Liam O Ruairc reviews O'Bradaigh biography

international | history and heritage | other press Thursday July 20, 2006 20:50 by Weekly Worker - CPGB

Soldier of the legion of the rear guard

"Ó Brádaigh is a traditional republican who is no more a ‘dissident’ than Cathal Brugha was an ‘irregular’ in 1922. He claims to be the president not of a ‘splinter group’ but of the same Sinn Féin formed by Arthur Griffith and subsequently abandoned by Griffith himself, Eamon de Valera, Seán MacBride, Tomás Mac Giolla and Gerry Adams, who all broke the party’s constitution and rules. To take the most recent example, according to section 1b of the Sinn Féin constitution in 1986, proposals supporting entry into Leinster House were banned. Before the Adams leadership put forward a motion to enter Leinster House, they needed to change section 1b by a majority vote. They did not do so, and thus broke the existing Sinn Féin constitution and rules.

Ruairi Ó Brádaigh says that he did not split and form a new party - he kept the old one intact (the word ‘Republican’ being added to emphasise the party’s beliefs). It was Adams and the others who broke away from Sinn Féin, not him. In 1969-70, as in 1986, the constitutions of both the IRA and Sinn Féin had been breached; and Ó Brádaigh formed a provisional caretaker executive upholding the existing Sinn Féin constitution. Most of those who served in the first Provisional army council and party executive followed Ó Brádaigh in 1986. For Ó Brádaigh, “No splits or splinters - long may it remain so, provided we stick to basic principles” (p293). But when it comes to rules and principles being ignored, “the minority is going to expel the majority”, as he puts it (p151).

The treatyites in 1922, Fianna Fáil in 1926 and Clann na Poblachta in 1946 had at least the decency to leave the movement, keep it intact and form new constitutional parties, whereas in 1969-70 and 1986 the Adams leadership attempted to convert the organisation into something that was contrary to its nature.

More controversially, Ó Brádaigh does not simply claim to represent the authentic republican movement: his organisation also claims to be the actual legitimate government of Ireland, and that the six-county and 26-county parliaments are “illegal assemblies” of illegitimate states. To be a republican is not simply to be for a British withdrawal or for Irish unity - at best that makes one an Irish nationalist. To be a traditional republican is to declare one’s allegiance to and recognise “no other law” than that of the 32-county Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916, mandated by the democratic majority vote of the people in the 1918 elections, established by the First and Second Dáil, overthrown by force of arms in 1922 and suppressed to this day by the 26 and six-county states. The republic is not an aspiration, but a reality."

The American sociologist, Robert W White, has finally published his long-awaited biography of Ruairi Ó Brádaigh. Since the 1950s, Ó Brádaigh (born1932) has played a key role within Irish republicanism. He joined the IRA and Sinn Féin in the 1950s and became a major figure in each. He was on the IRA army council for decades and until 1983 was the president of Provisional Sinn Féin. Today Ó Brádaigh is usually presented as the president of the small ‘dissident’ party, Republican Sinn Féin, which is supposed to have ‘split’ from Provisional Sinn Féin in 1986.

Read the whole review by following the link: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/634/review.htm