Stanley G. Payne has argued that the Blueshirts "really was never a fascist organization at all". Maurice Manning also did not consider them fascists, with their mixture of patriotic conservatism, militia activities and corporatism amounting "to no more than a kind of Celtic Croix-de-Feu", and that ultimately the Blueshirts "had much of the appearance but little enough of the substance of Fascism". Historians are divided on the extent to which the Blueshirts took a lead from Mussolini and his many imitators at that time. Some of the Blueshirts later went to fight for Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War because of his anti-communism. They imitated some aspects of the Mussolini movement, such as the coloured-shirt uniform, Roman salute and the March on Rome; however, Historian R. M. Douglas has opined that it is incorrect to portray them as an "Irish manifestation of fascism".