Kevin Gerard Barry (20 January 1902 – 1 November 1920) was an Irish Republican Army (IRA) soldier and medical student who was executed by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence. He was sentenced to death for his part in an attack upon a British Army supply lorry which resulted in the death of a British soldier.

His execution inflamed nationalist public opinion in Ireland, largely because of his age. The timing of the execution, only seven days after the death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the republican Lord Mayor of Cork, brought public opinion to a fever-pitch. His pending death sentence attracted international attention, and attempts were made by U.S. and Vatican officials to secure a reprieve. His execution and MacSwiney's death precipitated an escalation in violence as the Irish War of Independence entered its bloodiest phase, and Barry became an Irish republican martyr.

Early life

Kevin Gerard Barry was born on 20 January 1902, at 8 Fleet Street, Dublin, to Thomas and Mary (née Dowling) Barry. The fourth of seven children, two boys and five girls, Kevin was baptised in St Andrew's Church, Westland Row. His father, Thomas Barry Sr., ran a prosperous dairy business in Dublin based at Fleet Street and supported by the output of the family's farm at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, County Carlow. Barry Sr. died of heart disease on 8 February 1908, at the age of 56, when Kevin was six years old.

Barry's mother, the former Mary Dowling, came from Drumguin, County Carlow, and, upon the death of her husband, moved the family to the farm at Tombeagh while retaining the family's townhouse on Fleet Street. As a child he went to the National School in Rathvilly. In 1915 he was sent to live in Dublin and attended the O'Connell Schools for three months, before enrolling in the Preparatory Grade at St Mary's College, Rathmines, in September 1915. He remained at that school until 31 May 1916 when it was closed by its clerical sponsors.

During this period he was undoubtedly affected by the events in April of the Easter Rising. In the same period at St. Mary's, he also attended a commemoration concert for the Manchester Martyrs, who were hanged in England in 1867. These events served to incite his nascent nationalism to the extent that he expressed his desire to join Constance Markievicz's Fianna Éireann. His family attempted to dissuade him, but one sister later expressed the belief that he joined.

Belvedere College

With the closure of St Mary's College, Barry transferred to Belvedere College, a Jesuit school in Dublin. He was a substitute on the championship Junior Rugby Cup team and earned a place on the senior team. In 1918 he became secretary of the school hurling club which had just been formed, and was one of their most enthusiastic players.

In 1919, his final year at Belvedere, Barry wrote an essay supporting the Dublin Lockout as a "forcible demonstration of the power of Labour and had an experience also of the power of agitation in the person of that marvellous leader James Larkin and his able lieutenant, Commandant James Connolly". This piece earned him only sixty points out of a possible 100. Generally speaking, Barry's performance as a student was erratic. In his first and third years at Belvedere, he won no honours, although he did earn honours in five subjects in his middle year. He must have learned more than his grades reflected. After graduation, he won a merit-based scholarship given annually by Dublin Corporation, which allowed him to become a student of medicine at University College Dublin (UCD).

Medical student

Barry entered UCD as a first-year medical student in October 1919 and remained a student for the next year. His closest friend at UCD was Gerry MacAleer, from Dungannon, whom he had first met in Belvedere. Another friend at UCD was Frank Flood, whom he had met at the O'Connell Schools, and was now an engineering student at the university.

Barry's medical studies competed with other attractions, including dancing, drinking, gambling, and cinema. As a result, he only managed to attend about three-quarters of his medical school lectures. Not least of his distractions was his membership in the Irish Volunteers. Barry was one of several UCD medical students involved in the Volunteers, including Tom Kissane, Liam Grimley and Mick Robinson, all of whom were involved with Barry in the Monk's Bakery ambush, along with Frank Flood. Kissane, Grimley, Robinson and Flood all survived the ambush unscathed. Flood was later captured and executed by the British in 1921.

Despite Barry's extensive involvement in Volunteer actions, he appears to have been very discreet. Although Barry was a member of the Volunteers for three of the four years of their friendship, his closest friend, Gerry McAleer, was unaware of this aspect of his life.

Volunteer activities

thumb|Wall plaque marking the site in 1919, where the Active Service Unit of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army was founded. The building is in Great Denmark Street, Dublin.

In October 1917, during his second year at Belvedere, aged 15, he joined Company C, 1st Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers.

The following year, at age 16, he was introduced by Seán O'Neill and Bob O'Flanagan to the Clarke Luby Club of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). At some point in time, he was sworn as a member of this secret society which was led by Michael Collins. Barry's activities in Dublin focused on training and operations to acquire weapons and ammunition. Training sites were regularly shifted to avoid discovery, but the extent of training that Barry received is questionable.

Although he served in the Volunteers for almost three years, his operational experience prior to the Monk's Bakery ambush was somewhat limited. For the most part, Volunteers in Dublin did little other than training and few saw action or heard shots fired in anger. He took part in a number of small operations including a raid on the Shamrock Works for weapons intended for the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), and a raid on Mark's of Capel Street, looking for ammunition and explosives.

Barry's one significant action prior to Monk's Bakery was the raid for weapons on a military outpost at King's Inn on Constitution Hill. The Dublin Brigade had carefully reconnoitred the site and developed an operations plan to be completed within seven minutes. On 1 June 1920, a hand-picked team from the Dublin Brigade's three battalions attacked the site taking the 25 soldiers by surprise and seizing the available weapons. Within only six minutes the raiders had secured rifles, light machine guns, and large quantities of ammunition, and had departed the site with no casualties.

Ambush

In mid-September 1920, Captain Seamus Kavanagh, Commander of H Company of the Dublin Brigade, was approached by James Douglas of C Company. Douglas informed him that he and John Joe Carroll of H Company had noticed that a British army lorry guarded by an armed party of soldiers made twice weekly trips to Monk's Bakery at 79-80 Church Street to obtain bread. They had observed that the lorry came every Monday and Thursday between 11:00 and 11:15 a.m.. The party usually consisted of an officer and a driver in the cab with a non-commissioned officer and eight privates in the rear. The officer and one soldier would enter the bakery to purchase bread. Four or five soldiers would stay with the lorry without taking any particular security measures while the others would cross the street to purchase cigarettes or sweets. Within ten to fifteen minutes the bread would be loaded and the lorry would depart.

On 13 September, Captain Kavanagh went to Church Street to confirm the information and reconnoitre the area. He observed the lorry arrive and confirmed the particulars Douglas had related. After the soldiers departed he went into the bakery and talked with J.J. Moore, the foreman carpenter, whom Kavanagh knew and who was sympathetic to the Volunteers. Moore also validated the conclusions of Douglas and Carroll and stated that the party did not exceed 11 men. Moore then showed Kavanagh around the bakery so that the latter could develop a plan for an ambush including planned dispositions of his men. He was also shown a passage from the bakery yard leading into a shop in North King Street which would provide a useful line of retreat for any men posted in the yard. was well aware of the "propaganda value of the soldier's ages." Macready informed General Sir Henry Wilson on the day that sentence was pronounced "of the three men who were killed by him (Barry) and his friends two were 19 and one 20 — official age so probably they were younger... so if you want propaganda there you are."

About this competing propaganda, Martin Doherty wrote in a magazine article entitled 'Kevin Barry & the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War':<blockquote>from the British point of view, therefore, the Anglo-Irish propaganda war was probably . Nationalist Ireland had decided that men like Kevin Barry fought to free their country, while British soldiers — young or not — sought to withhold that freedom. In these circumstances, to label Barry a murderer was merely to add insult to injury. The contrasting failure of British propaganda is graphically demonstrated by the simple fact that even in British newspapers Privates Whitehead, Washington and Humphries remained faceless names and numbers, for whom no songs were written.”</blockquote>

Capture and allegations of torture

thumb|right|[[Sinn Féin's Dublin HQ at the Kevin Barry Memorial Hall]]

Barry was placed in the back of the lorry with the young body of Private Harold Washington, and also with Washington's comrades. He was transported then to the North Dublin Union. Upon arrival at the barracks, he was taken under military police escort to the defaulters' room where he was searched and handcuffed. A short while later, three sergeants of the Lancashire Fusiliers and two officers began the interrogation. He gave his name and an address of 58 South Circular Road, Dublin (his uncle's address), and his occupation as a medical student, but refused to answer any other questions. The officers continued to demand the names of other republicans involved in the ambush.

The affidavit, drawn up in Mountjoy Prison days before his execution, describes his treatment when the question of names was repeated:<blockquote> He tried to persuade me to give the names, and I persisted in refusing. He then sent the sergeant out of the room for a bayonet. When it was brought in the sergeant was ordered by the same officer to point the bayonet at my stomach ... The sergeant then said that he would run the bayonet into me if I did not tell ... The same officer then said to me that if I persisted in my attitude he would turn me out to the men in the barrack square, and he supposed I knew what that meant with the men in their present temper. I said nothing. He ordered the sergeants to put me face down on the floor and twist my arm ... When I lay on the floor, one of the sergeants knelt on my back, the other two placed one foot each on my back and left shoulder, and the man who knelt on me twisted my right arm, holding it by the wrist with one hand, while he held my hair with the other to pull back my head. The arm was twisted from the elbow joint. This continued, to the best of my judgment, for five minutes. It was very painful ... I still persisted in refusing to answer these questions... A civilian came in and repeated the questions, with the same result. He informed me that if I gave all the information I knew I could get off.</blockquote>

On 28 October, the Irish Bulletin, the official propaganda news-sheet produced by Dáil Éireann's Department of Publicity, published Barry's statement alleging torture. The headline read: English Military Government Torture a Prisoner of War and are about to Hang him. The Irish Bulletin declared Barry to be a prisoner of war, suggesting a conflict of principles was at the heart of the conflict. The English did not recognise a war and treated all killings by the IRA as murder.

Historian John Ainsworth, author of Kevin Barry, the Incident at Monk's bakery and the Making of an Irish Republican Legend, pointed out that Barry had been captured by the British not as a uniformed soldier but disguised as a civilian and in possession of flat-nosed "Dum-dum" bullets, which expand upon impact, maximising the amount of damage done to the "unfortunate individual" targeted, in contravention of the Hague Convention of 1899. Kevin Barry was brought into the room by a military escort. Then Seán Ó hUadhaigh sought a short adjournment to consult his client. The court granted this request. After the short adjournment Barry announced, "As a soldier of the Irish Republic, I refuse to recognise the court". Brigadier Onslow explained the prisoner's "perilous situation" and that he was being tried on a capital charge. He did not reply. Ó hUadhaigh then rose to tell the court that since his client did not recognise the authority of the court he himself could take no further part in the proceedings. On 14 October 2001, the remains of these ten men were given a state funeral and moved from Mountjoy Prison to be re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

Aftermath

thumb|Kevin Barry monument in [[Rathvilly|Rathvilly, County Carlow]]

thumb|On 14 October 2001 the remains of Kevin Barry and nine other volunteers from the War of Independence were given a state funeral and moved from [[Mountjoy Prison to be re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. Barry's grave is the first on the left.]]

The only full-length biography of Barry was written by his nephew, journalist Donal O'Donovan, and published in 1989 as Kevin Barry and his Time. In 1965, Sean Cronin wrote a short biography, simply entitled "Kevin Barry"; this was published by The National Publications Committee, Cork, to which Tom Barry provided a foreword. Barry is remembered in a well-known song about his imprisonment and execution, written shortly after his death and still sung today. The tune to "Kevin Barry" was taken from the sea-shanty "Rolling Home". The execution reportedly inspired Thomas MacGreevy's surrealist poem, "Homage to Hieronymus Bosch". MacGreevy had unsuccessfully petitioned the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, John Henry Bernard, to make representations on Barry's behalf.

Legacy

thumb|Exhibit of personal effects and [[death mask in Carlow County Museum]]

In 1930, Irish immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut, created a hurling club and named it after Barry. The club later disappeared for decades but was revived in 2011 by more recently arrived Irish immigrants and local Irish-Americans in the area. A commemorative stamp was issued by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs to mark the 50th anniversary of Barry's death in 1970. The University College Dublin and University of Galway branches of Ógra Fianna Fáil are named after him. Derrylaughan Kevin Barry's GAA club was founded in Clonoe, County Tyrone.

In 1934, a large stained-glass window commemorating Barry was unveiled in Earlsfort Terrace, then the principal campus of University College Dublin. It was designed by Richard King of the Harry Clarke Studio. In 2007, UCD completed its relocation to the Belfield campus some four miles away and a fund was collected by graduates to defray the cost (estimated at close to €250,000) of restoring and moving the window to this new location. A grandnephew of Kevin Barry is Irish historian Eunan O'Halpin. There is an Irish republican flute band named after him in Glasgow, the "Volunteer Kevin Barry Republican Flute Band".

Barry's execution is mentioned in the folk song "Rifles of the I.R.A.", which was written by Dominic Behan in 1968. The ballad "Kevin Barry", relating the story of his execution, has been sung by artists such as Paul Robeson, Leonard Cohen, Lonnie Donegan, Stompin' Tom Connors, the Hootenanny Singers, Damien Dempsey, The Clancy Brothers, Kinky Friedman, Tommy Makem and The Dubliners. At the place where Kevin Barry was captured (North King Street/Church Street, Dublin), there are two blocks of social housing named after him.

References

  • The Incident at Monk’s Bakery
  • The lyrics to "The Ballad of Kevin Barry"
  • Some images and a short discussion of the Kevin Barry Memorial Window, UCD.
  • The Digital Kevin Barry Papers in UCD Digital Library
  • The Digital Papers of the Kevin Barry Memorial Committee in UCD Digital Library
  • A Google Arts and Culture Exhibition - Kevin Barry: UCD Student, Irish Republican Hero