Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin was an Irish far right politician. He was born in 1910 into a comfortable middle-class Catholic family living in the Protestant-dominated Stranmillis

Stranmillis

Stranmillis is an area in south Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is also an electoral ward for Belfast City Council, part of the Laganbank district electoral area. As part of the Queen's Quarter, it is the location for prominent attractions such as the Ulster Museum and Botanic Gardens and is popular...

district of Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

. Ó Cuinneagáin was an intelligent and studious youth who distinguished himself in the classroom, gaining the third place nationwide in the Irish civil service examinations in 1927 and earning matriculation to Queen's University, Belfast.

He was inspired by one of his former teachers at St Malachy's, Patrick Lenihan

Patrick Lenihan

Patrick Lenihan was a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála in the Ireland in the early 1960s. He held the distinction of being the only parent to be elected to an Irish parliament where his son was already a member....

, to begin taking evening classes in Irish and adopted the Irish

Irish language

Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

form of his name, changing it from Cunningham to Ó Cuinneagáin. His command of the Irish language gained him a position in 1933 as an editorial writer with the Republican weekly An tEireannach.
He founded Ailtirí na hAiséirghe

Ailtirí na hAiséirghe

Ailtirí na hAiséirghe was a minor radical nationalist and fascist political party from Ireland, founded by Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin in 1942. The party sought to form a totalitarian Irish Christian corporatist state...

which had some influence for a short time in the 1940s. The party's aims included the banning of English spoken in public, the total revival of the Irish language across Ireland, the removal of Jews from Irish society, the rejection of Partition

Partition (politics)

In politics, a partition is a change of political borders cutting through at least one territory considered a homeland by some community. That change is done primarily by diplomatic means, and use of military force is negligible....

and the installation of a Catholic-based dictatorship. The party received support from politicians like Oliver J. Flanagan

Oliver J. Flanagan

Oliver J. Flanagan was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served in Dáil Éireann for 43 years and was Minister for Defence for six months. He was elected to the Dáil fourteen times between 1943 and 1982, topping the poll on almost every occasion...

, Dan Breen

Dan Breen

Daniel "Dan" Breen was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In later years, he was a Fianna Fáil politician.-Background:...

and Ernest Blythe

Ernest Blythe

Ernest Blythe was an Irish politician.Ernest Blythe was born to a Presbyterian and Unionist family near Lisburn, County Antrim in 1889, the son of a farmer, and was educated locally. At the age of fifteen he started working as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture in Dublin.Blythe joined the...

. Ailtirí na hAiséirghe held its last formal meeting in 1958, though the party newspaper continued to appear until the early 1970s.

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