Collins became president of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. The anti-treatyites refused to recognize the authority of the new government. Matt Brady and May Caffrey sided with de Valera and the anti-treatyites. Brady was a determined man. His injured leg was rigid and shortened by several inches and he was forced to wear a surgical boot and walk with a cane, but he was still a “Brigade Staff" officer in the IRA. Prior to the treaty he was “preparing forms for intelligence reports from units and indexing correspondence [of] GHQ Brigade and Gen Staff.” After the treaty, he “left Brigade Head Q’s … and started organizing against [the] Treaty.”
1921 letter from Liam Cosgrave appointing May Caffrey secretarylregistrar of the County Longford Board of Health. Ó Brádaigh family collection.
In Dublin, IRA (anti-treaty) forces established their headquarters in the Four Courts, the country’s legal center. The Free State government demanded that they surrender. They refused, and civil war broke out. The IRA was disorganized from the start, and the Free State forces, backed by the British, drove them from Dublin and pursued them into the countryside. In August, Arthur Griffith died of a heart attack and Mick Collins was killed in an ambush in Cork. Liam Cosgrave, 1916 veteran and the person who appointed May Caffrey as secretary in Longford, took over as president of the Irish Free State. Attitudes on both sides hardened. The 26-county Third Dáil of the pro-treatyites, referred to as Leinster House (where it met, in Dublin) by the anti-treatyites, granted the Free State government the power to impose the death penalty. Executions led to reprisals, which led to more executions. On December 8, 1922, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, four prominent anti-treaty Republicans who had been imprisoned without charge or trial for five months-Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey, and Richard Barrett-were taken out and shot. Between November and May 1922–1923, more than eighty Republican prisoners were executed. Sein Mac Eoin, a general in the Free State Army, had under his command Athlone Barracks. Five antitreaty Republicans were executed there in January 1923.
In Longford, most of the IRA activists supported Mac Eoin, but there was enough opposition that Mac Eoin singled out Sein F. Lynch in a letter, complaining of Lynch’s anti-treaty activities and noting that “it is time to relegate this man to his proper sphere of duties.” Lynch’s brotherin-law, Tom Brady, also rejected the treaty and tried to reorganize the IRA. The IRA was beaten down in Longford and elsewhere, however. Liam Lynch, its chief of staff, was killed in action in April 1923. Soon after this, de Valera met with Lynch’s successor, Frank Aiken, and they ended the fight. De Valera issued a famous statement to the “Soldiers of the Republic, Legion of the Rearguard" and declared that “[the] Republic can no longer be defended successfully by your arms.” Aiken issued a cease-fire order to soldiers still in the field. Thousands of anti-treaty Republicans were in prison, and still more faced prison if they surfaced. Tom Brady remained on the run until 1925. Militarily, the cost of the Civil War was relatively small, with probably less than 4,000 casualties. Politically, the Civil War created bitter political divisions. Sinn Féin remained the primary opposition party, but they refused to participate in the Free State Parliament. For them, the Second Dáil Éireann remained the true government of the Republic and Free Staters were traitors who had sold out the Republic for political power in a truncated, unfree Irish state. Abstention from Westminster had led to the creation of Dáil Éireann. Abstention from Leinster House, site of the Dublin government, left Liam Cosgrave and the pro-treatyites in unchallenged control of the Irish Free State.
As for Matt Brady and May Caffrey, they found each other in the midst of the truce. They were a perfect match—almost. She was a Cumann na mBan veteran, he was an IRA veteran. Each of them rejected the treaty. They were both ardent proponents of the Irish language. Yet May’s parents worried about the future of their young healthy daughter who was involved with a man nine years her senior who had not, and probably never would, recover from devastating war wounds. Her sister Bertha told her in fun, “You are running around with a broken soldier.” May was unhappy with the comment. Complicating their situation, each was employed at the Longford County Home. An employee there was not allowed to supervise the work of one’s spouse. If they married, one of them would be out of a job.
For four years they wrestled with these issues. In considering their options, they enlisted the support of the most powerful person they knew, Major General Sein Mac Eoin. Mac Eoin had saved Matt Brady’s life and kept him out of harm’s way as he recovered. While they differed totally in politics, they respected each other, and with May Caffrey the three of them had a personal relationship that transcended their political differences. This is clearly evident in letters found in Mac Eoin’s papers. Unfortunately, the best that Mac Eoin could do was to give an assurance that if May Caffrey resigned her job, Matt Brady would receive “the fullest possible consideration" for the position of superintendent assistance officer at the County Home. Making the best of a difficult situation, Matt Brady resigned his job. May Brady would be the breadwinner in the family.
They were married on August 26, 1926, at Castlefinn, County Donegal, where her parents lived. They passed through London on their honeymoon. May later recalled the trip for her children, finding humor in Matt’s reaction. She enjoyed the sights, but he instinctively wanted to get out of the place as fast as possible; as far as he was concerned, England was the fountainhead of all that was bad in the Irish world. They moved on and visited her relations in Switzerland. When they finally arrived back in Longford, May went to work as the secretary of County Longford Board of Health. Matt was unemployed but helped out as she went about her business, and they looked forward to raising a family.
Wedding photograph of May Caffrey and Matt Brady, August 1926.6 BrMaigh family collection.
2
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,
