Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was born in Longford Town in the early 1930s, the child of veterans of the 1919-23 era of Irish politics. By the time he graduated from University College Dublin (1954), he was already a training officer in the Irish Republican Army. He took a job teaching Commerce and Irish to secondary-level students at a vocational school in nearby Roscommon, and he lived there the rest of his life. He also travelled the world on behalf of Sinn Féin and is inextricably linked with the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland.

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s life is a window for understanding the generation of Irish Republicans that followed the people who rebelled in 1916, fought the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1922, and lost the Irish Civil War (1922-23). As young men and women, the republicans of his generation supported the IRA campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s and moved into leadership positions. Although some of his generation would ultimately reject armed struggle, he and his like-minded peers were the Provisional IRA’s “officer corps for the 1970s”.

For at least two reasons, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s life will remain relevant long after his passing. First, among those who embrace the use of armed struggle to achieve political ends, he had impeccable credentials. He spent years in the leadership of the IRA, Sinn Féin, and Republican Sinn Féin, three organizations that are central to understanding Irish Republicanism and, more generally, Irish politics since 1950. Second, his refusal to compromise and go along with the Irish peace process informs the activism of current activists who are often and misleadingly described as "anti-Good Friday Republicans"; like Ó Brádaigh, there is more to their activism than simple opposition to the GFA. Whether or not someone agrees with his politics, because Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was there when the Provisionals were created, he could legitimately claim that they did not, and will not, achieve their original goals. Because of people like him, the “Troubles” are still without end. Understanding who Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was is important for understanding the past and future of uncompromising Irish Republicans. His funeral is an important event in the history of the Irish Republican Movement.