The Blueshirts are best remembered as Ireland’s fascists, and as such there has been a tendency not to examine the broader activities of the movement. Between the image of a non-constitutional army, and the highly important role the Blueshirts played in the formation of the entirely constitutional Fine Gael, historians have struggled to give the … Read more
The uses of literacy, the ability to read and write, are central to the construction of popular culture. Cultural historians have long been engrossed with the reading habits of ordinary people, hoping to find clues to their knowledge, beliefs, expectations and fantasies. Yet the forms and functions of popular writing have been largely ignored. This … Read more
On 6 November 1922, with the Civil War raging and his political judgement seriously questioned, Eamon de Valera typed a carefully worded ‘private’ letter to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Melbourne. It was a critical moment. Two weeks earlier, on 22 October, the cardinal primate of Armagh, together with his fellow bishops in Ireland, had … Read more
‘This is the golden hour. Therefore be prepared.’ Thus did Austin Stack admonish the District Registrars throughout Ireland when, on 9 August 1921, he sent them detailed instructions on the procedures and regulations of the Dail Courts. No one was left in any doubt where the real authority lay: henceforth the parish and district courts … Read more
The concentration by historians on the more exciting events of the last two decades of the eighteenth century has contributed to the neglect of Lucas, and where he has been noticed he has frequently been portrayed as an extravagantly antiCatholic bigot. Hence R.R. Madden described him as ‘a bigot of rampant, puritanical, intolerant principles’, while … Read more