Irish Fascists

(First published September 2, 2018, and updated March 23, 2024)

The position of Ireland during World War II was a bit of a tricky one. A lot of people actually were pro-German, not so much because they agreed with the German policies but more because they were at war with Britain, and there was still this feeling that Britain’s enemy was our friend. Many people during the Emergency thought that Ireland owed Germany a debt for her support of the Easter Rising in 1916.

On September 2, 1939, the Republic of Ireland declared its neutrality, but even before that, there had been fascist groupings in Ireland.

The Blue Shirts

The Army Comrades Association, later the National Guard, then Young Ireland, and eventually Fine Gael, better known by their nickname, The Blueshirts, was a Right-wing movement in the Irish Free State in the early 1930s.

In 1933, Eoin O’Duffy (top photograph) became the leader of the Blueshirts. He remodeled the organization, adopting elements of German and Italian fascism.

The organization was to have the following goals:

1. To promote the reunification of Ireland.
2. To oppose Communism and alien control and influence in national affairs and to uphold Christian principles in every sphere of public activity.
3. To promote and maintain social order.
4. To make organized and disciplined voluntary public service a permanent and accepted feature of our political life and to lead the youth of Ireland in a movement of constructive national action.
5. To promote coordinated national organizations of the employers and employed, with the aid of judicial tribunals—to effectively prevent strikes and lock-outs and harmoniously compose industrial influences.
6. To cooperate with official agencies of the state. Look for a solution for the pressing social problems, such as provision and economic public employment—for those whom private enterprise could not absorb.
7. To secure the creation of a representative national statutory organisation of farmers, with rights and status sufficient to secure the safeguarding of agricultural interests, in all revisions of agricultural and political policy.
8. To expose and prevent corruption and victimization in national and local administration.
9. To awaken a spirit of combination throughout the country—discipline, zeal, and patriotic realism, which will put the state in a position to serve the people efficiently in the economic and social spheres.

In 1935, Eoin O’Duffy split with Fine Gael and founded the National Corporate Party, also known—as the Greenshirts.

In 1936, O’Duffy led a volunteer Irish Brigade to fight for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and retired on his return in 1937. Without him, both the Greenshirts and NCP faded away.

Ailtirí na hAiséirghe

Ailtirí na hAiséirghe (meaning “Architects of the Resurrection”) was a minor radical nationalist and fascist political party in Ireland, founded by Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin in March 1942. The party sought to form a totalitarian Irish Christian Corporatist state

Ó Cuinneagáin did have genuine global ambitions. Although he admired the ‘achievements’ of Germany and Italy, he had no desire to be assumed to be the local Irish representative of ‘the Hitler Fan Club. On the contrary, he truly believed that a fascist Ireland could have more influence than its Continental European counterpart, not in a military aspect but in an ideological manner.

 

Oliver J. Flanagan

Oliver James Flanagan served as a  TD (Member of Parliament) for the Laois-Offaly constituency from 1943 to 1987.

Initially, as an Independent, he was first elected to the Dail (Irish Parliament) known for his anti-Semitic views. From 1954 to 1987, he was a TD for Fine Gael (the current government party}

In his maiden speech in July 1943, he said the following:

“How is it that we do not see any of these Acts directed against the Jews, who crucified Our Saviour nineteen hundred years ago, and who are crucifying us every day in the week? How is it that we do not see them directed against the Masonic Order? How is it that the I.R.A. is considered an illegal organisation while the Masonic Order is not considered an illegal organisation? There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jews out of their country. Until we rout the Jews out of this country it does not matter a hair’s breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jews are there is the money.”

Sources

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1943-07-09/8/

Violence, citizenship and virility: The making of an irish fascist

The Blueshirts – fascism in Ireland?

Ailtirí na hAiséirghe: Ireland’s fascist New Order

https://www.jstor.org/stable/261053

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blueshirt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailtir%C3%AD_na_hAis%C3%A9irghe