An Eviction in Kinnitty: Republican Social Agitation and the New Fianna Fáil Government, 1932-1933

Abstract

This article uses an eviction in Co. Offaly to examine the interaction between national and local republican politics during the first year of Fianna Fáil in power. These politics revolved around and revealed the internal tensions within the IRA as it attempted to develop a strategy to counter the new Government, and that Government’s attempt to consolidate state power, which necessitated resisting the desire among local republicans to settle ten-year old local scores from the Irish Civil War, while simultaneously consolidating the republican base at the expense of the IRA.