The day after the count over 1,000 people attended a rally in Longford in support of their jailed abstentionist Teachta DAla. A band played marches and the town courthouse was decorated with Irish flags and a Sinn FCin banner. Thomas Higgins of Longford Sinn FCin read a letter from Ó Brádaigh to the crowd. He thanked his supporters for their work and then drew a parallel to the 1917 election: “Longford and Westmeath have matched their achievement of 40 years ago, and have written yet another page in the history of our struggle for unity and independence.” He also looked to the future, “If 1957 has been another 1917, then let us in God’s name look forward to another 1918, to the day in the near future, when the All-Ireland Parliament, pledged to legislate for the whole 32 Counties will be re-assembled.” Another speaker was Seán Ó Brádaigh, who stated, “We want to end the corruption, graft and hypocrisy that has been going on for the past 35 years.” The rally ended with the singing of “A Nation Once Again" and the national anthem.
From a revolutionary Republican point of view, the election was a watershed, Sinn FCin’s best showing in the Twenty-Six Counties since 1927. Combined with the Mid-Ulster and Fermanagh-South Tyrone results from 1955, Sinn FCin had elected six deputies to an All-Ireland Parliament. From the perspective of constitutional politics, Sinn FCin’s success was less dramatic. The party had elected four of 147 members of Leinster House. And because they were abstentionists, those four people would have no voice in the formation of the new government. Neither would Seán Mac Bride, who lost his seat. The big winner was Fianna Fáil, which elected seventy-eight Teachtai DAla and formed yet another government with am on de Valera as Taoiseach. De Valera, the most successful Irish politician of the twentieth century, was interviewed soon after the election. The most important issue for him was the Irish economy, which was forcing people to emigrate-"Unemployment is the one thing I am thinking at the moment.” He was also asked, ’Rs an old I.R.A. fighter yourself, what is your present view towards the revival of this extreme national movement?” His reply brought no comfort to Sinn FCin and the IRA, “As far as this part of the island is concerned, we have here a democratic system completely free and you cannot have two armed forces obviously.”
Mary Ó Brádaigh Delaney at a Sinn Féin rally in support of her brother, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, TD, Longford, 1957. Ó Brádaigh family collection.
6
TD, Internee, Escapee, and Chief of Staff
MARCH 1957—JUNE 1959
SINN FÉIN AND THE IRA were spurred on by the election. In March 1957, John Joe McGirl was released from Mountjoy and given a hero’s welcome when he arrived home in Ballinamore, Leitrim. In Limerick, Sein South’s home area, Sinn FCin established eight new cumainn. The election elevated Ó Brádaigh, McGirl, O’Hanlon, and Rice to the status of Teachtai Dila, and their enhanced status was used to promote their cause. Soon after the election, Ó Brádaigh’s election agent, Mary Delaney, sent a letter to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, concerning the imprisonment of a TD, her brother Ruairí. She called on the European Commission on Human Rights to investigate the provisions of Ireland’s Offenses Against the State Act, which she believed to be “the very negation of democracy and of all human rights.” It was the first attempt by Irish Republicans to seek redress from the commission.
Several prisoners in Mountjoy had received a three months’ sentence in January. Soon after the election, there was a series of releases and by the end of April most of the IRA’S leadership was back in place, with Tony Magan as chief of staff. The campaign had survived and was rejuvenated by their return. Early in the morning of Thursday, July 4th, the IRA ambushed an RUC patrol near Crossmaglen in South Armagh. An RUC commando was killed and another injured. That night, RUC posts in Fermanagh and Tyrone were wrecked by time bombs. To this point, the new Fianna Fáil government had not directly confronted the campaign. The attacks demonstrated that arresting people along the border and giving them light sentences was not enough. On Friday, July 5th, with Dáil Éireann/Leinster House closed for its summer recess, the Dublin government invoked Part Two of the Offenses Against the State Act, which allows for detention without trial-internment. On Saturday, the Special Branch raided the country, arresting sixty-three people. In Dublin, Sinn Ftin’s head office and the offices of The United Irishman were raided. An Ard Chomhairle meeting was in session, and Paddy McLogan, Tony Magan, Robert Russell, Michael Traynor, and Tomb Mac Giolla were arrested. In Cork, Tomis Mac CurtPin was arrested as he got off a train. The one person at Sinn Féin headquarters who was not arrested was Vice President Margaret Buckley; she left the building and tried to warn others that internment was under way.
On Sunday, the Curragh Camp, which was being used as a military prison for the Irish Army, was again an internment camp. Those arrested on Saturday were taken from the Bridewell in Dublin and shipped to the Curragh. The Government Information Bureau, on behalf of the minister for justice, released a statement claiming that people were arrested because they were believed to be involved in military activities. It said that “no one has been arrested because of membership of the Sinn Féin organisation.” Because the Ard Chomhairle of Sinn Ftin, a legal political party, had been picked up virtually en masse, the statement’s sincerity was subject to question. An editorial in the Irish Times supported the government, stating that internment was a necessary evil: “It is a sickening thought that, once again, circumstances exist which force the Government to revive the special powers of arrest and detention available under a section of the Offenses Against the State Act. In a democratic country nobody relishes the invocation of authority to bypass the ordinary processes of law. At the same time, it is difficult to see how the Government could have acted otherwise.” Within a matter of days there were fifty-six internees in the Curragh.
When internment was introduced, there were sixty-two convicted Republican prisoners in Mountjoy. Fifteen of them, including Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, were due for release on July 13th. The prisoners, their guards, and the newspapers speculated on whether or not they would be released or interned. The Irish Times reported that military pards had been added at the Curragh and that repairs were under way on wooden huts that had held German airmen and seamen during World War 11. Because he was a TD, Ó Brádaigh’s situation was especially interesting. Various warders told him that although the others would be interned, he would be released. Ó Brádaigh, who knew his Irish history, doubted it; to him, it appeared that de Valera was still living in 1940. Officially he was an elected member of the Dublin Parliament, but he expected the same treatment as the others. He had little faith in the 26-county political system and believed that the government would intern a majority of the TDs if necessary, let alone one.
The prisoners were due for release at 7:30 AM. The night before, the chief warder, who was friendly as a person, went to the prisoners’ wing and told Ó Brádaigh that there had been a phone call from the Department of Justice. All of them would be interned. The prisoners expected to see their families, and protesters, as they were released and taken back into custody. Instead, they were awakened early, at 5:30 AM, given tea and a slice of bread, and sent to the gate, where lorries awaited them. Ó Brádaigh was the first to be released. As he stepped through the main prison gate, Inspector McMahon said, “Ruairí,” tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed to a lorry. Very quickly the fifteen prisoners were transformed into internees and were on their way to the Curragh.
Their families arrived at Mountjoy’s