FRIENDS OF IRISH FREEDOM FACTS 1. The FOIF was founded at the First Irish Race Convention on 4 March 1916, at New York’s Hotel Astor. 2. It was another Irish-American organisation, the Clan na Gael, that played a key role in the foundation and direction of the Friends. Of the seventeen-man FOIF executive, fifteen were Clan members. Founded in 1867, the Clan was a secret revolutionary society dedicated to the cause of an Irish republic. 3. Interestingly then the Friends took the side of the Free State during the Civil War. 4. The Clan na Gael led by Joseph McGarrity opposed the Treaty. McGarrity’s Clan became the Anti-Treaty IRA’s main American support organization, expected to send both financial and military aid to Ireland. 5. Anti-Treatyites denounced the Friends of Irish Freedom as having ‘no principles, no morals, no standards’ and being ‘willing tools’ of the most corrupt Irish American politicians. 5. The Friends welcomed the triumph of the pro-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. In 1923 Cohalan, accompanied by Diarmuid Lynch, national secretary of the FOIF, visited Ireland and was warmly welcomed by Free State leaders.
Posted on: Fri, 09 May 2014 09:07:32 +0000