Blair urges Protestant waverers to keep the Good Friday Agreement alive and insists that IRA disarmament, which the pro-British unionists are demanding, is “part of the agreement.”
Britain says two monitors, former President of FinlandMartti Ahtisaari and South AfricanCyril Ramaphosa, have reported to the province’s disarmament commission. “We and the Irish government understand from the decommissioning commission that a second inspection of IRA dumps has now taken place, and they have received a report to that effect from President Ahtisaari and Mr. Ramaphosa,” a Northern Ireland Office statement says.
The IRA discloses the inspection, aimed to show that arms from its long anti-British war are no longer being used, as tension grows ahead of a crucial October 28 conference of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). “We specifically announced that we would repeat the inspection of a number of arms dumps by third parties to confirm that our weapons are secure,” the IRA says. “We now wish to confirm that this re-inspection has taken place and thank those involved for their co-operation.”
Ramaphosa and Ahtisaari first examine arms stockpiles in June 2000.
The IRA is observing a ceasefire following a 30-year war against British rule in Northern Ireland.
U.S. PresidentBill Clinton joins Britain and Ireland in applauding the IRA’s decision that it will permit a fresh look at some of its hidden arsenal.
However, as Blair arrives three bomb alerts underline the fragility of a peace that has been shaken by sporadic attacks by armed dissidents who oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. A detective escapes injury when a bomb under his car fails to explode in a carpark at Antrim, north Belfast. A police spokesman blames Protestant “loyalistparamilitaries.” Army bomb experts also deal with two “suspicious objects” found in other parts of the province, police say.
Blair’s visit is seen as a bid to garner support for First MinisterDavid Trimble, who is under pressure from within his Ulster Unionist Party over his decision to share power with Sinn Féin, even though the IRA has not disarmed.
Blair appeals to unionists ahead of their conference not to squander the accord’s hard-won political advances. He warns that disarmament will be out of reach if the coalition falls. “This is the only way forward for the future. If the Executive collapses and the Assembly then collapses, which must automatically happen, you don’t have a process at all, you don’t have decommissioning,” he tells reporters.
Confirmation of the second inspection is seen as a lift for the peace process which might ease pressure on Trimble.
UUP hardliners on Saturday, October 28, plan to urge grassroots members to back their demand for Trimble to pull out of the ruling coalition by November 30 if the IRA has not disarmed by that time. However, Trimble, at a news conference, dismisses the five-week deadline as “a crude device.”
(From: “IRA confirms arms dump inspections,” CNN.com, October 26, 2000 | Pictured: David Trimble, Seamus Mallon and Tony Blair at Stormont. Photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish Times)
McCaughey, from Aughnagar, Galbally, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, is born on February 24, 1967, the oldest son of Owen and Bridget McCaughey. He is a boyhood friend of several of the “Loughgall Martyrs” including Declan Arthurs, Seamus Donnelly, Tony Gormley and Eugene Kelly, with whom he travels to local discos and football matches when they are growing up.
McCaughey is elected as a Sinn Féin councillor for Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council and at the time is the youngest elected representative on the island of Ireland.
Two months prior to his shooting, McCaughey is disqualified from holding his office on the council as he had failed to appear for a monthly council meeting. After his death, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) reveals the explanation behind his disappearance. He had been shot and wounded in a shoot-out with undercover British Army security forces near Cappagh, County Tyrone. He is then taken south across the Irish border into the Republic of Ireland where he is given hospital treatment and therefore unable to attend the meetings.
Ulster UnionistMP and fellow Dungannon councillor Ken Maginnis alleges that McCaughey had conspired to kill him while both sat as councillors.
McCaughey is shot dead on October 9, 1990, along with Dessie Grew, in an operation by undercover British soldiers. A secret undercover intelligence unit named 14 Intelligence Company, also known as the DET, are monitoring three AK-47s at a farm building in a rural part of County Armagh and are aware that the pair are due to remove the guns.
As McCaughey and Grew are approaching an agricultural shed which is being used to grow mushrooms and also thought to be an IRA arms dump, as many as 200 shots are fired at the two men. British Army reports of the shooting state that the two men left the shed holding two rifles. Republican sources state the men were unarmed.
McCaughey is buried at Galbally Cemetery in October 1990.
The family of McCaughey claims that he and Grew were ambushed after a stakeout by the Special Air Service (SAS). In January 2002, Justice Weatherup, a Northern Ireland High Court judge, orders that official military documents relating to the shooting should be disclosed. However, Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief ConstableHugh Orde has the ruling overturned on appeal in January 2005.
Fellow Sinn Féin representative, Francie Molloy, replaces McCaughey on Dungannon Council after a by-election is held following McCaughey’s death.
In January 2007, the lawyers representing McCaughey and another volunteer, Pearse Jordan, apply to the House of Lords to challenge the details of how the inquests into their deaths are to proceed.
McCaughey’s father, Owen, seeks to compel Chief Constable Hugh Orde to produce key documents including intelligence reports relevant to the shooting and the report of the RUC’s investigating officer.
In 2010, a commemorative portrait of McCaughey is unveiled in the mayor’s parlour at Dungannon council.
McNamee is arrested on August 16, 1986, at his home in Crossmaglen by the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), then flown to London and charged with conspiracy to cause explosions. At his trial at the Old Bailey, he denies even having sympathy for the IRA, and no evidence is ever presented that he has any paramilitary links. Additionally, the IRA itself states that he is not a member, and never claimed him as a “prisoner of war.” However, his fingerprint is found on electronic circuits in an arms cache that is linked to the Hyde Park bombing. At his trial, he explains that he may have handled the circuits when working for a previous employer, whom he did not know had IRA connections. After five hours of deliberation by the jury, he is found guilty on all charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In September 1994, McNamee and Paul Magee are among six prisoners who escape from Whitemoor Prison, shooting and wounding a prison officer as they do so, before being captured two hours later.
In 1997, McNamee’s case is examined by Channel 4‘s Trial and Error programme. He is later to be the first case referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), and his conviction is overturned on December 17, 1998, because of other, much more prominent, fingerprints on the same circuits, belonging to known IRA bomb-maker Dessie Ellis, which were not disclosed at McNamee’s original trial. Despite quashing McNamee’s conviction, the appeal judges state, “The Crown makes a strong case that the appellant [McNamee] was guilty of a conspiracy to cause explosions.” Supporters of the campaign to clear his name include the comedianJeremy Hardy.
In February 1999, McNamee reads the IRA Roll of Honour at the Burns and Moley commemoration and the following month he sits with the Caraher family during the trial of Michael Caraher and other members of the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigadesniper team.
Whitty is born in on January 7, 1904, in Newbawn, County Wexford. He is a Volunteer in the IRA, who serves in the South Wexford Brigade during the Irish War of Independence. After the signing of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, he joins the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War.
In late October 1922, Whitty is arrested (although never charged or convicted of any crime) in a roundup of dissidents. He is initially interned by Irish Free State troops at Wexford Prison and from there is transferred to the Curragh Camp. It has been asserted that his arrest was in revenge for the actions of his brothers who are deeply involved with the IRA. The authorities are unable to locate his brothers, so he is arrested instead.
While at the Curragh Camp, Whitty decides to independently start a hunger strike and dies as a result on August 2, 1923, at the Curragh Camp hospital. At the time, hunger strikes are not an official policy of the IRA and are not directed by its General Headquarters. Instead, each hunger striker makes an individual decision to strike. Due to the newly formed Irish Free State government’s news embargo on conditions in prisons at the time, very little is published on Whitty’s motivations and the circumstances of his hunger strike and death, including the number of days of his strike.
Earlier, the high-profile hunger strike deaths of Thomas Ashe, president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in 1917 and Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork in 1920, bring international attention to the Republicans’ cause. The Irish Government’s news embargo prevents the embarrassment of having to publicly announce the death by hunger strike of a 19-year-old internee. From 1922, hunger strikes are of value only when a government is likely to be embarrassed sufficiently by the death of a prisoner.
With the ending of the 1923 Irish Hunger Strikes in late November 1923, the news embargo is relaxed. The November 20, 1923 death of Denny Barry from County Cork and the November 22, 1923 death of Andy O’Sullivan from County Cavan are widely reported in the media, while Whitty’s earlier death in August remains largely unreported.
After Whitty’s non-sanctioned hunger strike and death, Michael Kilroy, the Officer Commanding (OC) of IRA prisoners in Mountjoy Prison announces that 300 men will go on hunger strike on October 13, 1923. By late 1923, thousands of Irish republican prisoners are on hunger strike in multiple prisons and internment camps across Ireland. The mass hunger strikes of October/November 1923 see around 8,000 of the 12,000 Anti-Treaty republican prisoners on hunger strikes in Irish prisons, protesting internment without charge/trial, poor prison conditions and demanding immediate release of all political prisoners. Previously, the Irish Free State government had passed a motion outlawing the release of prisoners on hunger strike.
With the death of Whitty and two other recent Irish republican hunger strikers, Michael Fitzgerald (died October 17, 1920) and Joe Murphy (died October 25, 1920) and the large numbers of Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike, the Irish Free State Government sends a delegation to speak with IRA leadership in late October 1923. On November 23, 1923, the day after Andy O’Sullivan’s death, the hunger strike is called off, eventually setting off a release program for many of the prisoners, although some are not released until as late as 1932. The mass hunger strike of 1923 lasts for 41 days and met with little success.
Whitty is buried at Ballymore Cemetery. Killinick, County Wexford. The inscription on his grave reads: “In Memory of Joseph Whitty, Connolly St, Wexford. South Wexford Brigade who died for Ireland 2nd August 1923.”
The Sinn Féin Cumann (Association) in Wexford is named after Joe Whitty. The annual Joe Whitty Commemoration is held each year on Easter Saturday evening in Ballymore, County Wexford.
Rice joins the Irish Volunteers in 1913 but does not take part in the 1916 Easter Rising. For a time, he shares lodgings in Rock Street, Tralee, with Austin Stack, and like Stack he is a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) member, playing hurling with Kenmare. At the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), he becomes Officer Commanding of the 5th Battalion of the Kerry No. 2 Brigade. He also holds the post of second in command of that brigade, under Humphrey Murphy. On April 26, 1921, he attends the meeting in Kippagh, County Tipperary, that sees the establishment of the First Southern Division. After the truce, Murphy is transferred to command Kerry No. 1 Brigade, and Rice becomes commanding officer of Kerry No. 2.
Rice opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and leads the brigade throughout the Irish Civil War (1922-1923). When Michael Collins comes to Killarney on April 22, 1922, to speak in favour of the agreement, he is met at the train station by a group of fifty men, led by Rice, who attempt to prevent him from speaking. The meeting goes ahead despite several attempts by the group to stop it. During the civil war he leads his men into Limerick, briefly seizing Rathkeale, but for the most part they are on the defensive. In September he commands a force of seventy republicans to take Kenmare. This is a rare and morale-boosting success. When the First Southern Division council meets on February 26-28, 1923, he is one of only two senior officers, among a group of eighteen, who feel that it is worth fighting on.
Shortly after the civil war, Rice marries Nora Aherne, a Cumann na mBan member; they have one son, George. After the war he continues to be active in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Féin. He attends IRA executive meetings in 1923 and is involved in attempts to reorganise the IRA in 1924. He is a delegate to the Sinn Féin ardfheis in 1926, opposing the proposal of Éamon de Valera that abstention be a matter of policy rather than principle. He is elected as a Sinn Féin TD for the Kerry South constituency at the 1957 Irish general election. He does not take his seat in the Dáil due to the Sinn Féin policy of abstentionism. He is one of four Sinn Féin TDs elected at the 1957 Irish general election, the others being Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, John Joe McGirl and Eighneachán Ó hAnnluain. During his time as a TD, he campaigns against the Special Powers Act, which grants the Irish state extra abilities to deal with and punish suspected members of the IRA. He is defeated at the 1961 Irish general election.
In 1966, Rice and fellow Kerry Republican John Joe Sheehy are expelled from Sinn Féin, as are many others, by the new Marxist-Leninist party leadership that had recently come into power. This move both foreshadows and fuels the split in 1969/1970 of both the IRA and Sinn Féin, which leads to the creation of the Marxist-Leninist Official IRA and the more traditional but still left-wing Provisional IRA, and in parallel Sinn Féin – The Workers’ Party and “Provisional” Sinn Féin. Rice gives his support to the Provisionals.
Rice drives an oil lorry for a time and then becomes manager of the Tralee branch of Messrs Nash, mineral-water manufacturers and bottlers. He remains in this position until his retirement in 1965. He dies on July 24, 1970, at his son’s residence in Oakview, Tralee.
Rice’s sister, Rosalie, is a member of Cumann na mBan during the 1916 Easter Rising and is arrested for sending a telegram alerting the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in the United States to the rising. His cousins Eugene and Timothy Ring are members of the IRB and are also involved with the telegram. His grandfather, Timothy Ring, was a Fenian who fought in the uprising. Two of his cousins are members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) who both help the republican side during the Irish revolutionary period.
The 1916 Easter Rising is a watershed in O’Donoghue’s life. In December 1916, he joins the Cork branch of the Irish Volunteers. In early 1917, he is elected unanimously First Lieutenant of the Cyclist Company and as a result devotes all his spare time to Volunteer work. He begins writing weekly for two years for TheIrish World newspaper. By May 1917, he is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and in October, Tomás Mac Curtain appoints him head of communications of the Cork Brigade. He replaces Pat Higgins as Brigade Adjutant in February 1917. He is a key organiser in the sensational jailbreak of Captain Donnchadh Mac Niallghuis on Armistice Day 1918 and takes personal responsibility for his protection. Michael Collins is the last officer from Volunteers General Headquarters to visit Cork shortly after Christmas 1919, until the truce in 1921.
O’Donoghue builds up an intelligence network and agents which includes his future wife, Josephine Marchment. She is head female clerk at the 6th Division Headquarters at Victoria Barracks, Cork, and passes on secret British Army correspondence to him. He recruits people to open letters, tap phone lines and intercept telegrams. The Irish Republican Army has 2,000 active members in Cork which are also used for intelligence gathering. By March 1920, after killing a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Inspector, he is on the run and serving full-time in the IRA. In November of that year, the Cork Brigade kills six British Army officers and executes five Cork civilians on suspicion of spying.
After two and a half years of fighting, a truce is agreed upon on July 11, 1921. When the Dáil approves the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in January 1922, the IRA splits into pro- and anti-Treaty camps. Over the coming months and after being elected to the army’s executive as Adjutant General, O’Donoghue warns of the dangers of an Irish Civil War. In June 1922, he resigns from the army’s national executive and a month later, on July 3, 1922, from the army. Civil war does break out on June 28, 1922, between pro- and anti-Treaty factions, much to his dismay.
During the Irish Civil War, O’Donoghue remains neutral and tries to organise a truce to end the fighting. In December 1922, he forms a group called the “Neutral IRA”, along with Seán O’Hegarty, composed of pro-truce IRA men. He claims he has 20,000 members in this group. He campaigns for a month’s truce between the two sides, so that a political compromise could be reached. However, his efforts come to nothing and in March 1923, he winds up the “Neutral IRA,” judging that its objectives cannot be achieved. The Irish Civil War ends on May 24, 1923.
O’Donoghue serves as major in the Irish Army from 1939-1946. He forms a Supplementary Intelligence Service that is to remain behind enemy lines in the event of an invasion. He also teaches guerrilla warfare tactics to new army recruits.
O’Donoghue marries Josephine Brown (née Marchment) in April 1921, and they have four children. The couple also adopts two children from Josephine’s first marriage, including Reggie Brown, whom O’Donoghue kidnaps from his grandparents in Wales in 1920. He becomes a rate collector and remains outside politics.
In later years O’Donoghue becomes a respected historian. While in the army he edits An Cosantóir, the Irish Army’s magazine. He convinces Éamon de Valera to establish the Bureau of Military History to record personal accounts from the Irish War of Independence. He is a recording officer until 1948. His most famous work is his biography on Liam Lynch, entitled No Other Law.
The London Stock Exchange bombing occurs at 8:49 a.m. on the morning of July 20, 1990, with the explosion of a 5 to 10 lb. (2.3 to 4.5 kg) bomb of high explosives inside the London Stock Exchange building on Threadneedle Street in the City of London, England, planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The building and surrounding area are evacuated after the IRA gives a telephone warning 40 minutes prior to the explosion, and thus nobody is wounded. As many as 300 people are evacuated from the building alone. The bomb’s strength blows a 10-foot hole inside the Stock Exchange Tower and causes massive damage to the visitors’ gallery on the first floor, which is frequently used by foreign tourists and schoolchildren and had been scheduled to open ten minutes after the explosion. The bomb is placed in the men’s toilets behind the gallery. The gallery and public viewing area is forced to close in 1992.
The bombing comes on the eighth anniversary of the July 20, 1982, Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings which killed eleven soldiers and wounded 53 people. The IRA launches a renewed campaign in London in 1990. During May, a soldier at an army recruiting centre is killed by a bomb in Wembley, while five are injured in a similar explosion in Eltham. In June 1990, bombs at the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) and the Carlton Club injure 19 and 20 people respectively.
Scotland Yard‘s anti-terrorist chief George Churchill-Coleman says eight phone calls from the same man with an Irish accent are made between 8:02 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. to the City of London Police, the London Fire Brigade, Reuters, the Financial Times, The Salvation Army and the Stock Exchange itself. The caller telephones Reuters just after 8:00 a.m. and says, “This is the IRA. The bomb is due to go off in half an hour at the stock exchange.” The caller then gives a code word that the police say is known to them and used by the IRA to show that its threats are serious, and says, “Clear the building.”
The Stock Exchange’s chairman, however, says after the attack, “If the purpose of this callous act was to bring the City to a halt, they have failed singularly.” The explosion has little impact on stock trading since that is being carried out by computers elsewhere.
A spokesman for Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher says she is “appalled when people leave explosive devices in this manner in public areas.” On October 12, 1984, a bomb planted by the IRA at the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, where the Conservative Party is holding its annual conference, kills five people and comes close to killing Thatcher.
In 1992, the IRA bombs the Baltic Exchange building in the city.
(Pictured: The Stock Exchange Tower in 1983, taken from the top of the National Westminster Tower (now Tower 42), clearly showing the symbolic coffin shape of the building)
The Provisional IRA, officially known as the Irish Republican Army (Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann) and informally as the Provos, is an Irish republicanparamilitary force that seeks to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It is the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argues that the all-island Irish Republic continues to exist, and it sees itself as that state’s army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). It is designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejects.
The Provisional IRA emerges in December 1969, due to a split within the previous incarnation of the IRA and the broader Irish republican movement. It is initially the minority faction in the split compared to the Official IRA but becomes the dominant faction by 1972. The Troubles begin shortly before when a largely Catholic, nonviolent civil rights campaign is met with violence from both Ulster loyalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), culminating in the August 1969 riots and deployment of British soldiers. The IRA initially focuses on defence of Catholic areas, but it begins an offensive campaign in 1970 that is aided by external sources, including Irish diaspora communities within the Anglosphere, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It uses guerrilla tactics against the British Army and RUC in both rural and urban areas and carries out a bombing campaign in Northern Ireland and England against military, political and economic targets, and British military targets in mainland Europe. They also target civilian contractors to the British security forces. The IRA’s armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, kills over 1,700 people, including roughly 1,000 members of the British security forces and 500–644 civilians.
The Provisional IRA issues the following statement to news media on the morning of July 19, 1997:
“On August 31, 1994, the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann (Gaelic for Irish Republican Army) announced a complete cessation of military operations as our contribution to the search for a lasting peace.
After 17 months of cessation, in which the British government and the (pro-British Protestant) unionists blocked any possibility of real or inclusive negotiations, we reluctantly abandoned the cessation.
It is the root cause of division and conflict in our country. We want a permanent peace and therefore we are prepared to enhance the search for a democratic peace settlement through real and inclusive negotiations.
So, having assessed the current political situation, the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann are announcing a complete cessation of military operations from 12 o’clock midday on Sunday the 20th, July 1997.
We have ordered the unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994. All IRA units have been instructed accordingly.”
Keating is the youngest of six surviving children of Michael Keating, baker, and his wife Johanna, a native of County Kerry. He was educated at a local school and was an active member of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), playing football and hurling. After the 1916 Easter Rising, he leaves school at the age of thirteen to join the Irish Volunteers, which later becomes the IRA, serving in the 4th Cork Brigade. He is arrested by British troops in November 1920 and badly beaten. He spends a month in the Cork jail and is then interned for a year in Ballykinlar internment camp until December 1921. While interned he participates in several hunger strikes and makes several escape attempts. Following his release, he opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and serves in the Fianna Cork 4th Brigade on the Republican side under Seán Moylan during the Irish Civil War.
Keating emigrates to New York City in 1927 and becomes involved in Irish cultural organizations and Democratic party politics. He is a founder of American Friends of Irish Neutrality, which opposes Irish involvement in World War II, ostensibly fearing it will result in British re-occupation of Ireland.
Following World War II, Keating is chairman of the executive council of the 1947 Irish Race Convention and president of the American League for an Undivided Ireland, lobbying in support of the Fogarty Amendment, which unsuccessfully attempts to tie the release of Marshall Plan funds to British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.
Between the 1940s and 1960s, Keating serves as president of the County Corkmen Association, president of the United Irish Counties Association, and president of the Irish Institute. In 1956, he serves as Grand Marshal of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Keating serves in various positions under New York City mayors William O’Dwyer, Vincent R. Impellitteri, and Robert F. Wagner, Jr., rising to the position of Deputy Mayor, under Wagner. He is reportedly the first to publicly introduce future President Kennedy as “the next President of the United States” at an Irish Institute event in 1957. He is appointed Regional Director of the United States Postal Service by President Kennedy and serves in that position from 1961 until his retirement in 1966.
In retirement, Keating returns to Kanturk and continues to advocate for the reunification of Ireland. Keating dies at his home in Kanturk on July 2, 1976, and is buried in a local cemetery with military honors. He represents an emigrant political and social milieu which is often treated dismissively by later, more cosmopolitan Irish commentators, but his career reflects not only his own considerable talents but the ways in which this milieu sustains a generation of immigrants, and the contribution of Irish America to Irish development in the post-war decades.
Barry returns to Bandon in early 1919. He describes in his guerilla days in Ireland a Damascus-like conversion to Irish nationalism on hearing of the Easter Rising while with the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, but he is only accepted into the IRA with considerable caution. Initially tested in intelligence and training work, in mid-1920 he takes charge of the new brigade flying column, which is used both to train officers and to stage offensive actions.
Barry adapts his military experience successfully to the demands of guerrilla warfare, becoming the most famed of column leaders during the Irish War of Independence. In his memoirs, he pours scorn on the obsession of many with military titles and orthodox procedure, complaining of a “paper army.” He stresses the need for spontaneity, initiative, and knowledge of local conditions. “The reality,” he writes, “was a group of fellows, mostly in caps and not-too-expensive clothing, wondering how to tackle their job and where they would sleep that night or get their supper.” (The Reality of the Anglo–Irish War (1974)). He well realises that the war’s character does not permit any close control from the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin, hence increasing the importance of local leaders. His tactics put strong emphasis on speed of movement and on the need to attack the enemy at his weakest point. The column’s ambush successes are small in number but among the best-remembered of the war. He admits, however, that his own and his column’s lack of experience with mines frequently weakened their offensives.
The column’s first successful ambush is at Tooreen on October 22, 1920, followed on November 28 by the dramatic ambushing of a patrol of auxiliaries at Kilmichael while travelling from their Macroom base. A column of thirty-six men, divided into three sections, kill sixteen auxiliaries, with one captured and later shot, suffering two fatalities of their own. Controversy has raged since over whether a false surrender by the British force caused the brutality of some of the deaths. Together with the Bloody Sunday killings of a week earlier in Dublin, Kilmichael has a profound effect on the British military and political establishment, with the declaration in December of martial law for much of Munster and the implementation of wide-ranging internment, together with the authorisation of official reprisals.
After a short period in hospital with a heart condition, in early 1921 Barry leads unsuccessful attacks on Kilbrittain, Innishannon, Drimoleague, and Bandon barracks. The seizure of Burgatia House, outside Rosscarbery, in early February, and the successful resistance made there to British troops, wins much publicity but has little military significance. He is a leading figure in the brutal final stage of the war in the first six months of 1921, which sees widespread shooting of suspected spies and destruction of loyalist property. By March 1921, his flying column, with 104 men, is easily the largest in Ireland, and an explosives expert, Capt. McCarthy, has joined them.
The protracted engagement between Barry’s column and encircling British forces at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921, comes at a time when large-scale sweeps are making life increasingly difficult for the IRA. It consists of a daring and courageous breakout. Crossbarry is the largest action of the war, and Barry is to regard it as even more important than Kilmichael. Soon afterwards, Rosscarbery barracks is successfully attacked by a Barry-led party, representing one of the few successful such initiatives in 1921. Isolated triumphs, however, cannot hide the fact that pressure is increasing on the column, and he becomes increasingly critical of inactive regions. He is later to say that all County Kerry does during the war is to shoot one decent police inspector at Listowel Racecourse and a colleague of his. He is strongly critical also of the lack of assistance from GHQ and of the divisionalisation policy. He visits Dublin in May, travels around with Michael Collins, and is present when two American officers demonstrate the Thompson submachine gun. He is more aware than most of his 1st Southern Division colleagues of the scarcity of arms and ammunition at the war’s end.
During the truce, Barry becomes liaison officer for Munster, riling the British by insisting on his military rank, and criticising the IRA liaison men in Dublin for being overly deferential. He joins the overwhelming majority of the Cork IRA in opposing the Anglo–Irish Treaty but plays a characteristically maverick role throughout the treaty split. His independent attitude is heightened by his dislike of Liam Lynch, the republican IRA’s Chief of Staff, and his continuing respect for Michael Collins. He shows impatience at the long-drawn-out peace initiatives. In March 1922, therefore, he advocates armed confrontation with pro-treaty units over the occupation of barracks in Limerick, and on June 18 he submits a resolution, which only narrowly fails, at the army convention, giving British troops seventy-two hours to leave Dublin.
At the beginning of the Irish Civil War, Barry is arrested entering the Four Courts disguised as a woman. He escapes from an internment camp at Gormanston in early September 1922. For the rest of the war his actions mirror its confused nature. In late October 1922, he leads successful raids on the small towns of Ballineen and Enniskean, and later on Inchigeelagh and Ballyvourney. In December his column takes Carrick-on-Suir, demonstrating the weakness of the Free State army, but his talk of advancing on the Curragh and of large-scale actions does not materialise. There is no evidence that he is acting in accordance with any coordinated plan. By February 1923, he realises that the Republican IRA cause is hopeless and he is involved with Fr. Tom Duggan in efforts to get 1st Southern Division to declare a ceasefire. He journeys to Dublin to put pressure on the intransigent Lynch in this connection, telling Lynch, “I did more fighting in one week than you did in your whole life.”
Barry avoids capture in roundups after the war, remaining on the run until 1924. Unlike many republicans, he does not turn to constitutionalism, remaining strongly militaristic. He is always an unreconstructed republican, though by no means a naive one. In 1924 he becomes attached to Cleeves Milk Co., based in Limerick and Clonmel, and from 1927 to retirement in 1965 is general superintendent with the Cork harbour commissioners. He strongly advocates preserving the independence of the IRA army executive during the republican split of 1925–27. He is instrumental in continuing the drilling of IRA members and is a strong supporter of armed opposition to the Blueshirts.
During the 1930s Barry is arrested at various times for possession of arms and seditious utterances. He promotes an attack against a Freemasons’ meeting in Cork in 1936 and gives the orders for the killing on March 4 of that year of Vice-AdmiralHenry Boyle Somerville. He is opposed to the use by Frank Ryan of IRA volunteers to support the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and to the proposals of Seán Russell for a bombing campaign in England. To maintain the link with traditional republicanism, he is elected IRA chief of staff in 1937. His plan, however, for the seizure of Armagh city, as part of a direct northern offensive, quickly collapses due to a leak of information, and he soon resigns his position. He forcefully attacks the bombing of English cities in 1938, regarding attacks on innocent civilians as immoral and counterproductive. He enlists in the National Army on July 12, 1940, only to be demobilised a month later. In 1946, he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election in the Cork Borough constituency, finishing at the bottom of the poll. He is more comfortable the following year touring the United States on an anti-partition platform.
In 1949 his Guerilla Days in Ireland is published. It proves a best-seller and has frequently been reprinted. It is well written in a forceful and direct style, one memoir needing no assistance from a ghost writer. Age does not mellow him: lawyers and bank managers are threatened by him over matters relating to his own column, and in 1974 he publishes a fierce pamphlet, angry at perceived slights in the Irish War of Independence memoir of Liam Deasy. He does strive to achieve a public reconciliation with Collins’s memory by unveiling the memorial to Collins at Sam’s Cross in 1966. On the outbreak of the Northern Ireland crisis in the late 1960s, he takes a militant line, castigating the argument that the Six Counties can be brought into the Republic by peaceful means, and asking when had peaceful means existed there. At the memorial meeting in Carrowkennedy, County Mayo, in 1971, he claims that there is a perfect right at the opportune time to take the Six Counties by force. He remains opposed to IRA bombing of civilian targets.
Barry dies in Cork on July 2, 1980. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. Early in the truce of 1921 he marries Leslie Price, one of the most active of Cumann na mBan members during and after the rising. They have no children.
While Barry always remains an influential figure in republican circles, he will be remembered best as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, the hero of Kilmichael and Crossbarry. His military flair, individualism, and ruthlessness are well suited to the 1919–21 conflict. After that, his strained relations with colleagues and his lack of flexibility reduce his importance. While his life after the revolutionary era appears anti-climactic, he retains much of his charisma. In later years, he is ever willing to remind politicians and historians how far Ireland has retreated from republican ideals. He is often prickly and autocratic yet could be generous to old colleagues of either side of the treaty split. He is arguably the most intelligent but also the most intolerant of the revolutionary leaders.
(From: “Barry, Thomas Bernadine (‘Tom’)” by M. A. Hopkinson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
seamus dubhghaill 