Blueshirts

Blueshirts

The Army Comrades Association (ACA), later named the National Guard and better known by the nickname The Blueshirts (Irish: Na Léinte Gorma), was an Irish extra-parliamentary security organisation active in the 1930s. It consisted largely of former members of the Irish Republican Army who were pro-Treaty during the Irish Civil War. The purpose of the organisation was to provide physical protection for political groups such as the Cumann na nGaedheal from intimidation by the anti-Treaty IRA.

Because of the later attraction of the group's leader Eoin O'Duffy to authoritarian nationalist movements on the European Continent, they are sometimes compared to the MVSN (Blackshirts) of Italy and to some extent performed a similar function. Some of the Blueshirts later went to fight for Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and were anti-communist in nature, however historian R.M. Douglas has stated that it is dubious to portray them as an "Irish manifestation of fascism".

Most of the political parties whose meetings the ACA protected would merge to become Fine Gael, and members of that party are sometimes nicknamed "Blueshirts" to this day, generally as a tongue-in-cheek reference in Irish politics.