The Irish Counter-revolution 1921-1936 [signed] [first edition]

In 1921, Michael Collins argued that the Anglo-Irish treaty offered nationalists the freedom to achieve freedom. In 1926, his successor Kevin O'Higgins went to London with a proposal to have the British monarch crowned king of a reunited Ireland. In 1933, General Eoin O'Duffy, leader of the Blueshirts, advocated a corporatist state on the Fascist Italian model, within a republican settlement. All three men accepted the Treaty, and were leaders of the party which implemented it during the first decade of independence.John M. Regan explains how such contrasting political views were reconciled within an evolving treatyite position. Regan argues that in order to understand the development of the new state and the establishment of a viable democracy it must first be recognised that a dedicated counter-revolution underpinned the post-revolutionary settlement.