Читать книгу Ruairí Ó Brádaigh - Robert W. White - Страница 19

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TD, Internee, Escapee, and Chief of Staff

MARCH 1957—JUNE 1959

SINN FÉIN AND THE IRA were spurred on by the election. In March 1957, John Joe McGirl was released from Mountjoy and given a hero’s welcome when he arrived home in Ballinamore, Leitrim. In Limerick, Sein South’s home area, Sinn FCin established eight new cumainn. The election elevated Ó Brádaigh, McGirl, O’Hanlon, and Rice to the status of Teachtai Dila, and their enhanced status was used to promote their cause. Soon after the election, Ó Brádaigh’s election agent, Mary Delaney, sent a letter to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, concerning the imprisonment of a TD, her brother Ruairí. She called on the European Commission on Human Rights to investigate the provisions of Ireland’s Offenses Against the State Act, which she believed to be “the very negation of democracy and of all human rights.” It was the first attempt by Irish Republicans to seek redress from the commission.

Several prisoners in Mountjoy had received a three months’ sentence in January. Soon after the election, there was a series of releases and by the end of April most of the IRA’S leadership was back in place, with Tony Magan as chief of staff. The campaign had survived and was rejuvenated by their return. Early in the morning of Thursday, July 4th, the IRA ambushed an RUC patrol near Crossmaglen in South Armagh. An RUC commando was killed and another injured. That night, RUC posts in Fermanagh and Tyrone were wrecked by time bombs. To this point, the new Fianna Fáil government had not directly confronted the campaign. The attacks demonstrated that arresting people along the border and giving them light sentences was not enough. On Friday, July 5th, with Dáil Éireann/Leinster House closed for its summer recess, the Dublin government invoked Part Two of the Offenses Against the State Act, which allows for detention without trial-internment. On Saturday, the Special Branch raided the country, arresting sixty-three people. In Dublin, Sinn Ftin’s head office and the offices of The United Irishman were raided. An Ard Chomhairle meeting was in session, and Paddy McLogan, Tony Magan, Robert Russell, Michael Traynor, and Tomb Mac Giolla were arrested. In Cork, Tomis Mac CurtPin was arrested as he got off a train. The one person at Sinn Féin headquarters who was not arrested was Vice President Margaret Buckley; she left the building and tried to warn others that internment was under way.

On Sunday, the Curragh Camp, which was being used as a military prison for the Irish Army, was again an internment camp. Those arrested on Saturday were taken from the Bridewell in Dublin and shipped to the Curragh. The Government Information Bureau, on behalf of the minister for justice, released a statement claiming that people were arrested because they were believed to be involved in military activities. It said that “no one has been arrested because of membership of the Sinn Féin organisation.” Because the Ard Chomhairle of Sinn Ftin, a legal political party, had been picked up virtually en masse, the statement’s sincerity was subject to question. An editorial in the Irish Times supported the government, stating that internment was a necessary evil: “It is a sickening thought that, once again, circumstances exist which force the Government to revive the special powers of arrest and detention available under a section of the Offenses Against the State Act. In a democratic country nobody relishes the invocation of authority to bypass the ordinary processes of law. At the same time, it is difficult to see how the Government could have acted otherwise.” Within a matter of days there were fifty-six internees in the Curragh.

When internment was introduced, there were sixty-two convicted Republican prisoners in Mountjoy. Fifteen of them, including Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, were due for release on July 13th. The prisoners, their guards, and the newspapers speculated on whether or not they would be released or interned. The Irish Times reported that military pards had been added at the Curragh and that repairs were under way on wooden huts that had held German airmen and seamen during World War 11. Because he was a TD, Ó Brádaigh’s situation was especially interesting. Various warders told him that although the others would be interned, he would be released. Ó Brádaigh, who knew his Irish history, doubted it; to him, it appeared that de Valera was still living in 1940. Officially he was an elected member of the Dublin Parliament, but he expected the same treatment as the others. He had little faith in the 26-county political system and believed that the government would intern a majority of the TDs if necessary, let alone one.

The prisoners were due for release at 7:30 AM. The night before, the chief warder, who was friendly as a person, went to the prisoners’ wing and told Ó Brádaigh that there had been a phone call from the Department of Justice. All of them would be interned. The prisoners expected to see their families, and protesters, as they were released and taken back into custody. Instead, they were awakened early, at 5:30 AM, given tea and a slice of bread, and sent to the gate, where lorries awaited them. Ó Brádaigh was the first to be released. As he stepped through the main prison gate, Inspector McMahon said, “Ruairí,” tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed to a lorry. Very quickly the fifteen prisoners were transformed into internees and were on their way to the Curragh.

Their families arrived at Mountjoy’s gate about 7:00 AM. The guard, presumably following orders, told them the prisoners had been released. When asked where they were, he said he did not know. The justice department, when phoned, offered no information on their whereabouts. The full story was not known until the evening papers came out. The title of an Evening Press article summed up the event, “15 Released-Then Interned Rearrested Outside Jail Sinn Féin T.D. Sent to Curragh.” The London Times stated that “the sudden and drastic arrests are proof that Mr. de Valera in old age is still the most formidable leader in his country.” A United Irishman article on internment entitled “British Whipstated that de Valera had acted after being delivered a note from the British government.

By the end of August the 115 internees in the Curragh included most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership-Tony Magan, Paddy McLogan, Tomis Mac Curtiin, Larry Grogan (whose son joined him in January 1958), Robert Russell, Ó Brádaigh, and others. Several of the internees would become prominent in the movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, including Dáithi O’Connell, Éamonn MacThomiis, Sein Garland, Tomb Mac Giolla, and Proinsias de Rossa. Except for Vice-President Buckley and one other person, May Smith, one of the general secretaries, Sinn Féin had been beheaded and the Ard Chomhairle was in the Curragh. With McLogan as president, the internees began holding Ard Chomhairle meetings. Through visitors, the internees sent notes to May Smith and the organization continued on the outside. At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in October, McLogan was re-elected president and seven other internees were elected to the Ard Chornhairle, including Ó Brádaigh. Minus the internees, the reconstituted Ard Chomhairle began holding its own meetings in the Sinn Féin offices in Dublin. It was a signal to the state’s authorities that, internment or not, Sinn Féin would not roll over.

Neither would the IRA. A camp council that included Magan and McLogan was elected, with Mac Curtiin as commanding officer. The 1940s campaign and their experiences in the Curragh had left an indelible mark on them. Confrontation with Dublin had been a disaster. Avoiding confrontation had allowed them to rebuild the movement. As a result, they adopted a narrow nonconfrontational approach, which eventually caused problems. Initially everyone supported the council, which organized leathercraft projects, Irish-language classes, and other activities-Mac Curtdin and Ó Brádaigh taught Irish. For a group of men engaged in a political and military campaign against a colonial power, there were any number of topics available for discussion: Castro and Cuba; Nasser and the Suez Crisis; the FLN, the Colons and the French in Algeria; the EOKA, the Cypriots, and the Turks; and Dien Bien Phu and its ramifications in Vietnam. They were especially interested in the role of physical force in social change.

India and Ireland experienced similar treatment from the British after World War I. The British had promised Home Rule for Ireland in 1914, only to defer implementation until after the war. Before the war ended, the Easter Rebellion had occurred, which led to the 1918 election and DBil Éireann; instead of Home Rule, the Irish got repression. India had been promised political reform during World War I, but the British extended wartime emergency measures in 1919 with the Rowlett Acts and Indian leaders felt betrayed. When Mahatma Gandhi spearheaded a campaign to repeal the acts, the British responded with repression, including the Amritsar Massacre in April 1919, when British troops opened fire on a huge crowd of protesters in a small park surrounded by high walls, killing about 400 people.

The agitation in Ireland resulted in a partitioned country, not a Republic. Because of this, there was still an IRA. India had achieved independence, however, and the hunger strikes and nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns of Mahatma Gandhi were often presented as evidence that independence could be won without physical force. To the internees, it seemed evident that Gandhi must have known that people would suffer and die because of his actions. Most important, they believed that the options and resources available to the Indian leaders were not available to them. In India, a huge population was ruled by a small number of British personnel. The British Army could not control the population if a large percentage of it engaged in civil disobedience. In Ireland, the British and the Unionists had carved out an area where their sympathizers were by far in the majority. Politicians in Dublin claimed sovereignty over a 32county Irish Republic, but they were no match for the British government, who ruled Northern Ireland. Civil disobedience was an effective option in India; it was less so in Ireland. This, for the internees, had been confirmed by events in Fermanagh.

Some of the internees had experienced the civil disobedience campaign of Canon Thomas Maguire in Fermanagh. In Northern Ireland, under the Flags and Emblems (Display) Act of 1954, a Union Jack was afforded special protection; it was an offense to interfere with the display of a British flag. In contrast, a police officer could require a person to remove any other “emblem,” including an Irish flag. If a person refused to remove an offensive “emblem,” the police were authorized to enter buildings or homes and remove it. To raise awareness of discrimination against Nationalists in Northern Ireland, Canon Maguire would lock his door and hang an Irish flag from a window. Rather than kick in the door, the police would get ladders. As they were climbing up to capture his Irish flag, Maguire would reach out of the window and take it in. Although events like this might lead to press coverage, given Unionist domination of the Northern Ireland Parliament, they would not change the basic social and political arrangements there. Similarly, in organizing marches such as those associated with the Fermanagh Feiseanna, Maguire instructed people to march up to the RUC, filter through the police line one at a time, and then regroup and continue marching. It was a great action in principle, but in practice marchers were attacked with police batons and water cannons. The attacks also led to press coverage, but no one put external pressure on the RUC as a result; the Northern Ireland government defended the RUC, the Irish government was powerless, and the British government did not care.

Ó Brádaigh was among those internees who concluded that there was a place for civil disobedience in the Republican Movement’s repertoire, but in and of itself civil disobedience would not bring about a united and free Ireland. Based on his interpretation of Irish and more general colonial history, civil disobedience usually caused “action that would be taken by the Imperial power [that] would result in physical confrontation"-civil disobedience, in a colonial setting, generates state repression. In the face of state repression, the question was whether or not people would defend themselves or be driven into submission. Some people might submit. But “given our roots and our background and our experience and all that type of thing, we would be a people who would fight back.” Civil disobedience could be used to raise people’s awareness and to expose the illegitimacy of the colonial power, setting the stage for a military campaign. This was the goal of the planned “passive resistance campaign" that had not materialized before the Border Campaign. Gandhi’s hunger strikes, Canon Mapire’s violation of the Flags and Emblems Act, and the physical force the IRA used were all on a continuum-each was a weapon to be used against an unjust colonial oppressor.

Physically, conditions in the Curragh were crowded and cramped. The camp was old and had not been maintained. The exercise area was a muddy field that got worse and worse until the ground was no good for sports. The roofs leaked and sanitary conditions were poor. Toilets without doors were available outside the huts. The inside toilet facility was a large bucket in the corner of each hut. The internees wrote letters to the Irish Red Cross, which is funded by the Irish Department of Defense; their complaints were ignored. They also appealed to the International Red Cross. This effort received help from an unexpected source. Ó Brádaigh’s gandmother was Swiss and his mother had Swiss first cousins. One of them, Charles Girardclos, had married a French woman and lived in Paris. In August 1957 he took his wife on a holiday to Ireland. Not surprising, he found it curious that his cousin’s son, a member of the Irish Parliament, was interned. Girardclos was a dentist, and he informed the Ó Brádaighs and Caffreys that the secretary general of the International Red Cross was one of his patients. The families arranged for Girardclos to visit Ruairí, and he surreptitiously photographed the camp, with Ruairí standing by the fence wire. The photo was later published in the United Irishman. When Girardclos returned home he contacted the International Red Cross.

In October the Irish Department of Defense was notified that the International Red Cross wanted to inspect the facility. Whether or not this was prompted by Girardclos’s letter, it helped the internees. By the time of the inspection in the spring, the roofs were repaired, new toilets were installed, new beds were distributed, a physician had visited each internee, and a section of the camp was set aside as a sports field. A barbed-wire tunnel was built and internees had access to the field mornings, afternoons, and, as spring passed into summer, late into the evening. Gaelic football matches were organized. Ó Brádaigh did not play football, so he stayed in shape by running the perimeter of the camp regularly with Diithi O’Connell. But a football match was the setting for his escape from the camp.

As conditions in the Curragh improved, the situation outside deteriorated. By July 1958, there were 160 Republicans in the Curragh and the leadership needed help. The internees’ leaders were upset to discover Chief of Staff Sein Cronin and Charlie Murphy, his adjutant general, were working with people who had drifted away from the IRA. Magan, Mac Curtiin, and McLogan, with reason, viewed them as ill-disciplined and unreliable. Cronin and Murphy, who were busy fighting a war, saw them as resources at their disposal. They were also upset that internees, who were removed from the situation, were trying to tell them what to do. They sent in a note to this effect which, predictably, made things worse. Because the two groups could not meet, the situation festered. Still, in the summer of 1958, an opportunity arose for the camp leadership and the Army Council to work together. The sports field’s grass was cut regularly and turned into hay, which was tossed into piles that eventually covered the first lane of several safety fences. The internees noted this and a couple of them, including Diithi O’Connell, suggested to Mac Curtiin that one or two internees could hide under the grass during the day and then, under cover of darkness, cut through the wire and escape. Mac Curtiin sent this information out to Sein Cronin and suggested that one of the interned IRA leaders be included in the escape. Word came back from the Army Council that they wanted younger volunteers with operational experience. At the top of their list was J. B. O’Hagan, an important IRA commander in the North who was interned in January 1958. The camp’s escape committee made the final decision and chose Ó Brádaigh and Diithi O’Connell. Ó Brádaigh was probably chosen because of the combination of the propaganda value of having an escaped T D and his experience in the field. O’Connell, everyone agreed, was one of the IRA’S top soldiers. Sein Cronin describes the choice of O’Connell as putting the “hammer" in. All Ó Brádaigh remembers is Mac Curtiin telling him “You are escaping.” A loyal soldier, he never bothered to ask why he was selected.

On September 24, 1958, a spirited football match, with lots of cheering and standing, diverted the eyes of the warders. Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell slipped behind cheering internees, and Noel Kavanagh, former commanding officer of the Teeling Column, used wire cutters on the bottom strand of wire at a pole. While the sentries watched the football match, Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell took the wire cutters and crawled under an overcoat that was disguised to look like a blanket and made their way under the wire; the overcoat had belonged to Ó Brádaigh’s father. Kavanagh used spare wire to reattach the bottom strand. The match ended about 730 in the evening. As Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell kept quiet, the other internees returned to barracks and placed dummies in their beds. They waited until it was dark, cut through more wire, and climbed into a fifteen-foot deep dry moat and followed it, moving away from the search lights. After about 45 minutes they had covered about 500 yards and were on the Kildare-Brownstown Road. Awaiting them was a car and driver. Ó Brádaigh told him to head northwest, to LongfordWestmeath. He knew the area and the people and they knew him; after all, more than 5,500 of them had voted for him in the election.

The escape was not discovered until roll call the next morning. A general alert was declared, roadblocks were set up, and cars passing the camp were stopped and searched, but it was too late and Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell were safely hidden. Ó Brádaigh was the first Sinn Féin T D to be “on the run" since the 1920s. The two found themselves in a strange situation. They had escaped from an internment camp, not from a jail. There had been no charges against them, but now they could be arrested for escaping. For the next couple of weeks they hid in safe houses in the Longford-Westmeath area and went out only at night. During the day, they read, discussed the state of things with each other, and kept a low profile.

The escape was a morale booster for a cause that continued to suffer. Ó Brádaigh had escaped hoping to rejoin the campaign as a volunteer. But while he and O’Connell were lying low, Sein Cronin, Mick McCarthy (a member of the Army Council), and three members of IRA general headquarters staff were arrested and interned. The arrests hurt the IRA, which was very much centered on Cronin. A temporary three-man Army Council remained in charge-Chief of Staff John Joe McGirl was joined by Myles Shevlin, a solicitor from Carlow who was Cronin’s adjutant general, and Paddy Murphy, from Kilkenny. After waiting a couple of weeks, Ó Brádaigh made contact with the local IRA, who sent word to general headquarters, and a meeting was arranged. To his surprise, he was elected chief of staff. His initial reaction was that he should have stayed in the Curragh. In fact, he was a likely choice. At age 26, he was young, fit, and had operational experience. He was also the only member of the December 1956 Army Council who was at large. And because he was on the run, he could devote all of his time to the IRA. John Joe McGirl, Paddy Murphy, and Myles Shevlin remained on the council. Later, Paddy Mulcahy of Limerick was co-opted, as was another person, from County Down. The seventh member was DGthi O’Connell.

There are three key jobs in the IRA, chief of staff, adjutant general, and quartermaster general. The Army Council is in charge of the IRA except when the army meets in convention. The chief of staff directs the IRA on behalf of the Army Council. Essentially, the chief of staff is the chief executive officer of a voluntary, not-for-profit, clandestine organization. In the mid- to late 1950s, there were probably 600–700 active members of the organization, of whom perhaps 400–500 were in prison or were interned. When Tony Magan was chief of staff, he had gone on operations in the early 1950s. But by 1958, the IRA had expanded and Cronin and then Ó Brádaigh functioned more as directors than operators, although both stayed as close as possible to what was happening The adjutant general is an administrative officer in charge of communications and discipline; the position is like that of a general secretary or administrative assistant. The adjutant general might be involved in military operations, but the job is primarily that of a coordinator who is also in charge of IRA courts of inquiry and courts-martial. The quartermaster general is in charge of procuring, transporting, storing, and allocating material.

These three positions are complemented by general headquarters staff positions, including the director of finance, the director of intelligence, the director of publicity, and the director of operations. The duties of the positions are for the most part evident in their titles. At the October 24th meeting, Diithi O’Connell became director of operations. Like Ó Brádaigh as chief of staff, he was a likely choice for the position. He was in good shape, had operational experience, and he was available full-time. As director of operations, he worked closely with Ó Brádaigh and the adjutant general in planning operations. Up through the mid-1960s the director of publicity oversaw publication of An tÓglách (The Volunteer), the IRA’S small mimeographed internal newspaper that dated from 1914 and the Irish Volunteers. The IRA expands and contracts. When the army is small, one person will fill more than one position; the adjutant general, in charge of communications, will probably also serve as director of publicity. In an expanded period, as in the mid- to late 1950s, positions will be held separately. When things were especially active in the late 1950s, there was an assistant adjutant general.

Although the IRA’S administrative structure is constant, with a chief of staff, an adjutant general, the Army Council, and so forth, the IRA had changed its operations a great deal since December 1956. The high level of operations of the first several months had declined, especially after internment was introduced in the Twenty-Six Counties. From January, 1957, the Army Council had been in a constant state of flux; people were arrested, their replacements were arrested, the original people were released and rejoined the council only to be rearrested, and so on. By October 1958, Tomis Mac Curtiin, Tony Magan, and Larry Grogan had been interned for more than a year. J. B. O’Hagan was arrested in January 1958 and Charlie Murphy was arrested in May 1958. Pat McManus, a member of the Army Council, was killed in a premature explosion in July 1958. Sein Cronin, Mick McCarthy, and other general headquarters people were arrested in October 1958. A substantial number of IRA leaders were unavailable.

After nearly two years out of action, Ó Brádaigh began by familiarizing himself with the situation on the ground and reestablishing contact with IRA units along the border and in the North. He also worked at getting used to operating on the run. Cronin had kept things so much to himself that when weapons were needed, a note had to be smuggled in to him asking for the location of gun magazines and clips. The reply was decoded and led to an individual who provided ample magazines. Finding out who was doing what, and where, took time, however. The structure of the IRA units had also changed. Before the campaign Paddy McLogan had argued that smaller five-person sections composed of two battle teams and a section leader would be more mobile and more effective than the larger columns. He was right, and the change was made in January 1957. The basic goal of the units had not changed. The IRA was trying to establish liberated areas in the countryside, where they could dominate and attack any RUC or British forces who entered. In this, Pat McManus had been a leader and his loss was keenly felt-he had established a series of dugouts across Fermanagh.

Morale in the IRA was “reasonable,” but problems in the Curragh made things more difficult. Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell’s escape encouraged internees who wanted confrontation and more escapes. Tomis Mac Curtiin demurred. In September, Charlie Murphy was transferred from Mountjoy to the Curragh, and he became a leading dissenter against Mac Curtiin. With little for internees to do but complain, the situation deteriorated. Speculation on what lay in the future contributed to the complaints. The campaign had faltered and there were rumors that the government would close the camp. Some internees who had become convinced that the Irish soldiers guarding them would not shoot escaping internees organized an unofficial escape. Early in December 1958, during another football match, Charlie Murphy and another internee ran to the fence and cut a large hole. As they held the fence open, groups of internees ran off over the fields. When the guards realized what was happening they fired shots over their heads. Sixteen men got away before the shots and tear gas brought the situation under control. Only two of them were rearrested. Although it was a success, the escape violated IRA policies and Mac Curtdin was furious. IRA general regulations state that members who engage in unofficial operations incur automatic dismissal. Mac Curtdin sent word to the Army Council that the escape was unofficial and that, by definition, the escapees were dismissed from the IRA. Into Ó Brádaigh’s and the Army Council’s collective lap fell fourteen motivated young men seeking active service. The leadership at the Curragh considered them former IRA members, but the Army Council needed soldiers. It was a sticky situation. The pragmatic needs of the IRA outweighed Mac Curthin’s condemnation. The Army Council arranged interviews with the escapees. Each stated that his excuse for violating policy and escaping from the camp was a desire to return to active service. Each applied for readmission to the IRA and each application was accepted. Mac Curtdin was not pleased, but he could do little except complain.

The rumors of the Curragh’s imminent closing were true and the internees were released in March 1959. The end of internment reflected political changes that would have immediate and long-lasting effects in Ireland. The IRA’S campaign had slowed significantly and there was less need for internment. And 77-year-old am on de Valera was stepping down as Taoiseach and was a candidate for the Irish presidency in an election scheduled for June. Internment, an affront to civil liberties, had become a liability. The Curragh Camp was officially closed on March 15, 1959. In the presidential election, de Valera defeated Sein Mac Eoin of Fine Gael handily. Sedn Lemass, aged 60 and a 1916 veteran who had been linked with de Valera for decades, became Taoiseach. The change was part of a more general opening up of Irish society that began in the mid- to late 1950s and led to significant shifts in the Irish economy, freeing trade and encouraging foreign investment.

Closing the Curragh allowed Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell to move about more freely, but it also released Tomis Mac CurtQin and Tony Magan, who were still upset about the unofficial escape and the “conspiracy" of readmitting the escapees into the IRA. Their release also confused things; those who had led the IRA into the campaign were again available for leadership positions, while those who had filled in for them, including Ó Brádaigh, still held those positions. Just before Easter 1959, a meeting was arranged for the fifteen or sôeople who had been on either the Army Council or the Army Executive Council since December 1956. A long meeting produced two decisions. First, a statement would be circulated to all units explaining what had happened in the Curragh and, second, there would be a general Army convention.

Ó Brádaigh, an educator with obvious writing skills, was chosen to write the statement. He had also managed to remain on friendly terms with both the Curragh leadership and the dissidents. Partly this was due to his nature-even his political opponents note that he is polite and easy to get along with. It was also because of his age and position in the IRA at the time of the mass escape. He was much younger than Magan, Mac Curtiin, and McLogan and had only been in the leadership about a year when he was arrested. When he was in the Curragh, the IRA people on the outside identified more with him than they did with Magan and his peers. Yet it was Magan’s group who brought Ó Brádaigh into the IRA’S leadership. He respected them and got along with them in the Curragh. Ó Brádaigh tended to agree with the dissidents about the escape; he felt that the Curragh leadership had been too conservative. But this did not justify a blatant disregard for camp policy. Most important, he wanted to keep the IRA from splintering and he wanted to move ahead with the campaign. He discussed the situation with Cronin, who reduced the controversy to a question about the nature of the Republican Movement: Is the Republican Movement a self-perpetuating religious sect or is it the instrument of the freedom of Ireland? If it was a self-perpetuating religious sect, it was time for absolute discipline. If it was the instrument of the freedom of Ireland, then the situation had to be dealt with pragmatically. Cronin was not interested in the dispute; he wanted to get on with the campaign. Ó Brádaigh, and Diithi O’Connell, agreed with himtime was being wasted and dismissing people would be a waste of talent.

Ó Brádaigh’s document carefully laid out the facts, and both the Curragh leadership and the dissidents accepted this part of the presentation. The final paragraph stressed that IRA volunteers should guard against disunity. Mac Curtiin, who was interested in discipline, argued that the interim leadership had straddled the position: they recognized that a breach in discipline had taken place, but they allowed the violators to rejoin the IRA. He wanted vindication and had not received it. The dissidents criticized the statement from the other direction. They wanted explicit support for their actions. From their perspective, there should have been more escape attempts and the Curragh leadership had been too conservative. Neither side was satisfied, and Mac Curtiin and Magan continued to criticize Charlie Murphy, seeking his dismissal. Murphy, who was tired of the whole thing, asked for a court of inquiry. The court found against him and he resigned from the IRA. But the controversy still had not ended. Magan and Mac Curtiin believed that their reputations had been tarnished and looked to the upcoming IRA convention as an opportunity to clear their names.

The convention was held at the end of May 1959. Paddy McLogan, who had been released from the Curragh prior to the escape, was less involved in the dispute than Magan and Mac Curtiin and was elected the convention chairman. The agenda included resolutions condemning the escapees and resolutions congratulating them. When the first Curragh resolution came up for discussion, a counterresolution was offered from the floor: “That this Convention refuse to discuss the Curragh Camp and concern itself with the future of the Army and the Campaign of Resistance.” Tony Magan argued against the motion and lost. He refused to let go. After losing the vote, Magan asked that he, on behalf of the 1956 Army Council, be allowed to make the report that each outgoing Army Council presents to the delegates. Magan was granted one hour. It was a security measure; the longer a large number of Republicans are gathered, for whatever reason, the greater the likelihood that they will be discovered by the police. Magan agreed and then ignored the limit. After about two hours, with some delegates getting very angry and the possibility of a split becoming real, Paddy McLogan, as chair of the convention, finally pushed Magan into concluding.

In its final act the convention elected a new twelve-member Army Executive. Magan, Mac Curtiin, and McLogan were nominated, but Magan and Mac Curtiin asked that their names be withdrawn. The request was rejected. Each stated that he would resign if he was elected. Each was elected. At the first meeting of the new Executive Council, each resigned. They were replaced, and then a new seven-member Army Council was elected that chose Sein Cronin as its chief of staff-a decision Ó Brádaigh endorsed wholeheartedly. Cronin was ten years older, had more experience, was exceptionally able, and Ó Brádaigh had great respect for him-he considers Cronin an incredibly just person and one of the people who has had the most influence on him. Ó Brádaigh was also elected to the Army Council and became Cronin’s adjutant general. Cathal Goulding, who had returned to Ireland after six years in English prisons, was elected to the council and became quartermaster general. Others on the council included John Joe McGirl and J. B. O’Hagan.

With the clandestine activities of the IRA finally in order, Ó Brádaigh took a more public role. At a Sinn Féin rally in Mullingar, on Sunday, June 7th, he made his first public appearance in two years. He remembers the event because it was his first in-person address to his constituents and because it was the seventeenth anniversary of his father’s untimely death. He was met on the outskirts of the town by the local brass and reed band and was escorted by a fleet of cars. As reported in the Roscommon Champion, he challenged Fianna Fáil on internment, “The men who came into power simply did this and they would continue to do it until the people said ’No.”’ He spoke in Longford that evening. A week later, he made his first public appearance in Roscommon at another Sinn FCin rally. His remarks reflected his commitment to the campaign: “I undertook to sit only in an All-Ireland Republican Parliament, and I do not believe that the battle for the freedom of this country can be fought in Leinster House, Stormont, or any other assembly set up here by English Act of Parliament. I believe this battle must be fought and won elsewhere.” The Curragh Camp was closed, but the threat of arrest remained. Predicting what was to come, he stated, “It is highly probable that I shall be sent back to jail.”

These public appearances served as a buildup to the most significant event on the Republican calendar, the annual commemoration of Wolfe Tone’s birth, on June 20th, 1763. The commemoration is held at Tone’s tomb at the family’s plot in the cemetery at Bodenstown in County Kildare, on or about the third Sunday in June. In 1959, it was held on Sunday, June 21st. Typically, the event draws people from all over Ireland and the diaspora in England, the United States, and sometimes Australia. The event serves as a direct link between the United Irishmen of the 1790s and contemporary Irish Republicans of many persuasions. In 1959, Fianna FG1 and Sinn FCin held commemorations at the tomb.

The commemoration generally begins with a parade from the nearby village of Sallins. In 1959, it was organized by Cathal Godding, who served as chief marshal. Included in the parade were uniformed members of Cumann na mBan and the Republican youth groups Na Fianna Éireann and Cumann na gcailini. Tomb Mac Giolla presided at the graveside. Broadly defined, the leadership of the Republican Movement is the Army Council of the IRA and the Ard Chomhairle of Sinn FCin. Each year, the leadership picks a prominent person to deliver the keynote address at Bodenstown. In 1959, it was Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.

The campaign had lost momentum and wrangling over the Curragh had taken its toll. The situation required a speech looking to the future. He delivered, beginning with, “We are assembled at this sacred place to do honour to the man whose remains rest here for over 160 years-Theobald Wolfe Tone.” Tone, “the greatest Irishman who ever lived,” had “defined Irish Nationhood" and had “outlined the basis on which would be built a free and upright Irish Nation.” Tone, who had pledged “’never to desist in his efforts’ to secure the freedom of Ireland,” had “laid the groundwork of the great National Uprising of 1798.” Thus, “His last mortal remains are laid here, and to this spot succeeding generations have come to do him honour and to derive inspiration to complete his unfinished work.” Since Tone’s time, the Republican Movement had striven in every generation to follow his programme, and “the present generation, to their everlasting credit, has not been an exception.… They will fight on till the goal is achieved.” He concluded with a quotation from Patrick Pearse, the 1916 rebel, “0 my brothers, were it not an unspeakable privilege, if, to our generation, it should be granted to accomplish that which Tone’s generation, so much worthier than ours, failed to accomplish?”