Ó Brádaigh helped organize the 1953 commemoration in Ballymacormack and in 1954 he presided at the event at the memorial cross in Drumlish for Thomas Kelleher. The oration was delivered by Tom Doyle, who was serving as president of Sinn FCin for a brief period-McLogan returned to the post soon after this. In his remarks, Doyle reminded the audience that the “objective of those we commemorate has not yet been achieved.” He continued: “One fact we must keep constantly before usthe fact that British forces of occupation still hold six of our Irish counties against the will of the Irish people and by holding those six counties they dominate and control the life of the whole thirty-two.” He finished with an appeal to action: “Let us get rid of the invader out of every last inch of our territory-then and only then can we celebrate with a full heartthen and only then can we say that we have truly honoured our glorious dead.” Easter commemorations gave Ó Brádaigh an opportunity to recruit for the Longford IRA. He read the IRA’S Easter statement every year. Potential recruits could approach him and indicate that they were interested in more than Sinn FCin. Ó Brádaigh would then check the person’s background, a relatively easy task in a small county such as Longford. A prime resource was senior people, including Hubert Wilson and Sedn F. Lynch. Like Pasha Ó DonnabhGn, Ó Brádaigh’s job was to separate the reliable from the unreliable.
Ó Brádaigh was first a section leader of the Longford unit of the IRA. The section was attached to the Leitrim IRA, which was under the command of John Joe McGirl. Although it was only a nominal attachmentthey only met once or twice a year-it was significant. McGirl, who was about ten years older than Ó Brádaigh, was rebuilding the IRA in the area. He was reasonable and, more important, very enthusiastic. After two years, this arrangement was dropped and the small five-member Longford unit of the IRA became independent, with Ó Brádaigh as commanding officer reporting directly to Tony Magan. A perquisite of an independent unit is that it may send a delegate to the IRA’s annual convention. As an elected delegate, Ó Brádaigh attended the IRA’s 1953 convention. Aside from providing opportunities to participate in decision making and learn policy firsthand, conventions also bring together Republicans from throughout Ireland. One of the other delegates was Joe Cahill from Belfast. Cahill, in his early 30s, was one of six people arrested in 1942 and charged with the death of a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC; reformed for Northern Ireland from the Royal Irish Constabulary). Five of the sentences were commuted. Nineteen-year-old Tom Williams, the commanding officer of the unit that killed the constable, accepted responsibility for the action, and even though he did not fire the fatal shot, he was hanged in prison in Belfast. Cahill was among the last of the 1940s IRA people to be released. He was to become a key figure in the Republican Movement in the 1970s.
Attending the convention gave Ó Brádaigh the opportunity to see at first hand how the IRA worked. Although it is a clandestine organization, the IRA has a structure to govern its members. The twelve-member 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