As for Matt Brady and May Caffrey, they found each other in the midst of the truce. They were a perfect match—almost. She was a Cumann na mBan veteran, he was an IRA veteran. Each of them rejected the treaty. They were both ardent proponents of the Irish language. Yet May’s parents worried about the future of their young healthy daughter who was involved with a man nine years her senior who had not, and probably never would, recover from devastating war wounds. Her sister Bertha told her in fun, “You are running around with a broken soldier.” May was unhappy with the comment. Complicating their situation, each was employed at the Longford County Home. An employee there was not allowed to supervise the work of one’s spouse. If they married, one of them would be out of a job.
For four years they wrestled with these issues. In considering their options, they enlisted the support of the most powerful person they knew, Major General Sein Mac Eoin. Mac Eoin had saved Matt Brady’s life and kept him out of harm’s way as he recovered. While they differed totally in politics, they respected each other, and with May Caffrey the three of them had a personal relationship that transcended their political differences. This is clearly evident in letters found in Mac Eoin’s papers. Unfortunately, the best that Mac Eoin could do was to give an assurance that if May Caffrey resigned her job, Matt Brady would receive “the fullest possible consideration" for the position of superintendent assistance officer at the County Home. Making the best of a difficult situation, Matt Brady resigned his job. May Brady would be the breadwinner in the family.
They were married on August 26, 1926, at Castlefinn, County Donegal, where her parents lived. They passed through London on their honeymoon. May later recalled the trip for her children, finding humor in Matt’s reaction. She enjoyed the sights, but he instinctively wanted to get out of the place as fast as possible; as far as he was concerned, England was the fountainhead of all that was bad in the Irish world. They moved on and visited her relations in Switzerland. When they finally arrived back in Longford, May went to work as the secretary of County Longford Board of Health. Matt was unemployed but helped out as she went about her business, and they looked forward to raising a family.
Wedding photograph of May Caffrey and Matt Brady, August 1926.6 BrMaigh family collection.
2
The Brady Family
IRISH REPUBLICANS IN THE 1930S AND 1940S
POLITICAL EVENTS IN THE 1920s split people into two camps: pro- and anti-Treaty, which became defined as anti- and pro-Republican. In the 1930s and early 1940s, the anti-Treaty Republicans split again, for or against involvement in constitutional politics. These divisions directly affected the lives of Matt and May Brady and their children.
In 1925, the IRA formally withdrew itself from the authority of the Second Diil. The two organizations still sought an Irish Republic, but they drifted apart. The anti-Treaty Second Dáil Teachtai Dda considered themselves to be the de jure government of all of Ireland. Their abstentionism, however, locked them out of participation in the Free State government. In 1926, at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (convention), Éamon de Valera asked the delegates to drop the abstentionist policy with respect to both Leinster House and Stormont (the Parliament of Northern Ireland). When his request was denied, de Valera resigned as president of Sinn Féin and formed a new political party, Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin contested seats in the June 1927 Free State general election to “Leinster Housen—Republicans refused to label the government “Diil Éireann.” Under the direction of the charismatic de Valera, Fianna Fáil virtually wiped out Sinn Féin as the Republican alternative in the election, but it did not win enough seats to form a government. Instead, William Cosgrave and his pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal Party remained in power. This power was unchecked because entering Leinster House required an oath of allegiance to the Crown, which de Valera and the other Fianna Fáil TDs refused to take. But political events would lead them to compromise.
Many Republicans held Kevin O’Higgins, Free State minister for justice during the Irish Civil War and subsequently the state’s vice-president, responsible for the executions of 1922–1923. In July, 1927, freelance IRA volunteers shot him dead. Cosgrave responded by introducing severe antiRepublican legislation, and there was no opposition party to stop it. In a dramatic move, de Valera led his followers to Leinster House, signed the oath of allegiance, and entered Parliament. The decision haunts his place in history. Taking his seat did not prevent more repressive legislation, and purists believed he had compromised his principles. Because it was only the opposition party, Fianna Fdil continued its Republican rhetoric and kept an uneasy peace with those suspicious of de Valerds motives. As the 1932 Free State general election approached, de Valera was an untested alternative to the anti-Republicanism of Cosgrave. The IRA actively supported Fianna FG1, and the party won enough seats to form a coalition government with Labour. For the next sixteen years, Fianna Fdil was in power either in coalition or on its own.
Fianna Fdil acted like a Republican government. IRA prisoners were quickly released, the IRA was deproscribed, legislation removing the oath of allegiance was introduced, and the governor general was replaced with a de Valera loyalist. Fianna Fdil also refused to pay land annuities to the British created by the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and the Treaty. The first strain in the Fianna Fdil-IRA relationship appeared as fascism swept across Europe and landed in Ireland as the Blueshirts, a right-wing group that clashed with the IRA. The Fianna Fáil government could not tolerate this; it seized propaganda material and arrested Blueshirts and IRA members. The Blueshirts were short lived; they were harassed by the IRA, arrested by the government, and abandoned by mainstream politicians.
The IRA, still a large organization with generations of experience with conspiracy behind it, presented a more difficult problem. De Valera used his power to wean support from the IRA. In 1933, the Fianna Fáil government established an army volunteer reserve; the goal was to attract potential IRA recruits to the forces of the state. In 1934, a military service pension was introduced for old IRA men. Caught up in the Depression, some anti-Treaty Republicans were faced with living in poverty, emigrating, or recognizing the government and taking a pension. The IRA saw the pensions as an attempt to “seduce Volunteers from their allegiancen and rejected them. Able-bodied IRA veterans who accepted pensions were viewed as sellouts, but disabled veterans were allowed to accept. Matt Brady qualified for and received a pension.
National politics were played out on the local level throughout the Free State. Sedn Mac Eoin retired as chief of staff of the Irish Free State Army and became a full-time politician. In June 1934, the Blueshirts came to North Longford and Mac Eoin, a United Ireland Party TD (which was reorganized from Cumann na nGaedheal and later referred to as Fine Gael, the party’s Irish name), supported them. Sein F. Lynch organized against the rally, asking people to stay away “from the Blueshirt parade" because they were there “to create trouble and disturb the peace.”
That same June, the IRA staged a rally in Longford “in support of a demand for the release of Republican prisoners and the abolition of the Public Safety Act,” which was enacted by Cosgrave’s government and then used by de Valera’s government against the Blueshirts and the IRA. Forming up on Battery Road, 300 members of the IRA and its youth group, Na Fianna Éireann, carried banners with slogans such as “Join the IRA" and “Smash Partition" and marched to the