Killian Dockrell is a BA Graduand (soon to be graduate) of Exeter College, University of Oxford. His BA thesis explored the role of masculinity in the political culture of the Blueshirt movement in Ireland. He tells us more about his research here:

My undergraduate thesis explored masculinity amongst the Blueshirts. The Blueshirts were a right-wing movement that existed in Ireland from 1932-36 and have often been dubbed ‘Ireland’s fascists.’

The Blueshirts began as the Army Comrades Association (ACA) in February 1932, to protect those who served in the Free State National Army. They quickly assumed an anti-IRA and anti-Fianna Fáil stance. The organisation’s character changed following Fianna Fáil’s electoral victory in 1932. As the ‘republican’ party, Fianna Fáil shared support with those who sympathised with and were active in the IRA, releasing numerous IRA prisoners after coming to power. The ACA became something of a paramilitary force protecting Cumann na nGaedheal meetings. The movement adopted the blue shirt uniform in April 1933. Under Eoin O’Duffy, who assumed leadership in July 1933, the organisation became more explicitly political, particularly during the ‘Economic War’ of the 1930s. The Blueshirts merged with Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party in September 1933 to form Fine Gael, with O’Duffy as president. O’Duffy was forced out a year later, replaced by Ned Cronin. Cronin’s Blueshirts remained within Fine Gael before being wound up in 1936. The O’Duffyite splinter became the outwardly Fascist National Corporate Party in 1935, before being also wound up in 1935. Histories of the Blueshirts have largely focused on high politics, particularly the ‘fascist question’ – the extent of their fascism, their corporatist programme, and lack of long-term success.[1.]

Since Joan Scott’s seminal article on the importance of gender to social power relations, historians have increasingly embraced the importance of masculinity studies to analyse gender ‘as a whole’. [2.] Masculinity is itself a ‘field of power’. [3.] As Michael Kimmnel and Michael Messner have reminded us, specifically looking at masculinity is also important because masculine hegemonies are normalized to the extent of invisibility. [4.] This is as true of Ireland as elsewhere. Yet, Maria Luddy noted as recently as 2016 that ‘Irish historians have rarely utilized gender theory or postmodernism to understand that history’. [5.] Yet, Irish masculinities forged within the context of British colonialism experienced major change after 1922.

My undergraduate thesis explored masculinity amongst the Blueshirts. The Blueshirts were a right-wing movement that existed in Ireland from 1932-36 and have often been dubbed ‘Ireland’s fascists.’

The Blueshirts began as the Army Comrades Association (ACA) in February 1932, to protect those who served in the Free State National Army. They quickly assumed an anti-IRA and anti-Fianna Fáil stance. The organisation’s character changed following Fianna Fáil’s electoral victory in 1932. As the ‘republican’ party, Fianna Fáil shared support with those who sympathised with and were active in the IRA, releasing numerous IRA prisoners after coming to power. The ACA became something of a paramilitary force protecting Cumann na nGaedheal meetings. The movement adopted the blue shirt uniform in April 1933. Under Eoin O’Duffy, who assumed leadership in July 1933, the organisation became more explicitly political, particularly during the ‘Economic War’ of the 1930s. The Blueshirts merged with Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party in September 1933 to form Fine Gael, with O’Duffy as president. O’Duffy was forced out a year later, replaced by Ned Cronin. Cronin’s Blueshirts remained within Fine Gael before being wound up in 1936. The O’Duffyite splinter became the outwardly Fascist National Corporate Party in 1935, before being also wound up in 1935. Histories of the Blueshirts have largely focused on high politics, particularly the ‘fascist question’ – the extent of their fascism, their corporatist programme, and lack of long-term success.[1.]

Maurice Manning argued that the Blueshirts were only fascist ‘in appearance’, rather representing the final spasms of civil-war violence. [7.] This has been partly contested by Cronin’s view that the organization was at least ‘para-fascist’ – attached to fascist forms, but afraid of authentic fascism, and allying itself with the existing power structures of the Catholic Church, Army and Government. [8.] Fearghal McGarry emphasises that there was a genuine sense of crisis in Irish democracy in the 1930s. McGarry also highlights the potential of masculinity as an analytical category in his biography of Éoin O’Duffy [9.] Exploring the significance of masculinity in the Blueshirts should indeed be a fruitful line of enquiry, given the well-established links between masculinity and international fascisms. [10.] Thus, whilst decoding gender within the movement’s more ‘Irish’ or civil-war-focused politics is essential, a full appreciation of Blueshirt masculinities also entails viewing this subject through a wider, international, fascist prism. My thesis looked at three elements of Blueshirt masculinities – patriotism, physical culture and violence.

Patriotism:

The first section argued that Blueshirts constructed an alternative discourse, dismantling the privileged link between republicanism and manly patriotism, to emphasize their own gendered ‘Irishness’. The character of patriotism within Irish masculinities was fundamentally altered post-1922 with the creation of the Irish Free State. Ireland in the 1930s was far from nationally secure. Large parts of the population still sought the Republic which had been abandoned in 1922, whilst the recovery of the North topped political party manifestos from across the Treaty divide. Fianna Fáil revitalised the issue when they came to power in 1932, suspending annuity payments to Britain, and removing the oath to the British Crown in 1933.

Blueshirts recognised that patriotism was a powerful discursive space for demonstrating their masculinity. Anti-Treaty slurs that pro-treaty Blueshirts had abandoned the republic and cowered before British imperialism were emasculating, because they slandered their Irishness. Blueshirts responded by differentiating republicanism from patriotism. They argued that abandoning the republic was not cowardly but logical. They constructed an alternative framework of manly patriotism that emphasised civic contribution, work-ethic and industry, as well as an enlightened nationalism based on justice and the cultivation of Irish culture.

Cartoons from the era in United Irishman depict De Valera leading his followers on an endless treadmill towards ‘THE REPUBLIC’, or bringing Irish agriculture crashing to the ground to free it from the ‘ENGLISH MARKET’. Caricatures also maligned the intellectual attainment of IRA men against the cultural capital of Blueshirts who put on drama productions of Irish legends and Irish language classes. This was coupled with an attack on republicans using the ‘corner boy’ slur. The stereotype of an unemployed Republican shouting “Up the Republic” from a street corner whilst contributing nothing to the nation was seen underpinning IRA attacks on cinemas in the 1930s. The myth of Blueshirt constancy and reliability against republican fickleness and opportunism also stretched back to divided memories of the 1920s. Thus, Blueshirts feminised republicans who claimed patriotism simply as a consequence of their republicanism.

This was also ‘fascistised’. Later Blueshirt rhetoric stressed the importance of racial purity and ‘IRELAND FOR THE IRISH’. [11.] Fianna Fáil directed their attack on foreign emasculation squarely at reliance on the British market. The Blueshirts’ fascistic take on Irish nationhood looked to racial purity and the supremacy of the Irish male within Irish society. This was coupled with an emphasis on Ireland’s young men as are‘the first truly national generation of modern times’.The youth of the 1930s were particularly important given their maturations within a newly free nation, and the perception of crisis in contemporary Ireland. They were endowed with palingenetic potential.

Physical Culture:

The construction of Blueshirts as a model citizenry to dominate inferior Irishmen and women was also explicitly physical, and my second section focused on physical culture. Broadening the scope of Blueshirt physical culture beyond organised athletics to include hitherto underexamined discussions of sportsmanship and corporeal education show that a politicised physical culture was a positive construction of Blueshirt masculinities, satisfying real and imagined needs.

It is now recognised that the male body was a crucial canvas for fascist ideologies. Fascism was a ‘vitalistic philosophy’, which sought to counter moral and physical decline. Thus sport and gymnastics moulded the Fascist superman. Manganargues that muscle in international fascisms was not only a sign of physical strength and superiority over other races, but of preparation for conflict. The male body for Blueshirts, as international fascisms, was ‘superordinate because it was superior in purpose – the achievement of supremacy’. [12.]

Ernest Blythe, a Cumman na Ghaedheal senator, wanted physical culture to be an essential part of the Blueshirt programme. He and O’Duffy believed that discipline and proper deportment were developed through immediate and vicarious participation, shaping the incipient masculinity of Blueshirts as future citizens. [13.] ‘Physical Culture’ columns in United Ireland argued that corporeal perfection allowed one ‘attain efficiency, unity of action and purpose’. [14.] Machismo diet advice counselled upon muscularity rather than fashionable leanness, and weekly exercise routines focused on the muscular development of the trunk, arms and shoulders. [15.] For women however, the expectation was that the advice contained in the physical culture columns would provide ‘wellbeing, self-confidence, and improve the carriage’. [16.] It was the male body that was prepared for agency, and a dynamic role befitting the responsibility of the male Blueshirt.

Blueshirts did not make explicit the connection between attaining ‘physical perfection’ and the demonstration of physical superiority in confrontations with Republicans. Nonetheless, the latter was a crucial aspect of their masculinity and changes how we should view the ideologies around physical culture outlined above. For example, the trunk, arms and shoulders which featured so prominently in bodybuilding articles were perhaps not uncoincidentally the same muscles used throwing a punch in a street fight. Papers advertised Blueshirt supremacy in street battles as they overcame armed republican mobs ‘with only hands and fists’ and suggested ‘there are many parts of the country where the IRA and associates have been taught the wisdom of minding their own business’. [17.] Both athletics and street violence allowed the Blueshirts to show their physical prowess and demonstrate masculine dominance.

The movement believed that sport had didactic potential, making physical culture a space for the maturation of masculine ideals of discipline and proper deportment that would mould Blueshirt boys into model citizens. Blueshirts also stressed the importance of health for male agency, with a muscular focus on corporeal education and the male body. Explicit links were not made between these ideas and combat efficacy in the Blueshirt press, but implicitly they corresponded to the performance of physical supremacy. Blueshirts used the street battle, and athletics as examples of their dominance over alternative republican masculinities as well as over women. This was suggestive that they were the only body that could save the state from lawlessness and violence, but also that they were the superior body to lead a future Ireland. In a very real sense then, Blueshirt physical culture was about preparation for ‘conflict’.

Violence:

My final focus therefore was upon the complex role of violence in Blueshirt masculinities. The Irish tradition of rebellion gave a martial quality to Irishness which favoured men. However, the position of militarism within Irish masculinities was challenged by the creation of the Free State. Regan argues that Free State leaders prioritised stability over innovation. [18.] Knirck further suggests that militarism became subversive for the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party, because it was associated with those who lost the civil-war. [19.] Law and order, rather than heroic violence, became hegemonic. Thus Blueshirt outwardly sought to emphasise a rational constitutionalism that marginalised martial republican masculinities. Yet, this discourse was in tension with one that emphasised honour and underpinned more proactive Blueshirt violence. This tension was partially contained by an emphasis on discipline.

Blueshirts emphasised a restrained masculinity that played to their state-building credentials. United Ireland insisted that the ‘proudest boast of any Blueshirt is that they have never broken the law’. [20.] It was expected Blueshirts would retaliate appropriately if provoked, but they were not instigators. Blueshirt legality and thus defensive violence were a product of the treatyite tradition of law and order to which the Blueshirts belonged, which made them morally superior to anarchic republicanism.

R.W Connell has argued that dominant masculinities assert power via effeminisation, and by dehegemonising alternative masculinities. [21.] Blueshirts also empowered their ‘constitutional’ approach to violence by emphasising the undesirability of martial republican masculinities. This meant dismantling the ‘warrior-hero’ trope that many continued to associate with the IRA. The IRA were maligned as communists and pub-bound layabouts. This appealed to class stereotypes of the feckless, feral republican, inscribed since colonial days. Republican ‘Bolshevism’ was interpreted as a threat to man’s right to own property and thus provide for their family. Accusations of land-grabbing by an IRA-supported Fianna Fáil drew upon connections between masculinity and land-ownership in Irish society. Landlordism, rent and loss of land were all forms of emasculation

Blueshirts also challenged IRA representations as noble warriors of the Republic by stressing their conspiratorial cowardice and clandestinity. Blueshirt papers tended to describe the IRA as ‘unscrupulous gun bullies’ who intimidated the public with their weapons. Stereotypical IRA dress, which had previous connotations of a heroic guerrilla-fugitive struggling against British occupation, was now seditious. By emphasising IRA conspiracy, cowardice and secrecy, Blueshirts suggested that IRA violence was not manly but skulking and subversive. If accepted, this argument dehegemonised IRA masculinities, giving cultural resonance to Blueshirt constitutionalism and ‘defensive’ violence.

Nevertheless, a concurrent strand of Blueshirt masculinity paradoxically saw proactive violence as a necessary part of defending the state. Department of Justice files show that Blueshirts were engaged in broader patterns of antisocial aggression that went beyond anti-annuity action as part of the Economic War and were directed against the influence of political opponents. Much was made of the street fight as a demonstration of Blueshirt honour and prowess. It was said that ‘in every conflict, the Blueshirts have come out victorious’. [22.] In one account of a ‘Battle Royale’ in Cork, the piece makes clear that tensions began in the confusing environment of a pub brawl, and no pretence is made that a mob started on Blueshirts rather than vice-versa.[23.] A similar disregard for legality was made in an editorial on Blueshirt graffiti in 1934. This argued that, although graffiti was an act of vandalism, ‘we cannot leave activities of this kind entirely to them’. [24.] The editorial encouraged depictions of the Blueshirts’ St. Patrick flag as well as slogans which would demonstrate the movement’s tenacity. [25.] Allowing republicans take the lead painting slogans and intimidating treatyites was emasculating. It played to republican slurs that treatyites were cowards who hid behind a barricade of constitutionalism and backed away from fights – including the fight for the Irish Republic.

Blueshirt violence consisted of direct aggression, but also provocation and goading. The organisation made a point of returning to areas where they encountered opposition. In 1934 they returned to Cong, Co. Mayo, to organise a revenge attack on one Thomas Collins in the interval between a concert and a dance. [25.] Much of the violence in rural Ireland was competition over limited recreational space – masculinity was territorial. Beyond the ‘defensive’ or economic war violence against the state’s annuity collection, there were broader patterns underpinned by Blueshirt self-respect and honour that attempted to purge republican influence and calumny from the local community.

Blueshirts believed that discipline allowed the movement to navigate the boundaries of legality without compromising their principles. United Ireland was critical of suggestions that Blueshirt tackling of the IRA was a ‘usurpation of the state’, arguing that it was ‘such a disciplined civic spirit that creates order and gives security’. Blueshirts also competed with the Catholic Church over dancehall legislation, holding illegal all-night dances in contravention of curfews enacted under Church pressure. [26.] Nonetheless, there remained deliberate ambiguity over violence. United Ireland never explicitly praised Blueshirt aggression, only incited it. The parameters of what constituted ‘disciplined’ action were never explored. Violence remained potentially destabilising, and its controversy would ultimately split the movement in 1934.

Conclusion:

My thesis argued that Blueshirt masculinities should be situated in both an ‘Irish’ context of civil war politics but were also highly fascitised. Fascism perpetrated the organisation’s social relations, going beyond the fascist liturgy, corporatism and anti-parliamentary rhetoric accounted for in previous historiography. Masculine discourses prioritised the construction of an elite citizenry to lead the nation. They emphasised the palingenetic potential of racial purity and male youth to the Irish nation. They stressed a politicised physical culture that prepared the male Blueshirt body for ‘conflict’. Blueshirts also engaged in considerable violence against their political opponents. Thus, whilst Blueshirt masculinities were constructed in opposition to republican ones, they were also fascistised, and looked towards a future free of sectionalism.

By shedding light on the national question’s volatility, physical competition for supremacy in rural Ireland, and the scale of violence in the 1930s, these discourses also reinforce revisionist views that there was a democratic crisis in 1930s Ireland. By consequence, they further demonstrate a real potential for Irish fascism in the 1930s. This was because much within these discourses was positive, existing to satisfy particular treatyite needs for a patriotic, muscular Irishness to represent the ‘national will’ and lift the nation from crisis.

Endnotes

See M. Manning, The Blueshirts, (Dublin, 1970); M. Cronin, The Blueshirts and Irish Politics, (Dublin, 1997). W. Scott, ‘Gender as a useful category of Historical Analysis’, American Historical Review, 91:5 (1986), pp. 1053-75. Tosh, ‘What Should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-century Britain’, History Workshop Journal, 38:1 (1994), pp. 180-181. S. Kimmel and M. A. Messner, Men’s Lives, (New York, 2013), p. x. Luddy, ‘Gender and Irish History’ in A. Jackson (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History, (Oxford, 2017). Manning, Blueshirts, p. 241. Cronin, Blueshirts, 62. McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: a self-made hero, (Oxford, 2005), p. 270. See K. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, (Cambridge,1987); B. Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, ideology and Social Fantasy in Italy, (Minneapolis, 1996). The Blueshirt, 8 June 1935 A. Mangan, ‘Global Fascism and the Male Body: ambitions, similarities, dissimilarities’ in J. Mangan (ed.), Superman Supreme: Fascist Body as Political Icon – Global Fascism, (London, 2000), p. 3. Reminiscences, 48,300/2, Eoin O’Duffy Papers, National Library of Ireland United Ireland, 28 October 1934. United Ireland, 1 December 1934. United Ireland, 9 December 1933; United Ireland, 28 October 1933. . Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, 1921-1936: Treatyite Politics and Settlement in Independent Ireland, (Dublin, 1999), p. xii. Knirck, Women and the Dáil: Gender, Republicanism and the Anglo-Irish Treaty, (Dublin, 2006), p. 26. United Ireland, 24 February 1934. W. Connell, Masculinities, (Cambridge, 1995), p. 77. United Ireland, 28 October 1933. United Ireland, 29 September 1934. United Ireland, 29 September 1934. JUS/8/114, National Archives of Ireland. United Ireland, 7thOctober 1933. JUS/8/134, National Archives of Ireland.

Acknowledgements:

The author would like to acknowledge the support of Tim Ellis, who suggested the approach of gender as well as masculinity. The author is also grateful to his supervisor, Marc Mulholland, whose weekly chats about ‘toxic masculinity’ and cracking twitter feed made this possible!