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ABSTRACT
One of the first modern mass nationalist parties, the Irish Parliamentary Party [IPP] dominated Irish politics for almost half a century until its defeat in the 1918 general election. Although long designated nationalists by 1918, the party and its supporters encompassed a broad alliance entailing strong nationalists and those with affinity for an imperialist-nationalist vision. The IPP based its campaign on a demand for home rule — an accommodation whereby Ireland would gain its own parliament with jurisdiction over domestic affairs while remaining part of the United Kingdom. Although the demands of Irish unionists put the unity of the country in doubt, home rule legislation was on the British statute book in 1914 when IPP leader John Redmond called on Irishmen to enlist in the British army to help safeguard home rule when hostilities ended. The war, however, provided radical nationalists with an opportunity to plan and launch a rebellion at Easter 1916. While it has been argued that mass nationalism combining cultural and political nationalism was a relatively late development in the Irish case, this article examines how the IPP’s electoral defeat in 1918 interacted with events at home and abroad. It analyses the language and propaganda of both the IPP and its nationalist opponent, Sinn Féin, to examine how both parties framed their campaigns in the context of the post-war peace conference. The use of continental examples in the campaigns of both is analysed to assess contemporary perceptions and the ability of Sinn Féin to turn the Wilsonian message into a propaganda victory. While stressing the importance of domestic events in the decline of the IPP, this article sets the Irish election in a European context by examining how Sinn Féin sought to claim the language of self-determination for itself and disassociate the IPP from the Wilsonian message.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Sources
Dictionary of Irish Biography.
National Library of Ireland, J.J. Horgan Papers.
National Library of Ireland, William O’Brien Papers
National Library of Ireland, Thomas O’Donnell Papers.
National Library of Ireland, John Redmond Papers.
Trinity College Dublin, John Dillon Papers.
Notes
1. Augusteijn, “The Origins of Irish Nationalism,” 32–35; Walsh, Bitter Freedom; and Coakley, “Typical Case or Deviant?” 30–35.
2. Aan de Weil, The Irish Factor; and Whelan, “American Propaganda and Ireland during World War One.”
3. For studies of the nationalist parties and the vote, see Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland; McConnel, The Irish Parliamentary Party; Wheatley, Nationalism and the Irish Party; Mulvagh, The Irish Parliamentary Party; Ryan & Ward, Irish Women and the Vote; and Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women 1900–1918.
4. Novick, Conceiving Revolution.
5. Hopkinson, “President Woodrow Wilson and the Irish Question.”
6. See in particular Walsh, Bitter Freedom.
7. Brindley, “Woodrow Wilson, Self-Determination and Ireland 1918–1919,” 62–80. Although Brindley includes two unionist newspapers – the Irish Times and the Belfast Newsletter – nuanced interpretation of both is missing and he writes of the Times that ‘it is difficult for me to believe that it was Irish in origin and published in Dublin’, Brindley, 67–8.
8. Reid, Democracy, “Sovereignty and Unionist Political Thought,” 211–232.
9. Foy, “Ulster Unionist Propaganda against Home Rule 1912–14,” 49–53.
10. Comerford, “Epilogue.”
11. Cruise O’Brien, Parnell and His Party; McConnel, The Irish Parliamentary Party and the Third Home Rule Crisis; Mulvagh, The Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster. Girvin, From Union to Union; On O’Connell, see Geoghegan, King Dan; Liberator.
12. Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women 1900–1918, 63–64.
13. Augusteijn, “Irish Nationalism and Unionism Between State, Region and Nation,” 196–205.
14. Van Ginderachter, “Nationalist versus Regionalist?” 211.
15. Storm, “The Problems of the Spanish Nation‐Building Process around 1900”; Wright, The Regionalist Movement in France; and Reid, “An Experiment in Constructive Unionism.”
16. Hoppen has dismissed any convincing case for “political nationalism” in the latter case, Hoppen, Governing Hibernia, 2–5; Newby, “A Mere Geographical Expression’?” 150. See also Lloyd-Jones, “Liberalism, Scottish Nationalism and the Home Rule Crisis,” 862–87.
17. Mulvagh, The Irish Parliamentary Party, 1.
18. Wheatley, Nationalism and the Irish Party; and Wheatley, “John Redmond and Federalism in 1910,” 343–364.
19. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, 270–71, 78.
20. Meleady, John Redmond: The National Leader, 278–84.
21. Loughlin, “Creating ‘a Social and Geographical Fact”; Hennessey, ‘Ulster Unionist Territorial and National Identities”; Jackson, The Ulster Party; and Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party.
22. Augusteijn, “The Origins of Irish Nationalism”, 32–35. See also Alan O’Day, “Max Weber and Leadership, Butt, Parnell and Dillon: nationalism in transition”, Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe; and Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 131–162.
23. Augusteijn, “The Origins of Irish Nationalism”. Cultural nationalism could also sustain political nationalism, see Terence Brown, “Cultural Nationalism, 1880-1930,” 516–20.
24. McConnel, The Irish Parliamentary Party, 141–7; and Wheatley, Nationalism and the Irish Party, 66–8, 256; and Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism.
25. McConnel, “The Irish Parliamentary Party, Industrial Relations and the 1913 Dublin Lockout,” 25–36.
26. Freeman’s Journal, 21 December 1914.
27. Enniscorthy Guardian, 19 February 1916.
28. Bew, Ideology and the Irish Question, 148–150. Over 200,000 Irishmen enlisted though there remains doubt as to the exact figure for Irishmen killed. Initial figures put the number at 50,000 though modern scholarship tends to estimate closer to 35,000, see David Fitzpatrick, “Irish Consequences of the Great War”; Committee of the Irish National War Memorial, Ireland’s memorial records, 1914–1918: being the names of Irishmen who fell in the Great European War, 1914–1918 (8 vols, Dublin, 1923).
29. Phoenix, Northern Nationalism, 21–35.
30. Mohr, “The Irish Question,” 8; and Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition, 63–9.
31. Mohr, “The Irish Question,” 4–16.
32. Daniel O’Leary to John Redmond 14 July 1917, TCD John Dillon Papers, 6749/657.
33. Maume, “William Martin Murphy, the Irish Independent and Middle Class Politics 1905-19”.
34. Meleady, John Redmond. For the best analysis of US foreign policy and Ireland, see Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913–29.
35. See Shane Leslie to John Redmond, 16 May 1916; 9 March 1917. NLI Redmond Papers MS 15,236/14; Erica Doherty, “T.P. O’Connor and the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1912-1924,” 167.
36. Hopkinson, “President Wilson and the Irish Question,” 92.
37. Telegram to Redmond, 26 April 1917 and Leslie to Redmond 18 May 1917 NLI Redmond Papers MS 15236/14/8 and MS 15236/14/11.
38. Leslie to Redmond 4 June 1917 NLI Redmond Papers MS 15,236/14/10.
39. Doherty, “T.P. O’Connor,” 178.
40. Larkin “A Great Daily Organ.”
41. Steiner, The Lights that Failed, 4–7. Borislav Chernev, Twilight of Empire: The Brest-Litovsk Conference.
42. Freeman’s Journal, 14 November 1918; cf. Walsh, Bitter Freedom, 11–12.
43. Freeman’s Journal, 14 November 1918.
44. Freeman’s Journal, 22, 27 November 1918. The Independent urged President Wilson that the principles of self-determination for small nations must not be confined to the Central countries, Irish Independent, 10 December 1918.
45. J.J. Horgan to Richard Hazleton, 23 October 1918, NLI J.J. Horgan Papers P4645.
46. Freeman’s Journal, 11 November 1918; Walsh, Bitter Freedom, 36.
47. Tim Healy to William O’Brien MP, 11 November 1918, NLI William O’Brien Papers MS 8,556 (22).
48. F. S.L. Lyons, John Dillon, 444–55; and Girvin, From Union to Union, 57–9.
49. Boyce, “A First World War Transition: State and Citizen in Ireland, 1914-19,” 107.
50. Brindley, “Woodrow Wilson, Self-Determination and Ireland,” 63, 69.
51. John Dillon to Patrick Hooper 27 November 1918, TCD Dillon Papers 6840/57.
52. See for example Freeman’s Journal; Irish Independent, 27 November 1918. Lyons has shown Dillon seemingly unaware of the scale of the defeat facing the party until a very advanced stage Lyons, John Dillon, 453–5.
53. Freeman“s Journal, 7 December 1918.
54. Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 17 August 1918.
55. Belfast Morning News, 7 December 1918.
56. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, 42–46.
57. Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington; and Sheehy-Skeffington, Impressions of Sinn Féin in America.
58. Nationality, 27 October 1917.
59. Irish Independent 11 December 1918.
60. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, 88.
61. Maume, The Long Gestation, 211.
62. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, 37–49. Laffan has argued it provided a counter-balance to accusations of Sinn Féin impotence in the face of its abstentionist policy, Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, 250–251.
63. Maume, The Long Gestation, 211–212; Dillon quoted in aan de Weill, The Irish Factor, 283.
64. Boyce, “A First World War Transition,” 107.
65. See Horgan, “The World Policy of President Wilson,” 553–63.
66. Nationality, 2 November, 14 December 1918.
67. Healy, Poland in the Irish Nationalist Imagination 1772–1922: Anti-Colonialism within Europe, 280.
68. Nationality, 25 May 1918.
69. See for example Nationality, 14 December 1918.
70. See Doherty, “‘The Party Hack, and Tool of the British Government”; and O’Connor, America and Irish Party Resilience at the February 1918 South Armagh By-Election”.
71. Nationality, 9, 16 February, 2 March 1918.
72. Nationality, 9 February 1918.
73. Sinn Féin original manifesto http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E900009/index.html Sinn Féin manifesto as passed by Dublin Castle – http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900010.html date accessed 20 June 2016.
74. Nationality, 7 September 1918.
75. Nationality, 8 June 1918.
76. Nationality, 12 October 1918.
77. Nationality, 19 October 1918.
78. Girvin, From Union to Union, 55. Irish Times, 15, 22, 25 November 1918.
79. Reid, “Democracy, Sovereignty and Unionist Political Thought”; and Pašeta, “Feminist Political Thought and Activism in Revolutionary Ireland c. 1880-1918,” 193–209.
80. “The Shade of Wolfe Tone (Published as a Post Card),” Catholic Bulletin, December 1917, available http://digital.libraries.dublincity.ie/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:431?query=Wolfe+Tone&root=vital%3A92 29 March 2019.
81. Nationality, 6 July 1918.
82. Nationality, 30 November 1918.
83. Nationality, 7 December 1918; Irish Independent, 5 December 1918. Maume, The Long Gestation, 212.
84. Irish Independent, 9 December 1918.
85. Aan de Weil, The Irish Factor, 356–7 fn 15; C.M. Byrne, Wicklow People, 16 April 1918 quoted in Walsh, Bitter Freedom, 10, 18. Sinn Fein original manifesto http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E900009/index.html Sinn Fein manifesto as passed by Dublin Castle – http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900010.html.
86. Irish Independent, 7 December 1918.
87. Nationality, 6 April 1918.
88. Nationality, 20 April 1918.
89. Nationality, 7 December 1918. On Sinn Féin being alert to the problems of conflating dominion status and home rule, Maume, The Long Gestation, 212.
90. Nationality, 28 December 1918.
91. Nationality, 4 January 1919.
92. Elaine Callinan, ‘Sinn Féin landslide in 1918 not quite what it seemed’, Irish Times, 14 December 2018.
93. See note 53 above.
94. Including candidates who stood as ‘independent nationalists’, but excluding the two university constituencies, Laffan put the IPP’s vote count at 220,226, Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, 166.
95. McConnel, ‘The Franchise Factor and the Defeat of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1885-1918,’ 355–377. cf. Brian Farrell had earlier attributed the Sinn Féin almost entirely to the enlarged franchise, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, 45–50; cf. Garvin, The Evolution of Irish Nationalism.
96. Maume, The Long Gestation, 193, 208; and Reid, Lost Ireland of Stephen Gwynn, 79–82.
97. Healy, Poland in the Irish Nationalist Imagination, 266.
98. Brindley, ‘Woodrow Wilson, Self-Determination and Ireland,” 75–80.
99. Boyce, Englishmen and Irish Troubles, 52–3; and Knirck, “The Dominion of Ireland: The Anglo-Irish Treaty in an Imperial Context.”
100. Reid, “Democracy, Sovereignty and Unionist Political Thought”; and Bourke, “Reflections on the Political Thought of the Irish Revolution,” 175–91.
101. Comerford, “Epilogue,” 248.
102. Irish Independent, 13 December 1918.
103. Gwynn, Irish Books and Irish People, 118.
104. Girvin, From Union to Union, 55, 59.
105. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life; Campbell, Land and Revolution; and O’Donoghue, “The Legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party.”
106. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment; and Chernev, Twilight of Empire.
107. For a longer-term analysis of the political reasons for the party’s demise and the divisions among its leadership which worsened in the final years of crisis, see Mulvagh, The Irish Parliamentary Party, 267–71.
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Martin O’Donoghue
Dr Martin O’Donoghue lectures in history at the University of Limerick. Previously, he was the holder of the National Library of Ireland Studentship held in conjunction with the Irish Committee of Historical Sciences for 2017/18, working on landed estate papers for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research examines the Irish home rule movement, the Irish revolution, the development of party politics and commemoration in modern Ireland. He has taught history at NUI Galway at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Between 2013 and 2016 he was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Scholar at NUI Galway where he completed his PhD. His first book, The Legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Independent Ireland, 1922-1949, will be published by Liverpool University Press.
