IRA Executive calls the conventions, and this is an important source of its power. In calling a convention, the Executive sets in motion the process of creating a new IRA leadership. The convention is the IRA’s supreme authority, and it is here that delegates debate policies, tactics, strategies, motions, and so forth. The convention delegates directly elect the IRA Executive, which remains in place until the next convention. If someone is arrested or leaves for another reason, a new member is asked to join, or “co-opted,” onto the Executive until the next convention. The chair of the IRA convention convenes the Executive’s first meeting; if that person has not been voted onto the Executive, he or she retires. The Executive elects its own chair and secretary.
The IRA Executive then elects the seven-member Army Council, the size of which is derived from the number of people who signed the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916. The Army Council appoints a chief of staff, who subsequently appoints a staff: adjutant general, quartermaster general, director of intelligence, and so forth. These staff appointments are ratified by the Army Council. Because the Army Council cannot be in continuous session, it lays down lines of policy for the chief of staff to carry out. In that way the chief of staff is answerable to the Army Council, which in turn is derived from the Executive. The Army Council generally meets on a monthly basis. Unless there are leaks or they participate in the process, volunteers do not know who is on the Executive, the Army Council, or the chief of staff. In his dealings with Magan, 6 Bddaigh knew that Magan was a member of general headquarters staff, but he did not know he was chief of staff until later.
As commanding officer of the Longford unit, O Brhdaigh’s primary activity was training people in weapons and explosives. The unit possessed a number of weapons, including a revolver, a pistol, a rifle, and a Thompson submachine gun. Gelignite detonators and fuses were also available. If they lacked particular equipment, loans were arranged from other units. The training goal was to make people familiar with all aspects of the arsenal. They met weekly. On occasion, more-intensive training camps, involving weekend overnights, were organized. For each situation, Ó Brádaigh began by arranging a secure area and the transportation of weaponry. Firing practice was often undertaken in County Leitrim, one of Ireland’s most underdeveloped areas. The unit also practiced advanced fieldcraft: battle techniques, ambushes, and attacking barracks. At some of the camps, the director of training, Gerry McCarthy, and a training officer, perhaps Charlie Murphy, Magan’s adjutant general, came down from Dublin and offered expertise. Ó Brádaigh was aided in this activity by his mother (who probably knew what he was doing) and the design of Silchester. May, who was widowed again-Patrick Twohig had passed away in March 1951 and was buried next to Matt Brady-loaned him her Model Y automobile. The hedges surrounding her home presented a cover such that he could walk out the back door with a rifle and head off down the lane.
Although Ó Brádaigh was devoted to the IRA-he traveled home on weekends so he could run training exercises-he found time for other activities. He was an avid attendee at ckilis organized by Republicans and non-Republicans. He was also active in extracurricular activities at University College Dublin. He has fond memories of the college boxing club, which met during the week. The gym was in a part of the university’s buildings that backed up to Irish government buildings. The students used to joke about tunneling through and setting off explosives. There were no showers, and they would clean off by dipping towels in a water bucket. One articular boxer, a flyweight from Belfast, would stand in the bucket, splash himself clean, and then announce that the bucket was available for the next person to wash his face. Ó Brádaigh and the others learned quickly to get to the bucket before the flyweight.
Irish literature and economic and industrial history were his favorite courses. His mother encouraged his studies in the field of commerce, which included accounting, organization, and business statistics. He also continued his study of the Irish language. Ó Brádaigh was starting to consider teaching as a profession when he attended an intensive course in the summer of 1952 at the Galway Gaeltacht, which was designed for people with college degrees who wanted a qualification in teaching Irish. As a training officer for the IRA, he had experience with addressing a group of people, commanding their attention, and running them through drills. The Irish instructors, who were unaware of his clandestine activities, thought he was a natural teacher and told him so. It was a key point in his academic career, and when he returned home he told his mother that he would seek a career as a teacher. His sister Mary, who had graduated from University College Dublin in 1951, had already made the same choice. Thus, in the spring of 1954, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh graduated from University College Dublin and received a degree in commerce and certification to teach that subject and the Irish language.
Like most college graduates, he applied for jobs “all around the place.” He received two offers, one from a school in Athlone and the other from Roscommon Vocational School. He chose the job in Roscommon because it was closer to Longford than Athlone and the bus service suited his needs. He wanted to be close to his twice-widowed mother and to stay involved with the Longford IRA. He moved home and, starting in the fall of 1954, took a bus to Roscommon, spending the week there. By this time, Sein was attending St. Mel’s as a day pupil. Because jobs were scarce, Mary was teaching in a primary school in Birmingham, England. Longford, which is in the province of Leinster, is lush with trees and vegetation, like much of the Irish midlands. Roscommon, only twenty miles away, is in the province of Connacht and is on the edge of the west of Ireland. From Roscommon to the Atlantic, trees and vegetation give way to hills and rocks, small sheep farms and stone walls, and fewer and fewer people.
The IRA leadership, which was apprised of Ó Brádaigh’s career plans, put him in touch with Tommy McDermott, who had been in the IRA in London when Terence MacSwiney died on a hunger strike in Brixton Prison in 1920. At the age of 18, McDermott had marched in MacSwiney’s funeral in London. He initially took the Treaty side in the Civil War, but when the executions started, MacDermott took his rifle and deserted to the anti-Treaty side. Never married, he was interned in the Curragh in the 1940s. Ó Brádaigh viewed McDermott as a lodestone, a role model who attracted the next generation of Republicans. According to Ó Brádaigh, he was a person who “went through it all, took all the hard knocks, and in good times and in bad he didn’t change his views or his principles to suit the tide of the time.” People such as McDermott stood out and “immediately attracted all the disenchanted.” They were very important for the maintenance of the IRA in lean times.
Ruairí Ó BrMaigh on graduating from University College Dublin, 1954. This photo accompanied several articles that appeared in the United Irishman of the 1950s. Ó Brádaigh family collection.
McDermott, who by this time was in his early 50s, was the South Roscommon commanding officer; Ó Brádaigh, who was in his early 20s, complemented him as the South Roscommon training officer. Together, they built up the IRA in the area. One of their recruits was Sein Scott, who joined the IRA in 1955. Scott approached McDermott and through him met Ó Brádaigh. According to Scott, McDermott was “a very, very sincere man.… He was very dedicated, and he wasn’t prepared to deviate … one iota from what he believed.” McDermott saw that “the British were in the country [and] there was only one way that they were going to leave, through force. He was an absolutely committed soldier.” Scott found Ó Brádaigh “a lovely fella. Very energetic, full of action, very approachable. Ó Brádaigh had sincerity written all over his face. Anything that he said you knew that he meant it.” As a training officer, Scott found him “very dedicated.” He “was good at his job; “he expected you to pay attention, as any good teacher would.”
By the mid-1950s, Ó Brádaigh was involved in training camps outside Longford and Roscommon. These camps, like the IRA conventions, enabled volunteers from various parts of the country to meet each other. Scott’s comments were echoed by an IRA veteran from Belfast, who first met Ó Brádaigh at a training camp in the Wicklow Mountains in the mid-1950s. This volunteer found him “very forceful.”
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