There are times when dullness is best, when the achievement lies in the calmness. One hundred years ago today, journalists emphasised what a quiet day the previous one had been, as voters went to polling stations to vote in the general election, the first held in the new southern Irish state. The Irish Times headline referred to a “Peaceful day in nearly all districts” while its unnamed reporter suggested the election stood out for that reason and what appeared to be the “absence of that acute party feeling”.
This was primarily due to a pact between the two sides of the Anglo-Irish Treaty divide within Sinn Féin. In May it had been agreed the two wings would nominate candidates based on their existing strength in the Dáil (64 in favour of the Treaty, 57 against) as a panel, with a view to a post-election coalition, and that the election would, in effect, not be a contest over the Treaty but involve voters rubber-stamping the Sinn Féin candidates. This infuriated many, who regarded it as an assault on democracy. As historian Michael Laffan put it, critics of the pact saw it as “an undemocratic conspiracy against the electorate; they believed that in the circumstances of 1922 the Treaty was the dominant question on which the people should pronounce”.
The logic, as outlined in the formal agreement, drenched in arrogance, was that “the national position” required the state to be governed by “those who have been the strength of the national situation during the last few years”. Its proponents argued that without it, violence would derail the election. But crucially, the pact allowed “third parties” to contest seats, and the Labour Party, Independents and the Farmers’ Party duly did, forcing a contest in 21 of the 28 constituencies.
It took courage to stand as a non-panel candidate as there was outright hostility towards many of them; in Clare, for example, Farmers’ Party candidates withdrew due to their conviction “that a free election in the circumstances was impossible”. Darrell Figgis, though a prominent Sinn Féin member, decided to run as an Independent and encouraged others to challenge panel candidates. Days before the election he was attacked in his flat by three men, each brandishing a scissors, who cut off his beloved red beard.
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[ On this day 100 years ago: The Irish Free State’s first electionOpens in new window ]
Moral pressure
Analysis of the election by political scientist Michael Gallagher refers to a “great deal of moral pressure”, including in Tipperary, where a Sinn Féin conference insisted that candidates opposing the panel were “disruptionist and ... antinational in the present crisis”. That was an unwarranted slur, but is a reminder that, despite the Treaty divide, Sinn Féin could close ranks when it came to assertions of nationalist purity and in its insistence that there was no need for alternative candidates, as Sinn Féin was a “national movement” rather than a mere political party. The distrust of Independents endured for many of that generation of Sinn Féiners, including Seán Lemass, who, when interviewed in 1968, still reserved a particular wrath for them, describing them as “among the most pathetic phenomena in public life”.
The electorate, however, voting under the system of proportional representation, had other ideas, and ultimately non-Sinn Féin candidates, most pro-Treaty, won just under 40 per cent of the vote. Seventeen of the 18 Labour candidates were elected, and farmers’ representatives won seven, with Independents claiming 10. In Co Dublin, the beardless Figgis received the second-highest vote in the country (after Michael Collins).
The pact held up quite well overall, as did transfers between the Sinn Féin candidates. Sinn Féin won 94 seats out of 128 (58 pro-Treaty, 36 anti-Treaty) and 34 of these seats were won without a contest; overall, Sinn Féin won 60.2 per cent of votes cast, but it had hoped to do much better. Another way of reading the election is that, as observed by Gallagher, in the contested constituencies “only four returned the full Sinn Féin panel intact”. Pro-Treaty candidates were returned intact in 13 of the contested constituencies in which they stood, but “anti-Treatyites were returned solidly in only four out of 17 constituencies”.
The Sinn Féin coalition never came into being, as within two weeks the Civil War had started. It is a tricky election to analyse given the pact, but because of the contests that were forced, it was, suggests Gallagher, “a reasonably reliable test of the electorate’s feelings” and they were clearly strongly in favour of acceptance of the Treaty. As Gallagher further concludes, “the fact that the election affirmed the primacy of the ballot box, at a time when this seemed very much in the balance, may in the long term have been its most important consequence”. That primacy has endured unbroken in the century since, and for all the understandable focus this summer on recalling the pain of Civil War and the tragedy of its fallen, the primacy of the ballot box in 1922 should not be forgotten or its significance underestimated.