder salvaged some, contacted a friend, and bundled everything into black plastic bags.)

He was not feeling well during an informal celebration held on 1 July 1980 to mark his eighty-third birthday. That night he became ill and was taken to the Regional Hospital, Cork, where he died in the early hours of 2 July. His life had run a complete cycle; it was as if he had timed it. In life he was exact, and it seems almost as if he had ordered his death so that his precise age could be quoted without the addition of even an extra week.

His body lay in an oak coffin, draped with the tricolour, before the altar of the church of SS Peter & Paul in Cork city. His ‘loving wife, Leslie' whom he had hoped would go before him, had a wreath of yellow and white chrysanthemums sent. Unable to attend the funeral, she lay in her hospital bed where she would remain until she died over three and three-quarter years later (April 1984). Only a group of friends, relatives and a contingent of the special branch were present, while a police helicopter hovered overhead. His wife's nephew, Fr Cathal Price, who said that the general had asked for a simple funeral without fuss, celebrated the Mass. ‘Let us do that and give thanks for the man whose life touched our lives, and that of our country. Let us give thanks to God that the tremendous qualities that he had were used for us, and through us, and together let us give thanks.'
[6]