?No fascisti’ – Kevin O’Higgins and the threat to democratic policing in 1920s Ireland

In the summer of 1922, independent Ireland slipped into a state of civil war. As the government struggled to suppress a republican uprising with bolshevist undertones, elements within the Cumann na nGaedheal party (forerunner to Fine Gael) looked to augment the National Army and the infant Garda Síochána with armed treatyite paramilitaries.