Results of a British general election are not interesting to an Irish audience merely because of the Northern Ireland dimension, or because of the long-standing interest in the politics of our nearest neighbour.
They also clearly underline the big difference in our electoral systems: first- past-the-post in the UK and proportional representation (PR) here. That an overall majority can be won by a party receiving 36.9 per cent of the vote seems unfair; that a single party, in last week’s case Ukip, can receive almost four million votes but just a single Westminster seat seems wicked.
There is an irony to us feeling that our system is more representative, fairer and sophisticated, given that the decision to use PR in Irish elections was made under British rule. We have, of all things, the bankruptcy of Sligo Corporation during the first World War to thank for that.
In reacting to its financial woes, leading ratepayers in Sligo believed it was imperative that they gain representation on the corporation to tackle its economic crisis. To challenge the political domination of nationalists on the corporation, the Sligo Ratepayers Association was formed in 1917 by 18 ratepayers – nine Catholic and nine Protestant. (As a minority, Protestants found it difficult to gain representation under the first-past-the-post system.)
PR introduced
Early in 1918, after agreement between the corporation and the association, a parliamentary Bill was drafted and submitted to the House of Commons to introduce a new system of election: PR with single transferable votes and quota counting.
The association won eight seats in the subsequent Sligo Borough election in January 1919. Sinn Féin, which the previous month had swept to victory in Ireland in the general election under the first-past-the-post system, only managed seven. These results were widely heralded as proof that PR could work and was much fairer. The system was also used for the 1920 local elections, in the midst of the War of Independence, and in all Irish local and national elections since.
The Sligo experiment thus became the template, but in facilitating this the British government had no intention of considering it for the rest of the UK; in 1918 the House of Commons rejected a proposed amendment to the franchise Bill to allow 100 Westminster MPs to be elected by PR.
Nor was the British government committed to PR as a way of encouraging a more sophisticated Irish voter; the simple logic, from a British perspective, was that it would damage Sinn Féin. But Sinn Féin committed itself to supporting the introduction of PR. While it won the most seats nationally in the urban local elections in January 1920, it took serious hits, such as winning only 42 out of 80 seats on Dublin Corporation.
Unionists in Belfast also faltered, winning only 35 out of 60 seats on Belfast City Council, and after partition they reverted to the old system. In rural areas, however, where the local elections were held in June 1920, Sinn Féin took advantage of feelings engendered by the War of Independence and achieved a landslide.
More representative
Such was the polarisation of politics that Sinn Féin was able to weather the PR storm and frustrate British intentions, but the system did, in the long run at least, ensure much more representative assemblies than in the rest of the UK.
Not all were happy with the new system; historian Michael Laffan quotes one observer in 1920 saying that “PR has apparently taken the gizz out of elections and reduced them rather to mathematical arguments”. But it was precisely the “gizz” of the PR system that, over time, made election counts fascinating and memorable, and increased rather than reduced interest in the electoral process.
Losing referendums
Fianna Fáil made two attempts to get rid of PR by putting the question to referendums, but the electorate was not for turning; the result was close in 1959, with 48 per cent in favour of abolition. That was reduced to 39 per cent nine years later, partly because opponents demonstrated that under a first past the post system, Fianna Fáil, based on the vote it received in the 1965 general election, would win up to 96 seats in a Dáil of 144.
Ironically, then, it was PR that saved the party from an even greater disaster than it experienced in the general election of 2011.
Tánaiste Joan Burton last week insisted that what happened to the Liberal Democrats will not happen to the Labour Party here. That might be wishful thinking , but if Labour does hang on as a damaged but not entirely broken party, it will be largely as a result of our PR system.