Ruairí Ó Brádaigh

The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary

Robert W. White

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780253048325
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A biography and analysis of the influential Irish political and military leader. At his death in 2013, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh remained a divisive and influential figure in Irish politics and the Irish Republican movement. He was the first person to serve as chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, as president of the political party Sinn Féin, and to have been elected, as an abstentionist, to the Dublin parliament. He was a prominent, uncompromising, and articulate spokesperson of those Irish Republicans who questioned the peace process in Northern Ireland. His concern was rooted in his analysis of Irish history and his belief that the peace process would not achieve peace. He believed that it would support the continued partition of Ireland and result in continued, inevitable, conflict. The child of Irish Republican veterans, Ó Brádaigh led IRA raids, was arrested and interned, escaped and lived "on the run, " and even spent a period on a hunger strike. Because he was an effective spokesman for the Irish Republican cause, he was at different times excluded from Northern Ireland, Britain, the United States, and Canada. He was also a key figure in the secret negotiation of a bilateral IRA-British truce in the mid-1970s. In a brief afterword for this new edition, author Robert W. White addresses Ó Brádaigh's continuing influence on the Irish Republican Movement, including the ongoing "dissident" campaign. Whether for good or bad, this ongoing dissident activity is a part of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh's enduring legacy. "A tour de force. Indispensable for all Irish studies collections.... Essential." — Choice

1

Matt Brady and May Caffrey

ANGLO-IRISH WARS in the seventeenth century consolidated English power over Irish affairs and placed a minority but loyal Irish Protestant elite in control of the majority Irish Catholic population. The Protestant Ascendancy ruled Ireland from their base in Dublin, but their greatest numbers were in the northeast portion of the province of Ulster. It was here that the Plantation of English and Scottish settlers into Ireland in the seventeenth century was most successful. In the 1790s, anti-English agitation in Ireland, as organized by the United Irishmen, adopted a Republican political philosophy. They tried to unite Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter to establish an Irish Republic. They rebelled in 1798 and failed. Rebellions against English and British power in Ireland continued into the nineteenth century: by remnants of the United Irishmen in 1803, by the Young Irelanders in 1848, and by the Fenians at various points in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. These rebellions were complemented by largescale social protest movements that also challenged the status quo. In 1829, agitation led by Daniel O’Connell resulted in Catholics being granted the right to hold seats in Parliament. In the 1870s and 1880s, Charles Stewart Parnell and others involved in the Land League forced landlords, if only slowly, to return lands confiscated from the Irish people in the seventeenth century. Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, was also a key proponent of a Home Rule for Ireland Bill. If enacted, the bill would not create an Irish Republic, but it would limit the power of the Protestant Ascendancy and give Irish people significantly more control over Irish affairs.

It was into this context that Matt Brady was born in 1890 in North County Longford in the townland of Gelsha, near Ballinalee. He was the youngest of eight children, and in a time of high infant mortality, only he and his siblings Hugh and Mary Kate lived to adulthood. Then, as now, the area was filled with trees, bushes, small farms, and little villages. Matt’s father, Peter Brady, was married to Kate Clarke and worked a twenty-acre farm. Folklore has it that the Bradys were driven from Ulster by Orangemen. They were in North Longford by at least the 1840s, when Peter’s uncle died of typhus during the famine. Peter Brady was active in local politics and is remembered for buying newspapers and reading them to his neighbors, giving them the news on Parnell, the Fenians, and other events. He was active in the Land League, and at one point he chose to go to jail rather than pay a fine for agitation.

County Longford is strategically located in the Irish midlands where the provinces of Leinster, Ulster, and Connacht come together, and it has a long military history. In the 1640s, General Owen Roe O’Neill, who was home from the Spanish Army, trained his Army of Ulster at the juncture of the three provinces. In 1798, a French expedition, under the command of Jean-Joseph Amable Humbert, invaded Ireland in support of the United Irishmen. Humbert landed at Killala in County Mayo and marched his troops through Mayo, Sligo, and Leitrim and into Longford, where he confronted British General Lake in what became known as the Battle of Ballinamuck. It is estimated that 500 insurgents fell in the battle. As Humbert described it, he was “at length obliged to submit to a superior force of 30,000 troops.” The French were taken prisoner; the Irish were slaughtered. Among those captured and hanged were the United Irishmen Bartholomew Teeling and Matthew Tone, the brother of Wolfe Tone, who is considered the founding father of Irish Republicanism.

The effects of Ballinamuck weighed on the local peasantry and small farmers, who had risen against the Crown and paid a high price for it, and on the local elites, who feared it might happen again. Seán Ó Donnabháin, an Irish scholar who worked on an ordnance survey in North Longford, described the people of the area in an 1837 letter from Granard as “poor, and what is worse, kept down by the police.” One of the few Irish soldiers to survive the battle was Brian O’Neill. People like him kept the memory of the battle alive, and it became a symbol of local resistance to British injustice. O’Neill’s grandnephew, James O’Neill, was born on March 1, 1855, and over the course of his long life he was a keeper of the flame of Ballinamuck, a direct link between 1798 and decades of political activity in Longford, until his death in 1946. A contemporary of Peter Brady, he was involved in the Land League, was president of the Drumlish and Ballinamuck United Irish League, and was later active in Sinn Féin with Matt Brady.

In 1913, Matt Brady moved from Gelsha to Longford town and became a rate collector for the County Council. The town developed on the Camlin River; in 1913 a main feature was two military barracks, one for cavalry and the other for artillery. The barracks indicated Longford’s strategic location and a tradition of resisting the Crown’s authority. It was a prosperous town, and architecturally it was and is dominated by the facade and tower of St. Mel’s Cathedral. The foundation stone for St. Mel’s was laid in May 1840, but the building was not completed until the 1890s. In 1914, after Matt’s brother Hugh left for the United States, Matt continued his work for the county and maintained the small farm at Gelsha. World politics would soon set in motion events that would directly affect both Matt Brady and Longford.

When it became apparent that Home Rule would pass in Westminster, anti–Home Rule Unionists in Ulster organized the Ulster Volunteer Force and began drilling. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, heirs of the Fenians, countered this by forming the Irish Volunteers. When World War I began, Unionists supported the war effort and the Ulster Volunteer Force joined the British Army en masse. John Redmond, Parnell’s successor as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, encouraged the Irish Volunteers to do the same, splitting the Volunteers.

In August 1914, the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s Supreme Council met and determined that Ireland’s honor would be tarnished if no fight was made for an Irish Republic during the world war. The Irish Republican Brotherhood planned a rebellion to coincide with the importation of arms from Germany at Easter 1916. The arms were to arrive in County Kerry, then be distributed throughout the south and west of Ireland. Instead, Irish Volunteers missed their rendezvous with a German Steamer, the Aud, which was eventually spotted by the Royal Navy. The crew scuttled the Aud, and her cargo, at the entrance to Cork Harbor. When word of the lost arms reached the rebel organizers, confusion set in and the Rising was postponed from Easter Sunday until Easter Monday. Rebels seized the General Post Office and other strategic buildings in Dublin, and Patrick Pearse, “Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Republic and President of the Provisional Government,” stepped forward and proclaimed the Irish Republic. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) took up positions throughout Dublin. So did the Irish Citizen Army, led by James Connolly, a socialist critic and labor organizer, who had formed the small (approximately 200-member) Citizen Army in 1913 as a defense force for workers during a bitter lockout.

British reinforcements quickly suppressed the rebellion; within a week, several parts of the city were reduced to rubble and 450 people were dead. The rebels’ surrender was followed by large-scale arrests in Dublin and in the provinces, and general courts-martial were set up. One hundred and sixty-nine men and one woman, the Countess Markievicz of Connolly’s Citizen Army, were tried and convicted by courts-martial. The Easter Rising’s leaders—including the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Tom Clarke, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Seán Mac Diarmada, Eamonn Ceannt, Thomas McDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett—were executed. Over 1,800 men and five women were sent to Frongoch internment camp in Wales. Eight of them were from County Longford; three were from Granard.

Internees were quickly released; 650 after a few weeks, more in July, and the rest by Christmas 1916. They were welcomed home by crowds and bonfires. The prisoners had not wasted their time in the camp. Placed together in one location, they formed friendships, organized themselves, and plotted. When they were turned loose, they joined the political party Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers, or both. When it was announced that there would be a by-election for the North Roscommon seat at Westminster in February 1917, the Republicans had a chance to find out how much support they had. Count Plunkett was put forward as the representative of the new Irish nationalist direction in opposition to the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate. A prominent and respected member of the community, he was director of the National Museum, a papal count, and the father of the executed 1916 leader Joseph Plunkett. He ran as an independent, heavily supported by Sinn Féin, and won handily. After some pressure from Sinn Féiners, he declared he would follow Sinn Féin’s policy of not taking his seat at Westminster. This decision continues to influence Irish politics.

In May 1917, there was another by-election, this time in South Longford. Mick Collins, who had been interned in Frongoch, was a conspiratorial genius. He arranged to have Joe McGuinness, who was imprisoned in England, nominated as the Sinn Féin candidate. McGuinness, a Dublin draper, was a native of nearby Tarmonbarry, and his brother, Frank, owned a small shop in Longford town. The campaign slogan was “Put him in to get him out.” Republican Ireland descended on Longford; among those speaking on behalf of McGuinness were Margaret Pearse, widowed mother of the executed brothers Patrick and Willie Pearse, Count Plunkett, and Mrs. Desmond Fitzgerald, whose husband, a 1916 veteran, was in an English jail. Count Plunkett told one crowd, “Every vote for McGuinness [is] a bullet for the heart of England.” The public was presented with two distinct choices, the moderate work-with-the-system approach of the Irish Parliamentary Party versus the radical challenge-the-system approach of Sinn Féin. McGuinness won by thirty-seven votes. Around this time, Matt Brady joined the Irish Volunteers.

When McGuinness was released from prison, a rally in Longford brought together a who’s who of Irish Republicans, including McGuinness, Count Plunkett, Arthur Griffith, Éamon de Valera, and Thomas Ashe. Griffith was the founder of Sinn Féin and the prime source of its abstentionist tactics; that is, the refusal of Republican elected officials to take their seats at Westminster. De Valera was the most senior 1916 rebel who had not been executed. In 1916, Ashe had led attacks on Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks in North County Dublin and directed a pitched battle with the RIC outside Ashbourne in County Meath. Collectively, they were key actors in a series of dramatic political events. Matt Brady was a witness to and participant in these events and probably heard Ashe introduced as “Commandant Thomas Ashe of the Irish Republican Army.” Soon after the rally for McGuinness, under the Defence of the Realm Act, Ashe was charged with attempting to cause “disaffection” among the people while making a speech at Ballinalee, County Longford. He was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment at hard labor and joined about forty other prisoners in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. The prisoners attempted to distinguish themselves from the criminal population by requesting a number of special privileges, including unrestricted conversation, optional work, classes for study, and no association with ordinary criminals. When the privileges were refused, they embarked on a hunger strike. The prison authorities countered by force-feeding them, but liquid was pumped into Ashe’s lungs instead of his stomach, causing his death in September 1917.

Republicans from throughout Ireland attended the funeral; years later, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh recalls his parents’ account of the event. The First Battalion (Ballinalee) of the Longford Volunteers, including Matt Brady of the Colmcille Company, marched eight miles to Longford town to catch a special train to Dublin. There were so many passengers that extra carriages were attached as the train progressed. The funeral, an open display of contempt for the power of the authorities, brought the city to a standstill. After a volley of shots was fired over the coffin, the oration was given by Mick Collins. He was brief, but powerful: “Nothing additional remains to be said. The volley which we have just heard is the only speech which is proper to make above the grave of a dead Fenian.” On detail was Matt Brady and his comrades in the Colmcille Company of the Longford Battalion, Athlone Brigade, of the Irish Volunteers. As did many others, Brady took his turn “on guard over [the] corpse in the city hall … and then on duty at [the] funeral.”

About this time, May Caffrey was an 18-year-old living in County Donegal. She was the daughter of John Caffrey, a municipal inspector for Belfast Corporation, and Jeanne Ducommun. Caffrey met Ducommun in London, where he was attending classes while she was working as a governess. He was an Irish Catholic interested in learning French. She was a Swiss Calvinist who was fluent in French, English, and German. In spite of, or perhaps because of, their different backgrounds, a relationship blossomed. They married and moved into a house on Clonard Gardens in Belfast. One of her first experiences there was watching the aftermath of a July 12th march commemorating the victory of the Protestant army of William of Orange over the Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. She was amazed at the rioting. Their daughter, May Caffrey, was born in Belfast in 1899. In 1906, the family moved to Armagh City, where John Caffrey took a job as headmaster of the Technical Institute. May would later tell her children about how she always had to walk to primary school with a group of other children, for she had to pass through a Unionist area and her parents feared she would be attacked. In 1908, the family moved to Donegal Town, where John Caffrey became county engineer. He also became active in Sinn Féin. He attended the Dublin funeral of the Irish-American Fenian O’Donovan Rossa in 1915 and heard Pearse’s famous oration there. In the 1918 national election, he seconded P. J. Ward, Sinn Féin’s candidate for South Donegal, on Ward’s nomination papers. (Ward was elected). Caffrey’s children followed his politics.

Like Matt Brady, May Caffrey was a participant in the dramatic political events in Ireland. She was a member of the Gaelic League and was the captain of the first branch of Cumann na mBan, the women’s wing of the Republican Movement, in Donegal town. She also organized the hinterland, cycling to Mountcharles and Frosses and other places. At one point, a local priest complained to her father that she was drilling the servant girls. The priest indicated that not only were her politics wrong but she was consorting with people beneath her. Her father ignored him and supported her.

As Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers, and Cumann na mBan grew and de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Mick Collins, and others toured the country, the authorities became concerned. Collins was arrested in Dublin in March 1918, transported to Longford, and charged with having “incited certain persons to raid for arms and carry off and hold same by force” in North Longford. He was found guilty and sent by train to Sligo Jail. In the same month, John Joe O’Neill (son of James O’Neill), was charged with drilling a squad of young men at Ballinamuck. Crowds of Sinn Féiners regularly attended the court proceedings, protested the results, and welcomed the prisoners home when they were released. According to the Longford Leader, among those who met Collins when he was released from Sligo Jail was Hubert Wilson, a former Frongoch internee and Matt Brady’s battalion commander. Matt Brady was likely there, too.

In April 1918, the political situation became especially serious. The House of Commons voted to extend conscription to Ireland. Nationalist Ireland, Republican or not, was opposed. Most of the Catholic clergy were opposed. In Donegal, May Caffrey watched the local Hibernian priest share a platform with members of the Irish Parliamentary Party and Sinn Féin, united in opposition to conscription. In Longford Town, Sinn Féiners and Irish Parliamentary Party members shared the platform in a public protest. Energized by the crisis, Matt Brady and his comrades “organised resistance to conscription” in their area. In Ballinalee, Seán Mac Eoin, who had been appointed commander of the local unit of the Irish Volunteers by Mick Collins, was able to recruit a hundred people in one day. Mac Eoin later became a central figure in Matt Brady’s life as a guerrilla leader transformed into a leading politician.

World War I ended in November 1918, and the British government called a national election in December. Sinn Féin seized the opportunity and in a stunning victory won seventy three of the Irish seats at Westminster. The Irish Party, representing constitutional Irish nationalists, took six seats, and the Unionist Party, representing Protestant and Northeast Ireland, took twenty-six seats. In Longford, Sinn Féin polled extremely well and Joe McGuinness was easily re-elected. Among the others elected was Countess Markievicz, in Dublin. She was the first woman to be elected in a British parliamentary election.

In January 1919, the elected Sinn Féin representatives put their abstentionist principles into action. Instead of going to London as Irish representatives to a British government, they formed a revolutionary government in Dublin, called Dáil Éireann (Parliament of Ireland). Éamon de Valera, president of Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers could not attend; he was imprisoned in England. In his place, Cathal Brugha, a 1916 veteran noted for his devotion to the Republican cause-he had suffered many bullet wounds—was elected president of Dáil Éireann. Members of the Dáil viewed themselves as the Parliament of the Irish Republic, “proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, by the Irish Republican Army acting on behalf of the Irish people.” Ireland was sliding into a revolutionary situation. Sinn Féin courts and arbitration boards were established and their decisions were accepted by the people. On the day Dáil Éireann was formed, Irish Republican Army volunteers in Tipperary killed two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and seized a cartload of explosives.

Under the authority of Dáil Éireann, the Irish Volunteers formally became the Irish Republican Army. The IRA in North Longford reorganized under the command of the Longford Brigade. Seán Mac Eoin became Ballinalee battalion commander. John Murphy was his vice-commandant and Seán Duffy his adjutant. Battalion companies were located at Edgeworthstown (Mostrim), Killoe, Mullinalaughta, Drumlish, Ballinamuck, Colmcille, Granard, Dromard, and Ballinalee; Matt Brady was a lieutenant with the Colmcille Company. Similar reorganizations occurred across the country, and the IRA began to flex its muscles. Seán Mac Eoin led a raid into County Cavan that recovered shotguns impounded by the RIC. In Limerick, the IRA tried to free a hunger-striking Republican prisoner from the hospital. The prisoner, a police officer, and a prison guard were shot dead and another guard was wounded. The authorities proclaimed Limerick a military area, and tanks and armored cars paraded the streets. By the end of April, Counties Limerick, Roscommon, and Tipperary were under British military control.

On Sunday, April 27, 1919, one week after Easter, there was an aeraíocht in Aughnacliffe, a sort of outdoor contest and sports festival with bands and dancing. Such events build community spirit and allow people to enjoy the day. Several Sinn Féin members spoke there, including Joe McGuinness. In the evening, there was a concert. Given the political climate, extra police were brought into the area. Unknown to them, Seán Mac Eoin was using the event for an IRA Brigade Council meeting.

As the concert was starting, Matt Brady and Willie McNally, who were both in the IRA, went for an evening walk with Phil Brady, a Sinn Féin candidate in the upcoming local election. At about 9 PM, they left Phil Brady “on his way home” and were returning to the concert when they sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Chronology
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Matt Brady and May Caffrey
• 2 The Brady Family: Irish Republicans in the 1930s and 1940s
• 3 Off to College and into Sinn Féin and the IRA: 1950–1954
• 4 Arms Raids, Elections, and the Border Campaign: 1955–1956
• 5 Derrylin, Mountjoy, and Teachta Dála: December 1956–March 1957
• 6 TD, Internee, Escapee, and Chief of Staff: March 1957–June 1959
• 7 Marriage and Ending the Border Campaign: June 1959–February 1962
• 8 Political and Personal Developments in the 1960s: March 1962–1965
• 9 Dream-Filled Romantics, Revolutionaries, and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association: 1965–August 1968
• 10 The Provisionals: September 1968–October 1970
• 11 The Politics of Revolution: Éire Nua, November 1970–December 1972
• 12 International Gains and Personal Losses: January 1973–November 1974
• 13 The Responsibilities of Leadership: November 1974–February 1976
• 14 A Long War: March 1976–September 1978
• 15 A New Generation Setting the Pace: October 1978–August 1981
• 16 “Never, that’s what I say to you—Never”: September 1981–October 1986
• 17 “We are here and we are very much in business”: October 1986–May 1998
• Epilogue
• Afterword: The Legacy of Ruarí Ó Brádaigh
• Notes on Sources
• Works Cited
• Index