1918 - the general election
A pamphlet from 1919, including very detailed lists by Sinn Féin of people detained, deported and jailed for Republican activities.
Pamphlet by Cumann na mBan outlining their constitution, policies and suggested activities for 1917-1918. A chronology of the activities of the organisation in Cork and throughout Ireland by prominent member Lil Conlon.
An excerpt from Cork County Library's Southern Echoes of 1916 exhibition. These sections covered the history of the Volunteer movement in County Cork and their role in 1916.
The shift in public opinion favouring the growth of SF also had a military dimension. Although only a minority of the Irish Volunteers had been involved in the 1916 Rising the rest became sympathetic and from 1917 onwards local units were encouraged to drill, parade, present themselves as a force and to go about acquiring arms. Many of those who had not participated in the Rising had held on to their supply and guns were also arriving through donations from sympathisers. Material was also being bought or stolen from British soldiers at the same time that dockland contacts were facilitating the bringing in of arms. In general though the movement was ill-equipped but there was another source closer to home. From the start of 1918 attacks started to occur on RIC stations for arms and with the growing tension from the conscription crisis and the German plot violence developed towards the police themselves. In one incident near Ballyvourney, County Cork in June two policemen were shot and wounded. The escalating situation at one stage produced a membership of nearly 100,000 for the Irish Volunteers, many of whom were also members of SF though the two were not as yet organically linked. At the end of WW1 in November some of the returning servicemen took up the republican cause. A night of violence in Dublin on Armistice Night in November with at least five fatalities was another sign that law and order was under serious threat
A general election was held in November. The extension of the franchise to all men over 21 and all women over 30 subject to a property qualification meant a rise in the number of eligible voters in Ireland from 700,000 to 2 million and 36% of the new voters were women. The election issues in Britain were all about WW1 and its aftermath but in Ireland separate contests were taking place within the Unionist and Nationalist communities in a much altered political scene after the 1916 Rising.
The election took place on December 14th and when counting was completed the result was decisive on both sides of the Irish Sea. The conservatives were returned with an increased majority in Britain and in Ireland Sinn Fein won 73 seats at the expense of the Home Rule Party who won only 6. Over half of the victorious SF candidates were in prison at the time and 25 seats were uncontested in constituencies, mainly in Munster, where an SF victory was a foregone conclusion. The Irish Labour party had decided not to contest the election to avoid splitting the vote in a way that would have benefited opponents of SF in a first past the post system. Many of the newly elected would contribute significantly to Irish public life over the next few decades on both sides of the border. Among the ranks were Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Austin Stack and Cathal Brugha and in the north Edward Carson and James Craig led a very trenchant Ulster Unionist Party which won 26 seats in the province. One woman, Constance Markievicz, was elected, thus becoming the first ever woman to win a seat in the Westminister parliament though, like her SF colleagues she abstained and did not take her seat. The new women voters did not forget the Home Rule Party’s opposition to enfranchisement and hence opted overwhelmingly for SF.
Even without the benefit of hindsight upcoming confrontation must have been anticipated as 1918 drew to a close. Outside of Ulster the country had endorsed SF’s republican and abstentionist manifesto to which both a British government and the Unionist community were implacably opposed. Though the outside world was entering a period of peace the opposite would be the case in Ireland. While the events of both 1917 and 1918 could be seen as aftershocks from the political earthquake of 1916 a second such earthquake beckoned for 1919.