By the end of August the 115 internees in the Curragh included most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership-Tony Magan, Paddy McLogan, Tomis Mac Curtiin, Larry Grogan (whose son joined him in January 1958), Robert Russell, Ó Brádaigh, and others. Several of the internees would become prominent in the movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, including Dáithi O’Connell, Éamonn MacThomiis, Sein Garland, Tomb Mac Giolla, and Proinsias de Rossa. Except for Vice-President Buckley and one other person, May Smith, one of the general secretaries, Sinn Féin had been beheaded and the Ard Chomhairle was in the Curragh. With McLogan as president, the internees began holding Ard Chomhairle meetings. Through visitors, the internees sent notes to May Smith and the organization continued on the outside. At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in October, McLogan was re-elected president and seven other internees were elected to the Ard Chornhairle, including Ó Brádaigh. Minus the internees, the reconstituted Ard Chomhairle began holding its own meetings in the Sinn Féin offices in Dublin. It was a signal to the state’s authorities that, internment or not, Sinn Féin would not roll over.
Neither would the IRA. A camp council that included Magan and McLogan was elected, with Mac Curtiin as commanding officer. The 1940s campaign and their experiences in the Curragh had left an indelible mark on them. Confrontation with Dublin had been a disaster. Avoiding confrontation had allowed them to rebuild the movement. As a result, they adopted a narrow nonconfrontational approach, which eventually caused problems. Initially everyone supported the council, which organized leathercraft projects, Irish-language classes, and other activities-Mac Curtdin and Ó Brádaigh taught Irish. For a group of men engaged in a political and military campaign against a colonial power, there were any number of topics available for discussion: Castro and Cuba; Nasser and the Suez Crisis; the FLN, the Colons and the French in Algeria; the EOKA, the Cypriots, and the Turks; and Dien Bien Phu and its ramifications in Vietnam. They were especially interested in the role of physical force in social change.
India and Ireland experienced similar treatment from the British after World War I. The British had promised Home Rule for Ireland in 1914, only to defer implementation until after the war. Before the war ended, the Easter Rebellion had occurred, which led to the 1918 election and DBil Éireann; instead of Home Rule, the Irish got repression. India had been promised political reform during World War I, but the British extended wartime emergency measures in 1919 with the Rowlett Acts and Indian leaders felt betrayed. When Mahatma Gandhi spearheaded a campaign to repeal the acts, the British responded with repression, including the Amritsar Massacre in April 1919, when British troops opened fire on a huge crowd of protesters in a small park surrounded by high walls, killing about 400 people.
The agitation in Ireland resulted in a partitioned country, not a Republic. Because of this, there was still an IRA. India had achieved independence, however, and the hunger strikes and nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns of Mahatma Gandhi were often presented as evidence that independence could be won without physical force. To the internees, it seemed evident that Gandhi must have known that people would suffer and die because of his actions. Most important, they believed that the options and resources available to the Indian leaders were not available to them. In India, a huge population was ruled by a small number of British personnel. The British Army could not control the population if a large percentage of it engaged in civil disobedience. In Ireland, the British and the Unionists had carved out an area where their sympathizers were by far in the majority. Politicians in Dublin claimed sovereignty over a 32county Irish Republic, but they were no match for the British government, who ruled Northern Ireland. Civil disobedience was an effective option in India; it was less so in Ireland. This, for the internees, had been confirmed by events in Fermanagh.
Some of the internees had experienced the civil disobedience campaign of Canon Thomas Maguire in Fermanagh. In Northern Ireland, under the Flags and Emblems (Display) Act of 1954, a Union Jack was afforded special protection; it was an offense to interfere with the display of a British flag. In contrast, a police officer could require a person to remove any other “emblem,” including an Irish flag. If a person refused to remove an offensive “emblem,” the police were authorized to enter buildings or homes and remove it. To raise awareness of discrimination against Nationalists in Northern Ireland, Canon Maguire would lock his door and hang an Irish flag from a window. Rather than kick in the door, the police would get ladders. As they were climbing up to capture his Irish flag, Maguire would reach out of the window and take it in. Although events like this might lead to press coverage, given Unionist domination of the Northern Ireland Parliament, they would not change the basic social and political arrangements there. Similarly, in organizing marches such as those associated with the Fermanagh Feiseanna, Maguire instructed people to march up to the RUC, filter through the police line one at a time, and then regroup and continue marching. It was a great action in principle, but in practice marchers were attacked with police batons and water cannons. The attacks also led to press coverage, but no one put external pressure on the RUC as a result; the Northern Ireland government defended the RUC, the Irish government was powerless, and the British government did not care.
Ó Brádaigh was among those internees who concluded that there was a place for civil disobedience in the Republican Movement’s repertoire, but in and of itself civil disobedience would not bring about a united and free Ireland. Based on his interpretation of Irish and more general colonial history, civil disobedience usually caused “action that would be taken by the Imperial power [that] would result in physical confrontation"-civil disobedience, in a colonial setting, generates state repression. In the face of state repression, the question was whether or not people would defend themselves or be driven into submission. Some people might submit. But “given our roots and our background and our experience and all that type of thing, we would be a people who would fight back.” Civil disobedience could be used to raise people’s awareness and to expose the illegitimacy of the colonial power, setting the stage for a military campaign. This was the goal of the planned “passive resistance campaign" that had not materialized before the Border Campaign. Gandhi’s hunger strikes, Canon Mapire’s violation of the Flags and Emblems Act, and the physical force the IRA used were all on a continuum-each was a weapon to be used against an unjust colonial oppressor.
Physically, conditions in the Curragh were crowded and cramped. The camp was old and had not been maintained. The exercise area was a muddy field that got worse and worse until the ground was no good for sports. The roofs leaked and sanitary conditions were poor. Toilets without doors were available outside the huts. The inside toilet facility was a large bucket in the corner of each hut. The internees wrote letters to the Irish Red Cross, which is funded by the Irish Department of Defense; their complaints were ignored. They also appealed to the International Red Cross. This effort received help from an unexpected source. Ó Brádaigh’s gandmother was Swiss and his mother had Swiss first cousins. One of them, Charles Girardclos, had married a French woman and lived in Paris. In August 1957 he took his wife on a holiday to Ireland. Not surprising, he found it curious that his cousin’s son, a member of the Irish Parliament, was interned. Girardclos was a dentist, and he informed the Ó Brádaighs and Caffreys that the secretary general of the International Red Cross was one of his patients. The families arranged for Girardclos to visit Ruairí, and he surreptitiously photographed the camp, with Ruairí standing by the fence wire. The photo was later published in the United Irishman. When Girardclos returned home he contacted the International Red Cross.
In October the Irish Department of Defense was notified that the International Red Cross wanted to inspect the facility. Whether or not this was prompted by Girardclos’s letter, it helped the internees. By the time of the inspection in the spring, the roofs were repaired, new toilets were installed, new beds were distributed, a physician had visited each internee, and a section of