In his novel on the Fenians, The Tenants of Time, T.P. Flanagan makes a passing reference to my grandfather, J.K. Bracken, as "the radical stonemason from Templemore". A less complimentary reference came than when he was denounced from the pulpit for his Fenian activities as being "worse than a Protestant or even an atheist".
Joseph Kevin Bracken's interesting and turbulent career in the GAA, the Fenians and local government has been overshadowed by the fact that he was the father of Brendan Bracken, founder of the modern Financial Times and Churchill's wartime Minister for Information and close confidant.
His chief claim to fame, and one which has assured him a place in the pantheon of Irish nationalism is as one of the seven founders of the GAA in Hayes's Hotel, Thurles in 1884. Undoubtedly his commitment to militant republicanism was as much a factor as his athletic prowess in his decision to join the new organisation. As one of its first vice-presidents, he presided at the meeting of the GAA's executive which excluded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He was also one of the main proponents of "the Ban" prohibiting members from playing or even watching games such as rugby, soccer, hockey or cricket, which were associated with the British garrison in Ireland.
Over the next 10 years he was at the centre of affairs and sought to straddle the uneasy alliance between hardline nationalism and bourgeois respectability, which jockeyed for position within the fledgling organisation.
The drive and energy displayed during his involvement with the GAA was also evident in his business life. The family stone-cutting and monumental business expanded under his management to include building and road contract work.
The centenary celebrations of the 1798 Rising, allied to his high standing as a nationalist, helped him secure many contracts. These included the 1798 memorial in Clonmel, one to the Manchester Martyrs in Kilrush, a Celtic cross which commemorates the fenian,, Peter O'Neill Crowley, killed near Mitchelstown, and a memorial tablet on the grave of Nicholas Sheehy in Shanrahan cemetery in Clogheen. The Celtic crosses and other tombstones found throughout the cemeteries of the neighbouring countryside bearing the legend "Bracken Templemore" bear testimony to his life's work.
Bracken's involvement in local politics was relatively short-lived and tempestuous. Though he topped the poll in the local elections for the newly created Templemore Urban District Council, and was its first chairman, his authoritarian temperament and Fenian background does not seem to have been suitable for the cut and thrust of local politics. As Nancy Murphy writes in her essay on Bracken in Tipperary History and Society: "The Brackens now commenced a pattern of behaviour which eroded their standing." This included installing his wife as chairman of the UDC when business conflicts disqualified him from attending meetings, as well as undertaking a series of series of legal actions against the council. These led to the termination of his career as a public representative, and his decision to leave his native town and county.
Probably the last straw was a court case which he instigated out of a collision between his pony and trap and the carriage of the local landowner, Sir John Carden. The local court found against him and, as Charles Lysaght, the biographer of his son, Brendan Bracken, puts it: "Furious that his own people had let him down, he decided to shake the dust of the town off his feet."
Just turned 50, he moved 40 miles south to the town of Kilmallock in 1902, but died of cancer a hundred years ago and was buried in the nearby cemetery of Tankardstown, where a Celtic cross marks his grave. A tribute after his death stated: "He was one of the old guard, or as better known, one of the Fenian band".
The tribute continues that Bracken "had refused a seat in parliament because he did not want to take two oaths - one to the sovereign and one to the Irish Republic". Whether his son, the future Viscount Bracken of Christchurch and sometime member of His Majesty's Privy Council, was aware of this tribute is unknown.
Brendan Bracken's other biographer, Andrew Boyle writes: "Yet had Joseph Bracken lived only a few years longer, Brendan might have grown up a little straighter and a little less allergic to Irish ways and anti-English attitudes. He might even have been ready to stand up and be counted among the rebels instead of transferring his allegiance to the vanished England of his dreams."