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Irish (UK) General Election, 1918

Irish (UK) general election, 1918

The Irish general election of 1918 was that part of the 1918 United Kingdom general election that took place in Ireland. It is seen as a key defining moment in modern Irish history. This is because it saw the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a landslide victory for the radical Sinn Féin party, which had never previously enjoyed significant electoral success. The aftermath of the elections saw the convention of an extra-legal parliament, called the First Dáil, by the elected Sinn Féin candidates, and the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence.

Background

In 1918 the whole of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom and was represented in the British Parliament by about one hundred MPs. Whereas in Great Britain most elected politicians were members of either the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party, from 1882–1918 most Irish MPs were members of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The IPP strove for Home Rule in the form of internal self-government for Ireland, through a peaceful campaign of reform. This tactic did successfully bring a Home Rule Act 1914 on to the statute books in May 1918, but with a later amending partition of Northern Ireland bill enforced by Edward Carson's Ulster Unionist Party. The implementation of the Act was however temporarily postponed with the outbreak of World War I, expected to be over in a year. As the war prolonged, the more radical Sinn Féin began to grew in strength. Sinn Féin was founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. He believed that Irish nationalists should emulate Hungarian nationalists who, in the 19th century under Ferenc Deák, had chosen to boycott the imperial parliament in Vienna and unilaterally established their own legislature in Budapest. Griffith had favoured a peaceful solution based on joint monarchy with Britain. However by 1918, under its new leader Eamon de Valera, Sinn Féin had come to favour achieving separation from Britain by means of an armed uprising if necessary and the establishment of an independent republic. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising the party's ranks were swelled by participants and supporters of the rebellion as they were freed from British gaols and at its 1917 Ard Fheis (annual conference) de Valera was elected leader and the new, more radical policy adopted. Prior to 1916, Sinn Féin had been a fringe movement having a limited cooperative alliance with William O'Brien MP.'s "All-for-Ireland League" and enjoyed little electoral success. However between the Easter Rising of that year and the 1918 general election the party's popularity increased dramatically. This was due to the perceived failure of the IPP to have Home Rule implemented immediately, but also popular antagonism towards the British authorities created by the execution of most of the leaders of the 1916 rebels and by their botched attempt to introduce military conscription in Ireland. Sinn Féin demonstrated its new electoral capability in three by-election successes in 1917 in which Count Plunkett, W.T. Cosgrave and De Valera were each elected, although it did not win all by-elections in that year and in at least one case there were allegations of electoral fraud. Overall, however, the party would benefit from a number of factors in the 1918 elections.

Changes in the electorate

The Irish electorate in 1918, as with the entire electorate throughout the United Kingdom, had changed in two major ways since the preceding general election. Firstly, because of the intervening Great War, 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 such spell in modern British and Irish constitutional history. Thus the 1918 elections saw dramatic generational change. In particular:
- 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 the eight year period.
- Emigration (except to Britain) had been almost impossible during the war because of the dangerous sea lanes, which meant that tens of thousands of young people were in Ireland who in normal times would have been abroad. Secondly, the franchise had been greatly extended by the Representation of the People Act 1918. This increased the Irish electorate from around 700,000 to about two million. It also granted voting rights to women (albeit only those with property over 35) for the first time. Overall, a new generation of young voters, the disappearance of much of the oldest generation of voters, and the sudden influx of women over thirty-five, meant that vast numbers of new voters of unknown voter affiliation existed, changing dramatically the makeup of the Irish electorate.

Political factors


- Since the last general election in 1910 the local organisation of the previously dominant IPP, unchallenged for nearly a decade, had atrophied at worst and was largely elderly at best, making its defence of its seats difficult.
- The electorate had become enamoured to Sinn Féin by the harsh response of the authorities to the Easter Rising. The party also took most of the credit for the successful campaign to prevent the introduction of conscription.
- In contrast to the IPP Sinn Féin could be seen as a young and radical force. Its leaders were young politicians, such as Michael Collins (28) and 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. Therefore, 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. By 1918, Home Rule had come to be seen as an idea whose time had come and gone.

The election

Voting in most Irish constituencies occurred on 14 December, 1918. While the rest of the United Kingdom fought the 'Khaki election' on other issues involving the British parties, in Ireland four major political parties had national appeal. These were the IPP, Sinn Féin, the Irish Unionist Party and the Irish Labour Party. The Labour Party, however, decided not to take participate in the election, 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 two way choice between the two nationalist parties. The Unionist Party favoured continuance of the union with Britain and was supported by the Labour Unionist Party. A number of other small nationalist parties also took part. In Ireland 105 MPs were elected from 103 constituencies. Ninety-nine seats were elected from single seat constituencies under the Single Member Plurality or 'first past the post' system. However the were also two two seat constituencies: University of Dublin, (Trinity College) elected two MPs under the Single Transferable Vote and Cork City elected two MPs under the Bloc voting system. In addition to ordinary geographical constituencies there were three university constituencies: Queen's University, Belfast and the University of Dublin (which would return three Unionist MPs), and the National University of Ireland (which would elect a member of Sinn Féin). Of the 105 seats in Ireland many were uncontested. In some cases this was clearly because there was a certain winner, and the rival parties decided against devoting their money and effort to unwinnable seats. However there were also allegations that republican militants had threatened potential candidates to discourage non-Sinn Féin candidates from running. For whatever reason, in the 73 constituencies in which Sinn Féin candidates were elected 25 were returned unopposed.

Results

Sinn Féin candidates were elected in 73 constituencies but three party candidates (Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera and Liam Mellows) were elected for two constituencies and so the total number of individual Sinn Féin MPs elected was 70. Despite the isolated allegations of intimidation and electoral fraud on the part of Sinn Féin supporters, the election was seen as a landslide victory for the party. The party returned with the second-largest number of seats was the Irish Unionist Party with 22 seats. The success of the Unionists was largely limited to Ulster, however, and in the rest of Ireland Unionists were elected only in the constituencies of the University of Dublin and Rathmines. The IPP suffered a catastrophic defeat and even its leader, John Dillon, failed to be re-elected. The IPP won six seats in Ireland, all but one of which were won in Ulster. It was represented in Westminster by seven MPs because an IPP candidate won election from emigrant votes in the English city of Liverpool. The IPP's losses were exaggerated by the first-past-the-post system which gave it a share of seats far short of its rather larger share of the vote.

Aftermath and legacy

After the election the elected Sinn Féin candidates, although entitled to sit as MPs in the British parliament, chose to boycott the Westminster body and instead assembled as a revolutionary parliament they called "Dáil Éireann": the Irish for "Assembly of Ireland". However Unionists and members of the IPP refused to recognise the Dáil. At its first meeting on 21 January, 1919 the Dáil issued a Declaration of Independence and proclaimed itself the parliament of new a state called the "Irish Republic". On the same day, in unconnected circumstances, two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were ambushed and killed at Soloheadbeg, in Tipperary, by members of the Irish Volunteers. Although it had not ordered this incident the course of events soon drove the Dáil to recognise the Volunteers as the army of the Irish Republic and the ambush as an act of war against Great Britain. The Volunteers therefore changed their name, in August, to the Irish Republican Army. In this way the 1918 elections lead to the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War. The train of events set in motion by the elections would eventually bring about the first internationally recognised independent Irish state, the Irish Free State, established in 1922. Furthermore the leaders of the Sinn Féin candidates elected in 1918, such as de Valera, Michael Collins and W.T. Cosgrave, came to dominate Irish politics. De Valera, for example, held at least some form of elected office from his first election as an MP in a by-election in 1917 until 1973. The two major parties in the Republic of Ireland today, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are both descendants of Sinn Féin, a party that first enjoyed substantial electoral success in 1918.

Question of interpretation

The correct interpretation of the results of the 1918 general election has been the subject of some controversy. This is because Sinn Féin treated the result as a mandate from the Irish people to immediately set about establishing an independent, all-Ireland state, and to initiate a war of separation from Great Britain. In 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Ireland was divided into two separate jurisdictions: six counties in the northeast became Northern Ireland, and the rest of the country that would eventually become the modern Republic of Ireland. 1918 was therefore the last occasion on which a general election occurred across the whole of Ireland, north and south, on the same day. For this reason many radical republicans have regarded the election as conferring a mandate for a united Ireland that was still unchanged over eighty years later. Indeed the 1918 general election has become a potent symbol for militant republicans who have argued that the elections conferred legitimacy both on the anti-Treaty faction in the Irish Civil War of 1922–1923 and on the violent campaigns of later groups such as the Provisional IRA that erupted many decades later. Critics of these interpretations make a number of arguments. Some question the legitimacy of the original mandate won by Sinn Féin. It is argued that Sinn Féin practiced widespread intimidation and electoral fraud and that this called the result into question. Some also argue that the use of the first-past-the-post electoral system and/or the large number of uncontested constituencies exaggerated the effect of the pro-Sinn Féin vote so that, while the party won around 70% of the total number of Irish seats, its share of the vote may have been less than 50% and so not have amounted to a majority. In fact, because of the large number of uncontested constituencies, it is impossible to know with certainty what share of the vote Sinn Féin would have won had all seats been contested. However, this has not stopped some historians attempting to speculate, for example by extrapolating from the vote counts in constituencies neighbouring those that were uncontested. Unionists argue from a different perspective. They insist that, regardless of the result, no election result considered on an all-Ireland basis could justify the imposition of a united Ireland on the Unionist minority in the north-east. Some point to the fact that Unionists won a majority share of the vote, in both the historical northern province of Ulster and in the six counties that would later become Northern Ireland, to argue that the 1918 election in fact established a mandate for the north-east, at least, to remain within the United Kingdom. Other arguments, leaving aside the immediate politics of 1918, dispute the capacity of any 1918 mandate for a united Ireland to legitimise acts of violence committed then or later. Although the 1918 general election was the last held throughout the whole of Ireland on a single day, in every election held since 1921 candidates advocating violent resistance to the partition of Ireland have fallen far short of winning a majority in either part of Ireland. It is also observed that an all-Ireland election occurred in 1994 in the form of the European Parliament election of that year, and in that election neither Sinn Féin nor any other militant republican party won a seat. In 1998 both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted on the same day in referenda on the Belfast Agreement. Voters in both jurisdictions endorsed the agreement which, among many other provisions, enshrined the principle that a united Ireland should only be brought about by peaceful, constitutional means.

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 County
- Count Plunkett (SF) Roscommon North

Elected in contests


- Robert William Hugh O'Neill (Unionist Party) Antrim Mid
- Rt Hon. Sir Edward Carson (UP) Belfast Duncairn
- Joseph Devlin (IPP) Belfast Falls
- Samuel McGuffin (LUP) Belfast Shankhill
- Sir James Craig (UP) Down Mid
- Jeriamiah MacVeagh (IPP) Down South
- Sean T. O'Kelly (SF) Dublin City College Green
- Desmond FitzGerald (SF) Dublin County Pembroke
- Sir Maurice Dockrell (UP) Dublin County Rathmines
- Joseph McGrath (SF) Dublin City St. James's
- Countess Markievicz (SF) Dublin City St. Patrick's
- Sir Robert Woods (UP) University of Dublin
- Padraic Ó Maille (SF) Galway Connemara
- Frank Fahy (SF) Galway South
- Domhnall Ua Buachalla (SF) Kildare North
- Professor Eoin MacNeill (SF) Londonderry city (also elected for the National University of Ireland)
- Hugh Anderson (IPP) Londonderry county North
- Denis Stanislaus Henry (IPP) Londonderry county South
- Ernest Blythe (SF) Monaghan North
- Seán MacEntee (SF) Monaghan South
- Kevin O'Higgins (SF) Queen's County
- Harry Boland (SF) Roscommon South
- Captain Willie Redmond (IPP) Waterford city
- Cathal Brugha (SF) Waterford county
- Laurence Ginnell (SF) Westmeath
- Dr. James Ryan (SF) Wexford South
- Robert Childers Barton (SF) Wicklow West

Defeated


- John Dillon, MP, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

Footnotes

# On one occasion the 'victory' of a Sinn Féin candidate in the Longford by-election is said to have been achieved through putting a gun to the head of a returning officer and telling him to "think again" when he was about to announce an IPP victory. On doing a 'recheck' the official 'found' a new uncounted ballot papers in which votes were cast for the Sinn Féin candidate. Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: A Biography (Hutchinson, 1990) p.67. # The percentage of votes given is a percentage of the total number of votes cast and therefore does not take into account the preferences of voters in constituencies where no contest occurred. It is impossible to know with certainty what the final shares of votes cast might have been had all constituencies been contested. # See for example [http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/h1918.htm The Irish Election of 1918], a paper by Nicholas Whyte discussing the level of support for Sinn Féin that can be inferred from the 1918 election results; from [http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/ Northern Ireland Elections]. # King's County is now known as County Offaly. # Queen's County is now known as County Laois (old spelling, 'Leix').

See also


- History of Ireland, notably History of Ireland (1801-1922)
- John Redmond
- Sir Edward Carson

Further reading


- Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins
- Tim Pat Coogan, Eamon de Valera
- Robert Kee, The Green Flag
- F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine
- Dorothy MacCardle, The Irish Republic
- Brian Walker, Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922 Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922 Category:Elections in Ireland Category:Home Rule in the United Kingdom Category:1918 elections 1918

United Kingdom general election, 1918

The United Kingdom general election of 1918 held on 14th December 1918, after the Representation of the People Act 1918. It was therefore the first general election at which women could vote. The election was won by a coalition of the Conservatives, most of the Liberals and a few Labour and independent MPs, and produced a government led by David Lloyd George. Labour, led by William Adamson, vastly increased their share of the vote, but only slightly increased their number of seats. They were, however, the main parliamentary opposition. Herbert Henry Asquith's anti-coalition Liberals won few seats. In Ireland, the Irish Parliamentary Party lost almost all their seats, most of which were won by Sinn Féin.

Results

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History of Ireland

The History of Ireland is the story of a large island at the north-west of Europe and is heavily influenced by the concurrent History of Britain, its larger neighbour to the east. The first humans inhabited Ireland from around 7500 BC and, in time, were responsible for major Neolithic sites such as Newgrange and early writing. Christianity replaced Paganism by A.D. 600 and brought a written culture and monastic art, most famously in the Book of Kells. Irish is the indigenous language of the island's inhabitants, though settlers such as the Vikings and Normans introduced others. Today, for historical reasons, the overwhelming majority mother-tongue is English. Overt English colonial interest in Ireland began with a Norman invasion in 1169, but the Crown of England did not gain full control until the whole island had been subjected to numerous military campaigns in the period 1534–1691, which included the Desmond Rebellions, the Nine Years War (Ireland), the Irish Confederate Wars, and the Williamite war in Ireland, and was colonised in the Plantations of Ireland. From 1782–1800, Ireland regained a form of self-governing status through the Parliament of Ireland, but power was limited to the Anglo-Irish, Anglican minority while the majority Roman Catholic population suffered severe political and economic privations. This brief experiment was terminated following the outbreak (and vicious suppression) of the 1798 rebellion. In 1801, this parliament was abolished and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. The new political system led to a massive decline in trade and investment as business activity switched to London. In the 1840s, the population of Ireland fell, due to a catastrophic famine and emigration, from a peak of 8 million in 1840 to 4.4 million in 1911. In 1922, after the War of Independence, the southern and western twenty-six counties of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom and became the independent Irish Free State Since the 1937 Constitution, the country is called Ireland (in Irish, Éire) but is legally described as the "Republic of Ireland". The remainder of the island, known as "Northern Ireland", remained part of the UK. After independence in 1922, the Free State suffered from economic difficulties and continuing mass emigration for many decades. However, since the 1990s the Republic has been enjoying economic success, becoming known as the Celtic Tiger. Meanwhile, the history of Northern Ireland has been dominated by sporadic sectarian conflict between (mainly Catholic) Nationalists and (mainly Protestant) Unionists. This conflict erupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s, until an uneasy peace 30 years later.uneasy peace]

Early history: 8000 BC–AD 400

uneasy peace What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The earliest inhabitants of Ireland, people of a mid-Stone Age, or Mesolithic, culture, arrived sometime after 8000 BC, when the climate had become more hospitable following the retreat of the polar icecaps. About three or four millennia later, agriculture was introduced from the continent, leading to the establishment of a high Neolithic culture, characterized by the appearance of huge stone monuments, many of them astronomically aligned (most notably, Newgrange). This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. The Bronze Age, which began around 2500 BC, saw the production of elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons. The Iron Age in Ireland began about 600 BC. By the historic period (AD 431 onwards) the main over-kingdoms of In Tuisceart, Airgialla , Ulaid, Mide, Laigin, Mumhain, Cóiced Ol nEchmacht began to emerge (see Kingdoms of ancient Ireland). Within these kingdoms, despite constant strife, a rich culture flourished. The society of these kingdoms was dominated by druids: priests who served as educators, physicians, poets, diviners, and keepers of the laws and histories. Historians developed the concept from the 17th century onwards that the language spoken by these people could be called the Goidelic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages, and this was explained as a result of invasions of Celts. However, research during the 20th century indicated otherwise, and in the later years of the century the conclusion drawn was that the language and culture developed gradually and continuously. No archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants in Ireland. The hypothesis that the native Late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed influences to create Celtic culture has since been supported by recent genetic research. The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia. Ptolemy in AD 100 records Ireland's geography and tribes. Ireland was never formally a part of the Roman Empire but Roman influence was often projected well beyond formal borders. Tacitus writes that an Irish tribal chieftain was with Agricola in Britain and would return to seize power in Ireland. Juvenal tells us that Roman "arms had been taken beyond the shores of Ireland'. If Rome, or an ally, did invade, they didn't leave very much behind. The exact relationship between Rome and the tribes of Hibernia is unclear.

Early Christian Ireland 400–800

The middle centuries of the first millennium AD marked great changes in Ireland. Niall Noigiallach (died c.450/455) laid the basis for the Uí Néill dynasty's hegemony over much of western, northern and central Ireland. Politically, the former emphasis on tribal affiliation had been replaced by the 700's by that of patrilinial and dynastic background. Many formerly powerful kingdoms and peoples disappeared. Irish pirates struck all over the coast of western Britain in the same way that the Vikings would later attack Ireland. Some of these founded entirely new kingdoms in Pictland, Wales and Cornwall. The Attacotti of south Leinster even served in the Roman Legions in the mid-to-late 300's. Perhaps it was some of the latter returning home as rich mercenaries, merchants, or slaves stolen from Britain or Gaul, that first brought the Christian faith to Ireland. Some early sources claim that there were missionaries active in southern Ireland long before St. Patrick. Whatever the route, and there were probably many, this new faith was to have the most profound effect on the Irish. St. Patrick.]] Tradition maintains that in AD 432, St. Patrick arrived on the island and, in the years that followed, worked to convert the Irish to Christianity. On the other hand, Palladius was sent to Ireland by the Pope in 431 as "first Bishop to the Irish believing in Christ", which demonstrates that, by whatever means, there were already Christians living in Ireland. Palladius seems to have worked purely as Bishop to Irish Christians in the Leinster and Meath kingdoms, while Patrick — who is now believed to have arrived as late as 461 — worked first and foremost as a missionary to the Pagan Irish, converting in the more remote kingdoms located in Ulster and Connacht. 461 Patrick is credited, possibly too much so, with preserving the tribal and social patterns of the Irish, codifying their laws and changing only those that conflicted with Christian practices. He is credited with introducing the Roman alphabet, which enabled Irish monks to preserve parts of the extensive Celtic oral literature. While it is impossible to deny the very real effect Patrick had on his contemporaries, the fact remains that there were Christians in Ireland long before he came, and Pagans long after he died. The druid tradition collapsed, first in the face of the spread of the new faith, and ultimately in the aftermath of famine and plagues due to the climate changes of 535–536. Irish scholars excelled in the study of Latin learning and Christian theology in the monasteries that flourished shortly thereafter. Missionaries from Ireland to England and Continental Europe spread news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations came to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Early Middle Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewelry, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island. Sites dating to this period include clochans, ringforts and promontory forts.

Early medieval era 800–1166

Main article Early Medieval Ireland 800-1166 Early Medieval Ireland 800-1166 The first recorded Viking raid in Irish history occurred in 795 when Vikings from Norway looted the island of Lambay, located off the Dublin coast. These early Viking raids were generally small in scale and quick. These early raids interrupted the golden age of Christian Irish culture starting the beginning of two hundred years of intermittent warfare, with waves of Viking raiders plundering monasteries and towns throughout Ireland. Most of the early raiders came from the fjords of western Norway. Norway] Ireland and England were both being raided by Vikings in the early 840's. The Vikings began to establish settlements along the Irish coasts at this time and to spend the winter months there. Vikings started settlements in Waterford, Wexford, and most famously, Dublin. Written accounts from this time (early to mid 840's) show that the Vikings were moving further inland to attack (often using rivers such as the Shannon) and then retreating to their coastal headquarters. In 852, the Vikings Ivar Beinlaus and Olaf the White landed in Dublin Bay and established a fortress, on which the city of Dublin (from the Irish Gaelic An Dubh Linn meaning "the black pool") now stands. Olaf was the son of a Norwegian king and made himself the king of Dublin. The Vikings founded many other coastal towns (notably Waterford and Limerick), and after several generations a group of mixed Irish and Norse ethnic background arose (the so-called Gall-Gaels, Gall then being the Irish word for "foreigners" — the Norse). The descendants of Ivar Beinlaus established a long dynasty based in Dublin, and from this base succeeded in dominating much of the isle. This rule was ultimately broken by the joint efforts of Maelsechlainn II, King of Meath, and the famous Brian Boru (c. 941–1014) at the Battle of Clontarf where Brian Boru died. Early Ireland had an unusual government. All men who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of an assembly, known as a tuath. Each tuath's members annually formed an assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their 'kings'. The tuath was thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes, and its territorial dimension was the sum total of the landed properties of its members. About 80 to 100 tuatha coexisted at any time throughout Ireland.

The Coming of the Normans 1167–1185

Main article Norman Ireland Norman Ireland Norman Ireland By the 12th century, Ireland was divided politically into a shifting hierarchy of petty kingdoms and over-kingdoms. Power was concentrated into the hands of a few regional dynasties contending against each other for control of the whole island. One of their number, the King of Leinster Diarmait Mac Murchada (anglicised as Diarmuid MacMorrough) was forcibly exiled from his kingdom by a confederation of Irish forces under the new High King, Ruaidri mac Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair. Fleeing to Aquitaine, Diarmait obtained permission from Henry II to use the Norman forces to regain his kingdom. The first Norman knight to land in Ireland was Richard fitz Godbert de Roche in 1167, but it was not until 1169 that the main forces of Normans, Welsh and Flemings landed in Wexford. Within a short time Leinster was regained, Waterford and Dublin were under Diarmait's control, and he had Strongbow as a son-in-law, and named him as heir to his kingdom. This latter development caused consternation to King Henry II of England, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland. Accordingly, he resolved to establish his authority. Henry landed with a large fleet at Waterford in 1171, becoming the first King of England to set foot on Irish soil. Both Waterford and Dublin were proclaimed Royal Cities. Henry awarded his Irish territories to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae ("Lord of Ireland"). When John unexpectedly succeeded his brother as King John, the "Kingdom of Ireland" fell directly under the English Crown.
King John King John

The Lordship of Ireland 1185–1254

King John Initially the Normans controlled the entire east coast, from Waterford up to eastern Ulster and penetrated as far west as Galway and Mayo. The most powerful forces in the land were the great Anglo-Norman Earldoms such as the Geraldines, the Butlers and the Burkes, who controlled vast territories which were almost independent of the governments in Dublin or London. The Lord of Ireland was King John, who, on his visits in 1185 and 1210, had helped secure the Norman areas from both the military and the administrative points of view, while at the same time ensuring that the many Irish kings were brought into his fealty; many, such as Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair, owed their thrones to him and his armies. However, the Anglo-Normans suffered from a series of events that ceased the spread of their settlement and power. Politics and events in Gaelic Ireland served to draw the settlers deeper into the orbit of the Irish.

Gaelic Resurgence, Norman Decline 1254–1360

In 1315, Edward Bruce of Scotland invaded Ireland, gaining the support of many Gaelic lords against the English. Although Bruce was eventually defeated, the war caused a great deal of destruction, especially around Dublin. In this chaotic situation, local Irish lords won back large amounts of land that their families had lost since the conquest and held them after the war was over. Scotland The Black Death arrived in Ireland in 1348. Because most of the English and Norman inhabitants of Ireland lived in towns and villages, the plague hit them far harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in more dispersed rural settlements. A celebrated account from a monastery in Kilkenny chronicles the plague as "the beginning of the extinction of humanity and the end of the world". After it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again. The English-controlled area shrunk back to the Pale, a fortified area around Dublin. Outside the Pale, the Hiberno-Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in the words of a contemporary English commentator, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation. The authorities in the Pale grew so worried about the "Gaelicisation" of Ireland that they passed special legislation in a parliament in Kilkenny (known as the Statutes of Kilkenny) banning those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes or inter-marrying with the Irish. Since the government in Dublin had little real authority, however, the Statutes did not have much effect. By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in Ireland had all but disappeared. England's attentions were diverted by its Wars of the Roses (civil war). The Lordship of Ireland lay in the hands of the powerful Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, who dominated the country by means of military force and alliances with lords and clans around Ireland. Around the country, local Gaelic and Gaelicised lords expanded their powers at the expense of the English government in Dublin.

Reformation (1536–1654) and Protestant Ascendancy (1654–1801)

Main Article Early Modern Ireland 1536-1691 The Reformation, before which, in 1536, Henry VIII broke with Papal authority, fundamentally changed Ireland. While Henry VIII broke English Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI of England moved further, breaking with Papal doctrine completely. While the English, the Welsh and, later, the Scots accepted Protestantism, the Irish remained Catholic. This fact determined their relationship with the British state for the next four hundred years, as the Reformation coincided with a determined effort on behalf of the English state to re-conquer and colonise Ireland. The religious schism meant that the native Irish and the (Roman Catholic) Old English were excluded from power in the new settlement.

Re-conquest and rebellion

See also Tudor re-conquest of Ireland. From 1536, Henry VIII determined to re-conquer Ireland and bring it under crown control. The Fitzgerald dynasty of Kildare, who had become the effective rulers of Ireland in the 15th century, had become very unreliable allies of the Tudor monarchs. They had invited Burgundian troops into Dublin to crown the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel as King of England in 1497. Again in 1536, Silken Thomas Fitzgerald went into open rebellion against the crown. Having put down this rebellion, Henry VIII resolved to bring Ireland under English government control so the island would not to become a base for future rebellions or foreign invasions of England. He upgraded Ireland from a lordship to a full kingdom (with himself as King). With the institutions of government in place, the next step was to extend the control of the English Kingdom of Ireland over all of its claimed territory. This tok nearly a century, with various English administrations in the process either negotiating or fighting with the independent Irish and Old English lords. The re-conquest was completed during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, after several bloody conflicts. (See the Desmond Rebellions (1569–1573 and 1579–1583 and the Nine Years War 1594–1603, for details). After this point, the English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the native lordships.However, the English were not successful in converting either the Irish to the Protestant religion and the brutal methods used by crown authority to pacify the country heightened resentment of English rule. From the mid-16th and into the early seventeenth century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the provinces of Munster, Ulster and the counties of Laois and Offaly (see also Plantations of Ireland). These settlers, who had a British and Protestant identity, would form the ruling class of future British adminstrations in Ireland. A series of Penal Laws discriminated against all faiths other than the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland. The principal victims of these laws were Catholics and later Presbyterians.

Civil Wars and Penal Laws

Presbyterians after Irish Catholic rebellion and civil war, on behalf of the English Commonwealth. Under his government, landownership in Ireland passed overwhelmingly to Protestant colonists]] The seventeenth century was perhaps the bloodiest in Ireland's history. Two periods of civil war (1641-53 and 1689-91) caused huge loss of life and resulted in the final dispossesion of the Irish Catholic landowning class and their subordination under the Penal Laws. In the mid-seventeenth century, Ireland was convulsed by eleven years of warfare, beginning with the Rebellion of 1641, when Irish Catholics rebelled against English and Protestant domination, in the process massacring thousands of Protestant settlers. The Catholic majority briefly ruled the country as Confederate Ireland (1642-1649) against the background of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms until Oliver Cromwell re-conquered Ireland in 1649-1653 on behalf of the English Commonwealth. Cromwell's conquest was the most brutal phase of a brutal war. By its close, up to third of Ireland's pre-war population was dead or in exile. As punishment for the rebellion of 1641, almost all lands owned by Irish Catholics were confiscated and given to British settlers. The remaining native landowners were transplanted to Connacht. Connacht Forty years later, Ireland became the main battleground in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Catholic James II was deposed by the English Parliament and replaced by William of Orange. Irish Catholics backed James to try to reverse the Penal Laws and land confiscations, whereas Protestants supported William to preserve their dominance in the country. James and William fought for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in the Williamite War, most famously at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, where James's forces were defeated. Jacobite resistance was finally ended after the Battle of Aughrim in July 1691. The Penal laws (which had been allowed to lapse somewhat after the English Restoration) were re-applied with great harshness after this war, as the Protestant elite wanted to ensure that the Irish Catholic landed classes would not be in a position to repeat their rebellions of the 17th century.

Colonial Ireland

Main article Ireland 1691-1801 Subsequent Irish antagonism towards England was aggravated by the economic situation of Ireland in the eighteenth century. Absentee Landlords managed some of their estates very badly, meaning that food tended to be produced for export rather than for domestic consumption. In the 1740s, these economic inequalities, along with two very cold winters, led directly to the Great Irish Famine (1740-1741), which killed about 400,000 people. In addition, Irish Trade was adversley affected by the Navigation Acts, which placed tarrifs on Irish produce entering England, but which exempted English goods from tariffs on entering Irleand. Some Irish Catholics remained attached to Jacobite ideology in opposition to the Protestant Ascendancy. Nevertheless, most of the eighteenth century was relatively peaceful in comparison with the preceding two hundred years. By the late eighteenth century, many of the Irish Protestant elite had come to see Ireland as their native country. A Parliamentary faction led by Henry Grattan agitated for a more favourable trading relationship with England and for legislative independence for the Parliament of Ireland. However, reform in Ireland stalled over the proposals of some radicals to enfranchise Irish Catholics. When this failed, some were attracted to the more militant example of the French revolution of 1789. They formed the Society of the United Irishmen to overthrow British rule and found a non-sectarian republic. Their activity culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was bloodily suppressed. Partly in response to this rebellion, Irish self-government was abolished altogether by the Act of Union on January 1, 1801.

Union with Great Britain (1801-1922)

In 1800, after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the British and the Irish parliaments (the latter controversially, as massive bribery was involved) enacted the Act of Union, which merged Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain (itself a union of England and Scotland, created almost 100 years earlier), to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Part of the deal for the union was that Catholic Emancipation would be conceded to remove discrimination against Catholics, Presbyterians and others. However King George III controversially blocked any change. In 1823, an enterprising Catholic lawyer, Daniel O'Connell, "the Great Emancipator" began a successful campaign to achieve emancipation, which was finally conceded in 1829. He later led an unsuccessful campaign for "Repeal" (i.e., the repeal of the Act of Union). The second of Ireland's "Great Famines", An Gorta Mór struck the country severely in the period 1845-1849, with potato blight leading to mass starvation and emigration. (See Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849).) The impact of emigration in Ireland was severe; the population dropped from over 8 million before the Famine to 4.4 million in 1911. 1911 The Irish language, once the spoken language of the entire island, declined in use sharply in the nineteenth century as a result of the Famine and the creation of the National School education system, as well as hostility to the language from leading Irish politicians of the time; it was largely replaced by English. The form of English used in Ireland differs somewhat from British English and its variants. Blurring linguistic structures from older forms of English (notably Elizabethan English) and the Irish language, it is known as Hiberno-English and was in the twentieth century strongly associated with writers like J.M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, and had resonances in the English of Dublin-born Oscar Wilde. In the 1870s the issue of Irish self-government again became a major focus of debate under Protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell and the Home Rule League. British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone made two unsuccessful attempts to introduce Home Rule in 1886 and 1893. Parnell's controversial leadership eventually ended when he was implicated in a divorce scandal, when it was revealed that he had been living with the wife of a fellow Irish MP, Katherine O'Shea, and was the father of some of her children. However, with the introduction of the First Home Rule Bill of 1886 to the British House of Commons, Parnell was known throughout the country as the Uncrowned King of Ireland. The debate over Home Rule led to tensions between Irish nationalists and Irish unionists (those who favoured maintenance of the union). Most of the island was predominantly nationalist, Catholic and agrarian. The northeast, however, was predominantly unionist, Protestant and industrialised. Unionists feared a loss of political power and economic wealth in a predominantly rural, nationalist, Catholic home rule state. Nationalists believed that they would remain economically and politically second class citizens without self-government. Outside mainstream nationalism, a series of violent rebellions by Irish republicans took place in 1803, under Robert Emmet; in 1848, by the Young Irelanders, most prominent among them, Thomas Francis Meagher; and in 1868, by the Irish Republican Brotherhood. All failed, but physical force nationalism remained an undercurrent in the nineteenth century. The late nineteenth century also witnessed major land reform, spearheaded by the Land League under Michael Davitt. From 1870 various British governments introduced a series of Land Acts that broke up large estates and gradually gave rural landholders and tenants what became known as the 3 Fs; Fair rent, free sale, fixity of tenure." Dublin, however, remained a city marked by extremes of poverty and wealth, possessing some of the worst slums anywhere in the British Empire. It also possessed one of the world's biggest "red light districts" known as Monto (after its focal point, Mountgomery Street, on the northside of the city). Monto was to feature in many novels set in Dublin, most notably in the writings of James Joyce.

Home Rule, Easter 1916 and the War of Independence

The division of the island into "Northern" and "Republic" is a relatively recent development, brought about by the Fourth Government of Ireland Act 1920 which, amid much acrimony, (and the fact that the Island of Ireland was uncompromisingly divided within itself), separated the island into what the British government termed Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. A bi-lateral Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 formalised independence for the twenty-six county Irish Free State, (which in 1949 became the Republic of Ireland), while the six county Northern Ireland, gaining Home Rule for itself, remained part of the United Kingdom. United Kingdom In September 1914, just as the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament finally passed the Third Home Rule Act to establish self-government for Ireland, but was suspended for the duration of what was expected to be a very short war. Before it ended, Britain made two concerted efforts to implement the Act, one in May 1916 and again during 1917-1918, but the Irish sides (Nationalist, Unionist) were unable to agree terms for the temporary or permanent exclusion of Ulster from its provisions. A failed attempt was made to gain separate independence for Ireland with the 1916 Easter Rising, an insurrection largely confined to Dublin. Though support for the insurgents was small, the violence used in its suppression (being considered by the British to be a serious treason in time of war) led to a swing in support of the rebels. In addition, the unprecedented threat of Irishmen being conscripted to the British Army in 1918 (for service in France) accelerated this change. (See: Conscription Crisis of 1918 (Ireland)). In the December 1918 elections most voters voted for Sinn Féin, the party of the rebels. Having won three-quarters of all the seats in Ireland, its MPs assembled in Dublin on 21 January 1919, to form a thirty-two county Irish Republic parliament, Dáil Éireann unilaterally, asserting sovereignty over the entire island. Unwilling to negotiate any understanding with Britain (by international law Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom), a War of Independence (or Anglo-Irish War) was waged from 1919 to 1921. In mid-1921, the Irish and British governments signed a truce that halted the war. In December 1921, an Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed between representatives of both governments. The Irish delegation was led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. This abolished the Irish Republic and created the self-governing Irish Free State, a Dominion of the British Empire. Under the Treaty, Northern Ireland could opt out of the Free State and stay within the United Kingdom and promptly did so. For most of the next 75 years, each territory was strongly aligned to either Catholic or Protestant ideologies, although this was more marked in the six counties of Northern Ireland.

Free State/Republic (1922-present)

Main articles: History of the Republic of Ireland; Irish Free State, Republic of Ireland; Names of the Irish state After the treaty to sever the Union was ratified, the republican movement divided into pro-treaty and anti-treaty supporters. Between 1922 and 1923 both sides fought the bloody Irish Civil War. This division among Nationalists still colours Irish politics today, specifically between the two leading Irish political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael The new Irish Free State (1922–37) existed against the backdrop of the growth of dictatorships in Europe and a major world economic downturn in 1929. In contrast with many contemporary European states it remained a democracy, in which the losing faction in the Irish civil war, Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil, was able to take power by winning the 1932 general election. In contrast to many other states in the period, the Free State remained financially solvent. However, unemployment and emigration were high. The Catholic Church had a powerful influence over the state for much of its history. In 1937, a new Constitution of Ireland proclaimed the state of Éire (or Ireland). The state remained neutral throughout World War II (see Irish neutrality) and this saved it from much of the horrors of the war, although tens of thousands volunteered to serve in the British forces. Ireland was also hit badly by rationing of food, and coal in particular (peat production became a priority during this time). Though nominally neutral, recent studies have suggested a far greater level involvement by the South with the Allies than was realised, with D Day's date set on the basis of secret weather information on Atlantic storms supplied by the Republic. For more detail on 1939–45, see main article The Emergency. In 1949 the state was formally declared the Republic of Ireland and it left the British Commonwealth. In the 1960s, Ireland underwent a major economic change under reforming Taoiseach (prime minister) Seán Lemass and radical senior civil servant T.K. Whitaker, who produced a series of economic plans. Free second-level education was introduced by Brian Lenihan as Minister for Education in 1968. From the early 1960s, the Republic sought admission to the European Economic Community but, because of its economy's dependence on the United Kingdom's market, it could not do so until the UK did, in 1973. Economic downturn in the 1970s, augmented by a set of misjudged economic policies followed by Taoiseach Jack Lynch, caused the Irish economy to stagnate. However, economic reforms in the late 1980s and considerable investment from the European Community led to the emergence of one of the world's highest economic growth rates, with mass immigration (particularly of people from Asia and Eastern Europe) as a feature of the late 1990s. This period came to be known as the Celtic Tiger and was focused on as a model for economic development in the former Eastern Bloc states, which entered the European Union in the early 2000s. Irish society also adopted relatively liberal social policies during this period. Divorce was legalised, homosexuality decriminalised, while a right to abortion in limited cases was granted by the Irish Supreme Court in the X Case legal judgement. Major scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, both sexual and financial, coincided with a widespread decline in religious practice, with weekly attendance at Roman Catholic Mass halving in twenty years.

Northern Ireland

"A Protestant State" (1921-1971)

Main article: History of Northern Ireland From 1921 to 1971, Northern Ireland was governed by the Ulster Unionist Party government, based at Stormont in East Belfast. The founding Prime Minister, James Craig, proudly declared that it would be "a Protestant State for a Protestant People" (in contrast to the anticipated "Papist" state to the south). Discrimination against the minority nationalist community in jobs and housing, and their total exclusion from political power due to the majoritarian electoral system, led to the emergence of a civil rights campaign in the late 1960s, inspired by Martin Luther King's civil rights movement in the United States of America. A violent counter-reaction from right-wing unionists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) led to civil disorder. To restore order, British troops were deployed to the streets of Northern Ireland at this time. Tensions came to a head with the events of Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday, and the worst years (early 1970s) of what became known as The Troubles resulted. The Stormont government was prorogued in 1971 and abolished totally in 1972. Paramilitary private armies such as the Provisional IRA, the Official IRA, the INLA, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force fought each other and the British army and the (largely Unionist) RUC, resulting in the deaths of well over three thousand men, women and children, civilians and military. Most of the violence took place in Northern Ireland, but some also spread to England and across the Irish border.

Direct Rule (1971-1998)

For the next 27 years, Northern Ireland was under "direct rule" with a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the British Cabinet responsible for the departments of the Northern Ireland executive/government. Principal acts were passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in the same way as for much of the rest of the UK, but many smaller measures were dealt with by Order in Council with minimal parliamentary scrutiny. Throughout this time the aim was to restore devolution but three attempts - the power-sharing executive established by the Northern Ireland Constitution Act and the Sunningdale Agreement, the 1975 Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention and Jim Prior's 1982 assembly all failed to either reach consensus or operate in the longer term. During the 1970s British policy concentrated on defeating the IRA by military means including the policy of Ulsterisation (requiring the RUC and (British Army reserve) Ulster Defence Regiment to be at the forefront of combating the IRA). Although IRA violence decreased it was obvious that no military victory was on hand in either short or medium terms. Even Catholics that generally rejected the IRA were unwilling to offer support to a state that seemed to remain mired in sectarian discrimination and the Unionists plainly were not interested in Catholic participation in running the state in any case. In the 1980s the IRA attempted to secure a decisive military victory based on massive arms shipments from Libya. When this failed - probably because of MI5's penetration of the IRA's senior commands - senior republican figures began to look to broaden the struggle from purely military means. In time this began a move towards military cessation. In 1986 the British and Irish governments signed the Anglo Irish Agreement signaling a formal partnership in seeking a political solution. Socially and economically Northern Ireland suffered the worst levels of unemployment in the UK and although high levels of public spending ensured a slow modernisation of public services and moves towards equality, progress was slow in the 70s and 80s, only in the 1990s when progress towards peace became tangible, did the economic situation brighten. By then, too, the demographics of Northern Ireland had undergone significant change, and more than 40% of the population are Catholics.

Devolution and Direct Rule (1998-present)

More recently, the Belfast Agreement ("Good Friday Agreement") of April 10, 1998 brought a degree of power sharing to Northern Ireland, giving both unionists and nationalists control of limited areas of government. However, both the power-sharing Executive and the elected Assembly have been suspended since October 2002 following a breakdown in trust between the political parties. Efforts to resolve outstanding issues, including "decommissioning" of paramilitary weapons, policing reform and the removal of British army bases are continuing. Recent elections have not helped towards compromise, with the moderate Ulster Unionist and (nationalist) Social Democrat and Labour parties being substantially displaced by the hard-line Democratic Unionist and (nationalist) 1882 Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, formed the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), replacing the Home Rule League, as a parliamentary party with strict rules. Each member was required to swear an oath to sit, act and vote with the party, one of the first instances of a whip in western politics. The members were also given a salary from party funds, long before other MPs, which helped both to increase parliamentary turnout and to enable middle-class members such as William O'Brien or D.D. Sheehan to be elected. It was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Irish self-government. Following Parnell's fall in 1891, it split into Parnellite and anti-Parnellite wings, but reunited in 1900 under the leadership of John Redmond and his deputy John Dillon. Around this time many notable Acts of social legislation were pressed for and passed in Ireland's interest:
a Local Government Act (1898), a Town Tenant's Act, Housing of the Working Class Act, Department of Agriculture Act, Technical Instructers Act, a New University Act (1908), three Land Acts (1903, 1906, 1909) - contributing greatly to the solution of the contentious land question, an Evicted Tenants Act and an Old Age Pensions Act. In particular the Local Government Act abolished the old landlord-dominated Grand Juries and replaced them by forty-nine county, urban and rural district councils, managed by Irish people for the administration of local affairs. The councils were very popular in Ireland as they established a political class, who showed themselves capable of running Irish affairs. It also stimulated the desire to attain Home Rule and to manage affairs on a national level. A consequence of this was that the councils were largely dominated by the IPP, which eventually led to cronyism. Following the December 1910 general election and the passing of the Parliament Act limiting the veto power of the Lords, the party subsequently achieved Home Rule, which promised national self-government under the Third Home Rule Act 1914. The provision for the partition of Ireland into North and South was deeply unpopular among nationalists and southern and western Unionists. The outbreak of World War I led to its suspension for the duration of the war. This was to prove crucial to subsequent Irish history. Most of Redmond's Irish National Volunteers, established to help enforce the Home Rule Act in the face of opposition from the Ulster Volunteer Force, responded to his call that in order to ensure that Home Rule would be implemented, they should support Britain's war effort and its commitment under the Triple Entente as well as the Allied cause of maintaining a Europe free from German domination, by joining the Irish divisions of the British Army. Unlike their unionist counterparts in the UVF, they were not permitted to have their own officers and were given English commanders. The 1916 Easter Rising and the British reaction to it, and the clumsy attempt at conscription radicalised Irish politics to such an extent that the IPP lost almost all of their seats in the 1918 general election to the more militant Sinn Féin, and was dissolved. Many IPP members went on to join the pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal in the 1920's. The greatest achievement of the IPP was the introduction to Irish society of parliamentary tradition and all that went with it -- a fully up and running local government administration with its diverse institutions, which had rooted itself more deeply than anyone could have imagined into the life of the country. The party had above all (prior to 1914) contributed in its prime to the political maturity of the nation and to the transformation of its society. This in turn paved the way for the creation of the Irish Free State, in which Dáil Eireann had scarcely started to function before, almost unconsciously , it began to utilise and to build upon the constitutional tradition it had inherited. This is perhaps the highest tribute that can deservedly be bestowed upon the old Irish Parliamentary Party, which during fifty years of hard and exacting as well as frustrating parliamentary labours, established and fostered the development of representative institutions which gave stimulus to democratic action and discussion at every level of political involvement.

Leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1882-1918


- Charles Stewart Parnell 1882-1891
- John Redmond (Parnellite minority) 1891-1900
- Justin McCarthy (anti-Parnellite majority) 1891-1892
- John Dillon (anti-Parnellite majority) 1892-1900
- John Redmond (reunited party) 1900-1918
- John Dillon 1918

External link


- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/easterrising/profiles/po15.shtml BBC - History - Wars - 1916 Easter Rising - Profiles - Irish Parliamentary Party] Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922 Category:Political parties in pre-partition Ireland Category:Defunct political parties in the United Kingdom

1880s

Events and Trends

Technology


- Development and commercial production of electric lighting
- Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach
- First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings.
- First steel frame construction "sky-scrapers"
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers founded 16 February 1880, New York, N.Y.

Science


- Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect
- Michelson-Morley experiment, showing that the speed of light is invariant
- James-Lange theory of emotion

War, peace and politics


- First Boer War
- The New Imperialism

Other


- Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia, erupts cataclysmically; 36,000 people are killed, the majority by the resulting tsunami
- About 300,000 Swedes emigrate to the United States

People

World Leaders


- Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)
- Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald (Canada)
- Guangxu Emperor (China)
- Emperor Wilhelm I (Germany)
- Emperor Wilhelm II (Germany)
- Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (Germany)
- King Umberto I (Italy)
- Pope Leo XIII
- Emperor Meiji (Japan)
- Emperor Alexander II (Russia)
- Queen - Empress Victoria (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (United Kingdom)
- President Rutherford B. Hayes (United States)
- President Chester A. Arthur (United States)
- President Grover Cleveland (United States) Category:1880s ja:1880年代

First Dáil

The First Dáil (Irish: An Chéad Dáil) was Dáil Éireann as it convened from 1919–1921. In 1919 candidates who had been elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled as a unicameral, revolutionary parliament called "Dáil Éireann". The establishment of the First Dáil occurred on the same day as the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War. After elections in 1921 the First Dáil was succeeded by the Second Dáil of 1921–1922. 1922, Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera, Count Plunkett, Eoin MacNeill, W.T. Cosgrave, Kevin O'Higgins (third row, right)]]

General election of 1918

Main article: 1918 general election in Ireland In 1918 the whole of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom and was represented in the British Parliament by 105 MPs. From 1882–1918 most Irish MPs were members of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) which favoured limited home rule for Ireland, achieved by a peaceful campaign for reform. This tactic managed to get a home rule law on the statute book but the implementation of this law was shelved with the outbreak of the First World War. In the meantime the more radical Sinn Féin party grew in strength. Sinn Féin's founder, Arthur Griffith, believed that nationalists should emulate the means by which Hungarian nationalists had achieved partial independence from Austria. In 1867, led by Ferenc Deák, Hungarian representatives had boycotted the Imperial parliament in Vienna and unilaterally established their own legislature in Budapest. The Austrian government had eventually become reconciled to this new state of affairs which became known as an Ausgleich or "compromise". Members of Sinn Féin also, however, supported achieving separation from Britain by means of an armed uprising if necessary. Between the Easter Rising of 1916 and the 1918 general election Sinn Féin's popularity was increased dramatically by the execution of most of the leaders of the 1916 rebels and by a clumsy attempt to introduce military conscription in Ireland. The party was also aided by the 1918 Representation of the People Act which increased the Irish electorate from around 700,000 to about two million. Voting in most constituencies occurred on 14th December and elections were held almost entirely under the traditional 'first-past-the-post' system1. In total Sinn Féin won 73 out of the 105 Irish seats in the Westminster parliament. Unionists won 26 seats, all but three of which were in the six counties that today form Northern Ireland, and the IPP won six, all but one in Ulster. Twenty-five of the elected Sinn Féin candidates were unopposed and therefore returned without a ballot. Because of the large number of candidates elected unopposed, and despite evidence of intimidation and electoral fraud on the part of Sinn Féin supporters, the elections were seen as a landslide victory for the party. Once elected the Sinn Féin MPs chose to follow through with their plan of abstention from the Westminster parliament and instead assembled as a revolutionary parliament they called "Dáil Éireann": the Irish for "Assembly of Ireland". Unionists and members of the IPP refused to recognise the Dáil, and three Sinn Féin candidates had been elected in two different constituencies, so the First Dáil consisted of a total of seventy Deputies or "TDs" 2. Some were absent from the inaugaral meeting as they were on the run from the British.

Mansion House meeting

The first meeting of Dáil Éireann occurred on 21st January, 1919 in the Round Room of the Mansion House: the residence of the Lord Mayor in Dublin. At this first, highly symbolic meeting the proceedings of the Dáil were conducted largely through Irish. The Dáil elected Cathal Brugha as its Ceann Comhairle (chairman or speaker). A number of short documents were then adopted. These were the:
- Dáil Constitution - a brief, provisional constitution.
- Declaration of Independence
- Message to the Free Nations of the World
- Democratic Programme - a tract espousing certain principles of socialism The Declaration of Independence asserted that the Dáil was the parliament of a sovereign state called the "Irish Republic", and so the Dáil established a cabinet called the Ministry or "Aireacht", and a elected a prime minister known both as the "Príomh Aire" and the "President of Dáil Éireann". The first, temporary president was Cathal Brugha. He was succeeded, in April, by Éamon de Valera.

Anglo-Irish War

On precisely the same day as the Dáil's first meeting two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were ambushed and killed at Soloheadbeg, in Tipperary, by members of the Irish Volunteers. This incident had not been ordered by the Dáil but the course of events soon drove the Dáil to recognise the Volunteers as the army of the Irish Republic and the ambush as an act of war against Great Britain. The Volunteers therefore changed their name, in August, to the Irish Republican Army, and swore allegiance to both the Republic and the Dáil. The dual nature of this oath did not become apparent until much later. The Soloheadbeg incident is thus regarded as the opening act of the Anglo-Irish War. From its first meeting the Dáil also set about attempting to secure de facto authority for the Irish Republic throughout the country. This included the establishment of a parallel judicial system known as the Dáil Courts. Shortly after its establishment the Dáil was declared illegal by the British authorities and thereafter met only intermittently and at various locations. The First Dáil held its last meeting on 10th May, 1921. After elections on 24th May the Dáil was succeeded by the Second Dáil which sat for the first time on 16th August.

Legacy

The First Dáil and the general election of 1918 have come to occupy a central place in Irish republican mythology. The 1918 general election was the last occasion on which the entire island of Ireland voted in a single election held on a single day until elections to the European Parliament over sixty years later. The landslide victory for Sinn Féin was seen as an overwhelming endorsement of the principle of a united independent Ireland. Until recently republican paramilitary groups, such the Provisional IRA, often claimed that their campaigns derived legitimacy from this 1918 mandate, and some still do. Today the name Dáil Éireann is used for the lower house of the modern Oireachtas (parliament) of the Republic of Ireland. Many commentators, including, recently, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, have suggested that despite the ambitious aspirations of the First Dáil, Irish independence only "really" began in 1922 with the foundation of the Irish Free State. Nonetheless, successive Dála (plural for Dáil) continue to be numbered from the "First Dáil" convened in 1919. The current Dáil, elected in 2002, is, as a result, the "Twenty-ninth Dáil".

Prominent members


- Eamon de Valera
- Michael Collins
- W.T. Cosgrave
- Count Plunkett
- Eoin MacNeill
- Arthur Griffith
- Cathal Brugha
- Kevin O'Higgins
- Constance Markievicz

Footnotes

# The exception to the use of this system were the constituencies of Dublin University and Cork City. The two Unionist representatives returned for the University of Dublin (Trinity College) were elected under the Single Transferable Vote, and the two Sinn Féin candidates elected for Cork City were returned under the Bloc voting system. # The three members elected for two constituencies were Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera and Liam Mellows.

See also


- Members of the 1st Dáil
- Third Dáil

External link


- [http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/en.toc.dail.html Historical Dáil debates] from official [http://www.oireachtas.ie Oireachtas website]. Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922

Anglo-Irish War

The Anglo-Irish War (also known as the Irish War of Independence) was a guerrilla campaign mounted against the British government in Ireland by the Irish Republican Army under the proclaimed legitimacy of the First Dáil, the extra-legal Irish parliament created in 1918 by a majority of Irish MPs. It lasted from January 1919 until the truce in July 1921. The Irish Republican Army which fought in this conflict is often referred to as the Old IRA to distinguish it from later organisations that used the same name.

Origins

1921 To purist Irish Republicans, the Anglo-Irish war had begun with the Proclamation of the Irish Republic during the Easter Rising of 1916. Republicans argued that the conflict of 1919-21 (and indeed the subsequent Irish Civil War) was the defence of this Republic against attempts to destroy it. More directly, the Anglo-Irish War had its origins in the formation of an unilaterally declared independent Irish parliament, called Dáil Éireann, formed by the majority of MPs elected in Irish constituencies in the Irish (UK) general election, 1918. This parliament, known as the First Dáil, and its ministry, called the Aireacht, declared Irish independence. The IRA, as the 'army of the Irish Republic', was perceived by members of Dáil Éireann to have a mandate to wage war on the Dublin Castle British administration headed by the Lord Lieutenant running Ireland. On 21 January, IRA volunteers under Dan Breen, killed two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary when they refused to surrender a consignment of gelignite they were guarding, in Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. County Tipperary (fourth from left, front row) Eamon de Valera (centre, front row), W.T. Cosgrave (second from right, front row).]] This is widely regarded as the beginning of the War of Independence, although the men acted on their own initiative. Martial law was declared in South Tipperary three days later. On the same day as the shooting started, the First Dáil convened in the Mansion House in Dublin where it ratified the 1916 Proclamation of Independence, called for the evacuation of the British military garrison, and called on the "free nations of the world" to recognise Ireland's independence.

Violence Spreads

Volunteers began to attack British government property, carried out raids for arms and funds and targeted and killed prominent members of the British administration. The first was Resident Magistrate John Milling, who was shot dead in Westport, County Mayo, for having sent Volunteers to prison for unlawful assembly and drilling. They mimicked the successful tactics of the Boers, fast violent raids without uniform. Although some republican leaders, notably Éamon de Valera, favoured classic conventional warfare in order to legitimise the new republic in the eyes of the world, the more practically experienced Michael Collins and the broader IRA leadership opposed these tactics, which had led to the military débacle of 1916. The violence used was at first deeply unpopular with the broader Irish population, but most were won around when faced with the terror of the British government's campaign of widespread brutality, destruction of property, random arrests and unprovoked shootings. Events began slowly, but by 1920 widespread violence was the rule. In early 1920, Dublin dockers refused to handle any war matériel, and were soon joined by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, despite hundreds of sackings. Train driver