Tea with Bernard
It’s really no great surprise that the Irish needed their independence. There had been British indifference after the harvests failed and the folk began to starve. There had been the issues of the setting up of a general election set up by the British authorities in 1918 where 70% of the voters decided to support candidates pledged to abstain from the ties of English authority but were ignored. There had also been the issues of Easter 1916 when a “terrible beauty was born” and many good Irish folk died by shooting and hanging in the cause of shedding the yoke of an oppressive and uncaring ruling elite. Tom Barry wrote in “Guerrilla Days in Ireland” about those dark but somehow progressive days. Tom was Commandant General of the West Cork flying column and in his early career was pitted against the combined might of the British Army in the days just after the first war to end all wars. People like Major Percival and Montgomery were on his hit list. The first, who was later to surr