Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (2 October
1932 – 5 June 2013) was an Irish republican. He was a chief of staff of the
Irish Republican Army (IRA), president of Sinn Féin and president of Republican
Sinn Féin.
Ó Brádaigh, born Peter Roger
Casement Brady, was born into a middle-class republican family in Longford that
lived in a duplex home on Battery Road. His father, Matt Brady, was an IRA
volunteer and was severely wounded in an encounter with the Royal Irish Constabulary,
in 1919. His mother, May Caffrey, was a Cumann na mBan volunteer, and graduate
of University College Dublin, class of 1922, with a degree in Commerce. His
father died when he was ten, and was given a paramilitary funeral led by his
former IRA colleagues. His mother, prominent as the Secretary for the County
Longford Board of Health, lived until 1974. Ó Brádaigh was educated at St Mel's
College, leaving in 1950, and University College Dublin, from where he
graduated with a commerce degree (BComm) and certification in the teaching of
the Irish language, in 1954. That year he took a job teaching Irish at
Roscommon Vocational School, in Roscommon.
He joined Sinn Féin in 1950.
While at university, in 1951, he joined the Irish Republican Army. In September
1951, he marched with the IRA at the unveiling of the Seán Russell monument in
Fairview park, Dublin. A teacher by profession, he was also a Training Officer
for the IRA. In 1954, he was appointed to the Military Council of the IRA, a
subcommittee set up by the IRA Army Council in 1950 to plan a military campaign
against Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Northern Ireland.
On 13 August 1955, Ó
Brádaigh led a ten-member IRA group in an arms raid on Hazebrouck Barracks,
near Arborfield, Berkshire. It was a depot for the No 5 Radar Training
Battalion of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. It was the biggest
IRA arms raid in Britain and netted 48,000 rounds of .303 ammunition, 38,000 9
mm rounds, 1,300 rounds for .380 weapons, and 1,300 .22 rounds. In addition, a
selection of arms were seized, including 55 Sten guns, two Bren guns, two .303
rifles and one .38 pistol. Most if not all of the weapons were recovered in a
relatively short period of time. A van, travelling too fast, was stopped by the
police and IRA personnel were arrested. Careful police work led to weapons that
had been transported in a second van and stored in London.
The IRA Border Campaign,
commenced on 12 December 1956. As an IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ)
officer, Ó Brádaigh was responsible for training the Teeling Column (one of the
four armed units prepared for the Campaign) in the West of Ireland. During the
Campaign, he served as second in command of the Teeling Column.[1] On 30
December 1956, he partook in the Teeling Column attack on Royal Ulster
Constabulary barracks in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. RUC Constable John Scally
was killed in the attack; Scally was the first fatality of the new IRA
campaign. Ó Brádaigh, and others, were arrested across the border the day after
the attack, in County Cavan by the Garda Síochána. Those arrested were tried
and jailed for six months in Mountjoy Prison for failing to account for their
activities.
Although a prisoner, he was
elected a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Longford–Westmeath constituency
at the 1957 Irish general election, winning 5,506 votes (14.1%). Running on an
abstentionist ticket, Sinn Féin won 4 seats including Eighneachán Ó hAnnluain,
John Joe McGirl and John Joe Rice. They refused to recognise the authority of
Dáil Éireann and stated they would only take a seat in an all-Ireland
parliament—if it had been possible for them to do so. Ó Brádaigh did not retain
his seat at the 1961 Irish general election, and his vote fell to 2,598
(7.61%).
Upon completing his prison
sentence, he was immediately interned at the Curragh Military Prison, along
with other republicans. On 27 September 1958, Ó Brádaigh escaped from the camp
along with Dáithí Ó Conaill. While a football match was in progress, the pair
cut through a wire fence and crept from the camp under a camouflage grass
blanket and went "on the run". This was an official escape, authorised
by the officer commanding of the IRA internees, Tomás Óg Mac Curtain. He was
the first Sinn Féin TD on the run since the 1920s.
That October, Ó Brádaigh
became the IRA Chief of Staff, a position he held until May 1959, when an IRA
Convention elected Sean Cronin as C/S; Ó Brádaigh became Cronin's adjutant
general. Ó Brádaigh was arrested in November 1959, refused to answer questions,
and was jailed under the Offences against the state act in Mountjoy. He was
released from Mountjoy in May 1960 and, after Cronin was arrested, he again
became C/S. Although he has always emphasised that it was a collective
declaration, he was the primary author of the statement ending the IRA Border
Campaign in 1962. At the IRA 1962 Convention he indicated that he was not interested
in continuing as Chief of Staff.
After his arrest in December
1956, he took a leave from teaching at Roscommon Vocational School. He was
re-instated and began teaching again in autumn 1962, just after he was
succeeded by Cathal Goulding in the position of Chief of Staff of the IRA. He
remained an active member of Sinn Féin and was also a member of the IRA Army
Council throughout the decade.
In the 1966 United Kingdom
general election, he ran as an Independent Republican candidate in the
Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency, polling 10,370 votes, or 19.1% of the
valid poll. He failed to be elected.
Leader of Sinn Féin
He opposed the decision of
the IRA and Sinn Féin to drop abstentionism and to recognise Westminster,
Stormont Belfast and Dáil Éireann at Leinster House in 1969/1970. On 11 January
1970, along with Seán Mac Stíofáin, he led the walkout from the 1970 Sinn Féin
Ard Fheis (party convention) after the majority voted to end the policy of
abstentionism (though the vote to change the Sinn Féin constitution failed as a
two-thirds majority was required to do so, whereas the motion only achieved the
support of a simple majority of delegates votes).
He was voted chairman of the
Caretaker Executive of Provisional Sinn Féin. That October, he formally became
president of the party. He held this position until 1983. It is also likely
that he served on the Army Council or the executive of the Provisional Irish
Republican Army until he was seriously injured in a car accident on 1 January
1984. Among those joining him in Provisional Sinn Féin was his brother, Seán Ó
Brádaigh, the first Director of Publicity for Provisional Sinn Féin.[4] Sean Ó
Brádaigh continued in this position for almost a decade, when he was succeeded
by Danny Morrison, who had been editor of An Phoblacht/Republican News. Sean Ó
Brádaigh was the first editor of the paper.
In his presidential address
to the 1971 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Ó Brádaigh said that the first step to
achieving a United Ireland was to make Northern Ireland ungovernable.
On 31 May 1972 he was
arrested under the Offences Against the State Act and immediately commenced a
hunger strike. A fortnight later the charges against him were dropped and he
was released.
With Dáithí Ó Conaill he
developed the Éire Nua policy, which was launched on 28 June 1972. The policy
called for a federal Ireland.
On 3 December 1972, he
appeared on the London Weekend Television Weekend World programme. He was
arrested by the Gardaí again on 29 December 1972 and charged in the newly established
Special Criminal Court with Provisional IRA membership. In January, 1973 he was
the first person convicted under the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act
1972 and was sentenced to six months in the Curragh Military Prison.
In 1974, he testified in
person before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations regarding the
treatment of IRA prisoners in Ireland. He also had a meeting with prominent
Irish-American congressman Tip O'Neill. The same year, the State Department
revoked his multiple entry visa and have since refused to allow Ó Brádaigh to
enter the country. 1975 Federal Bureau of Investigation documents describe Ó
Brádaigh as a "national security threat" and a "dedicated
revolutionary undeterred by threat or personal risk" and show that the
visa ban was requested by the British Foreign Office and supported by the
Dublin government. In 1997, Canadian authorities refused to allow him board a
charter flight to Toronto at Shannon Airport.
During the May 1974 Ulster
Workers' Council strike, Ó Brádaigh stated that he would like to see "a
phased withdrawal of British troops over a number of years, in order to avoid a
Congo situation".
On 10 December 1974, he
participated in the Feakle talks between the IRA Army Council and Sinn Féin
leadership and the leaders of the Protestant churches in Ireland. Although the
meeting was raided and broken up by the Gardaí, the Protestant churchmen passed
on proposals from the IRA leadership to the British government. These proposals
called on the British government to declare a commitment to withdraw, the
election of an all-Ireland assembly to draft a new constitution and an amnesty
for political prisoners.
The IRA subsequently called
a "total and complete" ceasefire intended to last from 22 December to
2 January 1975 to allow the British government to respond to proposals. British
government officials also held talks with Ó Brádaigh in his position as
president of Sinn Féin from late December to 17 January 1975.
On 10 February 1975, the IRA
Army Council, which may have included Ó Brádaigh, unanimously endorsed an
open-ended cessation of IRA "hostilities against Crown forces", which
became known as the 1975 truce. The IRA Chief of Staff at the time was Seamus
Twomey, of Belfast. Another member of the Council at this time was probably
Billy McKee, of Belfast. Daithi O'Connell, a prominent Southern Republican, was
also a member. It is reported in some quarters that the IRA leaders had
mistakenly believed they had persuaded the British Government to withdraw from Ireland
and the protracted negotiations between themselves and British officials were
the preamble to a public declaration of intent to withdraw. In fact, as British
government papers now show, the British entertained talks with the IRA in the
hope that this would fragment the movement further, and scored several
intelligence coups during the talks. It is argued by some that by the time the
truce collapsed in late 1975 the Provisional IRA had been severely weakened.
This bad faith embittered many in the republican movement, and another
ceasefire was not to happen until 1994. In 2005, Ó Brádaigh donated, to the
James Hardiman Library of University College, Galway, notes that he had taken
during secret meetings in 1975-76 with British representatives. These notes
confirm that the British representatives were offering a British withdrawal as
a realistic outcome of the meetings. The Republican representatives—Ó Brádaigh,
Billy McKee and one other—felt a responsibility to pursue the opportunity, but
were also skeptical of British intentions.
In late December 1976, along
with Joe Cahill, he met two representatives of the Ulster Loyalist Central
Coordinating Committee, John McKeague and John McClure, at the request of the
latter body. Their purpose was to try to find a way to accommodate the ULCCC
proposals for an independent Northern Ireland with the Sinn Féin's Éire Nua
programme. It was agreed that if this could be done, a joint
Loyalist-Republican approach could then be made to request the British
government to leave Ireland. Desmond Boal QC and Seán MacBride SC were
requested and accepted to represent the loyalist and republican positions. For
months they had meetings in various places including Paris. The dialogue
eventually collapsed when Conor Cruise O'Brien, then Minister for Posts and
Telegraphs and vociferous opponent of the Provisional IRA, became aware of it
and condemned it on RTÉ Radio. As the loyalists had insisted on absolute
secrecy, they felt unable to continue with the talks as a result.
In the aftermath of the 1975
Truce, the Ó Brádaigh/Ó Conaill leadership came under severe criticism from a
younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams,
who became a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978. By the early 1980s, Ó Brádaigh's
position as president of Sinn Féin was openly under challenge and the Éire Nua
policy was targeted in an effort to oust him. The policy was rejected at the
1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and finally removed from the Sinn Féin constitution at
the 1982 Ard Fheis. At the following year's ard fheis, Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill
resigned from their leadership positions, voicing opposition to the dropping of
the Éire Nua policy by the party.
Leader of Republican Sinn
Féin
On 2 November 1986, the
majority of delegates to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis voted to drop the policy of
abstentionism if elected to Dáil Éireann, but not the British House of Commons
or the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont, thus ending the self-imposed
ban on Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats at Leinster House. Ó
Brádaigh and several supporters walked out and immediately set up Republican
Sinn Féin (RSF); more than 100 people assembled at Dublin's West County Hotel
and formed the new organization. As an ordinary member, he had earlier spoken
out against the motion (resolution 162) in an impassioned speech. The
Continuity IRA became publicly known in 1996. Republican Sinn Féin's
relationship with the Continuity IRA is similar to the relationship between
Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA when Ó Brádaigh was Sinn Féin's President.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh speaking
at the 2003 RSF Ard Fheis
Ó Brádaigh believed RSF to
be the sole legitimate continuation of the pre-1986 Sinn Féin, arguing that RSF
has kept the original Sinn Féin constitution. RSF readopted and enhanced Ó
Brádaigh's Éire Nua policy. His party has had electoral success in local
elections only, and few at that, although they currently have one elected
Councillor in Connemara, County Galway.
He remained a vociferous
opponent of the Good Friday Agreement, viewing it as a programme to
copperfasten Irish partition and entrench sectarian divisions in the north. He
condemned his erstwhile comrades in Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional
IRA for decommissioning weapons while British troops remain in the country. In
his opinion, "the Provo sell-out is the worst yet - unprecedented in Irish
history". He has condemned the Provisional IRA's decision to seal off a
number of its arms dumps as "an overt act of treachery",
"treachery punishable by death" under IRA General Army Order Number
11.
In July 2005, he handed over
a portion of his personal political papers detailing discussions between Irish
Republican leaders and representatives of the British Government during
1974/1975 to the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland,
Galway.
Commenting on news of the death of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Sinn Féin
President Gerry Adams TD said:
“Ba mhaith liom mo chomhbhrón a dhéanamh leis an gclann ar fad Ruairí O
Bradaigh.
“It is with sadness that I have heard the news of the death of Ruairí Ó
Brádaigh.
“On behalf of Sinn Fein, I want to extend my sincere condolences to his
family and friends.
“Whatever differences we may have shared on political matters Ruairí was
a life-long activist who was committed to his principles.
“Go ndeanfaidh Dia trócaire ar a n’anam dílis.”
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh dead, Republican Sinn Fein, Dissident Republicans, Continuity IRA
