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JJ wants to be a first-time voter

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By Peter O’Connell

EIGHTY-TWO-year-old Kilkee man, JJ Barry, is hoping to vote for the first time in Ireland on May 23. An emigrant in England for 63 years, JJ returned to his native town two years ago. A man with a keen interest in politics, JJ voted Labour when in England but has yet to receive confirmation that he can vote in the upcoming local and European elections.
“I’ve been trying to get a voting card for the last two years. I haven’t got it yet. I don’t know whether I’m voting or not in this election. They don’t send you anything. I’ve never got a letter to say I was registered or anything,” a rather frustrated JJ told The Clare Champion.
“I want to vote now because I don’t know how many years I have left. I always wanted to have a vote but, in my time, there was no voting in Ireland until you were 21. I was 19 when I emigrated,” he revealed. “When in the UK, JJ was a Labour man. “I always voted Labour. All of the Irish people voted Labour, as far as I know. I voted in the local elections and everything,” he said.
Family circumstances and lack of employment opportunity forced JJ abroad many decades ago.
“My father died when he was 53 and my mother was 39. There were eight of us and somebody had to go. I was the eldest boy. Before I left Kilkee, I was a shoemaker but I never practised. My father was a shoemaker but he died fairly young. I had to finish my trade off with a man called Willie Barry in the West End. I was in Manchester first, then Northampton and, after that, I went to London. I’d say I was about 50 years in London,” he recalled.
He worked for a while on the buses, before turning to construction. “I moved down to my uncle in Northampton, where I got a job as a bus conductor and then a bus driver. I did that for about four years. Then I was called for the (British) army but I wouldn’t go,” he said. “Conscription was there until 1953. My father was an IRA man and when I was called, I couldn’t do it. So I came home, waited a month or two, then went back with a friend of mine and I went to London. I started on the building game and I became a ganger man,” JJ recollected.
He returned to Kilkee after his wife died. “My daughter and her husband came with me. My wife, who was from Leitrim, passed away and is buried in Lisdeen (Kilkee). There was no point in being over on my own. I’m not 100% but I’m near enough. So my daughter came with me to look after me,” JJ explained.
Incredibly, JJ’s Kilkee accent remains as strong as the day he left West Clare.
“As they used to say long ago, you could cut it with a knife,” he laughed.
On a more serious note, he is hoping that, come May 23, he will have his polling card and can vote in his own country for the first time.

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