In his teens he joined the printing staff of The Cork Examiner, where in time he became a linotype operator.

The Executive Council sought to establish military courts that were empowered to impose sentences – including capital punishment, without appeal – in response to IRA violence.

Alongside Daniel Morrissey, Anthony broke ranks with Labour, who thought the measures too authoritarian, and voted for the bill, and both of them were expelled from the party.

In August 1939 he told the forty-fifth Irish Trades Union Congress that he would prefer fascism to a "dictatorship of the proletariat".

[1] Earlier that same year, back in April, Anthony had proposed a motion at Cork City Corporation congratulating Franco on "concluding his war against communism and anarchy in Spain".