Part 45 - Unfortunate suggestion by a new hand in a Dublin store

1 p.; clipping

A clipping of a cartoon titled ‘Unfortunate suggestion by a new hand in a Dublin store’. The caption reads ‘The innocent shop assistant who recommended a blue shirt to Mr de Valera (no flowers, by request)’. The cartoon is signed with the initials ‘WN’. An annotation in ink seemingly reads ‘The Bulletin / 23 VIII 1933’ but the title of the publication from which the cartoon was taken has not been definitively ascertained.

The cartoon addresses Éamon de Valera’s banning of the Blueshirt organisation in 1933. The Blueshirts, founded as the Army Comrades Association and later known as the National Guard, was a short-lived quasi-military organisation established in 1932 to provide physical security for Cumann na nGaedheal during the party’s handover of power to Fianna Fáil. In 1933 de Valera sacked Eoin O’Duffy, the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, who later assumed the leadership of the Blueshirts. Within a few months, de Valera declared the Blueshirts an illegal organisation and the National Guard merged into the newly formed Fine Gael party.