ABSTRACT
The Irish Free State, a dominion of the Commonwealth of Nations, was established on December 6, 1922. By 1937, when Irish voters consigned it to history, it had survived partition of its territory, civil war, the Great Depression, economic war with Britain, poverty, mass emigration, and the stultifying effects of conservatism, moral, political, religious, social. It had also become one of Europe’s few stable democracies. Two political parties dominated the state, sharing a common attachment to state-building and stability, though each journeyed a different path. Cumann na nGaedheal, in office from 1922–32, nursed the state in its formative years. Their adversaries, Fianna Fáil, held power from 1932–48, dismantling the state for one with the trappings, if not the name, of a republic. This book addresses the abridged history of Irish propaganda that halts abruptly with the end of the revolution and civil war period (1916–23). It explores how Free State governments and officials practiced propaganda for nation and state-building, and assesses attitudes towards propaganda, by identifying its uses, successes and limitations. Propaganda constructed national and state identity in the aftermath of a period of armed conflict, though the transition from bellicose to peaceful communication was uneven. Cumann na nGaedheal used propaganda to benefit the nation and state at home and abroad, while Fianna Fáil, thanks to a constitution that declared it not a political party but a national movement, adroitly re-imagined Louis XIV’s apocryphal l’état, c’est moi. State propaganda of the period, looking mainly at totalitarian Europe, has earned a sinister, deceitful reputation. This book posits that official Free State propaganda was benign and constructive.
