ABSTRACT
Fianna Fail was also another name for the Irish Volunteers – the main military organ involved in the 1916 Rising and War of Independence. Virtually throughout this entire period Fianna Fail was the most popular party in rural Ireland and urban Ireland, among the working class and the middle class, among the young and the old. The distinction between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael could be observed in the two parties' self-images, and particularly their images of each other. Fine Gael continued to see itself as a paragon of probity and the party of law and order. As the institutional embodiment of a national movement, we might expect the Fianna Fail party to be ideologically broad. Ireland's financial, fiscal, and economic collapse from 2008 shattered Fianna Fail's support. Fianna Fail's relationship with the Catholic Church represents yet another example of its utterly pragmatic and ambiguous approach to establishing and subsequently consolidating its own power.
