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

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-151
Author(s):  
Francis M. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Cumann Na Ngaedheal ◽  
Irish Politics

The political career of Michael Tierney, 1920–44

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (147) ◽  
pp. 412-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Martin
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Intellectual Influence ◽  
Cumann Na Ngaedheal ◽  
Irish Politics

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.

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

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.

Classics and Irish Politics, 1916-2016

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
Irish Politics

This collection addresses how models from ancient Greece and Rome have permeated Irish political discourse in the century since 1916. The 1916 Easter Rising, when Irish nationalists rose up against British imperial forces, was almost instantly mythologized in Irish political memory as a turning point in the nation’s history and an event that paved the way for Irish independence. Its centenary has provided a natural point for reflection on Irish politics, and this volume highlights an unexplored element in Irish political discourse, namely its frequent reference to, reliance on, and tensions with classical Greek and Roman models. Topics covered include the reception and rejection of classical culture in Ireland; the politics of Irish language engagement with Greek and Roman models; the intersection of Irish literature with scholarship in Classics and Celtic Studies; the use of classical allusion to articulate political inequalities across hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and class; meditations on the Northern Irish conflict through classical literature; and the political implications of neoclassical material culture in Irish society. As the only country colonized by Britain with a pre-existing indigenous heritage of expertise in classical languages and literature, Ireland represents a unique case in the fields of classical reception and postcolonial studies. This book opens a window on a rich and varied dialogue between significant figures in Irish cultural history and the Greek and Roman sources that have inspired them, a dialogue that is firmly rooted in Ireland’s historical past and continues to be ever-evolving.

Select bibliography of publications on Irish politics during 1990

1991 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-164
Author(s):  
John Coakley ◽  
Richard English
Keyword(s):  
Select Bibliography ◽  
Irish Politics

Charles James Fox and Ireland

2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (130) ◽  
pp. 169-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyn J. Powell
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
Irish Politics ◽  
Irish Patriots

In 1783 Henry Grattan complimented Charles James Fox by describing his views as ‘liberal to Ireland and just to those lately concerned in her redemption’. He also claimed that ‘Fox wished sincerely for the liberty of Ireland without reserve.’ Sir James Mackintosh’s draft inscription for Westmacott’s statue of Fox in Westminster Abbey stated that he had ‘contended for the rights of the people of America and Ireland’. Whiggish historians subsequently built upon this notion of Fox and his followers as great friends of Ireland. For the most part, modern scholars have avoided passing judgement on Fox’s views on Ireland, but a few authors have challenged early assumptions, depicting Fox as unprincipled in his use of Irish politics as a stick to beat the North and Pitt ministries. Christopher Hobhouse, commenting on Fox’s commitment to Catholic relief, claims that he ‘gave himself away’ and that ‘the House could distinguish by this time between Fox the religious liberator and Fox the artful dodger’. John Derry asserts that Fox ‘ruthlessly and irresponsibly exploited anti-Irish prejudice in England’ during the controversy over Pitt’s trade proposals of 1785. L.G. Mitchell notes that ‘his sympathy for American patriots had had real limits, and so had his concern for Ireland’, and that ‘Irish patriots were never sure of Fox, and their doubt was entirely justified.’ There is a good deal of substance in these comments, and in this article I also intend to argue that Fox was first and foremost a British parliamentarian. However, his conduct towards Ireland was not solely ruled by this stance. Free from the shackles of government, Fox was disposed to be generous to Irish patriotism and his friends and relatives in the Irish opposition.

scholarly journals Protection, economic war and structural change: the 1930s in Ireland

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (107) ◽  
pp. 250-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Peter Neary ◽  
Cormac Ó Gráda
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Industrial Sector ◽  
Home Market ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Political Controversy ◽  
Cumann Na Ngaedheal ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Economic Outlook

If I were an Irishman, I should find much to attract me in the economic outlook of your present government towards greater self-sufficiency. (J.M. Keynes)The 1930s were years of political turmoil and economic crisis and change in Ireland. Economic activity had peaked in 1929, and the last years of the Cumann na nGaedheal government (in power since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922) saw substantial drops in output, trade and employment. The policies pursued after Fianna Fáil’s victory in the election of February 1932 were therefore influenced both by immediate economic pressures and by the party’s ideological commitments. The highly protectionist measures associated with de Valera and Lemass — key men of the new régime — sought both to create jobs quickly and to build more gradually a large indigenous industrial sector, producing primarily for the home market.Political controversy complicated matters. De Valera was regarded as a headstrong fanatic by the British establishment. His government’s refusal to hand over to Britain the so-called ‘land annuities’ — a disputed item in the Anglo-Irish settlement of 1921 — led to an ‘economic war’, in which the British Treasury sought payment instead through penal ‘emergency’ tariffs on Irish imports. The Irish imposed their own duties, bounties and licensing restrictions in turn. The economic war hurt Irish agriculture badly; the prices of fat and store cattle dropped by almost half between 1932 and mid-1935. Farmers got some relief through export bounties and the coal-cattle pacts (quota exchanges of Irish cattle for British coal) of 1935-7, but Anglo-Irish relations were not normalised again until the finance and trade agreements of the spring of 1938, and the resolution of the annuities dispute did not mean an end to protection. The questions ‘Who won the economic war?’ and ‘What was the impact of protection on the Irish economy?’ are analytically distinct, but they are not that easy to keep apart in practice.

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