TOM BARRY
GERRY KELLY REMEMBERS
DAYS IN
1972
Somebody sent me a grainy photo recently with the Irish Republican legend, Tom Barry, in it. Standing tall and erect in his seventies, he is surrounded by a group of young, mostly teenage, Irish Republican activists from Belfast. The year was 1972 and the photo was taken in Cork at a Republican monument. It commemorated Volunteers, most of whom Tom Barry had fought alongside, who had died in the cause of Irish freedom. The photo brought back memories of that most difficult and most active period of the conflict. 1972 is accepted as the worst year of the three decades of conflict in terms of casualties and fatalities across all sides. Internment without trial was introduced by the British in August 1971. The first arrest operation, which imprisoned hundreds of Nationalists, netted very few republican volunteers, who had been warned to stay out of their homes. However, by the start of 1972, the arrests were having a bigger impact on IRA ranks. In Belfast in particular, the numbers of volunteers being interned meant that the average age of those continuing the struggle outside jail was under 20 years. There were British troops on the streets, all day and
In Belfast in particular, the numbers of volunteers being interned meant that the average age of those continuing the struggle outside jail was under 20 years
anphoblacht UIMHIR EISIÚNA 1 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 1
night. Shootings and gun battles were a daily occurrence in the war of attrition. I had been ‘on the run’, after escaping from Mountjoy Jail in Dublin in January, but, with internment, basically all activists were on the run. BY GERRY KELLY It was in these circumstances that small numbers of activists Gerry Kelly is a Sinn Féin MLA were given £15 spending money, for North Belfast and the party’s and offered a weeklong break Assembly Spokesperson on Policing from the intense atmosphere of war-torn Belfast. I accepted immediately and travelled with two other friends, John and Davey, from the Ballymurphy area. We stopped off at Rathfarnham on the outskirts of Dublin to visit John’s family, who had left Belfast to get some respite from ‘The Troubles’. The Fuscos were a large family of 13 children and were living in a not very big caravan in an otherwise empty field. John’s younger brother, Angelo, showed us where the boys were sleeping, which was a makeshift hut about 4ft high. We were greeted with hugs and handshakes by John’s parents. There was a huge pot of Bolognese cooking on a campfire and we were fed along with the rest of the clan. I was shocked by their living conditions and handed Mrs Fusco a few pounds when leaving. She refused to take it, but I insisted that we wanted her to have it. John found out about this later and told me his Mammy was really grateful, but the problem wasn’t the lack of money but of a house to live in. 41
