Irish fascism, peculiar to its recent colonial past, became a force in the early 1930s as Aodh MacManus of the new Communist Party of Ireland reports. In an echo of the Civil War a decade previous, Ireland in the mid-1930s saw confrontations between Republicans and fascist Blueshirts. Uniting with Communists, the left wing in the I.R.A. split to form the Republican Congress in 1934. That fight was carried from Dublin to Spain as Irish joined both Franco’s army and the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

‘Fascism Makes its Bow in Ireland’ by Aodh MacManus from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 13 No. 34. August 4, 1933.

Fascism has openly made its bow in Ireland, in the transformation of the Cosgravite Army Comrades’ Association (A.C.A.) into a so-called National Guard, uniformed but outwardly unarmed, and under the leadership of General Eoin O’Duffy, chief of police under the Cosgrave regime.

Several hundred delegates met at the first convention here last week of the A.C.A. All were in the hated blue shirts of this Army pensioners’ organisation. One and all, the delegates were ex-members of the Free State Army murderers who smashed the Republican resistance to the Treaty of surrender in 1922-23. On the platform were Ernest Blythe, Cosgrave’s Minister for Finance; General Mulcahy, the Free State Army chief after Michael Collins’ death; and other leading figures of the Cosgrave administration.

The convention greeted O’Duffy by standing to attention and raising their arms in the fascist salute, the first time the salute has been seen in Ireland. O’Duffy in his speech said:

“I believe there is a feeling in the country generally, and amongst the youth in particular, that economic measures of a really lasting and constructive character will prove unduly difficult, if not impossible, without political changes…We must work, therefore, for changes in the parliamentary system which will bring the Costitution of the State into closer harmony with national needs…One of the principal objects of the Guard is to combat Communism. We stand for an aggressive attitude towards Communism; we do not accept the view that Communists should be free to organise.”

The constitution of this fascist Guard has none of the demagogy made so familiar by Hitler. Its aims are stated to be to obtain a united Ireland, to transform the parliamentary system, to promote “the formation of coordinated national organisations of employers and employed which, with the aid of judicial tribunals, will prevent strikes and lock-outs and harmoniously compose industrial differences,” to oppose Communism, and to foster the Irish language. It will be seen that the representatives of the big bourgeoisie who are launching their military wing have no use for ranting phrases against financiers, poverty, etc.; the only approach to demagogy is the talk about a united Ireland and about the Gaelic tongue-talk which will deceive nobody who is aware of the national treachery of these pensioner heroes.

In an interview published in the Irish edition of the London Daily Herald ” on July 26, O’Duffy “admitted that it (the National Guard) had a good deal in common with the fascist outlook, but declared that it stopped short of dictatorship.”

We are an anti-Communist organisation,” he said.

He was asked to define the Guards’ attitude towards Jews. Only those of Irish birth and parentage and of the Christian faith are eligible for membership, he pointed out, admitting that this was directed against the Jews.

“The Jews are the instigators of Communism,” he said. “We had to exclude them from the Guards, but that does not mean that we are going to exclude them from the country.”

So far the de Valera Government has not even made a pronouncement on the new force. The only cognisance it has taken of the development is to state that the Guard will not be allowed to parade in uniform on August 13th (the Collins-Griffiths anniversary), while a pointless editorial in the Fianna Fail organ merely says:

“The whole business is an obvious effort to sustain the falling structure of Cumann na nGaedheal with the buttress of a military organisation aiming at dictatorial changes in the parliamentary system. It all boils down to the simple fact that the A.C.A. is to remain the A.C.A. in everything essential except the name, an auxiliary to Cumann na nGaedheal, an opponent of Fianna Fail and other Republican movements, the whole wrapped up in the poor disguise of woolly words about national ideals.”(“Irish Press,” July 21, 1933.) Not even a verbal protest has come yet either from the reformist Labour movement (indeed, a Labour leader, Mr. W. Davin, T.D., in a recent outburst against Communism and unofficial strikes, delivered himself of a provocation against Jews); but a number of trade unions are expected to take up the matter. The Communist Party of Ireland has issued leaflets and stickers to be distributed at the factories and through the countryside rousing the workers against the menace.

A resolution passed at the recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the C.P.I. characterises the new development as follows:

“The formation of the National Guard is a new step in the organisation of the bourgeois imperialist reaction against the anti-imperialist working masses of Ireland. The movement is supported by the conservative and national-imperialist sections of the bourgeoisie and the Church. The coming of O’Duffy, ex-Police Commissioner, and for whom the de Valera government is providing a pension of £520 per annum, to the leadership of this force is an open challenge from the imperialist bourgeoisie to the anti-militarist and working masses. The political leaders of the big capitalists–Mulcahy, Blythe, etc.–openly espouse this fascist force, whose object is the establishment of a regime of fascist dictatorship. The Irish capitalists are learning from the defeat of the bourgeoisie in the Russian Revolution and the methods of the Italian and German bourgeoisie in their struggle against the workers. The organisation of this fascist Guard shows that the capitalists anticipate the steady development of the economic crisis, the growth of the militant upsurge and the spread of Communist ideas among the working masses. To rouse the masses against the fascist menace, to expose it as an agency of imperialism and tool of the employers, is a task demanded of every Party member.”

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecor, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1933/v13n34-aug-04-1933-Inprecor-op.pdf