Most of us who may have encountered him skulking in the footnotes of modern Irish history, recall county Monaghan’s General Eoin O’Duffy for his prancing around in the 1930s as a blue shirted Fascist and, later, poncing about in Spain during that country’s civil war as a Generalissimo in Franco’s anti-democratic forces, writes An Fear Rua …

Yet, in an earlier part of his chequered career, O’Duffy was singular among his contemporaries in his use of the GAA as a recruitment and organising ground for revolution.

Appropriately enough, his induction into the ranks of revolution began after a match in Croke Park. He attended a game there in November 1917 and afterwards the General Secretary, Luke O’Toole, introduced him to Michael Collins. Within an hour, he had joined the Irish Volunteers. He returned to Monaghan and after only a short time had recruited virtually every able-bodied member or supporter of the GAA there into the Volunteers. The following year, O’Duffy consolidated his position as what Collins called ‘the best man in Ulster’ by joining the secretive Irish Republic Brotherhood and the resurgent Sinn Féin.

O’Duffy’s revolutionary progress owed much to his background in the GAA. As he recalled himself: ’So far as Monaghan is concerned, the Volunteers minus the GAA organisation would have been negligible…’ A Monaghan Volunteer estimated that as much as eight in every ten of their membership had come through the GAA with the local team forming the nucleus of the Volunteer company. O’Duffy took a leading role in a campaign against the government’s proposal to levy an entertainment tax on admission to GAA games. He refused to seek official permits for the holding of GAA matches.

GAA grounds were places where the revolutionaries could meet and matches provided cover for revolutionary gatherings. One time, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) came upon a group of Volunteers drilling, who promptly took their hurleys from their shoulders and started a game of hurling.

O’Duffy’s career in GAA administration – as he tells it himself - ’began rather surprisingly. When I arrived in Greenan’s Cross to conduct my Irish class and céilí, I was informed by the County Board Chairman, the late Patrick Whelan, that earlier in the day I had been appointed Honorary Secretary by the Board.’ O’Duffy was so successful in re-organising Monaghan GAA that, two months later, he was appointed Secretary of the Ulster Council. Clubs affiliated increased from sixty-three to ninety six, then to a hundred and eleven. Monaghan won the provincial championships in both hurling and football.

The RIC charged O’Duffy with ‘illegal assembly’ following a game between Clones Kaffirs and Newbliss Hottentots. (Does anyone recall those teams who were clearly named after native forces who had opposed the British Empire in colonial lands?). In the court, Constable Maguire said that he and Constable Ryle had followed a crowd on bicycles from Clones to Clontibret to attend a football match. The crowd on the bicycles were given their orders by the blowing of a whistle and eventually they ended up outside O’Duffy’s house where they were dismissed by a command in Irish.

The local newspaper derided the inability of the police to keep up with the crowd: ’well fed gentlemen with heavy uniforms on heavier official machines’ found it difficult to catch the ’athletic Clones lads’. O’Duffy claimed the use of the whistle was simply what cycling clubs did and the local Bishop supported him by complaining about ’youths being sentenced to terms of imprisonment for displaying such skill in the control of a group of cyclists as not to constitute a danger to themselves or others, by mounting or dismounting to whistle signals’. Nevertheless, O’Duffy was sentenced to two months in Belfast prison.


O'Duffy addresses a Blueshirts' rally in Cork
In a recent biography of O’Duffy * there is considerable discussion about whether or not he was gay. Indeed, a previous Chronicle of An Fear Rua is cited as one of the pieces of evidence that he was. However, extracts from O’Duffy’s diary about his time in Belfast prison after the GAA match may be even more significant. Recounting his arrival back in Clones for his trial, he says that as they alighted from the train they were ’affectionately greeted particularly by the ladies. Neither Mr Hogan nor myself being ever too attentive to the ladies, we were nonplussed by such loving embraces, both now and during our short stay in Clones.

An even more telling diary entry tells of the concerts organised by the prisoners in the jail. O’Duffy became a leading member of ‘the prison Prison Cumann na mBan’ and clearly enjoyed dressing up as a woman for the concerts: ’I had the privilege of contributing in full dress ‘The Hole in her Stocking’. A fortnight later, ’in an entirely new turnout’ the prison journal commented favourably on O’Duffy’s ’costume and head dress.’

O’Duffy in his time was a virulent opponent of ’the games of the foreigner'. He regarded the Irish Amateur Athletic Association as ’sycophants of the Crown. Monaghan County Board described soccer clubs as 'nation killing enclaves’. O’Duffy himself went so far as to claim that soccer and rugby were, in fact, inferior descendants of the ancient game of Gaelic football!

In late 1919, O'Duffy wrote to the Anglo Celt newspaper condemning British harassment of the GAA. He accused the government of using 'bribery and corruption' to popularize soccer. He cited a few examples. The chairman of the Belfast Soccer League had offered two Clones GAA players '£5 per match and a good time'. You'd have to wonder what he meant by a good time. The secretary of Donegal County Board had been offered £50 to defect to the Irish Football Association. A Clones soccer team composed largely of ex-soldiers had received 'free outfits and high class cuisine ... much better than Gaels could provide'.

O'Duffy was not alone in this type of viewpoint. After the Monaghan v Cavan final of 1916, for example, the Dundalk Democrat asserted:’The Gaelic field has no charm for the dull, effeminate, good-for-nothing loafer … our Association only provides attraction for the manly, the virtuous, the temperate – in short, for those imbibed with the higher instincts of the Gael…’

The GAA Annual went even further: ‘the Irish Celt is distinguished among the races for height and strength, manly vigour and womanly grace … despite wars and domestic disabilities the stamina of the race has survived almost in pristine perfection.’ The ideal Gael was ’a matchless athlete, sober, pure in mind, speech and deed, self-possessed, self-reliant, self-respecting, loving his religion and his country with a deep and restless love, earnest in thought and effective in action'.

Ah yes. Great to see so little has changed in the GAA over the intervening years …

*’Eoin O’Duffy – A Self-Made Hero’ by Fearghal McGarry is published by Oxford University Press. Well worth a purchase or a borrow from the local library for anyone with more than just a passing interest in history generally or in the history of the GAA.

Related Topic:
General O"Duffy...a Soft Touch for Hurlers...