The memory of West Cork republican Dick Barrett from Ballineen and his three comrades still looms large, writes Gerard Shannon

THE memory of Irish republican Dick Barrett looms large over West Cork during the revolutionary period of the early 20th century.

Born in 1889 in Hollyhill, Ballineen, Barrett by the time of the Irish War of Independence would emerge as a prominent leadership figure in the Cork No. 3 Brigade that encompassed West Cork.

He would be the brigade’s quartermaster and later would ascend to the staff of the First Southern Division under General Liam Lynch.

His comrade Peader O’Donnell later remarked how Barrett had once been close to Michael Collins, on the pro-Treaty side, and recalled Barrett as ‘a keen, searching mind with strong conspiratorial genius’.

Barrett remains best known for the circumstances of his death at the height of the Civil War, when he opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, regarding it as a betrayal of the Irish Republic as declared in 1916.

On December 8th 1922, Barrett was executed before a firing squad along with three other prominent republicans and anti-Treaty IRA leaders: Joe McKelvey, Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor.

Their executions were an illegal reprisal, and on the instruction of the Irish government at the time headed by WT Cosgrave.

Gerard Shannon.

Of particular cruelty was the fact the four men were put to death for an incident none of them had a part in: The assassination of pro-Treaty TD, Seán Hales, by members of the anti-Treaty IRA. Hales, in a great irony had been a close friend and comrade of Dick Barrett in the West Cork Brigade prior to the split over the Treaty.

Hales had been shot on Dublin’s quays because of orders issued by the anti-Treaty IRA leader, Liam Lynch. Lynch strongly opposed new government legislation that had allowed for the executions of republican prisoners. However, the executions of Barrett and his three comrades were illegal and outside the parameters of this.

In one of his last letters, addressed to his fellow prisoners in Mountjoy, Barrett wrote: ‘I hope you will all live through to the Faith of our National Fathers and when called on to do a great thing for Ireland, you will face it manfully. Do not bear ill will or dream of reprisals, the cause is too holy for ignoble deeds.’

Ironically, at the time of his death at the age of 39, O’Connor was perhaps the best known of the four men. The son of a wealthy Dublin-based solicitor, he had risen in the ranks of the Volunteers and became the IRA’s Director of Engineering. He also masterminded several high-profile prison escapes of republicans and IRA operations in Great Britain.

The cover of ‘Rory O’Connor: To Defend the Republic’.

Most poignantly, one of those ministers that approved the executions months was Kevin O’Higgins, then Minister for Home Affairs. Rory O’Connor was the best man at O’Higgins wedding – several weeks before the signing of the Treaty.

The death of the four men became a central component of his legacy. Nearly five years later, and four years after the end of the civil war, O’Higgins was assassinated by members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade while walking the streets of south Dublin – a particularly violent result of the executions on 8 December 1922.

Gerard Shannon is the author of ‘Rory O’Connor: To Defend the Republic’, which is now available from Merrion Press..