Cathal Brugha

Cathal Brugha ( ; born Charles William St John Burgess; 18 July 1874 – 7 July 1922) was an Irish republican politician who served as Minister for Defence from 1919 to 1922, Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in January 1919, the first president of Dáil Éireann from January 1919 to April 1919 and Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army from 1917 to 1918. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1922.

He was active in the Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In 1919, he served briefly as the first Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann as well as the first president of Dáil Éireann.

Early life Brugha was born in Dublin, of mixed Roman Catholic and Protestant parentage. He was the tenth child in a family of fourteen. His father, Thomas, was a cabinet maker and antique dealer who had been disinherited by his family for marrying an Irish Catholic, Maryanne Flynn.

Brugha attended Colmcille Schools on Dominick Street until 1888 when he moved to Belvedere College. He had intended to study medicine but this did not come to fruition after his father's business failed in 1890. Brugha was seen as an austere figure, not very different from Éamon de Valera, and was known not to smoke cigarettes, swear or drink alcohol. He met his future wife, Kathleen Kingston, at an Irish class in Birr, County Offaly, and they married in 1912 in the Church of Three Patrons in Rathgar (where fellow Belvederean James Joyce had sung in the choir before leaving for Europe).

He was elected as a Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for the County Waterford constituency at the 1918 general election. In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled at the Mansion House in Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. Owing to the absence of Éamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith, Brugha presided over the first meeting of Dáil Éireann on 21 January 1919.

He had differences with Michael Collins, who, although nominally only the IRA's Director of Intelligence, had far more influence in the organisation as a result of his position as a high-ranking member of the IRB, an organisation that Brugha saw as undermining the power of the Dáil and especially the Ministry for Defence. Brugha opposed the oath of allegiance required for membership of the IRB. Brugha had left the IRB after the 1916 Rising and did not approve of a secret organization having control over the Volunteers or the Dail Eireann. In 1919, his proposition that all Volunteers should swear allegiance to the Irish Republic and the Dáil was adopted.

Civil War

On 7 January 1922, Brugha voted against the Anglo-Irish Treaty. During the Treaty Debates, he pointed out that Collins had only a middling rank in the Department for Defence, which supervised the IRA, even though Griffith hailed him as 'the man who had won the war'. It has been argued that, by turning the issue into a vote on Collins' popularity, Brugha swung the majority against his own side. Frank O'Connor, in his biography of Collins, states that two delegates who had intended to vote against the Treaty changed sides in sympathy with Collins. After the vote, the anti-Treaty TDs moved into opposition and Brugha was succeeded as Minister for Defence by Richard Mulcahy.

In the months between the Treaty debates and the outbreak of Civil War, Brugha attempted to dissuade his fellow anti-treaty army leaders including Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey from taking up arms against the Free State. In Thomas Lane he then approached the Free State troops, brandishing a revolver and sustained a bullet wound to the leg which 'severed a major artery causing him to bleed to death'. Two members of the Irish republican women's paramilitary organisation Cumann na mBan were with Brugha when he died - Kathleen Barry Moloney (the sister of executed IRA man Kevin Barry) and Linda Kearns. He died on 7 July, eleven days before his 48th birthday. He had been re-elected as an anti-Treaty TD at the 1922 general election but died before the Dáil assembled. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

His wife Caitlín Brugha served as a Sinn Féin TD from 1923 to 1927. His son Ruairí Brugha later became a politician, firstly supporting Clann na Poblachta and later Fianna Fáil, and was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1973 general election. Ruairí married Máire MacSwiney, the daughter of Terence MacSwiney, the Republican Lord Mayor of Cork who had died on hunger strike in 1920.

His wife, Caitlín Brugha, survived him, along with their five daughters and his son, Ruairí Brugha. Caitlín was elected as a Sinn Féin TD for Waterford; Ruairí would follow in his father's and mother's footsteps and become a Fianna Fáil TD in Dublin from 1973 to 1977.

Brugha is mentioned by name in "The Foggy Dew" with the lyrics:

"Oh had they died by Pearse's side Or fought with Cathal Brugha"

He is also mentioned in the song "Soldiers of '22" where the lyrics say:

"When their praise you sing let the echoes ring with the memory of Cathal Brugha"