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The Brady Family

IRISH REPUBLICANS IN THE 1930S AND 1940S

POLITICAL EVENTS IN THE 1920s split people into two camps: pro- and anti-Treaty, which became defined as anti- and pro-Republican. In the 1930s and early 1940s, the anti-Treaty Republicans split again, for or against involvement in constitutional politics. These divisions directly affected the lives of Matt and May Brady and their children.

In 1925, the IRA formally withdrew itself from the authority of the Second Diil. The two organizations still sought an Irish Republic, but they drifted apart. The anti-Treaty Second Dáil Teachtai Dda considered themselves to be the de jure government of all of Ireland. Their abstentionism, however, locked them out of participation in the Free State government. In 1926, at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (convention), Éamon de Valera asked the delegates to drop the abstentionist policy with respect to both Leinster House and Stormont (the Parliament of Northern Ireland). When his request was denied, de Valera resigned as president of Sinn Féin and formed a new political party, Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin contested seats in the June 1927 Free State general election to “Leinster Housen—Republicans refused to label the government “Diil Éireann.” Under the direction of the charismatic de Valera, Fianna Fáil virtually wiped out Sinn Féin as the Republican alternative in the election, but it did not win enough seats to form a government. Instead, William Cosgrave and his pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal Party remained in power. This power was unchecked because entering Leinster House required an oath of allegiance to the Crown, which de Valera and the other Fianna Fáil TDs refused to take. But political events would lead them to compromise.

Many Republicans held Kevin O’Higgins, Free State minister for justice during the Irish Civil War and subsequently the state’s vice-president, responsible for the executions of 1922–1923. In July, 1927, freelance IRA volunteers shot him dead. Cosgrave responded by introducing severe antiRepublican legislation, and there was no opposition party to stop it. In a dramatic move, de Valera led his followers to Leinster House, signed the oath of allegiance, and entered Parliament. The decision haunts his place in history. Taking his seat did not prevent more repressive legislation, and purists believed he had compromised his principles. Because it was only the opposition party, Fianna Fdil continued its Republican rhetoric and kept an uneasy peace with those suspicious of de Valerds motives. As the 1932 Free State general election approached, de Valera was an untested alternative to the anti-Republicanism of Cosgrave. The IRA actively supported Fianna FG1, and the party won enough seats to form a coalition government with Labour. For the next sixteen years, Fianna Fdil was in power either in coalition or on its own.

Fianna Fdil acted like a Republican government. IRA prisoners were quickly released, the IRA was deproscribed, legislation removing the oath of allegiance was introduced, and the governor general was replaced with a de Valera loyalist. Fianna Fdil also refused to pay land annuities to the British created by the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and the Treaty. The first strain in the Fianna Fdil-IRA relationship appeared as fascism swept across Europe and landed in Ireland as the Blueshirts, a right-wing group that clashed with the IRA. The Fianna Fáil government could not tolerate this; it seized propaganda material and arrested Blueshirts and IRA members. The Blueshirts were short lived; they were harassed by the IRA, arrested by the government, and abandoned by mainstream politicians.

The IRA, still a large organization with generations of experience with conspiracy behind it, presented a more difficult problem. De Valera used his power to wean support from the IRA. In 1933, the Fianna Fáil government established an army volunteer reserve; the goal was to attract potential IRA recruits to the forces of the state. In 1934, a military service pension was introduced for old IRA men. Caught up in the Depression, some anti-Treaty Republicans were faced with living in poverty, emigrating, or recognizing the government and taking a pension. The IRA saw the pensions as an attempt to “seduce Volunteers from their allegiancen and rejected them. Able-bodied IRA veterans who accepted pensions were viewed as sellouts, but disabled veterans were allowed to accept. Matt Brady qualified for and received a pension.

National politics were played out on the local level throughout the Free State. Sedn Mac Eoin retired as chief of staff of the Irish Free State Army and became a full-time politician. In June 1934, the Blueshirts came to North Longford and Mac Eoin, a United Ireland Party TD (which was reorganized from Cumann na nGaedheal and later referred to as Fine Gael, the party’s Irish name), supported them. Sein F. Lynch organized against the rally, asking people to stay away “from the Blueshirt parade" because they were there “to create trouble and disturb the peace.”

That same June, the IRA staged a rally in Longford “in support of a demand for the release of Republican prisoners and the abolition of the Public Safety Act,” which was enacted by Cosgrave’s government and then used by de Valera’s government against the Blueshirts and the IRA. Forming up on Battery Road, 300 members of the IRA and its youth group, Na Fianna Éireann, carried banners with slogans such as “Join the IRA" and “Smash Partition" and marched to the courthouse. Mick Ferguson, the Longford Battalion commanding officer, presided, and the crowd was addressed by leading IRA figures who had come down from Dublin. As he addressed the crowd, Michael Fitzpatrick commented on the upcoming local elections: “We of the Republican Army have no interest—no definite interest—in the Local Government elections.” As far as the IRA was concerned, when the local governments functioned, they supported the governments in Dublin and Belfast, which were “functioning in the interests of the British Government.” He also attacked Fianna Fáil:

A number of you may think that we don’t give Fianna Fáil a chance and that they are doing their best. But if they are doing their best we came here to tell you that their best is not enough. The attitude they are adopting is the same as that adopted by their predecessors. They have more republicans in prison than were in it at any time during Cosgrave’s term in office.

Three local Republicans who agreed with most, but not all, of the IRA’S message were probably in the crowd that day. Sein F. Lynch, his brotherin-law Tom Brady, and Matt Brady were Independent Republican candidates in the local government elections.

Irish politics were in a state of flux. Fianna Fáil began the 1930s as the leading Republican challenger, but its success was in part the result of the compromises it made. In order to present his message to the people, de Valera had launched the Irish Press in 1931. The daily paper was financed by subscription shares. Among those who purchased shares were Matt and May Brady. They probably supported Fianna Fáil in 1932. But by 1934, distrust of Fianna Fáil kept Matt out of that party, and Sinn FCin was not fielding candidates. Running as Independent Republicans gave Matt Brady, Seán F. Lynch, and Tom Brady the opportunity to express their Republican aspirations.

At this point, Matt and May Brady were the parents of two children—Mary, born in August 1929, and Rory, born October 2, 1932. Mary was referred to as May Og by the family, Og being the Irish word for young or “junior.” Rory’s full name was Peter Roger Casement Brady. He was named Peter after his grandfather and Roger Casement after the 1916 leader who was hanged in Pentonville Prison in London. Sir Roger was knighted for his work exposing the abuses of natives in the Belgian Congo and in the Putumayo area of South America. Born into an AngloIrish family, he arranged the arms shipment from Germany for the 1916 Irish rebels. He was arrested and tried in England, where his name was smeared with the selective and controversial release of alleged diaries indicating he was a homosexual. In naming their child after him, the Bradys indicated their allegiance to Republicanism. The child was called Rory, the Hiberno-English translation of Roger; in the Irish language, it is Ruairí.

The Bradys had moved from a two-room flat over a mechanic’s garage to Silchester, on Battery Road. The IRA march in June 1934 probably formed up in front of Silchester or marched by it. Silchester was actually two sets of two semi-detached two-story homes connected to the main road by a long-perhaps one hundred yards long-avenue. The grounds were spacious, with tall hedges and apple trees and plenty of room for Matt to plant a garden for vegetables, which supplemented the family’s income, making them relatively self-sufficient.

On June 16, 1934, Matt Brady’s “election address” was published in the Longford Leader; it was titled “To the Electors of Ballinalee County Electoral Area.” He pledged “to support the present Government as long as they endeavor to obtain the complete independence of our country" and to “do all that is in my power to foster the revival of our mother tongue, the Irish language, for it is my firm belief that we can never become truly Irish and free until our own tongue is a living language in our midst.” He saw no reason why Ireland could not become bilingual, as was the case in Belgium. He also pledged to “do my best in the interests of the ratepayers" while at the same time trying to maintain an efficient local administration. He had “plenty of time at my disposal to devote to this work, and my services will always be available.” He was interested in the welfare of the “bona fide labourer" and in the state of roads and passes in the area, which were “badly in need of repair.” Not mentioned was a practical benefit to the Brady family if Matt was elected. As secretary of the Board of Health, May Brady was an employee of the County Council. Although council seats were unpaid positions, Matt’s presence on the council would guarantee her a fair hearing if there were ever difficulties.

In the election, Fianna Fáil repeated its success of 1932 and won control of a majority of the County Councils. In Longford, Fianna Fáil won thirteen of twenty-six seats. The other thirteen seats were split between the United Ireland Party (ten seats), the Independent Republicans (two seats), and the Independent Labour Party (one seat). Because ballots call on voters to rank candidates, a complex series of counts is taken to determine the winners. In Drumlish, Sein F. Lynch topped the poll (received the most votes) and was elected on the first count. In Ballinalee, on the sixth and final count, Matt Brady was elected. When the council met for the first time after the election, a Fianna Fáiler was elected the chair and Sein F. Lynch was elected vice chair. More relevant to the Brady family, Sein F. Lynch was appointed to the Board of Health and became its chairman and as such nominally oversaw the work of May Brady. Together, Lynch and Matt Brady used their positions on the County Council to support the Republican cause. Because they were there together, each could second the other and force the discussion of issues. Their importance was enhanced because no party had an overall majority. A high point of their collaboration was in 1937, when Lynch was an unsuccessful candidate for Leinster House and Matt Brady was his election agent. They publicly supported the IRA and the oppressed.

The Depression was especially hard on tenants, whose rents were fixed but whose incomes were declining. At the Sanderson Estate, near Edgeworthstown, Gerald More O’Ferrall was unable to collect from tenants, who demanded a 50 percent reduction in their rents. When he threatened eviction, he received threats. When he initiated eviction proceedings, the Edgeworthstown Town Tenants’ Association turned to the IRA. At a public meeting, IRA representatives, in the tradition of the Land League and the Fenians, pledged “the support of the I.R.A. to the tenants in their fight against landlordism.” One speaker bluntly stated that “if the forces of the state are called in to protect the bailiffs, then force must be met by force.” Opposition to landlords, bailiffs, and sheriffs has a lengthy and violent history in Longford. In the 1830s, tenants who supported landlords were killed, as was a bailiff. In the 1930s, landlords who insisted on their rents were courting trouble. The IRA waited through the Christmas season, then set out in February 1935 to humiliate O’Ferrall by dousing him with tar. It ended in tragedy. Dressed as police officers, IRA men barged into his house. In the scuffle that followed, Gerald More O’Ferrall was beaten and his son, Richard, was shot in the back. He lingered for eleven days and then died.

The attack was denounced all over Ireland, especially by the Catholic clergy. The Dublin County Council passed a resolution condemning the “foul murder of the late Mr. More O’Ferrall in his house,” called on the “Government to make every effort to bring the perpetrators of this foul crime to justice,” and asked that other councils endorse the resolution. At the next meeting of the Longford County Council, Mr. Dunne of the United Ireland Party brought up the resolution. Matt Brady immediately protested with, “I would like to propose that we go on with the next business as that resolution is political. If it was a poor man’s son there would be very little about it.”

Dunne replied, “No matter about that, I have a resolution to propose. It is that we condemn the shooting of any man whether he is rich or poor. There ought to be a way out of these things without going to the extreme of murder. It is a terrible thing that a man can be murdered in his own house.”

Brady persisted, “I protest against that resolution.”

The chairman, Mr. Belton of Fianna Fáil, stated, “Resolutions will not do any good anyway.”

Dunne argued that “if we are not in agreement with [the shooting] we should condemn it. I don’t know why Mr. Brady objects to it.”

Brady held his ground: “The resolution of Dublin County Council is political.” Eventually the chair ruled “the whole thing out as it has been turned into politics.” Dunne walked out of the meeting.

Police in Longford and Leitrim arrested seven people, four of whom were charged with the More O’Ferrall murder. But there was more trouble in Longford when three families were evicted from the Sanderson Estate. At a public protest, a crowd of about 200 was monitored by “a large force of Gardai [Irish police] and detectives.” The first speaker, a Fianna Fáil member of the County Council, was applauded for proposing a “resolution to stand by the men in jail who [are] fighting our fight for us.” He was followed by Sein F. Lynch, who stated that “the place for any public man is where the people are in trouble.” He encouraged the people to stand by their tenants’ association. Matt Brady followed Lynch, and his comments offer insight into his attitude on the shooting and his general approach to politics. He began by commenting on himself; he had not been on a public platform since the general election in 1918. He was there as a “representative of the people" of the area (Edgeworthstown was in the Ballinalee electoral area) and was not a “speech-maker.” But he would “always stand behind the underdog.” He encouraged the tenants to stick together and he seconded the proposition that the assembled crowd stand by the arrested men. He also voiced his concern that the accused would not get a fair trial: “It is a terrible thing that resolutions are being passed describing it as wilful murder. It is for a judge and jury to decide that; and how can a jury come to a fair decision when all this sort of thing is going on.” Matt Brady believed that the IRA had not set out to kill Richard More O’Ferrall. In their actions on behalf of the working poor of the area, an accidental tragedy had resulted. He supported the IRKS action on behalf of the underdog.

The four men accused of the murder recognized the court in Dublin and fought the charges. The result was a hung jury. In a retrial, they were found not guilty on the direction of the judge and set free. Officially, the case was never solved. It was a victory for the IRA, and the accused were welcomed at several public meetings. They were sent off from Dublin by the cream of the IRA, including Moss Twomey, the chief of staff. At Edgeworthstown, they were met by the Tenants Association and the local IRA. Irish flags (tricolors) were flying, as was a banner inscribed with “Welcome I.R.A. Prisoners.” Several of them addressed the crowd, as did Moss Twomey and Matt Brady. This meeting concluded with the singing of the Irish national anthem, and the ex-prisoners moved on to Longford town, where Matt Brady presided over another welcoming reception.

Fianna Fáil and the IRA both wanted a 32-county Republic. Those in Fianna FBil thought they could bring it about through constitutional means. Those in the IRA appreciated constitutional changes consistent with a Republic, but they also wanted direct action to end partition and reunite the country. The More O’Ferrall shooting was one of a number of incidents in which the IRA flouted the authority of the Free State. No government can long tolerate a paramilitary army undermining its authority. On June 18, 1936, Fianna Fáil proscribed the IRA once again. The annual Republican parade to Wolfe Tone’s grave at Bodenstown, scheduled for the next day, was banned. A thousand troops and 500 police officers kept Republicans out of the cemetery. In its lengthy history, dating from the 1790s, the military wing of Irish Republicanism had been legal for only four years. Proscribing the IRA and banning Republican activities made life difficult for the Republican Movement, but it was the usual situation for a group of people who had a history of adapting to such conditions.

In Longford, Matt Brady took on Fianna Fáil. At a County Council meeting he proposed a resolution protesting the use of solitary confinement and the denial of political status in Irish prisons, demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners, and protesting the ban on Bodenstown. He was seconded by Sein F. Lynch. The chairman, who was from Fianna FG1, ruled the motion out of order because he had not been notified in advance. He also noted that the year before, he had ruled another motion out of order on the grounds that it was political, as was this motion. Brady replied that it was not “political" but “national.” There were heated exchanges and he attacked Fianna Fáil and de Valera: “The Government should be ashamed of themselves, and particularly the President.” A Fianna FPil councilor defended de Valera, “as our leader, Mr. de Valera[,] says, we want to live in peace and harmony with our neighbour, England, too.” Brady responded with, “Oh, I see. Do you stand for coercion, Mr. Walsh?”

Opposition or not, Éamon de Valera continued on his quest to minimize the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. He directed the development of a new Constitution that was ratified by the Free State electorate in 1937. Article 2 stated that “the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas,” and Article 3 claimed for the Dublin Parliament the right to exercise jurisdiction over the entire island, “pending the reintegration of the national territory.” In 1938, as Taoiseach under the Constitution, he engineered the British return of control of Irish ports that had not been released with the 1921 Treaty. This helped Ireland stay neutral in World War 11, perhaps his greatest achievement.

In the summer of 1938, Matt Brady experienced what was probably his finest moment as a public person. On September 8, Longford celebrated the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Ballinamuck. Matt Brady chaired the commemoration committee. On a sun-filled day, thousands of people, including May, Mary, Rory, and presumably the youngest member of the family, infant Sein, assembled on the battlefield. The village and battlefield were decorated with side-by-side French and Irish tricolors. A collection of relics from the battle was on display in the village courthouse. It was an all-day event; the committee and bands traveled throughout North Longford, laying wreaths, reciting a decade of the rosary in Irish, and playing the national anthem and similar tunes at numerous sites marking Republican events from 1798 through the 1920s. When it arrived in Ballinamuck, the commemoration committee made its way to the platform and watched as speakers and marchers, including a procession of the IRA dressed as 1798 pikemen, arrived. Finally, Reveille was sounded and Matt Brady hoisted the Irish tricolor from half to full mast.

On the platform was a who’s who of past and present Longford Republicans. Matt Brady, Sein F. Lynch, Hubert Wilson, and Tom Brady, who had all rejected the Treaty, were joined by Seán Mac Eoin, a Fine Gael TD, and James Victory and Erskine Childers, Fianna Fáil TDs. Political differences aside, they all recognized and appreciated the significance of 1798. Each wanted a united Ireland; they differed in how they believed it was best to bring this about. Matt Brady began the formal commemoration with a quotation from John Kells Ingram’s famous poem, “The Memory of the Dead:

All, all are gone, but still lives on

—the fame of those who died,

And true men, like you men,

—remember them with pride.

The husband of a Cumann na mBan veteran and career woman, he welcomed the “exceedingly great number of ’true men’ and women, ’like you men’ and women here to-day.” He noted that “since the Norman Invasion the chequered history of our country consists of a series of attempts on the part of its people to regain their independence. These attempts were made, both with the sword and the pen, in nearly every generation.” For Brady, the struggle against England and the United Kingdom was continuous and consistent over time. These same motives and actions were present in 1938 Ireland: “We have all seen them in our own day, and they will continue till the end is achieved. The soil of our country has been wet with the blood of martyrs in this cause, its sod is dotted over with their graves.” A previous struggle was being commemorated; it was not to be forgotten, it was to be emulated:

It is to celebrate such an attempt that we are here now. So long as we continue to do so all will be well, but woe betide the day when we begin to forget, the day when we cease to remember the dead who died for Ireland.

With this he concluded his remarks and introduced the other speakers, including Seán Mac Eoin and, at age 82, James O’Neill, the grandnephew of Brian O’Neill, the survivor of the Battle of Ballinamuck. The proceedings concluded with bands playing the French and Irish national anthems; the crowd sang the Irish anthem.

The nonpartisan nature of the commemoration was an aberration. In spite of his successes, de Valera had not ended partition. Irish Republicanism was a mass movement in the years 1918–1922. Splits, defections, the pension issue, arrests, and time had reduced it to a small, isolated, clandestine group-its condition before 1916. Nevertheless, the IRA was preparing for war. During the Anglo-Irish War, the First DLil had passed a resolution such that a provisional government could be formed if repressive conditions significantly reduced its number and threatened its operation. After the Treaty, the Second Ddil TDs, with the support of the IRA, formed an emergency government. In their view, this was the de jure government of the Republic, led by an Executive Council. Over the years, the Executive Council met as a shadow government of the Republic. By 1938, a hard core of absolutist Republicans were on an Executive Council that included Count Plunkett; Mary MacSwiney, whose brother died on hunger strike in 1920; and Tom Maguire, whose brother was executed by the Free State. The IRA leadership asked the council to transfer its executive power to the IRA. They agreed, and in purist Republican terms, the IRA’S Army Council became the de jure government of the Republic. This was, and is, important; it gave the IRA the legal and moral authority to wage war in the name of the Republic. In making the transfer, the surviving Second Dáil deputies empowered men much like themselves, purists left over from the 1910s and 1920s who refused to accept the Free State and Northern Ireland. The IRA chief of staff was Sedn Russell; he had been IRA director of munitions in 1921. Also on the Army Council was George Plunkett, one of the Count’s remaining sons, and Larry Grogan, who had been imprisoned in Mountjoy in 1922 when the Free State began executing prisoners. In January 1939, the IRA demanded that the British withdraw from Ireland and asked for a response. When none was forthcoming, explosions rocked London, Manchester, and Birmingham. After nearly twenty years, the IRA was back at war.

The Dublin government quickly introduced repressive legislation, including a Treason Bill and the Offenses Against the State Act. The prescribed penalty for treason was death; the Offenses Against the State Act allowed the reintroduction of military tribunals and internment without trial. Opponents of the legislation mobilized, but with Fianna Fdil firmly in the majority, repressive legislation was destined to be enacted. At a meeting of the Longford County Council, Matt Brady proposed a resolution protesting the legislation “on the grounds that there is not occasion for it.” As far as he was concerned, it was peaceful in Longford and “anything that happened has happened at the Border or in England, and thank God we have young men sufficiently alive to the national inspirations that it is into the enemy camp they are carrying the work and are hitting at the hub of the Empire, which is the proper place to hit, and the best of luck to them.” He was supported by members of Fine Gael, who tended to oppose anything put forward by Fianna Fdil. The council passed the resolution, which was forwarded to the TDs of the area, including Sedn Mac Eoin. In the Dáil debates on the Offenses Against the State Act, Mac Eoin said it was “astonishing" that Fianna Fáil was criminalizing activities that its ministers had once pursued. Fianna FGl’s position was that they had a “duty to protect the State and its people" and the new Constitution negated any “moral justification" of the IRA. Irish Free State jails began to fill with suspected and active IRA members.

In August 1939, disaster struck in Coventry, England. Five people were killed and sixty were wounded when a bomb exploded in a crowded street. The action was contrary to IRA policy, but that did not help the victims or concern the police. Five Irish people living in Coventry were arrested, including Peter Barnes, who was originally from County Offaly, and James McCormick, who was from Mullingar in County Westmeath. Barnes was in the IRA and McCormick was present when the bomb was made, but neither was directly responsible for the premature detonation. Each pleaded innocent, was found guilty, and was sentenced to death. In spite of widespread appeals for clemency, they were hanged in a Birmingham jail on February 7, 1940.

That morning, as his 11-year-old daughter Mary and his 8-year-old son Rory were getting ready to leave for school, Matt Brady pulled out his pocket watch. When the watch hit nine o’clock, he turned to them and said, “Kneel down and say your prayers. Two Irishmen now lie into quicklime graves in Birmingham.” It was Ash Wednesday, making it that much easier for Rory to remember the event. Ireland went into mourning for Barnes and McCormick. In Longford, both cinemas closed the night of the hanging and the next day all shops drew their blinds. The courthouse flag was flown at half mast. The next Saturday there was a large protest meeting at the Longford Courthouse, where Republicans Hubert Wilson and Sein F. Lynch spoke. At the next County Council meeting, Matt Brady proposed a resolution “of protest against the English executions and sympathy with the relatives of the executed men.” After passing the resolution, the council adjourned for half an hour out of respect. McCormick had been from Mullingar, and Brady was a member of the Mullingar Mental Hospital Committee. At their next meeting he aired his feelings on the executions. In seconding a vote of sympathy, he stated that the men were “murdered.” As reported in the Westmeath Independent, he said that Barnes and McCormick would

go down in history as martyrs like Kevin Barry and Pidraig Pearse. They had gone now to their reward as he was sure they were in heaven. They had stood out for the complete freedom of their country. They were not Communists or Socialists or anything of that kind as some people would put them down to be. They were good Irish men, and went to their death with a smile. Their blood would not be shed in vain.

1940 was a particularly bad year for the IRA. There were mass arrests in Britain, in Northern Ireland, and in the Free State. Prison conditions were bleak. Arbour Hill Military Detention Barracks in Dublin was reported to be the coldest prison in Europe. People who had been arrested but not charged with a crime, “internees,” were sent to the Curragh Military Camp in County Kildare. The camp consisted of wooden stables left over from the British Army, surrounded by barbed wire. As they had during the Anglo-Irish War, IRA prisoners fought the conditions and eventually turned to the hunger strike as their most potent weapon. Among the strikers was John Plunkett, yet another of the Count’s sons. Two IRA men, Tony D’Arcy and Sehn MacNeela, died before the IRA called off the strike. At D’Arcy’s funeral a confrontation between the police and the Republican crowd caused the coffin to be knocked to the ground.

These events were closely followed in the Brady household. One of the funerals traveled through Longford, and the Brady family paid their respects as the cortege passed by. Rory Brady remembers that he “couldn’t understand this at all.” He knew that the British had left Longford in the early 1920s, “but why were men dying on hunger strike in Dublin?” He asked questions and discussed politics with his schoolmates, some of whom said it was suicide. He remembers, “I was politically aware enough to say, ’Well, what about Terence MacSwiney?’ They’d say, ’Ah, well, that’s different.’ Well, how different? It’s the principle of it.” MacSwiney had died after a 74-day hunger-strike. He is perhaps best known as the author of Principles of Freedom and for the quotation “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer.” In the Brady household, there was no difference between Terence MacSwiney in 1920 and Tony D’Arcy and Sehn MacNeela in 1940.

As the IRA campaign continued, Fianna Fáil set out to destroy the organization. The Longford IRA was especially hard hit. Barney Casey, the Longford commanding officer, was arrested and sent to the Curragh, where the situation was tense. In December 1940, the prisoners burned down several of the huts. Fighting broke out between prisoners and warders, and several prisoners were wounded. A few days later, Barney Casey was shot in the back and killed. For Casey’s funeral, the IRA provided a coffin and hearse. Republicans, wearing tricolor armbands, marched alongside the hearse. The mourners included Kathleen Clarke and Maud Gonne Mac Bride, widows of executed 1916 leader Tom Clarke and John Mac Bride. Busloads of people arrived from throughout the country, including one organized by Seán F. Lynch. Matt Brady and Hubert Wilson were there together, and after the funeral they were harassed by Free State troops. Richard Goss, the IRA’S North Leinster-South Ulster Divisional commanding officer, was arrested in County Longford after a shootout in which two soldiers were wounded. Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1939, anyone found guilty by the military tribunal faced a mandatory death sentence. Goss was executed by firing squad in Port Laoise Prison on August 9, 1941. With him, for all practical purposes, died the Longford IRA.

Matt Brady had never recovered from his wounds of 1919. As a youngster, Rory would climb into bed with his father and spot a red stain about the size of a sixpence on the man’s pajamas; he was still bleeding after twenty years. Not long after the Casey funeral and the Goss execution, Matt Brady’s health declined further. He was in Dublin’s Mater Hospital twice in 1942, to no avail. On Sunday morning, June 7, 1942, he died at the family residence; he was 51 years old. In passing a resolution of sympathy for the family, a member of the Board of Health stated, ’X fairer or straighter or more honourable man I never met in my life.” An obituary described him as “a man of sterling national principles and unrelenting patriotism throughout the whole period of his career, fair in criticism and unfailing in the cause of justice.” He was described in tributes as the first man in Longford “to shed his blood for the Cause" in the Anglo-Irish War and as a “die-hard Republican.” He was given a soldier’s funeral.

The funeral Mass was held at St. Mel’s Cathedral in Longford. Burial was in Ballymacormack Cemetery, near the town. Behind the ruined walls of a twelfth-century church, Matt Brady’s old comrades formed a guard of honor under the command of Sehn Duffy of Ballinalee. The surviving family watched as the guard exited an ancient door, marched to the gravesite, and fired three volleys over the tricolor-draped coffin. Sehn Mac Eoin had asked May Brady if she would like a bugler to sound The Last Post. She agreed, but only if the bugler was not in uniform. Mac Eoin offered a graveside oration for the man he had saved so many years before. In 1921, they had made different choices on the Treaty. Over time, each remained true to his convictions. They respected each other and the choice each had made, and they remained on good personal terms throughout the tumultuous 1930s and 1940s. For Matt Brady, Sein Mac Eoin was a political opponent and personal friend, but de Valera and Fianna FAil were bitter enemies who had betrayed the Republic. A tombstone, designed by May’s younger brother, Eugene, an architect, was later added to Matt Brady’s grave. Engraved on the front is an Easter lily, the symbol of 1916 and the continuing struggle; on the back is a reversed rifle, symbol of a fallen soldier.

Firing party at the funeral of Matt Brady, June 1942. Ó Brádaigh family collection.

Matt Brady’s Republicanism had several dimensions that combined an interest in history and culture and direct methods of physical force to bring about the Republic. His family and the people of Longford watched him act on each. At home, he spoke the few words of Irish that he knew. On the County Council, he supported changing the name Edgeworthstown to Mostrim, the area’s name prior to the arrival of the famous Edgeworth family. His support for the IRA was unwavering. In 1938 an IRA volunteer from Longford was killed in a premature explosion at the border. When a member of the County Council did not stand in silence for the deceased, Brady told him, “You should be ashamed.” He regularly served as chair of Longford’s 1916 commemorations. The first Easter Commemoration Rory Brady attended was in 1941, at Clonbroney, Ballinalee; he was there with his father, his sister Mary, and Hubert Wilson.

Matt Brady had also married a woman ahead of her time. Thirteen-year-old Mary, 10 year-old Rory, and 5-year-old Sein were in good hands. She was the family’s source of income and she was not afraid to stand up for herself. In the early 1930s, she was dissatisfied with the organization of the Board of Health. At one County Council meeting, which took place after Matt Brady and Sein F. Lynch had joined the council, she expressed her dissatisfaction and asked for change. When two councilors indicated that they were content with the organization, she challenged them, “I am not content at all. I have to sign things I know nothing about.” She explained that she could be held liable if illegal payments were made by the board. A councilor stated, “Nothing will satisfy Mrs. Brady until this Board gives her full control. Is that so, Mrs. Brady?” She replied, “Yes, I have stated that several times.” In her early 40s, she was still young and fit. She played for St. Ita’s Camogie Club of Longford; they were county champions from 1935 until Se6n was born in 1937. After Sein’s birth, she switched to referee. She was chair of the County Longford Camogie Board and an active member of the Irish Language Gaelic League. There was also a scholarly side to her. Matt Brady had introduced her to the poetry of his cousin, Pidraic Colum. In 1954, she offered a public lecture on this topic. She had her own Republican credentials and a keen interest in the North of Ireland. She was born in Belfast, where an aunt and her family were burned out and traumatized during the sectarian rioting of the early 1920s. She still had family in Donegal and they were Republican, too. In August 1942, Mary and Rory, in Dublin on holidays with their maternal grandmother, attended the large funeral of Father Michael O’Flanagan. O’Flanagan, vice president of Sinn Féin from 1917 and president of the organization in 1933–1935, had twice been “silenced" by the Catholic hierarchy, in 1917 and in 1925.

After Matt Brady’s funeral, May went back to work for the Board of Health and the children went back to school. They attended Melview, about two miles outside Longford. From the front of the school, the spire of St. Mel’s Cathedral is visible on a clear day; hence the name. Mary took Sein to school on his first day. The two older children watched out for Sein; he remembers them being very protective of him. Then, in August 1944, May Caffrey Brady married Patrick Twohig, a native of West Cork, Melview’s principal and one of its three teachers. Twohig had his own political history, He was a member of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers and on Easter Monday, 1916, he was arrested by the RIC when he arrived in Longford by train from Dublin. In the period 1919–1921, he was a married man with young children and he was not on active service with the IRA, but he did help out. He was battalion engineer for the Drumlish IRA and worked with the brigade engineer on various projects; in fact, in 1919, he had attended the aeraiocht in Aughnacliffe and had traveled the same road home on which Matt Brady and Willie McNally encountered the RIC. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in 1921 he withdrew from politics. He initially supported the Treaty but over time he became disillusioned; in the late 1940s, he supported a Republican alternative to Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta.

Twohig, a 57-year old widower with grown children, was for two years the teacher and stepfather of Rory Brady. Mary, three years older than Rory, and SeAn, five years younger, liked Twohig immediately. Rory, who was becoming a teenager, took a little longer, but he remembers Twohig now with affection, noting, “It was a difficult situation for both of us; the teacher getting married to your mother.” Patrick Twohig’s greatest influence on the Brady family involved the Irish language. Twohig, an award-winning teacher of the language, spoke Irish around the house, encouraged the children to do the same, and supported their interest in the language. Starting in 1945, Rory spent a month each summer in the Irishspeaking Gaeltacht in Spiddal, County Galway. Rory today believes that he owes his love of the Irish language to his stepfather.

At age 13, as he approached gaduation from Melview, Rory sought a scholarship to attend St. Mel’s College in Longford. The school, which was founded in 1865, was open to all students, but its main objective was providing priests for the local Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. There were about 170 students—120 boarders and forty to fifty day students, scattered over five grades. The curriculum was demanding and the schedule firm; September to Christmas, after Christmas to Easter, and after Easter to summer, with no other breaks. Family members could visit boarding students for half an hour on Saturdays. Among the notable graduates of the school are John Wilson, class of 1942 and TAnaiste (deputy prime minister) in Albert Reynolds’s government; Bishop Colm O’Reilly, class of 1953; and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.

Rory Brady was admitted to St. Mel’s in 1945 without a scholarship. He stayed at Melview another year, studied Latin with a tutor, and then earned the scholarship that paid half of his expenses. When he enrolled in 1946, he was immediately moved into the second-year curriculum. Eugene McGee’s St. Mel’s of Longford has a photograph of the entering class of 1946. In the photo, we see Rory Brady as a 14-year-old with jet black hair and arms crossed casually. He has grown to his adult height, five foot seven and a half, making him taller than most of the other children. Already shaving and stoutly built, there is a certain self-assuredness evident in the picture.

Rory Brady on entering St. Mel’s, back row, third from the right, 1946–1947. Ó Brádaigh family collection.

In her expost To Take Arms : My Ear with the IRA Prouisionals, Maria McGuire comments that Rory’s “mother took a second husband, a schoolteacher whom [he] disliked and so was not displeased at being sent away to boarding school.” But according to Rory, he had the option of attending as a boarder or as a day student; he was not sent out of the house. His decision to board was probably met with relief in the household, for at age 14 he had already developed a strong independent spirit. It was a St. Mel’s tradition and rite of passage, for instance, for second-year students to attend a formal ceremony in which they took a pledge not to drink liquor. In return, they received the Badge of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, to be worn on the lapel. Brady objected, not to the badge, but to the unfairness of not being given a choice in the matter. It was assumed that students would attend the ceremony and take the pledge. He refused to do either and was supported by his mother. He subsequently determined that he did want the badge and as a senior student went with the second-year boys and took the pledge. He obtained his Pioneer Badge on his terms, and he wore it proudly for almost forty years.

St. Mel’s was a hotbed of Irish football; the school won the All-Ireland Championship in 1948. Rory played football with his friends, but he was not on the school’s team. His heart was elsewhere. It was against the rules, but Mary Brady, who by then was a student at University College Dublin, sent him clippings of political events. He read them in the toilet, including accounts of the funerals of people such as Richard Goss, Patrick McGrath, and Charlie Kerins. McGrath was arrested after a shootout in which two police officers were shot dead. In 1940, he was executed by firing squad at Mountjoy. Charlie Kerins, the IRA’S chief of staff, was implicated in the killing of a Special Branch police sergeant. In 1944, he was hanged at Mountjoy. Their bodies were buried in prison yards until September 1948, when they were released and reinterred with proper Republican funerals.

In the library at St. Mel’s, he read the available Republican literature, including John Devoy’s Recollections of an Iirh Rebel. He was particularly interested in Devoy’s chapter on the Catholic Church and Fenianism. The chapter begins, “The hardest test the Fenians had to face was the hostility of the authorities of the Catholic Church.” Devoy summarizes his perspective on the Church and the Fenians with, “We’d have beaten the Bishops only for the English Government, and we’d have beaten the English Government but for the Bishops, but a combination of the two was too much for us.” Rory had purchased issues of Brian O’Higgins’s Wolfe Tone Annual and on a visit his mother brought them to him. One of O’Higgins’s Annuals carried a reference to Seán McCaughey, who died in Port Laoise Prison in 1946 after a horrific hunger and thirst strike. Brady wrote under the reference, “Died for Ireland on hunger strike.” Another student saw this. In study hall, where talking was forbidden, he sent a note reading, “He didn’t die for Ireland, he died to raise trouble.” Brady replied to the contrary. He pursued his interest in Republican politics when he was not at St. Mel’s. In the offices of the Longford Leader, he went through newspaper accounts of his father’s career. He also spoke with his mother about his father and about the Republican Movement. She encouraged his interest. For Christmas 1949, she gave him a copy of Tom Barry’s Guerrilla Days in Ireland, a classic account of guerrilla warfare and the Cork IRA in the 1920s. Her comment was, “This is what good Irishmen should be reading.” She also encouraged him to read Peadar O’Donnell’s work, including The Gates Flew Open. It had been banned by the state but she brought in a copy from Scotland. O’Donnell, who was from Donegal, was a key figure among a group of leftist Republicans of the 1930s.

Of the twenty-eight students in St. Mel’s class of 1950, eighteen went off to become priests. Rory had other plans. While at St. Mel’s, he had followed another split in the Republican Movement. Seán Mac Bride, the son of executed 1916 leader John MacBride and a former IRA chief of staff, had resigned from the IRA, although he remained sympathetic and continued to defend Republicans in court. In 1946, he formed the political party Clann na Poblachta. After what they had been through with de Valera, the faithful few who remained in the IRA expelled supporters of the new party. In the 1948 Free State election, Clann na Poblachta won ten seats and entered government as the junior partner to Fine Gael, with Mac Bride as minister for external affairs. It was the first non-Fianna Fáil Irish government since 1932. In 1949, the new government declared the 26-county state the Republic of Ireland. The IRA and Sinn Féin rejected this label and continued to call it the “Free State”; they reserved the term “Irish Republic" for the 32-County state they sought. Rory Brady agreed with them. For him, it was a Republic in name only, and the constitutional politics of Clann na Poblachta, like the constitutional politics of Fianna FG1 and Fine Gael, would not end partition and create a united and free Ireland. From his parents, and from his own studies, he knew his Irish history.

In the spring of 1950, he attended his first Easter Commemoration as an adult, at Cloonmorris Cemetery in County Leitrim, at the gravesite of James Joseph Reynolds. The event is noteworthy for a number of reasons. The movement’s paper, The United Irishman, was on sale. He signed up for a subscription; ten years later, he would edit the paper. The event was a joint Leitrim-Longford effort because the cemetery straddles the border of the two counties. Reynolds, who was killed in a premature explosion in 1938, had been one of the accused in the More O’Ferrall killing. His death had prompted the moment’s silence by the Longford County Council and Matt Brady’s statement that one of the councilors should be ashamed for not standing for the moment’s silence. Hubert Wilson was the chairperson, and a keynote speaker was John Joe McGirl, a 29-year-old publican from Ballinamore in Leitrim who was fast becoming prominent in the movement. A veteran of the IRA’S 1740s campaign and a key figure in the reorganization of the IRA in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was to become a close comrade of Brady for thirty-five years.

That summer, Brady attended summer school in the Gaeltacht for the last time. He met young men from Dublin who were active Republicans. As they spoke, the conversation drifted to politics and he found them like-minded, which was encouraging. That fall, he left for University College Dublin and the Republican Movement.