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  • “The Tide Had Definitely Turned”: The Irish Party, Sinn Féin, and the Election Campaigns in Longford, 1917–18
  • Mel Farrell

Sinn Féin’s triumph in the December 1918 general election was the political culmination of changes within nationalist Ireland that occurred during the Irish Revolution.1 The party’s success showed that Home Rule—the approach that had been at the forefront of nationalist discourse since the 1870s—was no longer viable as a political solution to the Irish Question.2 The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) has been the subject of much scholarly attention; historians have shown particular interest in the reunited party’s influence from 1900 to 1914. David Fitzpatrick observes that the “promise or threat of Home Rule was the driving force behind every substantial faction in Irish politics from 1870–1916.”3 Opposition to [End Page 83] Home Rule gave rise to Unionism in the 1880s, and disillusionment with parliamentary politics during the Parnell split fed the growth of cultural nationalism.

During the acrimonious split of the 1890s, the constitutionalists appear to have lost touch with a younger generation, which was more attracted to the cultural activities of such newly established bodies as the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the Celtic Literary Society (CLS), and the Gaelic League. The recollections of one Cork member of the new cultural bodies suggest that younger nationalists lost faith in constitutionalism. Liam de Róiste scoffed that the local United Irish League (UIL) in Cork was “dangerous to no one.”4 Roy Foster’s Vivid Faces (2014) has shed new light on the decline of the IPP and on what motivated younger nationalists.5 Other historians, such as Senia Paseta, Colin Reid, Alvin Jackson, and John M. Regan, have also drawn attention to the fate of Home Rulers after 1922, focusing on the “lost” Ireland of the Irish Party and the subsequent manifestations of “neo-Redmondism” in the politics of independent Ireland.6 Although such historians as Michael Laffan have examined the emergence of Sinn Féin as the new party of nationalist Ireland in 1917, less has been written about the IPP’s demise.7 The Irish Party’s campaigns in the May 1917 South Longford by-election, and the course of subsequent general elections in the amalgamated Longford constituency, offer an instructive case study of the conversion of nationalists from Home Rule to Sinn Féin. Brigid Lyons-Thornton, the niece of Joseph McGuinness (the victor in the South Longford by-election) described her uncle’s election as proof that “the tide had definitely turned.”8

Of the four seats won by Sinn Féin during 1917, South Longford was the most keenly contested. The election came three months after Count Plunkett, the father of the executed Joseph Mary Plunkett, won the North Roscommon by-election. The first parliamentary seat won by a Sinn Féin candidate, Plunkett’s election was a major setback for the IPP. The stakes were thus high when a vacancy arose in South Longford, prompting the Irish Party leadership to play an active role in the campaign. Marie Coleman, in County Longford and the Irish Revolution (2004), has provided the most detailed study of the by-election.9 [End Page 84] She devotes a chapter to McGuinness’s victory, exploring the weaknesses in the local IPP apparatus and the campaign’s subsequent effect on the local Irish Volunteers. By looking closely at the Irish Party’s campaigns in both the by-election and the subsequent general election, we can gain a greater understanding of how the party tried to stem the tide of separatist politics.

P. S. O’Hegarty (a Sinn Féin supporter), acknowledged in his 1924 history of the party that the roots of its emergence as the dominant nationalist party after 1916 lay in the tendency of both the British and the Home Rulers to label all non-orthodox nationalists “Sinn Feiners.” In a House of Commons speech on May 10, 1916, the independent nationalist MP Laurence Ginnell attempted to explain the nuances of separatist politics—but by that time, the term “Sinn Féin rebellion” had already stuck as a shorthand to describe an immensely complicated political scene.10...

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