Tommy McKearney has just finished reading Eunan O’Halpin's work on Kevin Barry.

On 1st November 1920, the British state executed 18-year-old Kevin Barry in Dublin’s Mountjoy jail. The hanging happened in the latter part of the second year of Ireland’s war for independence. It was the first capital sentence carried out on a republican activist since the leaders of the Easter Rising had been shot.

The youthful IRA volunteer Barry had been captured immediately after an unsuccessful attempt to capture arms from a party of British soldiers. What had been planned as a non-lethal raid for weaponry went wrong when one of the soldiers opened fire, causing an exchange of gunfire resulting in the death of three Tommies. When arrested, Barry was armed with a pistol.

While in custody, the young man was brutally abused by his captors before being committed to Mountjoy prison while awaiting court martial. In keeping with republican policy not to recognise Britain’s authority to govern Ireland, Kevin Barry refused to participate in his trial and was duly sentenced to death.

Throughout his ordeal, the young man displayed singular courage and even appeared at times to be in high spirits. By common consent and verified by his jailers, Barry went to the gallows without a tremor. Such was his bravery that the hangman remarked that if Irish ‘rebels’ were so insouciant when facing death, there was little prospect of defeating them.

The impact of his execution was enormous and not just in Ireland. The event was noted around the world and with the exception of Britain and its colonial outposts, reporting was generally sympathetic to the young IRA man. Eighty-one years later as his remains were being re-interred on a wet winter’s day in 2001, thousands lined the streets of Dublin to pay tribute to the long dead IRA volunteer.

That he made, and a century after his death continues to make, such an impact is not due to all he did in his short life. As Eunan O’Halpin says about his great uncle in his book, Kevin Barry: An Irish Rebel in Life and Death.

…he never wrote anything save school essays and breezy personal letters, whose student days, although busy did not involve making speeches, organising marches or producing political tracts …

There is, nevertheless, invaluable evidence produced by the author of the young man’s support for organised labour and a healthy opposition to racism.

The potency of his memory is, though, due to what he came to represent. The young man’s dedication to his cause and willingness to sacrifice his life in order to secure that objective have for long inspired Ireland’s republicans and therefore troubled their opponents.

It is this aspect of the Kevin Barry story that gives rise to the type of agonising that runs through O’Halpin’s book. While the publication offers an interesting insight into the personality of the youthful patriot and provides useful accounts of his capture, imprisonment, trial and execution it does so with ongoing reservations. The author leaves the distinct impression that he is somewhat uncomfortable with the subject. Might the legend that surrounds Barry give leverage to others using arms to contest the ground with Britain and by extension destabilise the southern state seems to be an underlying theme?

To off-set any risk that the reader would view the IRA’s struggle during the Black and Tan war as heroic, the author goes out of his way to offer ‘balance’. We are, for example, reminded several times that one of the British army casualties on the morning of the bakery gun-battle was only 15 years of age in comparison with 18-year old Barry. Elsewhere there is mention of the IRA execution of a still younger 17-year old in Cork. And in an extraordinary paragraph at the end where he asks and answers in the affirmative, whether Kevin Barry would have if asked:

… mobilised on Bloody Sunday morning and shot a defenceless man in his pyjamas as his wife screamed in the corner of the bedroom? … Pass sentence of death for spying upon a poverty stricken labourer … hustled an ex-soldier down an alleyway, ignored his pleas for mercy, pushed him to the ground and shot him as a spy…

There is too, the ritual denunciation of the Provisional IRA that certain established academics now feel to be obligatory when writing about the War for Independence.

With well researched details of Kevin Barry’s life before and during his involvement with the IRA and an exhaustive account of his siblings and their children in the years after his death, the author demonstrates an extensive knowledge of the man and his family. Whether he has the same understanding of Barry the revolutionary is not so certain. 

Eunan O’Halpin, 2020, Kevin Barry: An Irish Rebel in Life and Death. Merrion Press. ISBN-13 : 978-1785373497


Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

Kevin Barry: An Irish Rebel in life and Death

Tommy McKearney has just finished reading Eunan O’Halpin's work on Kevin Barry.

On 1st November 1920, the British state executed 18-year-old Kevin Barry in Dublin’s Mountjoy jail. The hanging happened in the latter part of the second year of Ireland’s war for independence. It was the first capital sentence carried out on a republican activist since the leaders of the Easter Rising had been shot.

The youthful IRA volunteer Barry had been captured immediately after an unsuccessful attempt to capture arms from a party of British soldiers. What had been planned as a non-lethal raid for weaponry went wrong when one of the soldiers opened fire, causing an exchange of gunfire resulting in the death of three Tommies. When arrested, Barry was armed with a pistol.

While in custody, the young man was brutally abused by his captors before being committed to Mountjoy prison while awaiting court martial. In keeping with republican policy not to recognise Britain’s authority to govern Ireland, Kevin Barry refused to participate in his trial and was duly sentenced to death.

Throughout his ordeal, the young man displayed singular courage and even appeared at times to be in high spirits. By common consent and verified by his jailers, Barry went to the gallows without a tremor. Such was his bravery that the hangman remarked that if Irish ‘rebels’ were so insouciant when facing death, there was little prospect of defeating them.

The impact of his execution was enormous and not just in Ireland. The event was noted around the world and with the exception of Britain and its colonial outposts, reporting was generally sympathetic to the young IRA man. Eighty-one years later as his remains were being re-interred on a wet winter’s day in 2001, thousands lined the streets of Dublin to pay tribute to the long dead IRA volunteer.

That he made, and a century after his death continues to make, such an impact is not due to all he did in his short life. As Eunan O’Halpin says about his great uncle in his book, Kevin Barry: An Irish Rebel in Life and Death.

…he never wrote anything save school essays and breezy personal letters, whose student days, although busy did not involve making speeches, organising marches or producing political tracts …

There is, nevertheless, invaluable evidence produced by the author of the young man’s support for organised labour and a healthy opposition to racism.

The potency of his memory is, though, due to what he came to represent. The young man’s dedication to his cause and willingness to sacrifice his life in order to secure that objective have for long inspired Ireland’s republicans and therefore troubled their opponents.

It is this aspect of the Kevin Barry story that gives rise to the type of agonising that runs through O’Halpin’s book. While the publication offers an interesting insight into the personality of the youthful patriot and provides useful accounts of his capture, imprisonment, trial and execution it does so with ongoing reservations. The author leaves the distinct impression that he is somewhat uncomfortable with the subject. Might the legend that surrounds Barry give leverage to others using arms to contest the ground with Britain and by extension destabilise the southern state seems to be an underlying theme?

To off-set any risk that the reader would view the IRA’s struggle during the Black and Tan war as heroic, the author goes out of his way to offer ‘balance’. We are, for example, reminded several times that one of the British army casualties on the morning of the bakery gun-battle was only 15 years of age in comparison with 18-year old Barry. Elsewhere there is mention of the IRA execution of a still younger 17-year old in Cork. And in an extraordinary paragraph at the end where he asks and answers in the affirmative, whether Kevin Barry would have if asked:

… mobilised on Bloody Sunday morning and shot a defenceless man in his pyjamas as his wife screamed in the corner of the bedroom? … Pass sentence of death for spying upon a poverty stricken labourer … hustled an ex-soldier down an alleyway, ignored his pleas for mercy, pushed him to the ground and shot him as a spy…

There is too, the ritual denunciation of the Provisional IRA that certain established academics now feel to be obligatory when writing about the War for Independence.

With well researched details of Kevin Barry’s life before and during his involvement with the IRA and an exhaustive account of his siblings and their children in the years after his death, the author demonstrates an extensive knowledge of the man and his family. Whether he has the same understanding of Barry the revolutionary is not so certain. 

Eunan O’Halpin, 2020, Kevin Barry: An Irish Rebel in Life and Death. Merrion Press. ISBN-13 : 978-1785373497


Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

4 comments:

  1. "What had been planned as a non-lethal raid for weaponry went wrong when one of the soldiers opened fire, causing an exchange of gunfire resulting in the death of three Tommies. When arrested, Barry was armed with a pistol."

    For fuck sake really?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SteveR. You've got a valid point there. Even if they wished to get away without much fuss, lethal action was certainly part of the contingency plan, hence the pistol.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If it was a non lethal they should have gone in disguised as cleaning or catering staff ... Or just told the Brits this is a non violent exercise.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Simon,

    It just seems a weird way to start off a history piece, by shooting oneself in the foot in the first paragraph.

    In Tommy's defense it's an unusual error and I enjoy his writings.

    ReplyDelete