How close did Ireland come to military dictatorship?

In March 1922, a relatively unknown member of the IRA was asked by journalists if they could take from his answers that Ireland would have a military dictatorship.

‘You can take it anyway you like,’ he replied.

On Free State today we look at the life of Rory O’Connor who was prepared to go to any lengths for the Republic of his ideals.

We talk to the author of a new biography of O’Connor Gerard Shannon about the fanaticism that drove him.

O’Connor became the public face of opposition to the Treaty but he also became the most human face when he was executed in December 1922, following a decision by the Free State cabinet including his great friend Kevin O’Higgins.

O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’s wedding a year before and now O’Higgins was part of the brutal decision to have him executed.

Shannon explains too why O’Connor faded from memory after his death and the extraordinary coincidence behind the killing of O’Higgins as he walked home from Mass in 1927.

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