The Dublin government quickly introduced repressive legislation, including a Treason Bill and the Offenses Against the State Act. The prescribed penalty for treason was death; the Offenses Against the State Act allowed the reintroduction of military tribunals and internment without trial. Opponents of the legislation mobilized, but with Fianna Fdil firmly in the majority, repressive legislation was destined to be enacted. At a meeting of the Longford County Council, Matt Brady proposed a resolution protesting the legislation “on the grounds that there is not occasion for it.” As far as he was concerned, it was peaceful in Longford and “anything that happened has happened at the Border or in England, and thank God we have young men sufficiently alive to the national inspirations that it is into the enemy camp they are carrying the work and are hitting at the hub of the Empire, which is the proper place to hit, and the best of luck to them.” He was supported by members of Fine Gael, who tended to oppose anything put forward by Fianna Fdil. The council passed the resolution, which was forwarded to the TDs of the area, including Sedn Mac Eoin. In the Dáil debates on the Offenses Against the State Act, Mac Eoin said it was “astonishing" that Fianna Fáil was criminalizing activities that its ministers had once pursued. Fianna FGl’s position was that they had a “duty to protect the State and its people" and the new Constitution negated any “moral justification" of the IRA. Irish Free State jails began to fill with suspected and active IRA members.
In August 1939, disaster struck in Coventry, England. Five people were killed and sixty were wounded when a bomb exploded in a crowded street. The action was contrary to IRA policy, but that did not help the victims or concern the police. Five Irish people living in Coventry were arrested, including Peter Barnes, who was originally from County Offaly, and James McCormick, who was from Mullingar in County Westmeath. Barnes was in the IRA and McCormick was present when the bomb was made, but neither was directly responsible for the premature detonation. Each pleaded innocent, was found guilty, and was sentenced to death. In spite of widespread appeals for clemency, they were hanged in a Birmingham jail on February 7, 1940.
That morning, as his 11-year-old daughter Mary and his 8-year-old son Rory were getting ready to leave for school, Matt Brady pulled out his pocket watch. When the watch hit nine o’clock, he turned to them and said, “Kneel down and say your prayers. Two Irishmen now lie into quicklime graves in Birmingham.” It was Ash Wednesday, making it that much easier for Rory to remember the event. Ireland went into mourning for Barnes and McCormick. In Longford, both cinemas closed the night of the hanging and the next day all shops drew their blinds. The courthouse flag was flown at half mast. The next Saturday there was a large protest meeting at the Longford Courthouse, where Republicans Hubert Wilson and Sein F. Lynch spoke. At the next County Council meeting, Matt Brady proposed a resolution “of protest against the English executions and sympathy with the relatives of the executed men.” After passing the resolution, the council adjourned for half an hour out of respect. McCormick had been from Mullingar, and Brady was a member of the Mullingar Mental Hospital Committee. At their next meeting he aired his feelings on the executions. In seconding a vote of sympathy, he stated that the men were “murdered.” As reported in the Westmeath Independent, he said that Barnes and McCormick would
go down in history as martyrs like Kevin Barry and Pidraig Pearse. They had gone now to their reward as he was sure they were in heaven. They had stood out for the complete freedom of their country. They were not Communists or Socialists or anything of that kind as some people would put them down to be. They were good Irish men, and went to their death with a smile. Their blood would not be shed in vain.
1940 was a particularly bad year for the IRA. There were mass arrests in Britain, in Northern Ireland, and in the Free State. Prison conditions were bleak. Arbour Hill Military Detention Barracks in Dublin was reported to be the coldest prison in Europe. People who had been arrested but not charged with a crime, “internees,” were sent to the Curragh Military Camp in County Kildare. The camp consisted of wooden stables left over from the British Army, surrounded by barbed wire. As they had during the Anglo-Irish War, IRA prisoners fought the conditions and eventually turned to the hunger strike as their most potent weapon. Among the strikers was John Plunkett, yet another of the Count’s sons. Two IRA men, Tony D’Arcy and Sehn MacNeela, died before the IRA called off the strike. At D’Arcy’s funeral a confrontation between the police and the Republican crowd caused the coffin to be knocked to the ground.
These events were closely followed in the Brady household. One of the funerals traveled through Longford, and the Brady family paid their respects as the cortege passed by. Rory Brady remembers that he “couldn’t understand this at all.” He knew that the British had left Longford in the early 1920s, “but why were men dying on hunger strike in Dublin?” He asked questions and discussed politics with his schoolmates, some of whom said it was suicide. He remembers, “I was politically aware enough to say, ’Well, what about Terence MacSwiney?’ They’d say, ’Ah, well, that’s different.’ Well, how different? It’s the principle of it.” MacSwiney had died after a 74-day hunger-strike. He is perhaps best known as the author of Principles of Freedom and for the quotation “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer.” In the Brady household, there was no difference between Terence MacSwiney in 1920 and Tony D’Arcy and Sehn MacNeela in 1940.
As the IRA campaign continued, Fianna Fáil set out to destroy the organization. The Longford IRA was especially hard hit. Barney Casey, the Longford commanding officer, was arrested and sent to the Curragh, where the situation was tense. In December 1940, the prisoners burned down several of the huts. Fighting broke out between prisoners and warders, and several prisoners were wounded. A few days later, Barney Casey was shot in the back and killed. For Casey’s funeral, the IRA provided a coffin and hearse. Republicans, wearing tricolor armbands, marched alongside the hearse. The mourners included Kathleen Clarke and Maud Gonne Mac Bride, widows of executed 1916 leader Tom Clarke and John Mac Bride. Busloads of people arrived from throughout the country, including one organized by Seán F. Lynch. Matt Brady and Hubert Wilson were there together, and after the funeral they were harassed by Free State troops. Richard Goss, the IRA’S North Leinster-South Ulster Divisional commanding officer, was arrested in County Longford after a shootout in which two soldiers were wounded. Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1939, anyone found guilty by the military tribunal faced a mandatory death sentence. Goss was executed by firing squad in Port Laoise Prison on August 9, 1941. With him, for all practical purposes, died the Longford IRA.
Matt Brady had never recovered from his wounds of 1919. As a youngster, Rory would climb into bed with his father and spot a red stain about the size of a sixpence on the man’s pajamas; he was still bleeding after twenty years. Not long after the Casey funeral and the Goss execution, Matt Brady’s health declined further. He was in Dublin’s Mater Hospital twice in 1942, to no avail. On Sunday morning, June 7, 1942, he died at the family residence; he was 51 years old. In passing a resolution of sympathy for the family, a member of the Board of Health stated, ’X fairer or straighter or more honourable man I never met in my life.” An obituary described him as “a man of sterling national principles and unrelenting patriotism throughout the whole period of his career, fair in criticism and unfailing in the cause of justice.” He was described in tributes as the first man in Longford “to shed his blood for the Cause" in the Anglo-Irish War and as a “die-hard