Jason Knirck.Afterimage of the Revolution: Cumann na nGaedheal and Irish Politics, 1922–1932.

Although Michael Tierney became famous as a controversial, reforming president of U.C.D., he had been a ubiquitous figure in Irish national politics for over twenty years before. A radical member of Cumann na nGaedheal and a key intellectual influence on the early Fine Gael party, he reinvented himself as a political independent, and campaigned for a vocational model of government in Ireland in line with papal teaching. He was that rarity in Irish politics – a political conservative who was also a public intellectual, and who tried to build a political career based on the quality of his ideas rather than tribal loyalties.

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The Blueshirts and the Shadow of the Land League, 1932–4

The Legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Independent Ireland, 1922-1949 ◽

10.3828/liverpool/9781789620306.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 139-168

Author(s):

Martin O'Donoghue

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Significant Role ◽

Direct Action ◽

Home Rule ◽

Political Consequences ◽

National Centre ◽

Cumann Na Ngaedheal ◽

Constitutional Tradition ◽

Irish Politics

This chapter examines the Land Annuities dispute and its political consequences through the lens of former home rulers and the legacy of the Land League. It analyses how Dillon and MacDermot tried to remain distinct from Cumann na nGaedheal, but also sought to broaden the appeal of the ostensibly agrarian National Centre Party to include emphases on Irish unity and the state’s constitutional status. Examining the formation of the United Ireland Party/Fine Gael, this chapter argues that individuals from home rule backgrounds played a significant role in the origins of this new party. However, the tensions between defenders of a constitutional tradition, unrest in the countryside and Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy meant that Dillon and MacDermot ultimately failed to straddle the dual Irish Party/Land League legacies of constitutionalism and direct action. It is argued that while MacDermot and Dillon sought to move Irish politics beyond the Civil War divide, the events of 1932-4 actually helped to solidify and mould the ‘Civil War’ cleavage, making it one with clear undertones of the 1930s as well as the original confrontation over the Treaty.

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REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE IRISH REVOLUTION

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.1017/s0080440117000081 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 175-191 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Richard Bourke

Keyword(s):

Intellectual History ◽

Political Thought ◽

The Political ◽

Political Ideas ◽

Easter Rising ◽

The World ◽

Irish Revolution ◽

Irish Politics ◽

The Revolution

ABSTRACTExamining the political thought of the Irish Revolution poses two distinct problems. First, we need to establish how we should date the Revolution for the purposes of intellectual history. There is no doubting that the 1916 Easter Rising was an event in British and Irish politics, but it was also an event in the world of ideas. Any serious consideration of this episode and its aftermath therefore needs to trace its origins to patterns of thought as well as shifts in affairs, and the two processes do not necessarily coincide. The second requirement for understanding the role of political thought in the Revolution is to reconstruct carefully the actual doctrines articulated and deployed. Irish historians have been reluctant to engage in this process of interpretation. Yet a more searching account of political ideas in the period has the potential to change our approach to the Revolution as a whole.

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