He was born near
Mountjoy Square, Dublin, to James Hughes, a baker from
County Offaly. His mother died of
tuberculosis when he was six. He attended
O'Connell School and spent time at a
Dominican seminary in
Voiron, France. He taught French in
Newbridge College and was a clerk at a firm exporting eggs. He married Josephine Hackett from
Milltown, Dublin in 1912; they had five children. In the 1910s, Hughes became interested in the
Gaelic Revival, and became involved in
Gaelic football and
traditional Irish music. In 1911, Hughes was brought into the
Irish Republican Brotherhood secret society. In 1914, as a member of the
Irish Volunteers, he was involved in the
Howth gun-running which saw hundreds of rifles secretly brought to Ireland from Germany to be used by Irish nationalists. From 1925 he worked for
2RN, later
Radio Éireann, becoming its director of programming in 1929.
Frank Gallagher took most of his functions in 1935, leaving Hughes only Irish-language programming. During
the Emergency he was transferred to censorship of post. During the 1920s, in parallel to his move from Labour to Cumann na nGaedheal, Hughes became associated with Catholicism conservatism: In 1924 he began writing for the
Catholic Herald, while in 1926 he joined the highly conservative
An Ríoghacht organisation. In 1930 he joined the Catholic fraternal organisation the
Knights of Columbanus while in 1936/1937, he was a member of the
Irish Christian Front, an anti-communist organisation which supported the
Nationalists in the
Spanish Civil War. ==References==