When
8-year-old Ruarí Ó Brádaigh
was getting ready for school, February 7, 1940,
his father pulled out his pocket watch. He commanded
Rory and his sister, when the big hand hit nine:
'Kneel down and say your prayers. Two Irishmen now
lie into quicklime graves in Birmingham.' (27) Peter
Barnes and James McCormick had been hanged for the
1939 Coventry bombings-neither IRA man had been
directly responsible for the premature detonation
that killed innocents, but victims had to be found.
Such drama often entered Rory Peter Casement Brady's
days, told in Robert W. White's biography. (Chesham,
Bucks.: Combined Academic Publishers/Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 2006; £20/$30) Matt Brady, Rory's
father, had been wounded in 1919; his life was saved
by Seán Mac Eoin-no friend of the Irregulars
in later years, but a loyal friend to one particular
Volunteer, no matter his side in the Civil War.
Matt died in 1942 from these slowly lethal wounds.
This symbolizes the world into which Ballinamuck,
Longford's Rory grew: one in which republican ideals
were lived, even if and certainly until death-even
if they killed you.
White,
who has written a curiously difficult to find (at
least in my experience; having long sought the book
in vain, I finally was able to photocopy it after
it finally had been retrieved after being 'on the
run' long from a university library) 'oral and interpretative
history' of the Provos (Westport CT: Greenwood P,
1993), here has the clout of Indiana UP and its
British distributor to publicize what I hope will
find its place on many shelves, public or private:
as his subtitle claims, this is a comprehensive
examination of 'the life and politics of an Irish
revolutionary.' In 436 packed pages, White scours
every scrap of information. He has excavated primary
material, challenged previous claims in print with
new evidence, and verified the claims documented
from lengthy interviews with RÓB and many
other Republicans-although Adams "and others"
refused, Danny Morrison consented once--by secondary
accounts and other witnesses whenever feasible.
His extensive notes record his careful scholarship.
His text flows without the impediments of many academics.
His insights unfold easily, without bravado, sentiment,
or editorializing. When White differs with RÓB,
he lets his findings make the counter-argument rather
than himself directly. Subtly and meticulously,
what emerges is the clash of principles with pragmatism
within the Republican movement over the past half-century
and more.
While
we have had lately solid biographies of Adams (Sharrock
& Davenport), McGuinness (Clarke & Johnston),
and Brendan Anderson's of Joe Cahill (also reviewed
by me in The Blanket), we until now have
lacked a substantial presentation of the supposedly
more traditional Republican thinker and activist
who, since 1986, has found himself and RSF on the
fringes of the Movement after having been shunted
aside in maneouvres that began at least a decade
before. Many readers of this review surely recall
how the Northern contingent, eager to carry on a
more sectarian campaign that targeted Loyalists
and therefore gained a tit-for-tat revenge against
their enemies, undermined the power of Dáithí
Ó Conaill (deserving of his own biography
certainly!) and RÓB. Belfast and Derry defeated
Dublin and the 26 County base that had sustained
the Movement for most of the past century. White
analyses how these tactics evolved, and fair-mindedly
provides his account of how RÓB--in his advocacy
of the Éire Nua programme that advocates
co-operatives, small-scale and localised control
of resources, and federalism allowing provincial
autonomy and grassroots representation as much as
possible within a united island under democratic
socialism-proves himself contrary to stereotype
the truly "revolutionary" socialist. Alongside
future Sticks and IRSP and Workers' Party founders,
RÓB laboured in the early 60s, after the
collapse of the Border Campaign, to provide a political
foundation for the military response to imperialism.
He argued against the allure of a consumer-driven,
EU-directed, market economy all too willing to weaken
the Irish language and native culture to advance
a specious Ameropean (to adapt a later term from
his one-time advisor Desmond Fennell ) hegemony.
His
interests in anti-colonial and national liberation
campaigns displayed his eagerness to learn from
like-minded radicals all over the world. His ecumenical
approach also inspired more local ties: the mid-60s
Wolfe Tone Society, White reminds us, had Belfast's
Protestants as its target audience. Despite the
damage it ultimately caused to his career by more
narrow-minded activists intent on revenge and not
only community defense, RÓB refused to pigeonhole
himself any more with Catholics than with Communists.
While his open-minded willingness to listen to Loyalists
and to invite them into his model of a Dáil
Uladh met with antagonism from both sides of the
sectarian divide in the 1970s, RÓB had long
preached against, as he had discussed in 1959 with
Seán Cronin, the dangers of the IRA turning
into a 'self-perpetuating religious sect' rather
than an 'instrument of freedom in Ireland.' (88)
He reminds us of RÓB's early creation, in
the mid-1970s, of what would become SF's foreign
policy, and of his subject's careful diplomacy that
established ties with other European and Third World
liberation struggles. He was an early proponent
of outreach to women's interests, and of an alternative
government-through a provincial Dáil that
was attempted to accompany the advocacy of Éire
Nua as the official policy of SF from about 1972
on until its abandonment was forced by Morrison.
SF's publicist famously belittled ÉN as 'a
sop to loyalism' in the same 1981 Ard Fheis speech
that boasted of the armalite and the ballot box's
two-handed ascendancy as the iconography of a Northern-controlled
Movement. As White quotes Ed Maloney's phrase for
this rejection of federalism that sought to protect
Loyalist self-government at the devolved level within
a democratic Republic, the scorn heaped upon RÓB
and his supporters revealed the Northerners' weakness:
they stooped to destroy federalism through 'the
ultimate sectarian analysis'. (284) Maloney also
provides a forward (dated April 2005) to this biography
in which he summarises that 'while Adams and his
people were prepared to break the rules to advance
their agenda, Ó Brádaigh believed
in playing by the rules, even though they might
damage his interests.' (xv) White diligently examines
the accusations that RÓB and Ó Conaill
had weakened the IRA in their handling of the 1975
truce. This supposed ineptitude, the Northerners
have long preached, had damaged the Movement and
thus justified the demotion or removal of the Dublin
and rural-based leaders. White finds that contrary
to claims-only in hindsight by Cahill, McGuinness,
and Adams-that none of these Northerners circa 1975
had expressed any of the doubts that they recalled
in 1985.
When
politics beckoned in the next decade, only then
did the Northerners manipulate votes at the 1986
Ard Fheis-which added 250 voters not attending the
1985 session who had defeated the call for the removal
of the doctrine of abstentionism from the collaborationist
Dáil in Leinster House. Packing Mansion House
with their new SF recruits and manipulating the
rules of who could vote so as to inflate voting
clout from many a newly-born, one-person cumann,
the majority who had aimed their rifles at the forces
of the South now dwindled as had every faction earlier
that century. The 1985 majority of 161 opposed,
141 in favour of ending abstention from the Dáil
turned into a rout: 429 for, 161 against in 1986.
Gerrymandering, intimidation, and a driver failing
to pick up a delegate likely to oppose the ballot
box policy: these all added up to defeat for those
determined to defy entry into the Dáil. The
holdouts by the media and their Provo victors portrayed
those who would begin RSF as a stubborn rosary-swaying,
gun-toting geriatrics--foolishly naïve followers
who preferred to parade their Fenian dead rather
than accept realpolitik. This fundamental IRA Green
Book policy of refusal to enter constitutional politics
had also for years been backed by the Northerners--until
entry into government in the wake of the H-Block
campaigns and the hope of wider electoral success
understandably swayed Provos to cooperate with Dublin's
government by sharing in its partitioned and British-backed
rule. Tempted by offers of power, promised jail
release if he informed, enduring hunger strike,
threatened by injury, cajoled by the sly, RÓB
does not back down from his principles, even at
the cost of losing any chance of success to advance
his heartfelt if idealistic vision of a truly revolutionary
socialism.
Contrary
to the canards peddled as fact by the Northern contingent
that defeated RÓB, White explains how RÓB
despite his suits and Pioneer badge and generally
mild manner-he worked as a vocational schoolteacher
in Roscommon town teaching Irish and business courses
when not directly serving as an activist, in hiding,
or seeking to advance the Movement abroad as well
as across Ireland-exemplifies radicalism. He explains
RÓB through what Frances Fox Piven and Richard
Cloward in Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed,
Why They Fail reveal: weaker parties gain from disrupting
the political process. Elites may respond with repression
and destruction of protest. Or, they may make concessions
if they cannot easily defuse the disruption. But
the key for success is that the weaker party remains
weaker! White paraphrases that 'short of a revolutionary
situation, protesters may force a government to
respond but they cannot dictate the nature of the
response.' (290) Concessions by the elite seek to
lure the protesters into 'normal political channels'
so its leaders are absorbed 'into stable institutional
roles.' White shows how this trapped the SDLP on
this route once they abandoned absentionism and
entered Stormont in 1974. They endorsed the statelet's
collection of overdue rents and rates. They consented
to their co-option. Meanwhile, internment continued.
This example may seem tangential in a biography.
Only one other time does White bring in comparative
political scholarship. But this also clarifies RÓB.
Adams and McGuinness and Morrison laughed at the
'suits' who represented the stuffy geezers and Fenian
worshippers rather than the denim-clad fist-raising
proles. White carefully contends that RÓB
would and has proved to be the more committed, uncompromising,
radical. As far back as the mid-1960s, RÓB
foresaw that the Marxists could cause a split. But,
in the meantime, hoping that this division could
be resisted, he decided to work with his comrades,
no matter their allegiance, to further the militant
along with the political cause. When the breaks
came in 1970 as in 1986, RÓB considered himself
the truer radical. So convinced is RÓB of
his ideals that he would rather wait for a wider
revolution one day that could transform Ireland
rather than enable constitutional efforts that only
prop up an unjust, capitalist, and voracious status
quo.
White
cites Rosa Luxemburg and Richard Michels. Michels
presents the 'Iron Law of Oligarchy' that crushed
socialist leaders of the early twentieth century.
These radicals, (White notes how Adams and his defenders
had in their earlier Marxist phase demanded abolition
of all Irish private property--against RÓB's
reminder that even in Eastern Europe some privatisation
was still allowed and defensible within a humane
and compassionate socialism that refused the class-based,
and demonstrably sectarian in its application, rigidity
of his Northern working-class opponents) once they
had organised and attained power, could not give
it up. The radicals became respectable. Their positions
had to be maintained, their perks sustained. Power
never returned to the people in whose name the socialists
had gained their votes and earned their party's
victory.
Rosa
Luxemburg in Revolution or Reform criticised reformers
who promised to destroy the legislatures they entered
vowing to defeat: 'Instead of taking a stand for
the establishment of a new society they take a stand
for the modification of the old society.' (342)
Such sparing citations are chosen well. They demonstrate
how RÓB's refusal on principle to enter not
only Westminster and Stormont but Leinster House,
during his time as SF leader and IRA chief-of-staff
as well as in his decades of service in many other
capacities, did not bring success as measured conventionally
by politicians, but has exemplified the necessity
for fidelity-dílseacht being the revealing
title of RÓB's biography of Second Dáil
survivor Tom Maguire-who granted the legitimacy
of the All-Ireland 1919 Republic to the Provos in
1970 and RSF in 1986. Why is this important? The
IRA claimed to be defending the Republic of 1916
proclaimed and established by the First Dáil
in 1919, reaffirmed by the Second of 1921, and never
dismantled by all the voters in Ireland--despite
the anti-Treaty vote of 1922 and the defeat of 1923,
no other grounds for legitimacy existed de jure
according to which the IRA could assert its legitimacy
against not only the British but the garda and the
'Free State' army. This claim of a sort of 'apostolic
succession' has often been derided by Marxists,
Provos, Sticks, and all other factions outside of
RSF, even by other dissidents from the current Provo
accommodation. But White, while not discounting
its fringe mentality and the costs that it has wrested
from its investors, does convincingly present how
a rejection of reformism becomes the only choice
for this brand of revolutionary.
If
the system is to be overthrown, RSF and RÓB
ask as once the Provos asked of the Officials in
1970 at their split, how can entry into the enemy's
camp and promotion as the enemy's servants be any
victory for those committed to radical Republicanism,
in the spirit of Peadar Ó Donnell-a role
model for RÓB-and those who sought nothing
less than a total 32-county democratic and socialist
republic? Against the Northern-led reformers, in
1982 RÓB defended his tenacity: to implement
'Irish people in control of their own affairs',
SF could not expect to merely shuffle the personnel
in charge of the government's institutions. Admitting
SF would not achieve the triumph of their platform.
'A big and successful heave to topple and replace
is what is needed rather than tinkering with the
existing system.' (289) Reformism could never be
disguised as revolution.
This
stance--parodied by the communists as naïve
and lacking in the deviousness that Lenin counseled
if rebels were to poison the beast from within,
and denigrated by the pragmatists as doomed to failure
within a nation that has long relegated the mandate
of the Second Dáil to the margins of Republican
histories--deserves the attention given here. White
keeps his academic distance from his subject. He
balances his interviews with citations, reflections,
and a detailed grasp of the minutiae surrounding
many diplomatic, tactical, and personal agendas
that have convulsed the Movement. I might add that
on pp. 340-1 he places the refusal of a vocal group
of ex-prisoners to accept the strategy of the Provos
within the context of their crackdowns against anti-GFA
dissidents. White also records violence perpetrated
by those aligned with the Provos against Derry and
Belfast activists; White refers in his notes on
pg. 404 to The Blanket's coverage of repression.
In
conclusion, he depicts why and how RÓB has
chosen a similarly unpopular stance that exiles
him from the comforts of power, the better to repel
its enticements and to seek realization of his dreams
of a socialism deepened by an ecological, non-sectarian
vision of gaining a fairer control by all of Ireland
over its resources, its products, and its peoples'
destiny. Inspired perhaps by the canton system of
Switzerland as a model for a union of independent
entities-his mother's mother was a Swiss Protestant
émigré-and by his own family rooted
partially in Belfast and Donegal, RÓB never
let his idealism become tainted by sectarianism.
This lost him the leadership of his party after
a decade or so of back-room deals and bitter backbiting
by the Northern contingent, but he kept his dignity.
RSF thus claims itself the only Republican party
true to its legacy. While this echoes the slogans
of Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta, Workers'
Party, and Provisionals, each of these predecessors
has in turn entered into the government that they
once had vowed to destroy. Yet, as an idealist,
RÓB claims to speak for many silent faithful.
Before the 1970 split, he observed correctly: 'the
minority is going to expel the majority.' While
nobody can make the same claim for RSF, rather than
give in to the majority, this time a minority still
refuses to surrender and to 'repeat the mistake
of the past.' (150) While avowedly Republican parties
earned seats, none have regained the island-wide
Republic as declared by their heirs and former comrades
in 1916 and 1919.
White
shows that RÓB must live where he has chosen
by such idealistic intransigence to reside: on the
outside of the castle and out of range from the
camera. Unlike Anderson's biography of Cahill, White
does offer us glimpses into domestic life, his marriage,
and the continuation of the struggle as fought by
his children. You do wonder how his family survived
without him for so much of his career. At least,
unlike as in Cahill's story, the children receive
names and assume recognisable identities. Too often,
no matter who's under examination, the Republican
leader analysed leaves spouse, parents, and children
outside the spotlight. While understandable for
privacy and protection, this often makes the activist
appear as if floating, his daily duties somehow
rolling on effortlessly as the kids keep coming
between his stints in prison or under a hedge. White
takes time to place RÓB within his community,
his heritage, and his legacy to show how the deeply
rooted ideals planted at an early age-such as in
an eight-year-old in 1940-blossom and renew.
His
local advocates in Roscommon town, no matter their
differences politically, held on to RÓB's
right to his post in absentia and proved in court
that his pension had been paid into. He kept the
respect of his neighbours in Roscommon and Longford
for decades. While his softer, more humorous side
was necessarily eclipsed by his bold resistance
and darkened by media eager to rank him among the
world's worst terrorists, RÓB does in these
pages emerge as a man who respected even those who
would betray his principles. He does not attribute,
for instance, Adams' long rise to power to any inherent
character flaw, but to Adams' choice to work within
a constitutional system that could only doom its
adherents to compromise. While the Provos succeeded
in entering the same Dáil as their earlier
opponents, giving in to pragmatism to advance in
the name of republicanism, RÓB finally steps
aside and watches them pass. His commitment to the
same fidelity that inspired his own forebears and
continues in his children wins out over his ambition.
Early
on, in 1966 against the communism of Goulding, Johnston,
and MacGiolla that would impel the Officials, RÓB
defended his brand of less au courant but equally,
if not more, relevant social agitation. This popular
front of civil rights and Enlightenment direction
had, however, to be welded to political activism,
and this strategy need not always stay peaceful
if violence against the State was deemed necessary
for revolution. Those faithful to tradition could
be just as radical. White speaks for RÓB
as he contended-immediately against the Marxists
in the late 60s Movement, but also consistently
ever since: 'Everyone agreed that the Dublin Parliament
was a neocolonial apologist for British imperialism.
How was the person who was willing to cooperate
with that Parliament more revolutionary than the
person who refused such cooperation?' (137) A question
all the more relevant today as the Parliaments,
Assemblies, and Ministries multiply that require
vowed Republicans to sign 'test case' oaths not
to promote physical-force, unconstitutional methods
as their ticket of admittance into the corridors
of power.
But,
if Republicanism in its endangered purity demands
no seduction, then a few true adherents can still
be found in every generation who refuse these blandishments
of power. They may be ignored as fanatics, cast
out as terrorists, or condemned as infidels or excommunicants
or cranks--depending on the accuser's own ideology.
But the diehards' defiant recital of Republican
catechism learned, as Rory's was at his father's
request to kneel in honor of another pair of Fenian
dead, rolls on through decades. You may reject this
purity. Yet, you close White's study understanding
its dogma and why its appeal still beckons to a
few stalwart activists. White's book enables us
to comprehend, if not necessarily to share or applaud,
the costs and the rewards of such an embattled faith.
i
White names Fennell as an 'important non-Republican
resource' for RÓB. (172) Fennell apparently
never joined a Republican body; his articulation
of regionalism, Cearta Sibhealta activism in Conamara,
and Irish federalism found its counterpart in Éire
Nua, advocated by Fennell, Ó Conaill, and
RÓB along with many others, not only Republicans
but even, as White notes, a stray Loyalist at least
on occasion. I might add that according to Richard
Davies' Mirror Hate: the convergent ideologies of
Northern Ireland paramilitaries, 1966-1992 (Aldershot,
Hants & Brookfield VT: Dartmouth UP, 1994),
Fennell wrote for An Phoblacht as 'Freeman' around
this time, promoting ideas to be elaborated in his
own publications as well as congruent with those
arrived at by RÓB through the 1960s along
with and perhaps detouring from those propagated
by the Wolfe Tone Society. Since I am personally
interested in this period and possible links between
these players, I admit my digression proudly-and
extra credit for White's reminders of such disparate
figures as the fate of Ivor Bell, the sadly vilified
Christine Elias, and (the awful disclosures of)
Maria McGuire. He has researched the period well,
and knows when to bring in the many minor as well
as the major players to illustrate his account-necessarily
it revisits much detail from Republican chronicles
along RÓB's quest.
