The foreign policy of the Irish Free State under the Cumann na nGaedheal administrations of 1922–32 was a far more complex issue than has generally been realised. Policy had a greater scope than simply Anglo-Irish relations. It had two basic foundations. Through the 1921 treaty, the state reluctantly joined the British Commonwealth. Then, with great deliberation, the Free State joined the League of Nations, being admitted on 10 September 1923. By developing an active multidimensional foreign policy using these structures, the new state sought to show its ‘international’ and European credentials. The Irish Free State was to carve out a small niche for itself in the post-Versailles world order. An analysis of the Free State’s response to the Geneva Protocol of 1924 provides a case study of this multifaceted foreign policy in action.

As the foundations of Irish foreign policy in the 1920s, the League and the Commonwealth were played off against each other. A prominent stance at the League indicated that although the Free State was a dominion, it was not tied to the imperial line and could act independently to secure its own interests. The Free State’s position as a radical dominion was emphasised through League membership as the state used its independence at the League in the 1920s to develop the concept of the Commonwealth as a looser international grouping of equals. This approach to foreign policy served to benefit both core aspects of the state’s foreign relations. Generally these two core aspects of foreign policy complemented each other.

The Blueshirts have been overlooked as a subject for study in recent years by historians. The only major work on the subject, Manning’s The Blueshirts, was written some twenty years ago, and what should have been an excellent launching-pad for further and fuller research into the subject has not been amplified since. Many questions remain undiscussed and unanswered. Historians have toyed with the subject of the Blueshirts’links with fascism, but no accepted consensus has yet appeared. There has been little if any work dealing with the leadership of the Blueshirts, and the numerous influential men and women who became involved in such a contentious organisation, but the biggest gap in Blueshirt knowledge is that relating to the numbers and background of men and women who joined the movement as ordinary members. This article will attempt to fill this gap by citing both Blueshirt and government figures which have relevance to the total number of Blueshirts, and by investigating the patterns of backgrounds and motivations that emerged from fifteen interviews with ex-members. The other unanswered questions must wait.

During the civil rights campaign of the late 1960s the perception of the Stormont government as fascist was widespread among nationalists—a perception expressed in Nazi salutes and the chant ‘S.S.—R.U.C.’ when confronting the police. The historical reference this perception embodied, however, was less than comprehensive. In particular, it obscured the attraction that fascism and movements inspired by fascism had for many people in Britain and Ireland in the inter-war years; and while fascism did not give rise to a movement of major importance in Northern Ireland, it nevertheless had a more significant presence there than has sometimes been thought. For instance, Robert Fisk's view that the only fascists in the north were Italian émigrés, grouped in Belfast and Derry, is inaccurate. In fact at various times in this period there existed branches of the British Fascists (B.F.), representatives of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (B.U.F.), together with a brief but significant initiative on Northern Ireland by the leader of the Blueshirt movement in the Irish Free State, General Eoin O'Duffy. Unlike the local representatives of Italian fascism, who confined their activities chiefly to greeting visiting Italian dignitaries and maintaining links with the homeland, these groups were very much concerned with domestic politics. Fascism in Northern Ireland, however, has other claims to attention than those occasioned by their activities alone, for it also serves to illuminate the neglected area of B.U.F. attitudes to Ireland in general.

On 11 July 1332 William de Bermingham, brother of the earl of Louth, was hanged at Dublin by order of the justiciar, Anthony de Lucy. This event is recorded by Clyn, by the author of the Annals of Ross and by the Dublin annalist, all of whom praise Bermingham for his military excellence but do not give any explanation for the execution. All the chroniclers mention Bermingham’s arrest earlier in the year, but the connexion between the two events is never stated.

In February and March 1332 William had been indicted by juries at Clonmel and Limerick of involvement in two alleged conspiracies, one in 1326 and the other in 1331, both of which had as their supposed object the establishment of the earl of Desmond as king of Ireland. The surviving indictments do not mention William’s son Walter, but he is later described as also having been indicted of felony. Both William and Walter were arrested by the justiciar at Clonmel in February 1332, held locally until Lucy had concluded his business in Munster, and then transferred on 19 April to Dublin castle, where two of the other named conspirators, Desmond himself and Henry de Mandeville, had been imprisoned since the previous year. Yet another conspirator, Walter de Burgh, was in the custody of his cousin, the earl of Ulster, in Northburgh castle.

Geoffrey Henry Browne, third Baron Oranmore and Browne, K.P., P.C., cannot have had publication in mind when he penned his journal; many entries are too personal. He chronicled the progress of his children, Dominick, Kathleen and Geoffrey, detailing their childhood ailments without even drawing a veil over a tonsillectomy on the kitchen table. Of recurrent concern was the health of his wife, Onie. It is a private document, written with evident candour. Much of it properly concerns only the Browne family. However, there is a seam, rich in Anglo-Irish politics, which runs throughout the journal and which merits a wider audience. In selecting passages for publication, I have attempted to mine this seam faithfully if concisely, retaining a limited measure of anecdote and human interest in order to illuminate Oranmore’s attitudes as a southern Unionist, for this apella-tion can have the resonance of an oxymoron to modern ears.

How small in fact were the differences between and within the Irish communities overseas, and between their cultures and work achievements and those of their host societies? The past decade has seen the arrival of fairly complete bibliographies of the Irish diaspora in the United States and in Britain, and substantial bibliographical essays on the Irish in Canada and in Australia. The pioneer volume of Hartigan and Hickman, compiled outside the academic grid and its resources, is welcome, intelligent and full of small surprises, despite some odd omissions (e.g. all but one of Denis Gwynn’s relevant titles). Yet, unlike Patrick Blessing, they could not rely on and collate existent bibliographies, as he could do with those of J. T. Ellis and Robert Trisco on American Catholic history (1982), Daniel Casey and Robert Rhodes on Irish-American fiction (1979), and W. C. Miller (1975) and Séamus Metress (1981) on the bibliography of Irish-America overall.