FROM THE ARCHIVES:The 50th anniversary of one of the most famous, and most controversial, engagements of the War of Independence, the Kilmichael ambush, was attended by many participants, including the IRA's uncompromising leader, Tom Barry, as Mary Leland reported. –
JOE JOYCE
THE BOYS of Kilmichael were honoured in Co. Cork, yesterday, 50 years after the famous ambush in which the West Cork Flying Column wiped out a force of Black-and-Tans.
General Tom Barry was the man who planned and led the ambush and yesterday he used the occasion to enunciate what he described as “certain principles of Republicanism.” To an audience of perhaps 1,000 people which included former members of the column who had taken part in the ambush as well as Messrs. Neil Blaney T.D., Kevin Boland, T.D., and Flor Crowley, T.D., he said that the first object of Republicanism was still the attainment of a Republic of the 32 Counties “despite any other implication or manoeuvring.”
“There is now a heresy being propounded,” he said, “that the question of the unity of this country is a matter for the people of the Six Counties. This can never be accepted because the unity of this country is a matter for every man, woman and child within it.”
That was the second principle. The third was that nobody had the right to abjure the right of Irishmen to drive from this country the armed occupying forces. “There has never been so much love-talk with British Imperialism as of late,” General Barry said. “Never so much sloppy talk and sloppy actions – particularly to the effect that Ireland can only be reunited by peaceful means. Do peaceful means obtain in the Six Counties?”
General Barry drew the parallels of history: his theory of interior disunity being the fatal flaw in Irish defensive warfare was expressed again – that, and British imperialistic machinations. “These are facts of our own lifetime,” he said. “Are we going to go on in this disunity? Are we going to continue to see our Six Counties under the repression, the terror of Imperialism? Are we going to go on allowing this, or are we going to do our thinking for ourselves?”
These words, and his gritty references to the men who died in their youth with guns in their hands, were greeted with cheers and applause. [. . .]
He described the plan of the engagement, how it happened, the long wait through the wet day among the rocks and heather. Then all over in 20 minutes. He took full responsibility for the fact that when the Auxiliaries called a second surrender (they had violated the first by opening fire again and killing two of his men) he refused to grant it.
“Keep firing,” I told them. “Keep firing until they stop.” Again the crowd cheered.
Eighteen members of the column were present, old men from . . . west Cork. Some had come from America; a wreath was laid on behalf of the old I.R.A. members in Boston, with the message: “We helped in the past and we will endeavour to help in the future”.
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