Irish general election, 1918
The Irish general election of 1918, which took place as part of the 1918 United Kingdom general election, is seen as a key defining moment in modern Irish history. It saw the decimation of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which since the 1880s had dominated the Irish political landscape. It saw the appearance as the new dominant electoral force of Sinn Féin, formally a small separatist Irish monarchist party but which in 1917 adopted republicanism as its defining strategy.
Context
The Irish electorate in 1918, as with the entire electorate throughout the United Kingdom, had changed utterly in two ways from the preceeding general election.
- Because of the intervening Great War (World War I), which had been fought from 1914 to 1918, the British general election due in 1915 had not taken place. As a result, no election took place between 1910 and 1918, the longest spell in modern British and Irish constitutional history. Thus the 1918 election saw dramatic generational change, namely
- all voters between the voting age of 21 and 29 were first time general election voters. They had no history of past voter loyalty to the IPP to fall back on, and indeed had begun their political awareness in the period of 8 years that had seen a bitter world war, the home rule controversy and the Easter Rising and its aftermath.
- a generation of older voters, most of them IPP supporters, had died in eight year period.
- Voting rights had been granted to women (albeit only those over 35) for the first time.
A new generation of young voters, the disappearance of much of the oldest generation of voters, and the sudden influx of all women under 35, meant that vast numbers of new voters of unknown voter affiliation existed, changing dramatically the makeup of the Irish electorate. In addition changes in the electorate were matched by dramatic changes to Irish politics in the intervening 8 years, notably
- The local organisation of the previously dominant Irish Parliamentary Party, unchallenged for nearly a decade, had disintergrated at worst, was largely elderly at best, making its defence of its seats difficult;
- The Easter Rising in 1916, though initially unpopular, had seen Irish public opinion become more radicalised, as the electorate reacted against the heavy-handed military response of the British government;
- The emergence of a new republican movement, Sinn Féin, built on a formerly fringe monarchist party now taken over by Easter Rising survivors, which had shown its electoral capability in by-election successes that had seen Count Plunkett, W.T. Cosgrave and Eamon de Valera elected in 1917 (though its electoral appeal in 1917 should not be overstated. It did not win all by-elections, and in at least one occasion the 'victory' of a Sinn Féin candidate was achieved through putting a gun to the head of a Returning Officer and telling him to "check again" when he was about to announce an IPP victory. Needless to say, he did a 'recheck' and 'found' a new bunch of uncounted ballot papers which all 'happened' to be votes for the Sinn Féin candidate, who as a result 'won' the election.)
- The new Sinn Féin leaders were all young new generation politicians (Collins was 28, de Valera 36), like most of the new voters, whereas the IPP was led by leaders such as John Dillon, who had been in public office since the 1880s and were largely elderly and still campaigning for home rule, as they had been since the 1870s under Isaac Butt. So whereas Sinn Féin represented change and a radical new policy for achieving Irish self-government, the IPP was still campaigning for the same issue as it has done for nearly fifty years. While home rule had finally been granted in 1914 its implementation had been put on hold. By 1918, many saw home rule as 'yesterday's idea', an idea whose time had come and gone.
The election
While the rest of the United Kingdom fought the Khaki election on other issues involving British parties, in Ireland four major political parties had national appeal, but one, the Irish Labour Party, immediately decided not to take part, fearing that it would be caught in the political crossfire between the IPP and Sinn Féin; it thought it better to let the people make up their minds on the issue of home rule versus a republic by having a clear IPP/Sinn Féin choice. That left three major parties, one unionist, the Irish Unionist Party (with a supportive Labour Unionist Party), and two nationist, Sinn Féin and the IPP (with other small nationalist parties). However it soon became clear that some of the 105 seats in Ireland would be uncontested. In some cases that was because there was a certain winner, and the rival parties decided against devoting their money and effort to unwinnable seats. In other cases, allegations were made that republican militants threatened potential candidates and their families to discourage non-Sinn Féin candidates from running. For whatever reason, in 25 of the 1031 constituencies, Sinn Féin won their seats unopposed.
Seat totals
The final results in terms of seats (both contested and uncontested) were:
- Sinn Féin 73 seats (69.5% of seats)
- Irish Unionists 22 seats (20.9% of seats)
- Irish Parliamentary Party 6 seats (+ 1 IPP MP in Liverpool, a strongly Irish city in Britain) (5.7% of seats)
- Labour Unionists 3 (2.8% of seats)
- Independent Unionist 1 (Trinity College Dublin) (0.95% of seats)
Vote totals
However the use of the unrepresentative and unproportional First Past the Post2 electoral system typically creates a distortion that overrepresents the larger parties' seat numbers at the expense of the smaller, or even those only marginally smaller. An example of the vote totals (based on those seats where contests occurred) gives a different impression on the nature of electoral opinion on the island of Ireland. The actual votes and percentages were
- Sinn Féin 476087 votes (46.9% of cast votes)
- Irish Unionists 257314 (25.3%)
- Nationalists 220837 (21.7%)
- Labour Unionists 30304 (3.0%)3
- Labour 12164 (1.2%)
- Independent Unionists 9531 (0.9%)
- Independent Nationalists 8183 (0.8%)
- Independent Labour 659 (0.1%)
- Independents 436 (0.0%)
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the election, the Sinn Féin's MPs, calling themselves Teachtaí Dálai (TDs), formed a proto-parliament in Dublin, called Dáil Éireann (The Assembly of Ireland), declared the Irish Republic and elected an "Irish government", called the Áireacht, under a prime minister called the Príomh Áire (also sometimes called President of Dáil Éireann.) Though this new regime had no legal legitimacy and its Unilateral Declaration of Independence remained unaccepted diplomatically, it marked the first attempt an independent Irish government. Leaders of the Áireacht like Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins and W.T. Cosgrave, came to dominate Irish politics, with de Valera holding some form of elected office from his first election as an MP in a by-election in 1917 down to 1973.
The 1918 general election was the last all-Ireland election held, as under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Ireland was partitioned into two states, each of whom held separate elections to their own parliaments. All Ireland vote not vote again on the same issue until 1998, when both Irish states simultaneously ratified on the Belfast Agreement.
Some prominent candidates elected unopposed
- Arthur Griffith (SF) Cavan East (also won Tyrone North East in a contest)
- Eamon de Valera (SF) Clare East
- Terence McSwiney (SF) Cork County Mid
- Michael Collins (SF) Cork County South
- Sean Hayes (SF) Cork County West
- Liam Mellows (SF) Galway East (also won Meath North in a contest)
- Pierce Beaslai (SF) Kerry East
- Austin Stack (SF) Kerry West
- W.T. Cosgrave (SF) Kilkenny North
- Patrick MacCartan (SF) King's County4
- Count Plunkett (SF) Roscommon North
Some prominent candidates elected in contests
Most prominent defeated candidates
John Dillon, MP, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
See Also
Footnotes
1 The 105 seats were spread over 103 constituencies, with two constituencies having two MPs.
2 The University of Dublin (better known as Trinity College Dublin), was a two seater elected through the Single Transferable Vote.
3 Some Labour candidates did run in the election, even though the Labour Party itself opted not to.
4 King's County is now known as County Offaly.
5 Queen's County is now known as County Laois (old spelling, Leix)
Additional Reading
- Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins
- Tim Pat Coogan, Eamon de Valera
- F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine
- Dorothy MacCardle, The Irish Republic
- Brian Walker, Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922
External links
Paper on the 1918 election in Ireland
Referenced By
Eamon De Valera | James Dillon | John Bruton | Sinn Fein | Sinn Féin | W.T. Cosgrave
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