Tom Barry (32 page)

After about 15 minutes, Macready turned, ‘Now, Barry, you've heard what's to be done'.

Barry laughed and said, ‘I'm listening, Macready! And I'm listening to Mr “Yes General, it will be done” Duggan. Well you know Macready and Duggan it won't be done! None of these things will take place and I'll see that they won't, even if we make bits of the truce. From your behaviour here, the sooner we get to grips again and fight it out the better!'

He was furious that ‘troops of the elected government' were being referred to ‘as if we were the army of occupation'. As Barry watched Macready turn ‘blue' he thought of a speech Lord French, who ‘despised' Macready, made on leaving Ireland. He went to the door, turned and said, ‘After all your crude and insulting behaviour, Macready, I can well understand what Lord French meant when he said at his farewell dinner, when the wine was flowing, that the one big regret he had was leaving behind his decent staff to a flat-footed bastard of a London policeman.'

Barry told the driver to take him back to Collins. He told Mick the story – ‘every bit' including his repetition of what Lord French had said.

‘You didn't!'

‘I did.'

‘Where's Duggan?'

‘I don't know. I hope to Christ he's gone into the bloody Liffey! I left him behind with Macready.'
[4]

Among the terms of the Truce were, ‘No provocative display of forces, armed or unarmed ... To discountenance and prevent any action likely to cause disturbance of the peace which might necessitate military interference.' Therefore, on one occasion Tom was annoyed when he found a group of IRA men openly drilling. His honesty would not allow him deviate from the rules. The men maintained that it was merely a practice – judging by the reports in the newspapers, and the manner in which negotiations were progressing between London and Dublin delegates, they might have to take up arms again against the British. Never for a moment did they envisage a call to arms against their own people.

Tom Barry was impatient. He was torn. Progression towards normalisation and stability was too slow. He threatened to resign. Mulcahy did not take too kindly to this, but the ill discipline of the IRA and that of the enemy disturbed him more. ‘We have either truce or war, and whoever by any want of discipline reopens the war prematurely, will have to be held accountable for it,' Tom wrote.
[5]

Over in London one night on the way home after a fiery session with the British delegation, Michael Collins broke his stride, turned to Emmet Dalton and said, ‘I wish I had Tom Barry here. We need a man like him to face Lloyd George!'
[6]
On Collins' next visit to Dublin he sent word to Barry to go to London. In Hans Place, Collins questioned him ‘about strengths and about reasons why, if the British wanted' more garrisons that they couldn't get them. ‘They had several garrisons here [in Ireland] already and they wanted more'. Collins and the negotiators wanted to have Barry's opinion on various military aspects, and ‘when these things would come up in Hans Place at night' Barry would give his viewpoint.
[7]
‘Collins valued Barry's opinion. He had great respect for that man. He said one night in Hans Place that we wouldn't be here at all [negotiating] only for Tom Barry', Emmet Dalton recalled. ‘He wished he had him at the negotiating table, and told him so, too. There's no doubt but Barry wouldn't have taken any of Lloyd George's bluff. Whether his forceful approach would have worked it's hard to know.'
[8]

One day Tom set out for Downing Street where he was to have a word with Mick prior to a negotiating session. He wore a long trench coat. It was a very wild day and his coat blew up. Photographers hovered around. In taking a picture of Mick Collins they got a view of Barry from the back with ‘his two skits' (guns) exposed. Next day a photo with the caption, ‘Gunmen in Downing Street!' landed on Lloyd George's desk. A fuming Lloyd George accosted Collins, ‘Is this true?'

Collins opened his coat. ‘If you want to know I'm armed myself!'
[9]

While in Britain, Barry took the opportunity of visiting his friend Tom Hales, who was still in Pentonville Jail. On 15 November, Jenny (Jennie) Wyse Power in a letter to Sighle Humphreys, wrote that ‘Leslie tells us that in two months time her new companion [Tom Barry] expects the only work he is good at, to be going again'.
[10]
In a further letter on 21 November Jenny wrote, ‘I am certain things are critical. House [Michael Collins] told Sara [Jenny Wyse Power] that he expected things going again any day now … Leslie has definitely gone and was very lonely in the finish. It is difficult to explain why her spouse's [Tom Barry] work has changed; but I will try find out all.' She believed he disliked being liaison officer, ‘his power and capabilities lay one way only and you understand what that way was. This got tangled up all over Munster where he was the chief … a crux came when it became necessary to take orders from civil as well as military people'.
[11]

Tom Barry, Liam Lynch, Liam Deasy and other officers in the Southern Division, who welcomed a Truce, only wanted a short one. A short Truce followed by a renewal of the armed conflict when talks were not proving meaningful, would, they felt, with hindsight, have forced the British government into a more meaningful Treaty.
[12]
In any case the Truce period was too long, because the Irish people were uncertain and the IRA had not really put their guns away. ‘The Truce lasted for a year and it ended in Civil War. It was a heartbreaking period for those who had built up the IRA. When the first flush of over-hopeful expectation had passed, serious problems emerged, more difficult to deal with than any which the leaders had previously encountered. ‘A nation's destiny had passed for the moment from the hands of the soldiers into the field of diplomacy and the army was in large part a helpless spectator of a course of events which contained all the elements of disaster.'
[13]

On the night of 6 December Articles of Agreement for the Treaty signed by a delegation in London created the circumstances for those guns to be used later by friend against friend and brother against brother.

When the Treaty was signed the first reaction of the Irish people was one of rejoicing. Barry said it took him 24 hours to understand it. ‘Once I absorbed it, I knew it wasn't freedom – so did the people who signed, let's be fair to them! There was the continuation of partition, there was the oath of allegiance, the governor general and there were the bases. I'm not opening an attack on those who signed …'
[14]

When Barry analysed it, he found that ‘we would continue to be a subject race, subject to an oath of allegiance'. With ‘the press of the country' and ‘supporters of the establishment backing it' he decided something should be done, so he ‘drafted half a page notice pointing out the disadvantages of the Treaty', gave it to the
Cork Examiner
, but they refused ‘to take' it. ‘I visited them a few hours later with a half a dozen armed men, and I said, “Publish this or you can pay for it!”' Though he accepted it wasn't right, he maintained that ‘somebody had to let these facts be known.'
[15]

When the Dáil reconvened on 3 January 1922, the Treaty debate continued; on 7 January the Treaty was accepted by 64 votes to 57. De Valera resigned as president of the Dáil and Arthur Griffith was elected in his place. De Valera left the house in protest followed by his supporters.

So now in Ireland there were two groups – pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty. News travelled quickly and immediately people began to take sides. Tom and his companions met and debated long and hard the terms of the Treaty and the reasons for De Valera's opposition to it. Tom felt that they had fought too hard to relinquish and accept less than a 32-county Republic or pay allegiance to the British crown. He agreed with Liam Lynch who explained, ‘my attitude is now as always to fight on for the recognition of the Republic.'
[16]
Tom won the confidence of the majority of his men who decided to stick together. ‘From the day on which Dáil Éireann took its decision for acceptance of the Treaty, the wedge of division was driven into the ranks of the IRA,' Tom wrote. ‘Liam Lynch devoted all his energies to an effort directed towards keeping the army united in loyalty to its original allegiance. So far as his division was concerned he was largely successful, but he realised that unless the whole army could evolve a policy of agreement on fundamental principles where the political leaders had failed, civil war was inevitable.'
[17]

The Treaty was already signed when Tom Hales was released from Pentonville Jail, and because of Michael Collins' close connection with the Hales family Collins expected Tom would back the Treaty. His brother, Seán, agreed with Collins' point of view and was later a member of the Free State Dáil. When Tom Hales took the anti-Treaty side, Collins said, ‘More than any man, I would have valued his support'.
[18]

Since the handing over of Dublin Castle to the Provisional Government in Dublin, local IRA units around the country had been taking over British evacuated positions. Ammunition, which the Republicans would use at a future date, was also collected.

Throughout the country there were pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty divisions of opinion. In places like Limerick there were open clashes of opinion. The Volunteer army was split, but very often the attitude of a group was determined by the decision of its commanding officer. There are those in West Cork who maintain that if Tom Barry had taken a different course, it is possible that history would have been different. Having known both De Valera and Michael Collins, he believed in the sincerity of both, so when he saw another war looming, he tried to keep the people of West Cork together.

He attended the Mansion House convention on 26 March 1922, which was prohibited by the Dáil, and was only attended by anti-Treaty men. They appointed an executive, which was to be the army's supreme authority. Barry was one of five men from the executive elected to the army council on 28 March.
[19]

Afterwards Tom went to Cork, got some men together and went to Limerick where trouble was brewing. William Street barracks, evacuated by the Auxiliaries, was occupied by anti-Treatyites who also occupied hotels and a wing of the mental hospital. Barry and members of the army council ‘agreed to support the views of the Second Southern Division'. Barry wanted ‘an issue to be made' of ‘the occupation' of Limerick ‘as a most strategic point'. Travelling with Rory O'Connor he met Ernie O'Malley, Tipperary officers, and Tom Hales with his West Cork Brigade. The collective anti-Treaty officers nominated Barry ‘to command the different Divisional Units'. The situation was explosive as pro-Treatyites occupied the castle and a number of other evacuated British posts.Already the anti-Treatyites had begun to organise into a separate force, repudiating its nominal allegiance to the Dáil. At Mulcahy's suggestion, Liam Lynch and Oscar Traynor travelled from Dublin to Limerick to help avert a clash. Traynor found Michael Brennan, pro-Treatyite, prepared ‘to fight and he was puffed out in his uniform like a peacock'. On the other side the mediators ‘had an awful job with Barry'. Eventually they succeeded in an agreement as the men ‘marched off singing and carrying their guns. We had to try and impress on Barry that there would be fighting at some time,' Traynor wrote.
[20]
The Limerick agreement was considered ‘a climbdown by the Provisional Government'.
[21]

When the convention met again on 9 April 1922, feeling was strong against the Treatyites. Therefore, on the night of 13 April, Rory O'Connor, Tom Barry, Liam Lynch, Ernie O'Malley, Seán Moylan, Seán MacBride and others set up headquarters in the Four Courts.

During this period Tom and Leslie were spending most of their time in Dublin, staying in Leslie's original home with the Price family. Leslie was involved with the White Cross – an American charitable relief organisation that helped alleviate hardships for families, and disbursed $5,000,000,000 dollars that the American Relief organisation had collected. They arranged the distribution of boatloads of clothes and food shipped from America.
[22]

Notes