Eoin O'Duffy

Who was Eoin O'Duffy?

Eoin O'Duffy was an Irish political activist, soldier and police commissioner. O'Duffy was the leader of the Monaghan Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the successful Irish War of Independence and in this capacity became Chief of Staff of the IRA in 1922. He was one of the Irish activists who along with Michael Collins accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty and fought as a general in the Irish Civil War on the pro-Treaty side.

Professionally, O'Duffy became the second Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, the police force of the new Irish state, after the resignation of Michael Stains. In his political life O'Duffy had been a member of early Sinn Féin, founded by Arthur Griffith. He was elected as a Teachta Dála for his home county of Monaghan during the 1921 election. After a split in 1923 he became associated with Cumann na nGaedheal and led the security organisation known as the Army Comrades Association. After the merger of various pro-Treaty factions under the banner of Fine Gael, O'Duffy was the party leader for a short time.

A staunch anti-communist, O'Duffy was attracted to the various authoritarian nationalist movements on the Continent. He raised the Irish Brigade to fight for Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War as an act of Catholic solidarity and was inspired by Benito Mussolini's Italy to found the National Corporate Party. He also offered to Germany the prospect of raising an Irish Brigade to fight in Operation Barbarossa during World War II on the Eastern Front against the Soviet system, but this was not taken up.