The Cork ladies who left their mark on Irish history

In Cork in the early 1930s, a piece of history was made when a new group started up in Toames, near Macroom.

This was the first branch meeting in Ireland of the Blue Blouses - the female contingent of Eoin O’Duffy’s infamous Blueshirts

By 1933, the group nationwide had more members than Cumann na mBan, the Irish Countrywomen’s Association, and every other women’s organisation in Ireland combined.

Their now forgotten story is told in Mná na Léinte Gorma, a documentary on TG4 at 9.30pm on Wednesday, as we hear the story of the women who organised, mobilised, and wielded influence within one of the most controversial political movements in Irish history.

Produced by Cork-based Bo Media, the documentary asks why such a large and powerful female movement was written out of Ireland’s historical narrative. Drawing on archival material and expert analysis, it explores how thousands of ordinary, respectable women became involved in a proto-fascist organisation in the turbulent 1930s, and what it reveals about gender, power, and political life in the early Free State.

As authoritarian ideologies gained ground across Europe, Ireland was not immune. Mná na Léinte Gorma traces how fear, faith, and a desire for order shaped women’s political engagement, examining their motivations, contradictions, and the darker implications of the movement they supported.

The documentary resists easy judgments, offering a nuanced and critical re-examination of women’s political agency at a moment of profound social change.

Bilingual in Irish and English, and rooted in Cork city and county, the documentary offers up timely conversations about extremism, gender, identity, and how history chooses what and who it remembers.