Tadhg Barry 'Rebel and Revolutionary' Exhibition

Labour and the Republic: Tadhg Barry and Politics 1914-1919

(1880-1921) Tadhg Barry

After his departure from the AFIL in 1914, Tadhg re-joined Sinn Féin and delighted by its rapid growth in popularity after the 1916 Rising. He was a delegate to the historic Sinn Féin ardfheis in Dublin’s Mansion House in October 1917, when it became an explicitly republican party. Tadhg believed that both a political and a military struggle against British rule were complementary. He seconded a motion that ‘every Irishman should be armed and trained in the use of arms. All members of Sinn Féin should be able to use arms.’ When Constance Markievicz moved that Sinn Féin sponsor the creation of Irish trade unions to replace British unions in Ireland, Tadhg put forward an amendment that a committee of trade unionists be established to bring the idea to fruition.

Unlike most of his fellow republicans, Tadhg was a lifelong socialist. He had helped to organise, and had chaired, Jim Larkin’s final public address before his departure for the United States in Cork City Hall in October 1914. And in May 1915, he had helped to bring James Connolly to Cork to speak at a meeting of Connolly’s Independent Labour Party of Ireland. Tadhg was horrified by the British Labour Party’s support for the First World War and its participation in the war cabinet, which

A military order under the highly

draconian Defence of

the Realm Act 1914 – which was passed to crack down on opposition to the First World War – prohibiting Tadhg Barry from leaving the ‘urban and rural districts of Cork’, 1916. (Courtesy of Donal Ó Drisceoil)

convinced him that a socialist Ireland was impossible under British rule. But there was another component to his socialism: Christianity. Like many Irish people of his generation, Tadhg was a devout Catholic; but unlike most of his generation, he considered the Christian Gospel a call to establish a socialist society. ‘Father McSweeney … has spoken more socialism … than … my poor friend Connolly’, Tadhg once wrote when speaking about a popular Dominican priest. ‘And he rightly takes his stand by the greatest socialist of all, the crucified reformer of Nazareth, whose dictum was and is, ‘Go and sell all your goods and give them to the poor.’’ The Bolshevik Revolution had a profound influence on Tadhg, as it had on millions of workers and leftists all over the world. The Bolsheviks were widely popular in Ireland for taking Russia out of the First World War and supporting self-determination for small countries (like Ireland) under the yoke of empire; many viewed the October Revolution as a blow to imperialism. Tadhg saw it in those terms too, but he also considered it

A 1921 intelligence file on ‘Timothy (Tadhg) Barry’ from the War Office (a now defunct British government department) detailing his politics activities. Note the description of him as a ‘notorious and irreconcilable revolutionary’ and ‘extreme socialist and Bolshevist’! (The UK National Archives)

a social revolution where the working class had seized state power, the first of many to come. He was involved in the ‘Hands Off Russia’ movement organised by the pro- Bolshevik Socialist Party of Ireland (predecessors to the Communist Party of Ireland), which campaigned against Allied intervention on the side of the counterrevolutionaries in the Russian Civil War. Like many other Irish socialists, Tadhg looked to Russia as an example and adopted the radical language of Bolshevism, championing concepts such as a ‘workers’ republic’ and a ‘co-operative commonwealth’ as alternatives to capitalism. However, he remained a Christian socialist to his core, regarding Jesus Christ as a greater political and ideological inspiration than Karl Marx. But the British authorities were not convinced of his sincerity. They spuriously claimed that he had ‘been a Sinn Féiner, extreme socialist and Bolshevist’ … as occasion offered.’ The same intelligence file also called him an ‘utter disloyalist … a mischievous socialist … a notorious and irreconcilable revolutionary who has taken an active part … in every rebel and revolutionary movement in Ireland.’ No doubt Tadhg would have proudly agreed!

A 1916 letter from Tadhg Barry to Irish Opinion in which he outlines his Christian socialist views. A devout Catholic, Christianity remained the driving force behind Tadhg’s left-wing politics throughout his life. (Irish Newspaper Archives)

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