Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘The Centre of Delight of the Household’: 1904–1916
- 2 ‘Fighting the Tans at Fourteen’: 1916–1918
- 3 Seán MacBride's Irish Revolution: 1919–1921
- 4 Rising through the Ranks: 1921–1926
- 5 ‘The Driving Force of the Army’: 1926–1932
- 6 ‘The Guiding Influence of the Mass of the People should be the IRA’: 1932–1937
- 7 Becoming Legitimate? 1938–1940
- 8 ‘Standing Counsel to the Illegal Organisation’: 1940–1942
- 9 ‘One of the Most Dangerous Men in the Country’: 1942–1946
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - ‘The Guiding Influence of the Mass of the People should be the IRA’: 1932–1937
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘The Centre of Delight of the Household’: 1904–1916
- 2 ‘Fighting the Tans at Fourteen’: 1916–1918
- 3 Seán MacBride's Irish Revolution: 1919–1921
- 4 Rising through the Ranks: 1921–1926
- 5 ‘The Driving Force of the Army’: 1926–1932
- 6 ‘The Guiding Influence of the Mass of the People should be the IRA’: 1932–1937
- 7 Becoming Legitimate? 1938–1940
- 8 ‘Standing Counsel to the Illegal Organisation’: 1940–1942
- 9 ‘One of the Most Dangerous Men in the Country’: 1942–1946
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Although the first handover of power in the Irish Free State ultimately proved commendably peaceable, the weeks between the publication of the election results and the formation of the new government were a period of extreme tension within the political and military structures of the state. What lay behind this tension was the shadow of the IRA, who were widely perceived to be merely awaiting an opportunity to stage a coup. W. B. Yeats reported the rumours swirling around Dublin streets:
One hears such comments on political events as ‘when those Church of Ireland gunmen, the Gilmours [sic], get out of jail everything will start popping’ or will ‘De Velera [sic] have the nerve to suppress Shawn Gonne before he shoots the town up’, and I remember Shawn Gonne so like the Christ child that O Delany (Maud Gonnes [sic] old retainer) said her prayers to a rosary made out of his shed buttons.
This perception of de Valera being unwilling or unable to control IRA militancy reinforced the tendency to view the Fianna Fáil victory as a prelude to a fully fledged Bolshevik-inspired IRA takeover. Indeed, elements within the IRA viewed the situation in similar terms, the pseudonymic ‘Grangegorman’ writing smugly in August 1932 that ‘Cosgrave's rule is as dead as the Tsar's, and Kerensky is in power.’
Fianna Fáil and the IRA
The secret negotiations between Fianna Fáil and the IRA, initiated by the former immediately after election day, appeared to confirm this belief.
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- Seán MacBrideA Republican Life, 1904-1946, pp. 100 - 125Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011