GARDA FILES:GARDA PAPERS from 1935 and 1936 reveal a catalogue of "outrages and offences" by members of the League of Youth, the new name adopted by the Blueshirts to get around a 1933 ban.
In May 1935 an attempt was made to burn the home of Fianna Fáil TD Patrick Murphy in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. In the same month shots were fired at a GAA dance in Buttevant. No one was injured.
A month earlier at Castletown Kildorrey, Cork, three shots were fired at the home of David Nolan, “as a reprisal against members of the family who had given evidence in court proceedings against Blueshirts”.
On St Patrick’s Day 1935 in Kilmallock, Limerick “a party of Blueshirts got out of control and attacked everybody and anybody whom they considered were opposed to them. The position was so serious that the gardaí were obliged to use their batons.”
In July 1935, 200 women and 40 men assembled outside the military barracks in Fermoy for a sale of seized cattle. When gardaí refused admission “the women threw dust, sods, stones and eggs at the gardaí”. The same month in Kerry “an armed attack was made on the Bank of Ireland premises at Listowel. The bank manager, one Mr Elliott, is a Protestant from the north of Ireland and this attack was intended as a reprisal for the recent attacks on Catholics in Belfast.”
Released State papers also show that Gen Richard Mulcahy, who became Fine Gael leader, complained to gardaí that a member of his Garda protection unit referred to him as a “f***er”. In November 1937 he claimed that after he and his wife attended the Abbey Theatre, they noticed a Garda McGuire, who walked “rather insolently about the vestibule”.
The garda asked a young man about getting cigarettes and said to the youth “will you get them for me as we are scorching this f***er up”, in reference to Mulcahy.Garda McGuire, who denied the claims, was taken off his protection duty.
