‘He was an ardent patriot … but a man warped by ambition.’ Bob Briscoe's assessment of MacBride – his electoral rival for the favours of Dublin South-West in 1957 – is cuttingly accurate. The distrust surrounding MacBride's later career, evoked in the negative comment on his death in the British press and in some sections of the Irish political establishment, rested in large measure on memories of his earlier record as a republican leader. Existing biographical treatments of MacBride are inadequate in examining his republican activities in the years prior to 1946; similarly, a proper assessment of his place in Irish political life requires a more thorough analysis of his earlier political career. This book has, for the first time, provided a full account of MacBride's early career, around which so much controversy later swirled. In doing so, it has not only filled a number of historiographical gaps – the most notable of which are in the existing biography of MacBride – but has also contributed to wider understanding of a number of important themes within Irish political history.

The Politicised Child

Editorialising on his death, the Irish Times commented that ‘[MacBride's] childhood influences, the very genes within him, were such that he could follow no path other than that which was radical and revolutionary.’ The early sections of this book uncover those genes and influences: the exalted parentage, the disastrous marriage, the bitter separation.