Comrades Association nicknamed "the Blueshirts" comprising former members of the Free State army who pledged to provide security at Cumann na nGaedheal events. Following much street violence between the two sides and increasing fascist tendencies amongst the Blueshirts, both Blueshirts and IRA were banned again. In 1933, O'Donnell wrote an introduction to Brian O'Neill’s book The War for the Land in Ireland. Republican Congress O'Donnell's attempts at persuading the remnants of the defeated anti-Treaty IRA to become a socialist organisation ended in failure. Eventually, O'Donnell and other left-wing republicans left the IRA to co-found the Republican Congress in 1934 with other socialists, communists and Cumann na mBan members. The overriding aim of the Republican Congress was the maintenance of a united front against fascism. Despite having left the IRA, O'Donnell and others were tried in absentia by an IRA court-martial presided over by Seán Russell which dismissed them 'with ignominy'. The high point of the Republican Congress was between May and September 1934, when it achieved remarkable success as an umbrella organisation for class agitation. It earned the wrath of the IRA leadership, which banned IRA members from joining it. This led to widespread defections to the Congress from the IRA in Dublin, and the spectacular success of the Republican Congress in organising Belfast Protestants under the Republican Congress banner. On a march by the Shankill Road branch to Bodenstown churchyard in June 1934 to honour the founding father of Irish republicanism, Theobald Wolfe Tone the Shankill republicans, many of whom were members of the Northern Ireland Socialist Party, carried banners with slogans such as 'Break the Connection with Capitalism' and 'United Irishmen of 1934'. To the bemusement of many, the IRA leadership blocked the Belfast contingent from carrying their banners and attempted to seize them. The Republican Congress spearheaded attacks on Blueshirts in Dublin, while the IRA rank and file continued attacks on them elsewhere. By September 1934 the state was crushing the Blueshirts; leading Fine Gael figures abandoned the Blueshirt leadership under Eoin O'Duffy, reverting to parliamentary politics. With the demise of the Blueshirts imminent, 186 delegates attended what became the final Republican Congress assembly in Rathmines Town Hall on 29 and 30 September 1934. The Congress split on a proposal by Michael Price to turn it into a political party, a proposal which was perceived by the Communist Party of Ireland and other vested interests as threatening