Dan Hoban’s Remarks at the funeral of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
“Begins in Irish….Óglaigh na hÉireann, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.
Fellow Republicans and people who remain true to the Irish Republican cause right down through the years, you have put on a great demonstration here today. A demonstration that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh would be so proud of.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, a personal friend and a comrade-in-arms for nigh on sixty years. And my first duty on behalf of all loyal Republicans is to offer our deepest sympathy to his wife Patsy, to his two daughters, Deirdre and Eithne, to his sons Mait, Ruairí Óg, Conchúr, and Colm. To Seán Ó Brádaigh, his brother and his wife Blathnaid, and to the extended Ó Brádaigh family. They were great people who stood behind a great man. And as Ruairí Ó Brádaigh once said to me, he says, “Any man is as good as the woman who stands behind him.” And he had a great one.
For sixty years myself and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh trod the roads of Ireland. We were comrades-in-arms, we were villains and we did the devil together. And we have no regrets. And when I sat in his front sitting room, three weeks ago, and he was barely able to talk, he still rose himself up in the chair, and he said to me, “Dan”, he says, “we lit the torch, she’s lighting well, and if we fail to free Ireland before we go, we will make sure that the next generation has the right to do that. And there are better men to come than ever we were.”
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was born to Matt and May Brady on the second of October 1932, the second of three children. Before that his sister May and after that his brother Seán. And Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was born to be a Republican. Because all who belonged to him were Republicans and had served that Republican cause. Matt Ó Brádaigh, his father, was severely wounded in an engagement with the British forces of occupation in 1919. And the man who stands here beside me, chairing this meeting, Seán Lynch’s father was the man who brought him medical attention. And Matt Ó Brádaigh suffered a lot before he died at a young age of 42.[i] And he died with a British bullet still in his body. That is the environment into which Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was born.
My first encounter with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was in the 1950s. And we can reminisce here amongst some old comrades when Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was a training officer in the West of Ireland. Before that he travelled all North Longford and that area of Leinster as a training officer, first of all on a pushbike and then when he got enough money together he got a little motorbike. And by God he got around with it. And he met some people. And as the fella says, “He kicked some arse.” But anyways, I remember and there will be a few people out here today including a great friend of his, Seán Scott, and my own brother-in-law, Peadar Murray, who is here today, will remember the camps that Ruairí ran. Out in the forest in July and August, the flies eating you and you came in at night and down on Mount Talbot, Tommy McDermott was the cook and he had a big black pot and you got IRA stew. Well, if you ate it, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh also ate it. And as Tommy McDermott says, “It’ll harden ye up, boys”. So those were the days.
And we went on from there to where Ruairí reached a high popularity and he contested the General Election of 1957. Let me explain to you that it was on the abstentionist policy. And Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was returned to Dáil Éireann on that policy. And he remained true to that policy right throughout his life. And when men took gold and took houses and took everything, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh took nothing.
And when he was interned in the Curragh Concentration Camp, and let me say, we are surrounded here by all this big armed response unit — oh Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was a terrible dangerous man. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s first mission in the Irish Republican Army was an attack on Arborfield Barracks in the heart of the enemy territory in Britain.[ii] And he came away with a handful of weapons and there was no armed response unit then. And there was no armed response unit when Ruairí Ó Brádaigh led the Teeling Column in the 1956 campaign in Fermanagh. And that was it. And then he was interned in the Curragh.
I always remember in the Curragh there was a more diplomatic man than the armed response unit we have here today. He was the man, the O/C commanding the Free State forces, and he had a meeting with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, and he said, “I’ll bend forwards, I’ll lean backwards, I’ll do anything for ye but I won’t kiss the ground”. But the only time that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh leaned forward was when he went out under that the wire fence, himself and Dáithí O Connell.
I must pay a compliment to the people of North Longford, where he went to, and he was sheltered until he was built up strong enough to join his comrades in the 1956 campaign to continue the fight for Irish freedom, the fight that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh had continued up to this day. There were all kinds of things happened in Republican circles. We have a bad history. We have a history of men who are bought and men who sold but Ruairí Ó Brádaigh never sold anything. He sold his soul to the Irish people and he remained true to them to the bitter end.
I am so proud to stand here today to pay the last respects to this man.
This man, I travelled the roads the length and breadth of Ireland. And you know a funny thing, we used to meet, we can say it now because we won’t be meeting in this house anymore, its vacant, but he used to pick me up at his sister May’s house. May was a very kind person and she was fully behind Ruairí and when we were in the Curragh in the 50s, May was so concerned about the Republican prisoners that she thought this thing out very well and she said, “Well, I’ll send a parcel, I’ll collect a parcel of food and I’ll send it in to the man with the largest family’. And who do you think the man with the largest family was? Dan Hoban — of the country, it’s a good job I was locked up!
Well anyways, time has moved on and we all came through that period; then there was a lull in the Irish history program up until 1969. And in 1969 — the man who laid the first wreath here — Seán Maguire, son of Comdt-General Tom Maguire, who the last surviving member of the Executive of the Second Dáil, had handed over the powers that be to the Army Council of the IRA in 1938 and now handed it over when we were sold out by the Stickies in 1969, and had re-handed it out to the Continuity IRA in 1986 when our erstwhile comrades had sold the past.
You know, I was speaking three weeks ago at Arigna, at the re-dedication of the monument up there, up there and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was very ill at the time. And a lot of people said he wouldn’t be there. But as I mounted the platform a car drove up driven by his wife Patsy and we got Ruairí out of the car and he took his place. And when I came down after speaking he squeezed my hand and he said to me, “It isn’t often I see you in a new suit, but keep it pressed, you will want it”.
So that is why I am so proud to be here today with all you good Republicans because there are so many good people in this country. Forget about the people that have sold the past. Forget about those. We won’t even think about them who have shook hands with the Queen - who have sold the Irish people down the drain.[iii]
But when I sat in that front room with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh three weeks ago and he said, “Dan, we have lit the flame, it’s burning. I may not see it but another generation will come, the same as they came in ’69, and they will do it”. That was his belief right up to his death. He was such a man you could not explain.
I’ve had so many happy memories of him. But the last thing I will say here today is that if we respect his memory, you people, the young people of Ireland, I am appealing to you here today, get into the ranks of the Republican Movement. Drive the Brits from our shores. Don’t be ashamed to be a Republican. Stand out there like Ó Brádaigh did and take them on.
That was Ruairí and that’s the way it should be. We don’t give a damn about these fellas that are here on the outside. We speak our minds because what I have said today to you people I couldn’t read it off a paper because I have lived this with this man for 60 years. He was my voice. He was everything to me and he was everything to so many people. He never put a foot wrong in those sixty years. He was the Chief-of-Staff, he was the Publicity Officer. He issued statements. He could never be contradicted. He held his true Republican principles until the end and that is why you people are here today to honor such a great soldier of the Irish Republican Army.
I will conclude by saying about Ruairí Ó Brádaigh what Pearse said at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa, “They think they have intimidated half of us and they think that they have bought the other half — but the fools, the fools, the fools they have left us our patriot dead and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
That is the life and story of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and I am so proud to be here and doing this and I’m sure he would be proud of me, too. Go raith mille … An Poblacht abu.
[i] Matt Brady (Ó Brádaigh in Irish), Ruarí Ó Brádaigh’s father, was an Independent Republican County Councilor in Longford, born in 1890 and died 7 June 1942, aged 52. See Robert White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006).
[ii] On the morning of 13 August 1955, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh led an IRA team into the British army's Arborfield Barracks (or Garrison) in Berkshire, England. They captured the sentries and seized enough weapons to fill two vans, including 55 Sten guns, 10 Bren guns, and 60,000 rounds of ammunition (see J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: From 1916 - [Dublin: The Academy Press, 1979, pp. 273-75]). Several IRA members were subsequently arrested and the weapons retrieved; Ó Brádaigh was among those who were not captured. Although weapons were recovered and a part of the raiding party was captured, the raid was seen as a public relations coup in that the IRA boldly entered a British army base in England, captured soldiers, and made off with a large number of weapons.
[iii] This is a reference to Martin McGuinness (1950-2017), former Chief of Staff of the IRA (1978-82), leading member of Sinn Féin, and Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly (2007-17), who shook the hand of Queen Elizabeth II when she toured Northern Ireland in 2012.