Background
Magan was a son of farmer James Magan and his wife Elizabeth, of Kilmore, County Meath.
Magan was a son of farmer James Magan and his wife Elizabeth, of Kilmore, County Meath.
Magan was interned in the Curragh during the Irish Emergency (during the Second World War). In March 1946, he was arrested along with a number of other Ireland Republican Army men in the Ardee Bar, Dublin. Jailed, he was released in December 1946 along with Micksie Conway.
Both men resumed their attempts to reorganise the Ireland Republican Army. A lifelong bachelor and County Meath farmer, Magan sold his farm and devoted all his time and money to the Ireland Republican Army. He was appointed Ireland Republican Army chief of staff by the Ireland Republican Army Army Executive at its convention in September 1948.
The Ireland Republican Army had almost been destroyed in the 1940s and Magan immediately set out to reorganise the political and military wings of the Republican Movement, namely the Ireland Republican Army and Sinn Féin, along with Michael Traynor, Paddy McLogan, and Tomás Mac Curtain. Magan drew support chiefly from Dublin delegates, who felt that "the Army needed a steel core and that Magan could supply it".
Magan was a determined physical force traditionalist. At the 1950 Sinn Féin Ardfheis, Magan was elected honorary joint secretary of the party.
In May 1951, the Ireland Republican Army leadership established a Military Council to draft an overall plan for the Republican Movement as a whole.
In 1953, Magan played a role in organising and carrying out the Felstead arms raid. Unlike Seán Mac Stiofáin, Cathal Goulding, and Manus Canning, later jailed for the raid, Magan evaded arrest and managed to return safely to Ireland. Magan was chief of staff and the commencement of the Ireland Republican Army"s Border Campaign, codenamed Operation Harvest, which began on 11 December 1956.
He resigned from the Republican Movement in 1962 in a dispute over the relationship between the Ireland Republican Army and Sinn Féin.
Magan, who lived at 45 Lower Dodder Road in Rathfarnham, Dublin, subsequently worked as a taxi driver. He died on 4 July 1981 at Meath Hospital.
On 8 July 1981 he was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
According to J. Bowyer Bell, he "wanted to create a new Army, untarnished by the dissent and scandals of the previous decade", with "no shadow of a gangster gunman, no taint of communism, but a band of Volunteers solely dedicated to reuniting Ireland by physical force". Coogan recounts that Magan"s Sinn Féin submitted key political and economic policies for review by friendly clergy, "to ensure that they contained nothing contrary to Catholic teaching".
Magan was not a popular choice for the position and several members of his previous Ireland Republican Army Army Council were not impressed by him but did not oppose his nomination outright.