Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (IPA: [ˈɾˠuəɾʲiː oː ˈbˠɾˠaːd̪ˠiː]; born Peter Roger Casement Brady; 2 October 1932 – 5 June 2013) was an Irish republican political and military leader.

[2] His mother, May Caffrey, was a Cumann na mBan volunteer and graduate of University College Dublin, class of 1922, with a degree in commerce.

On 13 August 1955, Ó Brádaigh led a ten-member IRA group in an arms raid on Hazebrouck Barracks, near Arborfield, Berkshire.

As an IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ) officer, Ó Brádaigh was responsible for training the Teeling Column (one of the four armed units prepared for the Campaign) in the west of Ireland.

While a football match was in progress, the pair cut through a wire fence and crept from the camp under a camouflage grass blanket and went "on the run".

Ó Brádaigh was arrested in November 1959, refused to answer questions, and was jailed under the Offences against the State Act in Mountjoy.

The delegates who walked out reconvened at the Kevin Barry Hall in Parnell Square, Dublin and established Provisional Sinn Féin.

In January 1973 he was the first person convicted under the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1972 and was sentenced to six months in the Curragh Military Prison.

The same year, the State Department revoked his multiple entry visa and have since refused to allow Ó Brádaigh to enter the country.

During the May 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike, Ó Brádaigh stated that he would like to see "a phased withdrawal of British troops over a number of years, in order to avoid a Congo situation".

[14] On 10 December 1974, he participated in the Feakle talks between the IRA Army Council and Sinn Féin leadership and the leaders of the Protestant churches in Ireland.

These proposals called on the British government to declare a commitment to withdraw, the election of an all-Ireland assembly to draft a new constitution and an amnesty for political prisoners.

The IRA subsequently called a "total and complete" ceasefire intended to last from 22 December to 2 January 1975 to allow the British government to respond to proposals.

British government officials also held talks with Ó Brádaigh in his position as president of Sinn Féin from late December to 17 January 1975.

In 2005, Ó Brádaigh donated, to the James Hardiman Library of University College, Galway, notes that he had taken during secret meetings in 1975–76 with British representatives.

Their purpose was to try to find a way to accommodate the ULCCC proposals for an independent Northern Ireland with the Sinn Féin's Éire Nua programme.

Desmond Boal QC and Seán MacBride SC were requested and accepted to represent the loyalist and republican positions.

The dialogue eventually collapsed when Conor Cruise O'Brien, then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and vociferous opponent of the Provisional IRA, became aware of it and condemned it on RTÉ Radio.

[15][better source needed] In the aftermath of the 1975 truce, the Ó Brádaigh/Ó Conaill leadership came under severe criticism from a younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams, who became a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978.

By the early 1980s, Ó Brádaigh's position as president of Sinn Féin was openly under challenge and the Éire Nua policy was targeted in an effort to oust him.

On 2 November 1986, the majority of delegates to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis voted to drop the policy of abstentionism if elected to Dáil Éireann, but not the British House of Commons or the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont, thus ending the self-imposed ban on Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats at Leinster House.

Ó Brádaigh and several supporters walked out and immediately set up Republican Sinn Féin (RSF); more than 100 people assembled at Dublin's West County Hotel and formed the new organisation.

[22] In June 2005, he handed over a portion of his personal political papers detailing discussions between Irish Republican leaders and representatives of the British Government during 1974–1975 to the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway.

[26] His funeral was attended by 1,800 mourners including Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan and was policed by the Emergency Response Unit and Gardaí in riot gear, for "operational reasons", a show of force believed to have been to deter the republican tradition of firing a three-volley salute of shots over the final place of rest during the graveyard oration.