The life of Republican Socialist Jim Kerr
1940s Curragh Internee, RAF rear gunner, member of Official Sinn Féin’s National Executive, founder member of IRSP and prisoner for INLA activity in 1980s
Introduction
In November 1984, Detective Martin Donlon and a colleague from the Bridewell Garda Station in Dublin flew out to Switzerland. In an immigration office in Zurich Airport, they cautioned a 63-year-old who had been evading an outstanding Irish warrant for nearly a decade. The individual told the pair of detectives: “I am the man named on the warrant and everything is correct”.¹
James Kerr (or Seamus MacCarra) had been on the run in Europe for nine years after failing to turn up to his trial in the Special Criminal Court in December 1975. A blasting engineer at Mogul Mines near Nenagh in County Tipperary, he had been caught red-handed stealing gelignite for his comrades in the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). During his time in France and Switzerland, it is believed that was associated with members of the Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionäre Zellen, RZ) and was part of the INLA’s Palestinian arms trafficking network.
Following his extradition to Dublin in 1984, Kerr was sentenced to three years imprisonment for possession of explosives at the Special Criminal Court.
Jim Kerr, as he was widely known, led a remarkably interesting life. Born into a comfortable Protestant family in Enniscorthy in County Wexford, he was interned in the early 1940s in the Curragh camp where he was part of the left-wing Connolly Group. Kerr was allowed to sign himself out in order to enlist with the Royal Air Force (RAF) to fight against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Upon his return to Ireland, he rejoined the IRA and is believed to have taken some part in the Border Campaign in the mid-1950s.
Described as a close friend and strong supporter of Bray Republican Seamus Costello, Kerr was a leading member of Official Sinn Féin (OSF) in Nenagh in the early 1970s and a member of its Ard Comhairle (National Executive). He was a strike leader during a 1971 industrial dispute at Mogul Mines and addressed the funeral of Cork man Martin O’Leary who was killed while planting explosives at the mine in an intervention during the dispute from the Official IRA. Kerr resigned from the Officials and followed Costello into the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in 1974. This is an attempt to sketch his remarkable life.
Early Life
James (Jim) Kerr was born in Enniscorthy town, County Wexford in circa 1921.² He came from a respected Church of Ireland family who had established a jewellery and watchmaking business at 16 Slaney Street in 1881.³ During Easter Week 1916, local Irish Volunteers looted the premises of a six-chamber revolver, an American rifle, sword and cartridges. The family’s claim for £5 5s compensation was granted.⁴
IRA and RAF (1940s-50s)
It is believed that Jim Kerr joined the Republican Movement in the late 1930s. Wexford IRA member George Molloy recalled to Uinseann MacEoin that:
“Jim Kerr’s people in Enniscorthy were in the watchmaking business and hence they were comparatively well off. They were displeased that Jim had become mixed up in the IRA but that did not deter him for, when he was in the Curragh, he teamed up with the ‘Reds’” ⁵
Kerr was interned during The Emergency (Second World War) in the Curragh Camp, County Kildare in the early 1940s. He was a member of the 60-strong Connolly Study Group together with Michael O’Riordan (Cork City), Johnny Power (Waterford City), Paddy Smith (Dublin), Neil Goold (Donegal) and Liam Dowling (Dublin).⁶ O’Riordan edited the group’s sporadically produced clandestine handwritten journal, An splannc (‘The spark’, after Lenin’s Iskra).⁷
Other Enniscorthy men imprisoned in the period were David Grace, Walter Sutton, John (Pender) Murphy and Tom Cullimore.⁸
Something of Kerr’s politics is revealed in messages that he wrote in a camp autograph book which included calls for the “Red Terror of the Revolution” and a “United Front against Fascism, internal and external”.⁹
Matt Treacy states that Kerr signed himself out from the Curragh Camp to join the Royal Air Force (RAF). The authors of Deadly Divisions corroborate this and state that he became a “rear gunner in a bomber” aircraft.¹⁰ A further reference asserts that he “fought in the anti-fascist resistance during World War II.” ¹¹
It is likely that Kerr made this decision following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Other republican socialists in the Curragh, like Kevin Neville of Cork, also signed themselves out to join the RAF in, as they saw it, the fight against fascism and the defence of the Soviet Union.
Border Campaign and associate of Seamus Costello (1950s-60s)
Both Treacy and Deadly Divisions state that Kerr rejoined the IRA in the 1950s and took part in the Border Campaign (1956–1962) although his exact role is unclear.
Kerr was described in Deadly Divisions as a “strong supporter” and “old friend” of Bray Republican Seamus Costello who was active in South Derry during the Border Campaign. The 18-year-old earned the title ‘boy general’ for leading an IRA unit that burned down Magherafelt Courthouse.¹²
(At his hearing in front of the Swiss Supreme Court in the 1980s, it was claimed that Kerr was a member of the Communist Party [of Ireland] from 1937 to 1955 although this has not been corroborated by any other source. Manus O’Riordan has pointed out to me that as the CPI dissolved in the 26 Counties in 1941, he would have been attached to the Irish Workers’ League from 1948 to 1955)
Mogul Mines strike (1971)
Kerr was employed as a blasting engineer at the Canadian-owned Mogul Mines at Silvermines, near Nenagh, County Tipperary and was a shop steward with the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU).¹³
In early 1971, a union member was dismissed for taking three cigarette packets that didn’t belong to him from a changing room at the mine.¹⁴ The Labour Court met and recommended that the employee should be reinstated. Mogul Mines agreed to this but wanted him to return to a different role. The employee refused and his fellow workers voted to take strike action.
There were obviously deeper concerns amongst the workforce with one 2016 article referring to “low wages, poor conditions and an unresponsive management”.¹⁵ Workers were risking life and limb every day. Five miners had been killed in separate workplace accidents at the site.¹⁶
The strike, which began in late May 1971, involved around 400 ITGWU members. This was the first strike at the mine in seven years although workers had been involved in four short unofficial stoppages.¹⁷ Kerr was described as chairman of the Strikers’ Committee.¹⁸
On 3rd July — about six weeks into the strike — an Official IRA unit comprising five armed men held up security guards at the mines and planted explosives at the main electrical transformers. The blast caused £1.6m worth of damage. In the process of laying the devices, 20-year-old Martin O’Leary, of 143 Connolly Road, Ballyphehane, Co. Cork, was electrocuted and suffered extensive burns. He later died of his injuries in Barrington’s Hospital, Co. Limerick.
O’Leary’s funeral in Cork on 7th July was a show of strength for the Official Republican Movement and was attended by about 1,000 people led by a colour party and guard of honour. A volley of shots was fired outside O’Leary’s family home as the cortege stopped outside for a minute's silence.
Jim Kerr laid a wreath at O’Leary’s grave at the Republican Plot, St. Finbarr’s Cemetery on behalf of the striking miners of which 20 were in attendance.
Kerr addressed the crowd and said that “the Irish nation was indebted to Martin O’Leary for what he had done”. He added that “it is a warning to all the oppressors that the Irish working people are no longer content to be bonded slaves”.¹⁹ The main oration was given by Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff of the Official IRA.
Only a few days after the funeral, the Mogul workers voted on 10th July to return to work after six weeks on strike following the company’s agreement to reinstate the dismissed worker in his original role with £300 back pay.²⁰
Official Sinn Féin (early 1970s)
Kerr was a leading member of the Sean Bergin²¹ Cumann (Branch) of OSF in Nenagh in the early 1970s.²² He often used the Irish version of his name, Seamus Mac Carra.²³
The Cumann officers in 1972 were Seamus MacCarra (James Kerr)(President), Padraig O Cleirigh (Patrick O’Cleary) (Chairman); Seamus O Fuccarton (sic)(Vice-Chairman); Cait Ni [Coiglig] (Kathleen or Kitty Quigley) (Secretary) and Antoin Ó Foghlú (Anthony Foley) (Treasurer).²⁴
Kerr addressed a gathering in Nenagh following the ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre in Derry in January 1972. Described simply as an ITGWU member, the local newspaper reported that he “called on the people to get together and fight”.²⁵
In March 1972, a “mystery” fire destroyed the protective clothing of 250 underground mineworkers at Mogul which occurred during a go-slow strike that had commenced the previous month.²⁶ Immediately following the fire, Jim Kerr was one of five Mogul employees who were ordered to vacate a hostel at the company’s premises at Gorteenadiha, Silvermines.²⁷ They were the last remaining workers, who refused to leave the premises, since the company decided to close down the facility in August 1971.
In September 1973, Jim Kerr was described as the spokesperson for a body called Republican Trade Unionists. At a meeting in O’Meara’s Hotel in Nenagh, he told the crowd that a “National Wages Agreement takes away the freedom of the working man. Free Collective Bargaining … is the only method by which the demands of the workers can be heard”.²⁸
IRSP Split (1974)
Kerr was a member of OSF’s Ard Comhairle (National Executive) in 1974 alongside such well-known names as Tomais MacGoilla, Sean Garland, Cathal Goulding, Eamon Smullen, Mick Ryan, Liam McMillen (killed 1975), Seamus Costello (killed 1977) and Ronnie Bunting (killed 1980).
It was noted in the report of that year’s Ard Fheis (annual party conference) that Kerr had only attended three out of 12 Ard Comhairle meetings and that he had since resigned from the party (“although nothing had been received in writing”).²⁹ His sparse attendance at meetings is explained by his involvement in background manoeuvres which led to the establishment of the IRSP by Seamus Costello, Micky Doherty and others.
(The origins of the IRSP lay in Costello and his supporters' ardent opposition to the Official IRA’s cease-fire in May 1972 and what they saw as a shift towards political reformism. Things came to a head when Seamus Costello was court-martialled and dismissed from the Official IRA in July 1974.)
The IRSP was formally established at the Lucan Spa Hotel near Dublin, on 8 December 1974 by 80 individuals. A new military organisation (INLA) was set up in tandem but it did not reveal itself publicly for some time.
The Nenagh Cumann of OSF “unanimously decided to reconstitute themselves as a branch of the IRSP” due in part “to the lack of democratic procedures in the dismissal of Seamus Costello”.³⁰ Kerr was elected president of the new IRSP Nenagh Branch alongside Danny Shankley (Chairman), Cait Bean Ní Coiglig (Kathleen Quigley) (Secretary) and Anthony Quinn (Tony Quinn) (Treasurer).
OSF’s Public Relations Officer (PRO) Seán Ó Cionnaith told the Irish Press that the Sean Bergin Cumann had not been registered with the party for the last two years and Seamus McCharra was not a member of the Ard Comhairle.³¹ In a second statement, the North Munster Comhairle Ceantair of OSF told the press that the “Sean Bergin Cumann in Nenagh never existed and Seamus McCharra (sic) was not a member of Sinn Féin”. It was signed by Siobhan Thomas (Secretary) and Fergus Reynolds (PRO).³² Contemporary party documents show that Kerr was on the OSF’s Ard Comhairle in 1974 (see above) and the Sean Bergin Cumann was certainly active in 1972–73 as they submitted three motions to the Ard-Fheis of that year.
It should be noted that Jim Kerr was not elected to the temporary National Executive of the IRSP in late 1974. The Tipperary representative was Anthony (Tony) Quinn referred to earlier.
Arrest (1975)
Jim Kerr was arrested by police in December 1975 and charged with stealing gelignite for the INLA from the Mogul Mines where he was still employed. It is unclear if Kerr had been engaged in this activity for a significant period of time.
Garda Dervan of Nenagh Station told a subsequent court case that he saw Kerr leaving the mine with a lunchbox that “appeared to be heavy”.³³ It is possible that Kerr was under surveillance as other miners had been caught stealing explosives from the same site within the previous year. Derville followed Kerr, examined his lunchbox and found that it contained explosives. A follow-up search of Kerr’s flat in Summerhill, Nenagh on 06 December 1975 discovered safety fuses, detonators and sticks of gelignite under a cooker and sink unit. Superintendent Peter Smith of Nenagh told the court that Kerr had removed nine ‘stones’ of Frangex (commercial gelignite) in small quantities using his lunchbox.³⁴
On 10 December 1975, James Kerr (Seamus Mac Carra) was charged at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act with possession of Frangex.³⁵ Kerr was remanded on his own bail of £500 and an independent bail of £1,000 provided by Frank Lewis of Ballyartella, County Tipperary who was Branch Secretary of the Nenagh Branch of the ITGWU.³⁶
Kerr failed to turn up at court on 06 February 1976 and a warrant for his arrest was issued by the judge. His home address was recorded as Drumkay [House], Two Mile Water, Co. Wicklow.³⁷ In March 1976, Superintendent Peter Smith said, somewhat optimistically, that he believed Kerr would return to Ireland in June of that year for his son’s graduation from university.³⁸
France and Switzerland (1976–84)
Kerr went on the run to Europe and was there when his old comrade Seamus Costello was shot dead in North Strand, Dublin in October 1977 by the Official IRA. IRSP members from Nenagh travelled to the funeral in Bray with Kathleen Quigley laying a wreath on behalf of the branch. Costello’s wife Maeliosa Gaynor was originally from Rapla, Nenagh.
It is stated that Kerr spent time in France where, according to Deadly Divisions, he associated with another IRSP member on the run, Michael (Mick) Plunkett. A former general secretary of the party, Plunkett had been a leading member of OSF in Dún Laoghaire and had been a close friend of Costello. He had been a regular visitor to West Germany and France where he had built links with armed Leftist militants. (In 1982, he was one of three INLA/IRSP activists caught up in the ‘Irish of Vincennes’ affair.)³⁹
Deadly Divisions states that Kerr moved to Basel, Switzerland in late 1979, where he used the alias Anthony Hurbert, and lived with a female member of the leftist urban guerrilla group Revolutionary Cells.⁴⁰
Between 1977 and 1981, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) supplied the INLA with six shipments of arms that included hundreds of Czechoslovak pistols and Chinese SKS rifles.⁴¹ The authorities believed that Kerr was part of the INLA group which facilitated the transport of these weapons across Europe to Ireland.⁴²
Extradition (1984)
Kerr was arrested by the authorities in Basel on 06 April 1984.⁴³ He had been on the run for nine years. In the Swiss Supreme Court, he said that he was:
“less concerned with his sympathy for Catholicism than with the liberation of Northern Ireland from Great Britain (the “occupier”). [I have] always advocated justice, independence and freedom based on the socialist model.” ⁴⁴
He resisted extradition, claiming, among other things, that his offences were “political crimes” and that he would be tried in an “exceptional court” (Special Criminal Court) in Ireland.⁴⁵
The court deemed the alleged offence as not political and two Gardaí escorted him back to Ireland in early November 1984.⁴⁶
Kerr was described, in court in Dublin, as a married man with four children and no previous convictions.⁴⁷ His previous links to the IRA in the 1940s and 1950s were not mentioned, presumably, because he was not convicted of any offences but had ‘only’ been interned in the Curragh in the early 1940s?
Mr Justice Thomas Doyle sentenced Kerr to three years penal servitude for possession of explosives.⁴⁸ (Which should be noted was three times shorter in length than the time he was actually on the run!)
Kerr’s counsel Patrick McEntee told the court that Kerr had been living on a diet of “condensed milk and beans” while in Europe.⁴⁹ He further claimed that he had “undergone a spiritual conversion … and was now appalled by the use of violence for political ends”. Whether this was true or was a tactic for a lenient sentence is uncertain.
If he served his full sentence, Kerr was released in November 1987. It is believed he died in the early 2000s.
If anyone has any further information on the life of Jim Kerr, please email me at ‘matchgrams(at)gmail.com’. Thanks.
About the author
Sam McGrath is a Dublin-based historian and archivist who was a co-founder of the Come Here To Me! blog in 2009.
Footnotes
[1] The Cork Examiner, 07 Nov 1984
[2] Article in the Tipperary Star (28 Feb 1976) said he was 54 (born c1922) and the Belfast Telegraph (09 Nov 1984) said he was 63 (born c1921). There is a birth registered for James F X Kerr in period of April-June 1921 in County Wexford.
[3] The New Ross Standard, 07 Dec 1973
[4] James Kerr application, Property Losses (Ireland) Committee, 1916 (PLIC). http://centenaries.nationalarchives.ie/reels/plic/PLIC_1_6213.pdf
[5] Uinseann MacEoin, The IRA in the Twilight Years, 1923–1948 (Dublin, 1997), p. 683.
[6] Manus O’Riordan, An Irish Anti-Fascist Volunteer And Some Other Soldiers Part 2, Irish Political Review (August 2012). http://free-magazines.atholbooks.org/ipr/2012/IPR_August_2012.pdf
[7] Dictionary of Irish Biography entry for Michael O’Riordan
https://www.dib.ie/biography/oriordan-michael-micheal-mick-a9433
[8]MacEoin, The IRA in the Twilight Years, p.688
[9] Matt Treacy, The Communist Party of Ireland 1921–2011 (Dublin, 2012), p. 159
[10] Henry McDonald and Jack Holland, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, 2010 edition), p. 296
[11] ‘Excerpt from the judgment of the 1st public law department of October 31, 1984 in the context of Mac Charra against the Federal Police Office’ https://entscheidsuche.ch/docs/CH_BGE/CH_BGE_003_BGE-110-Ib-280_nodate.html
[12] Dictionary of Irish Biography entry for Seamus Costello https://www.dib.ie/biography/costello-seamus-a2085
[13] The Nenagh Guardian, 30 Jan 1971
[14] The Evening Herald, 06 April 1971
[15] Rebel City Writers, Rebel Lives: Volunteer Martin O’Leary — Ballyphehane’s Soldier of the People, 2016. https://rebelcitywriters.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/rebel-lives-volunteer-martin-oleary-ballyphehanes-soldier-of-the-people/
[16] The miners who were killed in workplace accidents were Tony Grace, Paddy O’Keeffe, John O’Brien, Willie Ryan and Kevin Burgess. See: https://silvermineshistoricalsociety.com/20th-century-mining-in-silvermines/
[17] The Evening Echo, 31 May 1971
[18] The Evening Herald, 08 July 1971
[19] ibid
[20] The Evening Herald, 10 July 1971
[21] IRA member Sean Bergin, from Silver Street, Nenagh, was killed by British forces near Loughglynn, Co Roscommon in April 1921 during the War of Independence.
[22] The Irish Press, 11 Dec 1974
[23] Sometimes McCarra, McCharra or MacCharra
[24] The Nenagh Guardian, 05 Feb 1972
[25] The Irish Press, 17 March 1972
[26] The Irish Independent, 21 March 1972
[27] ?
[28] The Nenagh Guardian, 22 Sep 1973
[29] Official Sinn Féin 1974 Ard Fheis Report, p. 1
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=workerpmat
[30] The Tipperary Star, 14 Dec 1974
[31] The Irish Press, 07 Dec 1974
[32] The Irish Press, 09 Dec 1974
[33] The Nenagh Guardian, 17 Nov 1984
[34] ibid
[35] The Cork Examiner, 10 Dec 1975
[36] The Irish Press, 23 March 1976
[37] The Irish Independent, 20 Feb 1976
[38] The Irish Press, 23 March 1976
[39] See this RTÉ article for more information on the scandal, https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0325/1126344-1982-irish-republicans-france-mitterrand-vincennes/
[40] Deadly Divisions, p. 296
[41] Richard English, The Cambridge History of Terrorism (Cambridge, 2021), p 493
[42] Deadly Divisions, p. 296
[43] The Irish Press, 01 Nov 1984
[44] ‘Excerpt from the judgment of the 1st public law department of October 31, 1984 in the context of Mac Charra against the Federal Police Office’ https://entscheidsuche.ch/docs/CH_BGE/CH_BGE_003_BGE-110-Ib-280_nodate.html
[45] ibid
[46] The Nenagh Guardian, 10 Nov 1984
[47] The Cork Examiner, 09 Nov 1984
[48] Deadly Divisions states that he served a 10-year sentence but contemporary newspapers article say it was three
[49] The Cork Examiner, 09 Nov 1984
Further reading
Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, (Dublin, 2009).
Sean Boyne, Gunrunners: The Covert Arms Trail to Ireland, (Dublin, 2006)
Henry McDonald and Jack Holland, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, 2010 edition)
