‘Mná na Léinte Gorma’ review: Excellent TG4 documentary on how the Blue Blouses story was brushed under history’s carpet

This fascinating film shows we cannot write off the group’s brief popularity of as a blip in history

Women dressed as Blue Blouses for dramatised scenes in the excellent documentary ‘Mná na Léinte Gorma’, on TG4 on March 4. Photo: Bo Media/TG4

Fascists love a nice uniform. Hitler had his Brownshirts. Mussolini and Mosley had their Blackshirts.

Here in Ireland from 1932 to 1935, Eoin O’Duffy had his Blueshirts, the unofficial name of the Army Comrades Association, later the National Guard, then Young Ireland and finally, as it faded into irrelevance, the League of Youth.