The purpose of this study was to examine the political economic and social events that gave birth to a so-called fascist movement in Ireland during the early nineteen thirties. The study also attempted to explain the reasons for the failure of the movement. The members were called the "Blueshirts" and although they were significant in the political arena for only a few years there has never been a satisfactory explanation for their impact. Was it truly a fascist movement with the sinister potential of its sister political organizations on the continent? Or was it simply a short-lived reaction to what was called "the repressive policies" of the newly elected Fianna Fail government in 1932? Was their leader, General Eoin O'Duffy, attempting to overthrow parliamentary government? Or was he simply trying to solve the economic problems of Ireland that were the result of the world depression and the Anglo-Irish Economic War? Which, if either, was the explanation for Blueshirtism? In an attempt to answer these questions this writer began by putting the story in historical perspective.

No abstract included. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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Having critically examined the dominant approaches to the study of development now current in Irish geographical and historical research, the thesis outlines the need for a structurally based, historical analysis of uneven sectoral and regional development in Ireland from circa 1550 to 1750. This is achieved through examining the dialectical relationships between class, colonialism and development, involving an analysis of, in turn, land confiscation and colonisation policies, the creation of a new landed aristocracy, legislation against trade and manufacturing, and the overall retardation of development on the island. Uneven regional development is examined through contrasting the differing evolution of the North-east, where factory based industry eventually became firmly established and the remainder of the island, where agriculture remained predominant. Throughout the thesis the changing relations between internal class, and external colonial, aspects of development are highlighted.

This inquiry analyzes the necessity for the Irish Repeal Party's alliance with the Catholic Church, especially during the two crucial years prior to the Great Famine, The Repeal Party during this time sought to defend the predominantly rural subsistence Irish society against British policies of coercion and assimilation. The main organization at the national and popular level to unify this Irish resistance to British policies was the Irish Catholic Church. Daniel O'Connell acted as the bridge between the Parliamentary Irish Repeal party and the Catholic Church. This was closely linked to his aims and methods which he conceived in the immediate practical terms of Irish survival against the threat of cultural and economic extinction. He therefore rejected as unrealistic the more absolutist doctrine of nationality of his Young Ireland critics and rivals within his party. He recognized that their ultimate ideals of physical resistance to the almost total military control that Britain exercised over Ireland would be futile, and possibly disastrous for the Irish people. He insisted, instead, on "moral force" and Constitutional methods to achieve peaceful co-existence with Ireland's more dominant neighbour, Britain. His Catholic alliance was essential to these pragmatic and constitutional ends. The introductory chapters set the historic framework for this most important phase of the British-Irish conflict from 1844 to 1846 which was centered around a struggle for control of the Irish Catholic Church. Ireland's development is traced from a position of almost complete domination and control by Britain and a lack of organized resistance at the Act of Union in 1800, to a political voice and organized resistance at a national and popular level in 1844. In this historical process, Daniel O’ Connelly Repeal Party, supported by the Irish Catholic leaders, acted as a major catalyst. Next, the trial of Daniel O'Connell in 1844 on charges of sedition against the British government is examined as a model in miniature of the British-Irish conflict that had raged in the preceding years. It was the culmination of this conflict, showing that the accused was also, in a political sense, the accuser. O'Connell’s acquittal was a moral refutation of British policies that supported the Protestant government oligarchy practice of discrimination against Catholic Ireland. Furthermore, it and the subsequent repercussions in Britain, aggravated the growing dissension within the ruling British Conservative party. From this point, the policy of the British government towards the Irish Repeal Party took a more devious turn, and never again directly challenged O'Connell. Rather, it attempted to divide the Irish nation, and especially its Catholic leaders, by coercion and bribery. Also in 1844, the British government failed to persuade the Papacy to compel the Irish Church leaders to abandon Repeal. Instead, it only succeeded in strengthening the bonds between Catholicism and the national movement of O'Connell, which had become a "cause celebre" in the Catholic context of Europe. By 1845 the British policy towards the Irish Catholic Church had shifted to belated recognition and half-hearted conciliation. The increased Maynooth Grant of 1845 was a prime example of an isolated and limited gesture. The goodwill engendered by this was counteracted by the strength of the anti-Catholic opposition to the Bill. In addition, the immediate subsequent introduction of the Academical Institutions (Ireland) Bill, without consulting the Irish Church leaders, and with its implied threat to Irish culture and Catholic influence, further reduced the favourable impression that the British government had created among the Irish Catholic leaders by the Maynooth Grant. These British policies revealed the weakening of the government's efforts at ideological assimilation, and the strength of the Catholic base of Irish nationalism under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell. The ensuing controversy within the Repeal Party from 1845 between the more secular physical force Young Ireland nationalists and O'Connell's Catholic supporters served to intensify the latter's link with his moral, force and constitutional objectives. It was not his failure of leadership in his last two years, as his critics have supposed, that temporarily interrupted his constitutional movement at his death. It was, rather, the major tragedy of the Great Famine, compounded by British administrative failure and the consequent abortive Young Ireland rebellion in 1848, that left the constitutional movement without a strong leader. O'Connell's heritage and most permanent contribution was to give the Irish Catholic Church a more unified and active political role within the national movement, and thus provide a base during those years from which the Irish constitutional national movement in the late nineteenth century could be launched. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Ethnonational movements have proliferated throughout the world since the American and French Revolutions first gave birth to the consciousness that every nation has a right to self-determination. Whether these ethnic-based nationalist movements are a new phenomenon which is rooted in the Industrial Era of Europe, or are just a recent stage in an ethnic struggle that began during the initial cultural contact between two ethnically different groups and has persisted ever since, determines the point at which an analyst will choose to begin his or her investigation. Ultimately, the selection of this starting point determines the conclusions drawn about the cause and nature of ethnonational movements. In this thesis, the exploration of Irish ethnonationalism begins in the twelfth century when the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland. The formation and development of the Irish ethnic group is analyzed, and self-identification found to be the key criterion for determining group membership. As social cleavages between the "Irish" and "colonizer" hardened, institutions and structures emerged to maintain and reinforce the ethnic boundary between these two groups. The thesis concludes with a detailed analysis of the operation of one mechanism of self-segregation--separate education—using ethnographic data and autobiographical accounts of the childhood experiences of people who were born and raised in Northern Ireland. In this thesis, it is argued that Irish ethnic consciousness was brought into awareness when the invading Anglo-Normans threatened to dissolve into chaos the existing Gaelic social order. It is contended that the ethnic struggle in Ireland which began in the twelfth century and still persists today in Northern Ireland, has no single cause, but was and still is fundamentally a cultural conflict which continues to be fuelled by a long history of "remembered" grievances—cultural, political, and economic--most of which predate industrialization and the American and French Revolutions. This past is kept alive by the institutions, structures, and practices which maintain and reinforce the ethnic boundary between Catholics and Protestants in contemporary Northern Ireland, thus ensuring that the Irish nationalist movement will continue to have at its disposal a sharply defined ethnic group which it can mobilize when necessary, and from which it can recruit new members. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

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