Social Credit Party

The Irish Social Credit Party was a political party active in the Irish Free State. Founded as the Financial Freedom Federation in 1932, it was re-named in 1935. History Formed in 1932 as the Financial Freedom Federation (FFF), it became the Irish Social Credit Party in late 1935. The party sought to reform Ireland’s financial and economic system on lines consistent with the social credit economics as espoused by Major C. H. Douglas. The FFF had split in two factions: one operating under the banner of the Financial Freedom Federation and the other under the banner of the Financial Freedom Federation of Ireland. A list of the party's executive committee member submitted to the 1934 Banking Commission includes Maud Gonne MacBride and Josephine Fitzgerald. As of 1936, the Party's headquarters was based in Gardiner Street, Dublin. In the Irish Independent in 1936, Gonne criticised Ernest Blythe's denunciation of social credit economics. She wrote: "I read with amazement the report of Mr. Blythe's broadcast attack on Social Credit. Major Douglas's contention that production has outstripped distribution with disastrous results of unemployment and starvation, tending to war and anarchy is uncontrovertible, and is apparent to all in the desperate scramble for markets, the restriction of output and destruction in almost every country of consumable goods, while millions of people who need these goods are allowed to starve."