For twelve years, from 1964 to 1976, O’Brien teaches at St. Finbarr’s Seminary, Farranferris, where he is also the hurling trainer for the school team. He is “at the helm as Farranferris wins Dr. Harty Cups in 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1974, adding All-Irelands in 1972 and 1974.”
A twelve-year stint as chaplain at the Naval Base of Haulbowline follows before O’Brien returns to parish ministry, again in Blackrock. In 1985, he starts a lengthy stay in Carrigaline where he serves as curate, administrator and finally parish priest of Carrigaline, before retiring from active ministry in 2003.
Duff is born in Dublin on June 7, 1889, at 97 Phibsboro Road, the eldest of seven children of John Duff and his wife, Susan Letitia (née Freehill). The wealthy family lives in the city at St. Patrick’s Road, Drumcondra. He attends Blackrock College.
In 1908, Duff enters the Civil Service and is assigned to the Irish Land Commission. In 1913, he joins the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and is exposed to the real poverty of Dublin. Many who live in tenement squalor are forced to attend soup kitchens for sustenance, and abject poverty, alcoholism, and prostitution are rife in parts of Dublin. He joins and soon rises through the ranks to President of the St. Patrick’s Conference at St. Nicholas of Myra Parish. Having concern for people he sees as materially and spiritually deprived, he gets the idea to picket Protestant soup kitchens as he considers they are giving aid in the form of food and free accommodation at hostels in return for not attending Catholic services. He sets up rival Catholic soup kitchens and, with his friend, Sergeant Major Joe Gabbett, discourages Catholics from patronizing Protestant soup kitchens. They succeeded in closing down two of them over the years.
Duff publishes his first pamphlet, Can we be Saints?, in 1916. In it, he expresses the conviction that all, without exception, are called to be saints, and that through Christian faith, all have the means necessary.
Duff briefly acts as private secretary to Michael Collins, the chairman of the Provisional Government and the commander-in-chief of the National Army. In 1924, he is transferred to the Department of Finance.
On September 7, 1921, Duff is a part of a meeting alongside Fr. Michael Toher and fifteen women which becomes the nucleus of what would become the Legion of Mary. The Legion of Mary is created to organise lay Catholics to perform voluntary work. He models the organisation on Roman legions. Some of the first causes the Legion pursues is to become involved with homelessness and prostitution in Dublin. In 1922, he defies the wishes of the Archbishop of Dublin and the widespread Crypto-Calvinism, or Jansenism, within the Catholic Church in Ireland, which had created an intense hostility towards both prostitutes and other allegedly “fallen women.” Similarly, to St. Vitalis of Gaza before him, he begins an outreach to the prostitutes living in often brutal and inhuman conditions in the “kip houses” of “the Monto,” as Dublin’s red-light district, one of the largest in Europe at the time, is then called. Although middle-class Dubliners dismissively view these women as “whores,” the impoverished but devoutly Catholic residents of the Monto tenements refer to local prostitutes as “unfortunate girls,” and understand that they often turn to prostitution as a last resort. As part of his work, Duff establishes the Sancta Maria hostel, a safe house for former prostitutes who had run away from their “kip keepers.” Following the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, he also persuades the first Catholic Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, former Irish Army General W. R. E. Murphy, to launch a crackdown and, even though prostitution in the Republic of Ireland, rooted in human trafficking, still exists, the closure of the Monto’s last “Kip-Houses” is announced on March 12, 1925.
In 1927, Duff establishes the Morning Star hostel for homeless men, followed shortly by the Regina Coeli hostel for homeless women in 1930. Unlike the Magdalen Asylums, the Regina Coeli hostel reflects his view that unwed mothers should be taught how to be able to provide for and raise their children. This defies the norm of the era which holds that the children of unwed mothers should be saved from the stigma of their illegitimacy by being put up for adoption as quickly as possible.
While Duff enjoys the support of W. T. Cosgrave, Ireland’s head of government, and in May 1931 is granted an audience with Pope Pius XI, his efforts are opposed internally in the Dublin diocese. The Archbishop of Dublin Edward Joseph Byrne and his successor John Charles McQuaid seek to censor him because of his involvement with prostitutes. McQuaid also does not approve of his ecumenical efforts. In the 1930s and 1940s Duff creates the Mercier Society, a study group designed to bring together Catholics and Protestants, as well as the Pillar of Fire, a group designed to promote dialogue with Ireland’s Jewish community. In communication with Irish social dissidents Seán Ó Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell, he suggests he is far more censored than even they are.
Duff does have some supporters amongst the Catholic hierarchy though. With the backing of Cardinal Joseph MacRory and Francis Bourne of Westminster, the Legion is able to expand rapidly and internationally. In 1928 the Legion establishes its first presidium in Scotland. In 1932 he is able to use the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress of Dublin to introduce the concept of the Legion of Mary to several visiting bishops, leading to further international growth.
Duff retires from the Civil Service in 1934 to devote all of his time to the Legion of Mary.
In July 1940, an overseas club for Afro-Asian students in Dublin is created. At that time Ireland is a popular destination for students from Asia and Africa because of its recent anti-imperial, anti-colonial history. Duff personally funds the purchase of a building for the club using funds from an inheritance. The club lasts until 1976 and facilitate many notable students, including Jaja Wachuku.
For the rest of his life, and with the help of many others, Duff guides the Legion’s worldwide extension. Today, the Legion of Mary has an estimated four million active members and 10 million auxiliary members in close to 200 countries in almost every diocese in the Catholic Church.
In 1965, Pope Paul VI invites Duff to attend the Second Vatican Council as a lay observer. When he is introduced to the assembly by the Archbishop of Liverpool, John Heenan, he receives a standing ovation.
Duff dies in Dublin at the age of 91 on November 7, 1980, and is interred at Glasnevin Cemetery. In July 1996, the cause of his beatification is introduced by Cardinal Desmond Connell.
Edgeworth Lysaght, later Edward Anthony Edgeworth Lysaght, and from 1920 Edward MacLysaght (Irish: Éamonn Mac Giolla Iasachta), a genealogist of twentieth century Ireland, is born on November 6, 1887, at Flax Bourton, Somerset, England. His numerous books on Irish surnames build upon the work of Rev. Patrick Woulfe’s Irish Names and Surnames (1923).
Lysaght is born to Sidney Royse Lysaght (1856-1941), of Irish origin, a director of the family iron and steel firm John Lysaght and Co. and a writer of novels and poetry, and Katherine (died 1953), daughter of Joseph Clarke, of Waddington, Lincolnshire. His grandfather, Thomas Royse Lysaght, is an architect, and his great-grandfather, William Lysaght, a small landowner distantly connected with the Barons Lisle. He is named “Edgeworth Lysaght” after his father’s friend, the economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth. He loses the sight in one eye after a childhood accident.
Lysaght is educated at Nash House preparatory school, Bristol, and Rugby School at Rugby, Warwickshire, where he is unhappy, his parents’ frequent absence due to his father’s business responsibilities necessitating travel to South America, South Africa, and Australia contributing to this. He is a contemporary there of Rupert Brooke, whose father is Lysaght’s housemaster. Eighteen months after leaving Rugby, on the advice of Francis Edgeworth, he goes to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to study law, but, having on his own account “had a wild time as part of the smart set” and anticipating rustication after a drunken incident, he leaves after three terms.
Lysaght takes up residence in a caravan at Lahinch, County Clare, where he had previously holidayed and become friendly with local people. His father, himself strongly connected to his Irish boyhood and wanting to establish himself as a “country gentleman,” recognizes his son’s enthusiasm for Ireland and in 1909 purchases a 600-acre estate at Tuamgraney, at which Lysaght farms until 1913, introducing an electrical generator and other forms of modernization including the development of a lime kiln, nursery, and school where young men of means can learn the basics of farming. This is the beginning of a metamorphosis for him. Although of English upbringing, he dislikes the local gentry, considering them “layabout rentiers,” and prefers to make friendships amongst employees and his neighbours. He seeks to replace his English accent with a Clare accent, eschews his lack of religion of a few years before in favour of Roman Catholicism, and becomes involved in the Gaelic League.
An integral factor in Lysaght’s reinvention is his relationship with Mabel (“Maureen”) Pattison. Five years his senior, they meet when he spends a period at a Dublin hospital. She is born and raised in South Africa, her father a civil servant there, but has Irish family including a local postmistress. His family seeks to avoid what they consider an unsuitable marriage, sending him and his brother Patrick on a world tour, but the couple are nevertheless married at the Brompton Oratory on September 4, 1913. Mabel introduces him to friends in the Arts Club, and he enters Dublin literary society. His father invests £300 in Maunsell’s publishers, who produces Lysaght’s book of poems, Irish Eclogues. As of the early 1930s, he serves on the General Committee of the Munster Agricultural Society.
By 1915, Lysaght’s command of the Irish language has improved dramatically, and in that year he founds the Nua-Ghaeltacht at Raheen, County Clare. He is an independent delegate to the 1917-18 Irish Convention in which he opposes John Redmond‘s compromise on Home Rule. By 1918 his involvement in all aspects of the Irish independence movement have deepened greatly. Although not known if he is actually a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), he is very active in the Irish War of Independence as a supporter, financially and otherwise, of the East Clare Brigade of the IRA and its legendary leaders, Michael and Conn Brennan.
In 1920, Lysaght, along with others of the name, changes his name to “MacLysaght,” “so as to emphasise its Gaelic origin.”
MacLysaght’s Raheen office serves as a meeting place for the Volunteers and guns, documents and ammunition are stored there. However, the war leads to a sharp decline in the fortunes of his farm. The execution of close friends such as Conor Clune of Quin in November 1920 and the subsequent devastating raids on his farm result in his playing a far more active role in Sinn Féin as a loyal supporter of the new TD for Clare, Éamon de Valera. For this he is imprisoned following his return from Britain as part of a Sinn Féin delegation which is publicising the Black and Tans atrocities.
He has been invited by the Protestant noblemen of the country to come and usurp the English throne. Led by Lord Monmouth, a group of Protestant nobles have unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the Catholic James from ascending to the throne on the death of Charles II in 1685. Since then, James has been disturbing the Protestant noblemen who have remained loyal to him in 1685 by giving Catholics more and more freedoms in both England and Ireland.
On May 7, 1688, James II issues a “Declaration of Indulgence” pledging religious toleration. Still the Protestant nobles are comforted by the fact that all the possible heirs to James are Protestant. Thus the country will be safely returned to a Protestant monarch in time and many of James’ reforms will be reversed. All that changes on June 10, 1688, when the Queen gives birth to a male heir, one who is to be raised as a Catholic.
Soon thereafter, an invitation is sent across to William, who is married to James’ sister Mary, to come and save England for Protestantism. This, William is more than happy to do, for Louis XIV of France is threatening to invade the Netherlands and what better way to ensure the support of England in that coming war than to become the King of that country.
The “Glorious Revolution,” as the British would come to call it, is now underway. In less than two months, James II flees for his life and goes into exile in France, never to return. For the native population of Ireland, the eventual results of this revolution are far from “glorious.” The results are death, destruction, poverty, hundreds of years of second-class citizenship in their own land, and a legacy of hatred between Protestant and Catholic in the north of Ireland that persists to this day.
(Pictured: “William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688” by Jan Wyck, National Maritime Museum)
Hickie attends the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1882 to 1885. He is commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers at Gibraltar, in 1885 and serves with them for thirteen years in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and India, during which time he is promoted to captain on November 18, 1892. In 1899 he graduates as captain at the Staff College, Camberley, and is selected when the Second Boer War breaks out as a Special Service Officer in which capacity he acts in various positions of authority and command. He leaves Southampton for South Africa on board the SS Canada in early February 1900 and is promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command as major on March 17, 1900. He is subsequently in command of a corps until eventually at the end of 1900 he is given command of an independent column of all arms. He holds this position for eighteen months. He serves with distinction at the Battle of Bothaville in November 1900 and receives the brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel on November 29, 1900. He serves in South Africa throughout the war, which ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging in June 1902. Four months later he leaves Cape Town on the SS Salamis with other officers and men of the 2nd battalion Royal Fusiliers, arriving at Southampton in late October, when the battalion is posted to Aldershot Garrison. In December 1902 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).
After the end of the war in South Africa there follows various staff appointments, the first from December 1902 as deputy-assistant adjutant general for district staff in the Cork district. In 1907 Hickie is back in regimental service in Dublin and Mullingar with the 1st Royal Fusiliers, where he is in command of the regiment for the last two years. From 1909 to 1912 is appointed to the Staff of the 8th Infantry Division in Cork where for four years he is well known in the hunting field and on the polo ground. In May 1912, he is promoted to colonel and becomes Quartermaster General of the Irish Command at Royal Hospital Kilmainham for which he is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
When war is declared, the Staff of the Irish Command becomes automatically the staff of the II Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Hickie is promoted to brigadier general and, as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, takes charge of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General’s Department during the retreat of the II Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the First Battle of the Marne. In mid-September 1914, he relieves one of the brigadiers in the fighting line as commander of the 13th Brigade (5th Infantry Division) and then commands the 53rd Brigade (18th Infantry Division) until December 1915, when he is ordered home to assume command of the 16th (Irish) Division at Blackburn.
Promoted to major general, Hickie takes over from Lieutenant General Sir Lawrence Parsons. It is politically a highly sensitive appointment which requires the professionalism and political awareness he, fortunately, possesses as the division is formed around a core of Irish National Volunteers in response to Edward Carson‘s Ulster Volunteers. He is much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and speaks of the pride which his new command gives him but does not hesitate to make sweeping changes amongst the senior officers of the Irish Division. After putting the division through intensive training, it leaves under Irish command of which each man takes personal pride. It arrives in December 1915.
In the next two years and four months during which Hickie commands the 16th (Irish) Division, it earns a reputation for aggression and élan and wins many memorials and mentions for bravery in the engagements during the 1916 Battle of Guillemont and the capture of Ginchy, both of which form part of the Battle of the Somme, then during the Battle of Messines, the Third Battle of Ypres and in attacks near Bullecourt in the Battle of Cambrai offensive in November 1917.
During this period the Division makes considerable progress in developing its operational techniques but at a price in losses. The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits, due to nationalist disenchantment with the war and the absence of conscription in Ireland, is successfully met by Hickie by integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division.
In February 1918, Hickie is invalided home on temporary sick leave, but when in the hospital the German spring offensive begins on March 21, with the result that after his division moves under the command of General Hubert Gough it is practically wiped out and ceases to exist as a division. Although promised a new command, this does not happen before the Armistice in November. He typifies the army’s better divisional commanders, is articulate, intelligent and is competent and resourceful during the BEF’s difficult period 1916–17, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918. He is advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1918.
Hickie retires from the army in 1922, when the six Irish line infantry regiments that have their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new Irish Free State are all disbanded. He identifies himself strongly with the Home Rule Act and says that its scrapping is a disaster and is equally outspoken in condemning the activities of the Black and Tans. In 1925, he is elected as a member of Seanad Éireann, the Irish Free State Senate.
Hickie holds his seat until the Seanad is dissolved in 1936, to be replaced by Seanad Éireann in 1937. He is President of the Area Council (Southern Ireland) of the Royal British Legion from 1925 to 1948. He never marries.
Hickie dies on November 3, 1950, in Dublin and is buried in Terryglass, County Tipperary.
Burke is born in Moycullen, County Galway, a daughter of George Edmond Burke of Danesfield and his wife Theresa Quin. She becomes an activist in Irish industrial, charitable and cultural groups, serving as second president of the Camogie Association and first president of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. She is also a noted literary hostess, whose salon at Earlsfort House is a centre of Dublin intellectual life for many years.
In 1883, Burke marries Arthur James Francis Plunkett, 11th Earl of Fingall, 4th Baron Fingall (1859–1929), state steward to the administration in Dublin Castle and one of the few Catholics to hold an Irish peerage, thus becoming Countess of Fingall.
A friendship with Máire Ní Chinnéide, forged through theatrical circles, leads to Burke-Plunkett accepting the patronage of Camogie Association of Ireland from 1910 to 1923. She also presents a cup and medals for the winners of the Dublin League. She serves largely in an honorary role, attending a few meetings of what is then known as Cualacht Luithchleas na mBan Gaedheal.
A liberal unionist, Burke-Plunkett becomes active in the promotion of Irish agriculture, industry and culture. She is a founder member of Horace Plunkett’s Irish co-operative movement, is the first president of the Society of United Irishwomen from 1912 to 1921, and of its successor, the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1942. She presides at suffragette meetings in Dublin, is a founder of the Irish Distressed Ladies Committee, and serves on the board of the Irish Industries Association. She is also the chairperson of the Irish Central Committee for the Employment of Women.
Burke-Plunkett dies on October 28, 1944, at Earlsfort House, her Dublin home, where she had held her famous Thursdays “at home” for many years. She is buried on the grounds of Killeen Castle, County Meath, following a Requiem Mass at University Church in Dublin.
Flannery edits the Dominican bi-monthly journal entitled Doctrine and Life from 1958 to 1988, while at St. Saviour’s Priory, Dublin, where he also serves as prior from 1957 to 1960. He also edits the Religious Life Review. During and after the Second Vatican Council he makes available in English all the documents from the event.
From August 1969, Flannery is a member of the executive committee of the Northern Relief Coordination Committee, raising funds on behalf of the families of those interned without trial in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s.
Flannery embodies the post-Vatican II conception of the priest as a social catalyst engaged by the gospel, closer to his flock than to the clerical hierarchy. He has a great gift for friendship, is indefatigably interested in people, and courts religious affairs commentators and journalists at a time when the hierarchy ignores them, magnifying his influence.
Flannery dies of a heart attack on October 21, 2008, at Kiltipper Woods Care Centre, Dublin. Following a funeral mass at St. Saviour’s Priory, he is buried in the Dominican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, on October 24, 2008.
Ó Brádaigh is born into a middle-class republican family. His father, Matt Brady, is an IRA volunteer who is severely wounded in an encounter with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in 1919. His mother, May Caffrey, is a Cumann na mBan volunteer and a 1922 graduate of University College Dublin (UCD). His father dies when he is ten and is given a paramilitary funeral led by his former IRA colleagues. His mother, prominent as the Secretary for the County Longford Board of Health, lives until 1974. He is educated at Melview National School at primary level and attends secondary school at St. Mel’s College, leaving in 1950, and graduates from University College Dublin in 1954. That year he takes a job teaching Irish language at Roscommon Vocational School in Roscommon. He is a deeply religious Catholic who refrains from smoking or drinking.
Ó Brádaigh joins Sinn Féin in 1950. While at university, in 1951, he joins the Irish Republican Army. In September 1951, he marches with the IRA at the unveiling of the Seán Russell monument in Fairview Park, Dublin. A teacher by profession, he is also a Training Officer for the IRA. In 1954, he is 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 (RUC) barracks in Northern Ireland.
On August 13, 1955, Ó Brádaigh leads a ten-member IRA group in an arms raid on Hazebrouck Barracks, near Arborfield, Berkshire, England, a depot for the No. 5 Radar Training Battalion of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. It is the biggest IRA arms raid in Britain. Most, if not all, of the weapons are recovered in a relatively short period of time. A van, traveling too fast, is stopped by the police and IRA personnel are arrested. Careful police work leads to weapons that had been transported in a second van and stored in London.
The IRA Border Campaign commences on December 12, 1956. As an IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ) officer, Ó Brádaigh is responsible for training the Teeling Column in the west of Ireland. During the Campaign, he serves as second-in-command of the Teeling Column. On December 30, 1956, he partakes in the Teeling Column attack on RUC barracks in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. RUC Constable John Scally is killed in the attack and is the first fatality of the new IRA campaign. Ó Brádaigh and others are arrested by the Garda Síochána across the border in County Cavan the day after the attack. They are tried and jailed for six months in Mountjoy Prison. A leading abstentionist, upon his arrest he refuses to recognize the authority of the Irish government and refuses to renounce violence in exchange for his release.
Upon completing his prison sentence, Ó Brádaigh is immediately interned at the Curragh Camp along with other republicans. On September 27, 1958, he escapes from the camp along with Dáithí Ó Conaill. While a football match is in progress, the pair cuts through a wire fence and escapes from the camp under a camouflage grass blanket. This is an official escape, authorised by the officer commanding (OC) of the IRA internees, Tomás Óg Mac Curtain. He is the first Sinn Féin TD on the run since the 1920s.
In October 1958, Ó Brádaigh becomes the IRA Chief of Staff, a position he holds until May 1959, when Seán Cronin is elected as his replacement. He is arrested in November 1959, refuses to answer questions, and is jailed in Mountjoy Prison under the Offences against the State Act. He is released in May 1960 and, after Cronin is arrested, again becomes Chief of Staff. Although he always emphasises that it is a collective declaration, he is the primary author of the statement ending the IRA Border Campaign in 1962. At the IRA 1962 Convention he indicates that he is not interested in continuing as Chief of Staff.
After Ó Brádaigh’s arrest in December 1956, he takes a leave from teaching at Roscommon Vocational School. He is re-instated and begins teaching again in late 1962, just after he is succeeded by Cathal Goulding in the position of Chief of Staff of the IRA. He remains an active member of Sinn Féin and is also a member of the IRA Army Council throughout the decade.
Ó Brádaigh opposes the decision of the IRA and Sinn Féin to drop abstentionism and to recognise the Westminster parliament in London, the Stormont parliament in Belfast and the Leinster House parliament in 1969/1970. On January 11, 1970, along with Seán Mac Stíofáin, he leads the walkout from the 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis after the majority votes to end the policy of abstentionism, although the vote to change the Sinn Féin constitution fails to receive the required two-thirds majority. The delegates who walk out reconvene at the Kevin Barry Hall in Parnell Square, Dublin, and establish Provisional Sinn Féin.
Ó Brádaigh is voted chairman of the Caretaker Executive of Provisional Sinn Féin. That October, he formally becomes president of the party. He holds this position until 1983. In his presidential address to the 1971 Provisional Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, he says that the first step to achieving a United Ireland is to make Northern Ireland ungovernable. He apparently also serves on the Army Council or the executive of the Provisional Irish Republican Army until he is seriously injured in a car accident on January 1, 1984.
On May 31, 1972, Ó Brádaigh is arrested under the Offences Against the State Act and immediately commences a hunger strike. A fortnight later the charges against him are dropped and he is released. With Dáithí Ó Conaill he develops the Éire Nua policy, which is launched on June 28, 1972. The policy calls for a federal Ireland.
On December 3, 1972, Ó Brádaigh appears on the London Weekend TelevisionWeekend World programme. He is arrested by the Gardaí again on December 29, 1972, and charged in the newly established Special Criminal Court with Provisional IRA membership. In January 1973 he is the first person convicted under the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1972 and is sentenced to six months in the Curragh Camp.
On December 10, 1974, Ó Brádaigh participates 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 is raided and broken up by the Gardaí, the Protestant churchmen pass on proposals from the IRA leadership to the British government. These proposals call 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 calls a “total and complete” ceasefire intended to last from December 22, 1974, to January 2, 1975, to allow the British government to respond to proposals. British government officials also hold talks with Ó Brádaigh in his position as president of Sinn Féin from late December to January 17, 1975.
On February 10, 1975, the IRA Army Council, unanimously endorses an open-ended cessation of IRA “hostilities against Crown forces,” which becomes known as the 1975 truce. The IRA Chief of Staff at the time is Seamus Twomey of Belfast. It is reported in some quarters that the IRA leaders mistakenly believe they had persuaded the British Government to withdraw from Ireland and the protracted negotiations between themselves and British officials are the preamble to a public declaration of intent to withdraw. In fact, as British government papers now show, the British entertain talks with the IRA in the hope that this would fragment the movement further and score several intelligence coups during the talks. This bad faith embitters many in the republican movement, and another ceasefire does not happen until 1994.
In late December 1976, along with Joe Cahill, Ó Brádaigh meets two representatives of the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee (ULCCC), John McKeague and John McClure, at the request of the latter body. Their purpose is 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 is agreed that if this can be done, a joint Loyalist-Republican approach can then be made to request the British government to leave Ireland. Desmond BoalQC and Seán MacBrideSC are requested and accepted to represent the loyalist and republican positions. For months they have meetings in various places including Paris. The dialogue eventually collapses when Conor Cruise O’Brien, then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and vociferous opponent of the Provisional IRA, becomes aware of it and condemns it on RTÉ Radio. As the loyalists had insisted on absolute secrecy, they feel unable to continue with the talks as a result.
In the aftermath of the 1975 truce, the Ó Brádaigh/Ó Conaill leadership comes under severe criticism from a younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams, who becomes a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978. By the early 1980s, Ó Brádaigh’s position as president of Sinn Féin is openly under challenge and the Éire Nua policy is targeted in an effort to oust him. The policy is 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 resign from their leadership positions, voicing opposition to the dropping of the Éire Nua policy by the party.
On November 2, 1986, the majority of delegates to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis vote 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 walk out and immediately assemble at Dublin’s West County Hotel and set up Republican Sinn Féin (RSF). As an ordinary member, he had earlier spoken out against the motion (resolution 162) in an impassioned speech. The Continuity IRA becomes 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.
Ó Brádaigh believes RSF to be the sole legitimate continuation of the pre-1986 Sinn Féin, arguing that RSF has kept the original Sinn Féin constitution. RSF readopts and enhances his Éire Nua policy. His party has electoral success in only a few local elections.
Ó Brádaigh remains 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 condemns 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 condemns 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, Ó Brádaigh hands 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.
In September 2009, Ó Brádaigh announces his retirement as leader of Republican Sinn Féin. His successor is Des Dalton. He is also a long-standing member of the Celtic League, an organization which fosters cooperation between the Celtic people and promotes the culture, identity and eventual self-determination for the people, in the form of six sovereign states, for the Celtic nations – Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, Isle of Man and Ireland.
After suffering a period of ill-health, Ó Brádaigh dies on June 5, 2013, at Roscommon County Hospital. His funeral is attended by 1,800 mourners including Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan and is policed by the Garda Emergency Response Unit and Gardaí in riot gear, for “operational reasons,” a show of force believed to have been to deter the republican tradition of firing a three-volley salute of shots over the final place of rest during the graveyard oration. As a result, there are some minor scuffles between gardai and mourners.
The meeting is held under conditions of tight secrecy. Each man has only one assistant with him and there is no briefing for the press afterward. No one expects a firm agreement on any issue of substance. The British appear to be satisfied with a promise to meet again and to keep the communication lines open.
The meeting, the first such tripartite conference since the partition of Ireland 50 years earlier, is itself a considerable accomplishment politically. Even six weeks earlier, it is considered an impossibility by most observers.
At that time, Faulkner is widely regarded as being under such heavy pressure from the right-wing of his Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) that he cannot talk with the Taoiseach. Lynch has been saying that he can meet with Faulkner only as the leader of the Unionist party, not as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. That is consistent with Dublin‘s view that the six counties of Ulster are part of the Republic of Ireland.
Heath also seems to have retreated from his previous position. In an angry exchange of telegrams in August, he suggests that the situation in Northern Ireland is a British affair and none of Lynch’s business. The exchange follows the decision to intern suspected members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ulster without trial. Faulkner, backed by the Heath government, begin arrests of suspects on August 9.
The interment policy arouses a bitter reaction among the Roman Catholics of Ulster, where they make up a third of the population. Lynch denounces the policy. The Catholic opposition members in the Ulster Parliament at Stormont say they will boycott all Government matters until the interned men are released.
What has softened the attitudes of the three leaders is the appalling extent of violence in Belfast and other towns in Northern Ireland since the internments began. In those seven weeks, 17 British soldiers, 36 civilians and one policeman are killed, most of them by IRA bullets and bombs.
The British Government and Faulkner offer broad changes in the constitutional setup of the Ulster regime. They talk about bringing Catholics — non‐Unionists — into the Government for the first time. But internment without trial remains an obstacle even to talking about those ideas with the main opposition group, the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP). The SDLP refuses to join in a proposed conference on political reform while internment goes on.
Ideally, the British would like Lynch to use his influence with the opposition leaders. They want him to urge them to talk about political reform in return for some concession on internment, perhaps the release of some of those currently held. But any such concession might get Faulkner in trouble with his own party or arouse Protestant violence. That is always the trouble in Northern Ireland – any gesture toward one side antagonizes the other.
A new and serious problem for Heath is an apparent waning of the British public’s willingness to bear the military and social burden of Northern Ireland. A poll just before the meeting at Chequers shows that 59% want to bring all British troops home from Ulster at once.
Even Lynch, though he is pledged to the principle of a United Ireland, does not want the hasty withdrawal of British troops. That would almost certainly mean an enlargement of the present terror into civil war.
(From: 3 Prime Ministers Confer on Ulster, The New York Times, September 28, 1971)
Smithson is christened Margaret Anne Jane but takes the names Anne Mary Patricia on her conversion to Catholicism. Her mother and father are first cousins, and her father dies when she is young. About 1881 her mother marries her second husband, Peter Longshaw, who owns a chemical factory in Warrington, Lancashire, England. She dislikes her stepfather and refers to him always as Mr. Longshaw. There are five children of the second marriage.
Smithson abandons her ambition to become a journalist in order to train as a nurse and a midwife. She trains in London and Edinburgh, before returning to Dublin in 1900. In 1901 she takes up a post as district nurse in Millton, County Down. There she falls in love with her colleague Dr. James Manton, a married man. Deciding that a relationship is impossible, she leaves Millton in 1906. They keep up a correspondence until her conversion, when she burns his letters.
Smithson takes the Republican side in the Irish Civil War and nurses participants in the siege at Moran’s Hotel. In 1922 she is imprisoned by Irish Free State forces and is rescued from Mullingar prison by Linda Kearns McWhinney and Muriel MacSwiney, posing as a Red Cross delegation. Her political views lead to her resignation from the Queen’s Nurses Committee and a move into private nursing. In 1924 she writes a series of articles on child welfare work for the Evening Mail newspaper, based on her work in tenements in the Dublin Liberties, one of the poorest areas of the city, where she continues to work until 1929.
Smithson is Secretary and Organiser of the Irish Nurse Organisation from 1929 to 1942. She writes for the Irish Nurses’ Magazine and edits the Irish Nurses Union Gazette.
In 1917 Smithson publishes her first novel, Her Irish Heritage, which becomes a best-seller. It is dedicated to those who died in the Easter Rising of 1916. In all, she publishes twenty novels and two short story collections. Other successful novels include By Strange Paths and The Walk of a Queen. Many of her works are highly romantic and draw on her own life experiences, with nationalism and Catholicism featured as recurrent themes. In 1944 she publishes her autobiography, Myself – and Others.
From 1932 onwards Smithson shares a house in Rathmines, Dublin, with her stepsister and her stepsister’s family. She dies of heart failure on February 21, 1948, at 12 Richmond Hill, Dublin, and is buried in Whitechurch, Dublin.
seamus dubhghaill 