Foundations of Statehood PDF

1 The foundations of statehood John Coakley Most states recognise a dramatic landmark event as a formative moment in their history....

1 The foundations of statehood John Coakley Most states recognise a dramatic landmark event as a formative moment in their history. For the United States, it is Independence Day (4 July), commemorating the declaration of independence in 1776; for France, Bastille Day (14 July), recalling the storming of a notorious prison in Paris, a crucial event of the Revolution in 1789; for ­Norway, Constitution Day (17 May), marking the adoption of Norway’s first constitution in 1814 following separation from Denmark. In Ireland, this role is played by Easter ­Monday (anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916), though with some competition from St Patrick’s Day (17 March) and from other secular anniversaries linked to the independence struggle (see Government of Ireland 2022). This difficulty in identifying a single moment when independent Ireland came into existence draws attention to the starting point of this introductory chapter, and a recur- ring theme in the rest of this book: to what extent has contemporary Irish politics been conditioned by history, and more specifically by the relationship with Great Britain? Although political histories of Ireland often start at 1922 and conventional wisdom stresses the ‘new era’ that then began, it is clear that centuries of British rule left a deep imprint. Significant elements of continuity underlay the sharp political break that took place at the time that the state was founded. Before looking at the establishment of the state itself and at subsequent developments, then, the first section of this chapter examines the legacy of the old regime (for accessible general histories, see Moody and Martin 2011; Cronin and O’Callaghan 2015; Gibney 2017; for more detailed ­coverage, Bourke and McBride 2016; Bartlett et al. 2018). The second section discusses the ­poli­tical background to the establishment of the independent Irish state. The third ­section ­analyses the political themes of the post-independence period, linking them with earlier developments. Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. British rule and its impact The emergence of the modern state in Ireland was shaped by intervention from the neighbouring island in medieval times. Prior to this, Gaelic Irish society, though ­attaining a high degree of cultural, artistic and literary development, had shown only limited signs of following the path of early European state formation; the island was deeply divided between warring statelets. The Norman invasions that began in 1169 and the establishment of the Lordship of Ireland that followed (with the Norman King of England exercising the functions of Lord of Ireland) marked the beginning of rudi- mentary statehood. Norman or English control was little more than nominal for several centuries; it extended only over the ‘Pale’ (Dublin and its environs), the larger cities, DOI: 10.4324/9781003328476-2 Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  4 John Coakley and certain territories in Leinster and Munster. The Tudor dynasty effectively subdued the whole island in the sixteenth century. At an early stage in this process, in 1541 the Irish parliament promoted the Lord of Ireland to the status of King. The Kingdom of Ireland continued thereafter to have its own political institutions, though a much more profound degree of British influence followed the passing of the Act of Union in 1800, which created a new state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The story of Irish resistance to these processes is well documented (see English 2007). Three major uprisings each ended in defeat: a rebellion spearheaded by the Ulster Gaelic leaders O’Neill and O’Donnell in 1594–1603, an alliance of Gaelic and Anglo–Norman forces against the Cromwellian government in 1641–50 under the umbrella of the ‘Confederation of Kilkenny’, and the mobilisation of (mainly Catholic) Irish supporters of the deposed King James II in 1689–92. After each of these episodes, the position of the Gaelic Irish population and its allies of Norman origin was worse than before, as the victors colonised increasingly large swathes of land. Penal laws directed against Catholics completed the process of marginalising this formerly rebellious population: its leaders either conformed to the established Protestant church, fled to the continent, or risked sinking into social and political obscurity in Ireland. The main legacy of this collective experience was a fusion of religious and political interests that was of great importance when it resurfaced again in the form of Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century. These events provided abundant material for the creation and dissemination of a nationalist interpretation of Irish history based on an image of unrelenting resistance to English rule. Even the United Irish rebellion of 1798 (rooted at leadership level in the ideology of the French Revolution rather than in Irish ‘ethnic’ identity) made its way onto the list. The primary focus in this chapter is, however, not on Irish resistance but on the relatively neglected issue of pre-1922 state building. In looking at the legacy of the old system of government to independent Ireland, we may identify three areas in which spill-over effects were important. First, at the constitutional level, certain roles and o ­ ffices that had evolved over the centuries provided an important stepping stone for the buil­ ders of the new state. Second, at the administrative level, the development of a large civil service bequeathed to the new state a body of trained professional staff. Third, at the political level, a set of traditions and practices had been established in the decades ­before 1922 that greatly reduced the learning curve for those involved in the making of indepen­dent Ireland. The constitution of the old regime Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. In an era when travel and communication were slow, difficult and dangerous, it was neither sensible nor practical for expanding dynasties to seek to govern all of their terri­tories directly. In common with the peripheral areas of other mediaeval monar- chies, then, Norman Ireland acquired a set of autonomous political institutions that were gradually modernised. The hub around which political life revolved, at least in theory, was the King’s personal representative in Ireland, an officer to whom the term ‘Lord Lieutenant’ was eventually applied. The Lord Lieutenant was advised on everyday ­a ffairs of government by a ‘Privy Council’ made up of his chief officials, and on longer- term matters by a ‘Great Council’ or Parliament that met irregularly. The evolution of the Irish parliament followed a path similar to that of the English Parliament (see Johnston-Liik 2002). It first met in Castledermot, Co Kildare, in 1264, Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  The foundations of statehood 5 and for the next four centuries it continued to assemble from time to time in various Irish towns, with Dublin increasingly becoming dominant. By 1692 it had acquired the shape that it was to retain up to 1800, resembling closely its English counterpart. Its House of Commons consisted of 300 members (two each from 32 counties, from 117 cities, towns or boroughs, and from Trinity College Dublin). Its House of Lords had a small but variable membership: archbishops and bishops of the established (Protestant) Church of Ireland and lay peers. The Act of Union of 1800 abolished this parliament, creating instead a merged or ‘united’ parliament for all of Great Britain and Ireland. In the new House of Commons there were to be 100 Irish MPs (about 15 per cent of the total, even though at this time Ireland accounted for about one third of the popula- tion), while the House of Lords would receive 32 additional members: the Irish peerage would elect 28 of its number for life, and four Irish Protestant bishops would sit in the House of Lords in rotation. Although the legislative branch of government thus disappeared completely from Ireland, the executive branch did not. Throughout the entire period of the union (1800–1922), the existence of a ‘Government of Ireland’ was recognised – a critical weakness in the scheme for Irish integration with Britain (Ward 1994: 30–8). The Lord Lieutenant, as representative of the sovereign, was formal head of this govern- ment (see Gray and Purdue 2012). This post was always filled by a leading nobleman who, in addition to his governmental functions, was ‘the embodiment of the “digni- fied” aspects of the state, the official leader of Irish social life’ (McDowell 1964: 52). The day-to-day running of the process of government was the responsibility of another official, the Chief Secretary, who had responsibility for the management of Irish affairs in the House of Commons, and, although he was not always a member of the cabinet, he was at least a prominent member of the governing party. Between the late eigh­ teenth and early twentieth centuries, effective power gradually passed from the Lord Lieutenant to the Chief Secretary, following the pattern of a similar shift in power in Britain from the King to the Prime Minister. Symbolising this, the Lord Lieutenant’s official residence, the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, has now become the Presi­dent’s residence, Áras an Uachtaráin, while the Chief Secretary’s Office in Dublin Castle went on to become the core of the Department of the Taoiseach. Even after the union, then, Ireland remained constitutionally distinct from the rest of the UK. Although all legislation was now enacted through the UK parliament, in many policy areas (including education, agriculture, land reform, policing, health and local government) separate legislation was enacted for the different components of the UK (Hoppen 2016). For example, the parliament of 1880–85 passed 71 acts whose appli­ Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. cation was exclusively Irish (out of a total of 422 acts, the rest being ‘English’, ‘Scottish’, ‘United Kingdom’ or other). Electoral reform illustrates the extent to which Ireland was treated in a distinctive way even in the matter of representation at Westminster: it was only in 1884 that a uniform electoral law was adopted for all parts of the UK. But Ireland was not just constitutionally distinct within the UK. It was governed in practice in a quasi-colonial manner, under a British-dominated elite in Dublin Castle; Irish-born Catholics were perceived as ‘second-class (and potentially disloyal) citizens’ even into the twentieth century (Campbell 2009: 305). The question of electoral reform has a central place in the process of constitutional evolution. It has been assumed since the late nineteenth century that democratic elec- tions to parliamentary chambers designed to represent the people have four charac­ teristics, and these are frequently written into modern constitutions: voting is direct, the Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  6 John Coakley Image 1.1 College Green, Dublin, in the 1890s A group of British soldiers march across College Green in front of Trinity College Dublin, which was then a bastion of the Protestant and Unionist establishment. Source: loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.09879/?st=image. process is secret, all votes are of equal weight, and suffrage is universal. Elections to the old Irish House of Commons and to its post-union successor always operated on the basis of direct voting: voters selected their members of parliament without the intervention of any intermediate electoral college, so the first of the four conditions was not an issue. The second condition was met rather later. Traditionally, voting was open: a public poll was conducted at a central place in the constituency, and voters declared publicly the names of the candidates for whom they wished their votes to be recorded. This Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. ­obviously permitted intimidation by opinion leaders such as landlords and clergy, but the Ballot Act (1872) abruptly and permanently changed these practices: in future vot- ing was to be carried out by secret ballot, except in the case of illiterates and other incapacitated persons. Third, in the old Irish House of Commons, voters’ voices were of unequal weight; large counties (such as Cork) and small boroughs (such as Tulsk, Bannow and Ardfert) were represented by two MPs each, with complete disregard for their greatly varying populations. This position was rectified in three principal stages. In 1800 the smaller boroughs were abolished at the time of the Act of Union; in 1885 all seats were redistri­ buted to conform more closely to the distribution of the population; and in 1922 the new constitution guaranteed that all votes would be equal. Fourth, although in many countries extension of the right to vote was characterised by a number of major reforms and the proportion enfranchised increased in stages, the Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  The foundations of statehood 7 Box 1.1 Extension of voting rights, 1793–1973 Act Major effect Catholic Relief Act, 1793 Extension of right to vote to Catholics Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act, Restriction of right to vote in counties to 1829 those with a valuation of £10 (increased from £2) Representation of the People (Ireland) Minor extension of right to vote Act, 1832 Representation of the People (Ireland) Significant extension of right to vote in Act, 1850 counties Representation of the People (Ireland) Extension of right to vote in boroughs Act, 1868 Representation of the People Act, 1884 Extension of right to vote in counties and boroughs to male householders and lodgers Representation of the People Act, 1918 Universal adult male and limited female suffrage Electoral Act, 1923 Universal adult suffrage Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1973 Reduction of voting age from 21 to 18 process in Ireland was more complex. This may be seen in Box 1.1. The most sweep- ing early changes were the extension of the right to vote to Catholics (1793) and the ­abolition of the county ‘forty-shilling freehold’ (1829), one greatly extending, the other greatly reducing the electorate (the 1829 change coincided with Catholic emancipation, a legal reform that permitted Catholics to sit in the House of Commons, following a vigorous campaign led by Daniel O’Connell). The reforms of 1832, 1850 and 1868 (unlike the English reforms of 1832 and 1867) were rather less far-reaching. The major reforms were those of 1884, associated with the birth of modern politics in Ireland; 1918, linked to another episode of electoral revolution; and 1923, which completed the process (for an illustration of the impact of these reforms on the proportion of the population entitled to vote, see discussion below and Figure 1.1). By 1918, the right to vote extended to 97.5 per cent of all men in Ireland, and to 53.3 per cent of all women (Coakley 2018: 120; see also Ward 2018). Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Emergence of state bureaucracy Underneath the political superstructure of the Irish government, the modern Irish civil service developed slowly but steadily (for the classic study, see McDowell 1964). It ­consisted of a range of departments, offices and other agencies employing considerable numbers of staff. Formal control of these bodies was normally collegial rather than ­individual: they were directed by ‘boards’ or ‘commissions’, generally overseen by the Chief Secretary. There were 29 of these bodies by 1911, employing a staff of several thousand. They included such entities as the Commissioners of National Education (1831), the Local Government Board (1872) and the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (1899). In addition to these ‘Irish’ departments, a number of departments of the London-based ‘Imperial’ civil service had branches in Ireland. These were controlled ultimately by the Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  8 John Coakley relevant British cabinet ministers, and in some cases they employed very large staffs in Ireland. They included the Irish Treasury, merged with its British counterpart in 1817 but re-appearing as a branch of the latter in 1870 (Fanning 1978: 1–13). On the same post-­Union integrationist logic, the old Irish revenue boards that survived the union were merged with their British counterparts following the Anglo–Irish customs amalgamation of 1823; they also acquired a considerable staff (McDowell 1964: 78–103). The pre-union Post ­Office (1785) was similarly merged with its British counterpart in 1831, and underwent rapid e­ xpansion in the late nineteenth century (Ferguson 2016: 203–14). By 1911 these bodies, 11 in all, had about 24,000 employees in Ireland, of whom 20,000 worked in the Post Office. By the beginning of the twentieth century, then, Ireland already had a very sizeable civil service, with about 27,000 employees spread over 29 Irish and 11 UK departments. In addition, there were large field staffs in certain other areas: two police forces, the Dublin Metropolitan Police (1787) with about 1,200 members and the Royal Irish Constabulary (1836) with about 10,700, and the body of national teachers, numbering some 15,600. Together, these amounted in 1911–13 to about 55,000 workers in what would now be described as the public sector, not including the large numbers of army and naval personnel stationed in Ireland (there were about 30,000 of these in 1911). Notwithstanding its traditional domination by Protestants, a kind of ‘greening’ of the Irish civil service had been taking place steadily since the advent of open competition for recruitment to lower ranks in 1876, and a deliberate policy of appointing or promoting nationalist-oriented civil servants to senior ranks was followed from 1892 onwards, at least under Liberal administrations (McBride 1991; see also O’Halpin 1987). But the upper ranks of the service continued to be disproportionately Protestant, with Catholics largely excluded from the more powerful positions by a kind of religious ‘glass ceiling’. By 1911, Catholics accounted for 61 per cent of the lower ranks of the civil service, but only 37 per cent of the upper ranks; and they constituted 70 per cent of junior ranks in the Royal Irish Constabulary but only 9 per cent of senior ranks (Campbell 2009: 298–300). The system of local government was comprehensively overhauled in the nineteenth century (see Potter 2011). Many of the smaller boroughs disappeared under the Act of Union, since their population was insignificant and their only effective function had been to return MPs to the Irish House of Commons. A report in 1835 showed that almost all of the 68 boroughs that survived were run by exclusively Protestant corporations. In 1840, however, these bodies were swept away, and were replaced in the ten largest cities by corporations elected on a limited franchise. In rural areas the principal authority was the county grand jury, made up of large property owners selected by the county sheriff (an official appointed, in turn, by the Lord Lieutenant) and responsible for most of the activi- Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. ties that we associate with county councils today. In a major reform in 1898, however, the grand juries’ administrative functions were transferred to new, elected county councils. A lower tier of local government was also created at the same time. This built on a network of ‘poor law unions’ established in 1838, initially to provide assistance to the poor but later also to provide health care, and took the form of a set of rural and urban district councils. The only significant change in this system before independence was the introduction of proportional representation for council elections in 1920 (see Daly 1997: 1–92). The birth of modern party politics Although the impression is sometimes given that modern forms of politics began in Ireland in 1922, or at the earliest with the foundation of Sinn Féin a few years before that, this is misleading. Modern party politics began in the 1880s, and had earlier roots. The Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  The foundations of statehood 9 growth of party politics in nineteenth-century Ireland follows a pattern of evolution identified elsewhere in Europe (Duverger 1964: 17–27; Sartori 1976: 18–24). It seems to have passed through three phases; the transition between them was marked by signifi- cant changes in levels of electoral mobilisation. In the first phase, political life was dominated by wholly parliament-based cadre parties, groups of MPs without any kind of regular electoral organisation. Before the 1830s, all parties fell into this category. These were not parties in any recognisably modern sense; instead, Irish MPs were linked to one or other of the two great English groupings, the Tories and the Whigs. Already during this period, however, the connection between the Tory party and the Protestant establishment was beginning to find expression in geographical terms, as Tories achieved a much stronger position in the north than in the south. This may be seen in Appendix 2a, which summarises the results of the 31 elections that took place under the Act of Union (because of the large number of uncon- tested elections, we have to rely on the distribution of seats rather than votes for an indi- cation of party strengths). This point emerges even more clearly from T ­ able 1.1, which is based on this appendix: in the ten elections before 1832, Tories already ­controlled 74 per cent of the seats in the present territory of Northern Ireland, but only 45 per cent of those in the south. In the second phase we see the appearance of electoral parties, consisting no longer of loosely linked sets of MPs but rather of groups standing for some more or less coherent policy positions and supported by constituency organisations that enjoyed a degree of continuity over time (see Hoppen 1984). This phase began around 1830 and lasted for Table 1.1 Irish parliamentary representation, 1801–1918 Group 1801–31 1832–80 1885–1910 1918 (Number of elections) (10) (12)   (8) (1) North Tories/Unionists 73.6 78.6 69.5 76.7 Whigs/Liberals 14.1 18.5 2.5 0.0 Nationalists, etc. – 0.0 28.0 13.3 Others 12.3 2.9 0.0 10.0 (Number) (220) (276) (200) (30) South Tories/Unionists 44.5 24.4 3.7 4.0 Whigs/Liberals 41.4 39.6 0.0 0.0 Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Nationalists, etc. – 35.3 96.3 2.7 Others 14.1 0.7 0.0 93.3 (Number) (780) (980) (624) (75) All Ireland Tories/Unionists 50.9 36.3 19.7 24.8 Whigs/Liberals 35.4 35.0 0.6 0.0 Others 13.7 1.2 0.0 69.5 (Number) (1,000) (1,256) (824) (105) Source: Calculated from Appendix 2a. Note: Party strengths are indicated as percentages of seats won. Before 1832 party affiliations are ­approximate only. ‘Tories/Unionists’ includes Liberal Unionists; ‘Nationalists, etc.’ includes independent nationalists; in 1918, ‘others’ refers to Sinn Féin MPs. The north is defined as the present area of Northern Ireland, the south as the Republic. The number of MPs returned by constituencies in the north was 22, 23 and 25 in the first three periods; in the south it was 78 in the first and third periods and 82 in the second period, except for the last two elections, in 1874 and 1880, when the number was 80. Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  10 John Coakley approximately five decades, and was accompanied by episodic mass mobilisation of ­peasants behind such demands as repeal of the Act of Union of 1800. It was charac- terised by the metamorphosis of the Whigs into the Liberal Party, which increasingly ­became the party of Catholic Ireland, and of the Tories into the Conservative Party, which quickly became the party of Protestants. The MPs of these parties were sup- ported by organisations at constituency level, commonly labelled ‘Independent Clubs’ on the Liberal side and ‘Constitutional Clubs’ on the Conservative side. From a com- parative perspective, this was unusual in two respects. First, constituency organisations developed at a remarkably early stage in the Irish case. Second, the content of the liberal–­conservative polarisation, with its sectarian overtones, contrasted sharply with the issues at stake behind similarly named forms of polarisation elsewhere in Europe, where such issues as church–state conflict and constitutional modernisation were to the fore. In particular, the association between Catholicism and liberalism appears anoma- lous in a European context where liberalism was associated with anticlericalism. Given the fact that the electorate was restricted to the wealthy (who were dispro- portionately Protestant), Irish Conservatives enjoyed solid support throughout most of this period, though reduced from their position of overall dominance (especially in the south, where they now controlled only 24 per cent of the seats). The relationship ­between the Liberals and the Catholic vote was, however, much less secure, and was open to challenge from parties representing specifically Irish interests. The most signif- icant of these were O’Connell’s Repeal Party in the 1830s and 1840s, the Independent Irish Party in the 1850s, the rather amorphous National Association in the 1860s and, most importantly, the Home Rule Party from the 1870s onwards. The third phase was marked by the birth of modern mass parties. These were tightly disciplined parliamentary groups resting on the support of a permanent party s­ ecretariat and a well-oiled party machine: thousands of members were organised into branches at local level, with provision for constituency conventions to select candidates and for an annual conference to elect an executive and, at least in theory, to determine p­ olicy. This development took place first on the Catholic side, with the formation of the Irish National League (1882) as the constituency organisation of the Home Rule or Nationalist Party (also known as the Irish Parliamentary Party). This was modelled on an earlier agrarian organisation, the Land League (1879); another organisational prede- cessor, the Home Rule League, founded in 1873, had followed the model of the elec- toral party. On the Protestant side a similar development took place in 1885 with the formation of the Irish Loyal Patriotic Union (from 1891, the Irish Unionist Alliance) to represent southern Unionists. A range of similar organisations, eventually brought Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. together under the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, represented northern Unionists. These parties were prototypes of the party organisations that appeared after 1922 in the south (see Chapter 5), and, indeed, the Ulster Unionist Council continues to the present to constitute the organisational apex of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. The 1885 election marked the birth of modern Irish party politics. It resulted in a strict polarisation between Protestant and Catholic Ireland, in which the Liberals were completely eliminated, being decisively defeated by the Nationalist Party in compet- ing for Catholic votes. In the territory that was to become the Republic of Ireland, ­Nationalists won virtually all of the seats. In the north, a geographical balance between Nationalists and Unionists was established that was to persist until 1969 (and even later, but in a more fragmented form) – a phenomenon of electoral continuity without parallel in Europe. Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  The foundations of statehood 11 Nationalist domination of the south lasted for more than 30 years, for most of this period in single-party form; it extended also to local government level after the 1898 reforms. Where significant electoral competition arose, this was not a consequence of a challenge from other parties, but reflected deep divisions within the party itself, as in 1890, when most MPs left in protest at the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell follo­ wing his involvement in a divorce scandal. The Irish National League also fractured as a consequence of this split; the more electorally successful anti-Parnellites set up the rival Irish National Federation. When the two wings of the party reunited in 1900 they adopted a new body, the United Irish League, as their grassroots organisation. Two important points need to be made about the background to the emerging Irish party system. The first is the relationship between electoral reform and political mobili- sation. The appearance of significant new political forces has often been associated with major waves of franchise extension; it is obvious that parties that target disenfranchised sections of the population act on the assumption that these will ultimately be given the right to vote. Franchise extension alone, however, does not necessarily bring about electoral mobilisation, as the Irish experience vividly illustrates. The first major change, the enormous expansion of voting strength that followed from the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, had a negligible political effect; instead, landowners simply had more voters to manage at election time. Subsequent changes in the proportion of the population entitled to vote are summarised in Figure 1.1. The first appearance of modern elec- toral parties began in 1830, after the huge disenfranchisement of 1829 and before the modest reform of 1832. By removing from the electorate thousands of ‘lumpen voters’ who had been at the disposal of their landlords, the 1829 measure had the unintended effect of empowering independent-minded voters (Hoppen 1984: 15). Again, the wave of electoral rebellion that began in the late 1870s and that marked the birth of modern mass politics took place a few years before the 1884 reform, though assisted by the intro- duction of ballot secrecy in 1872. The major reforms of 1884 and 1918 appear to have 70 60 50 40 Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 30 20 10 0 1828 1829 1832 1850 1868 1884 1918 1923 1973 Figure 1.1 Electorate as percentage of population, 1828–1973 Source: Coakley (1986). Note: The data refer to all of Ireland up to 1918, but only to the south in 1923 and 1973. Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  12 John Coakley cemented emerging voter-party alliances rather than acting as their prerequisite. This mobilisation was not confined to the electoral level; it extended also to the formation of new organisations with mass membership in the economic, cultural, sporting and other domains, and to the growth of a widely read and more radical press (see Legg 1998). The second general point concerns the cleavage between the main Irish parties and its close correspondence with social divisions. Irish political life was dominated by three principal relationships in the 120 years after the Act of Union came into effect: between Ireland and Great Britain, between Catholics and Protestants and between tenants and landlords. By the 1880s the two major parties had adopted clear positions on these i­ssues. The Nationalist Party stood for Home Rule for Ireland, for defence of Catholic rights and for the principle of state intervention to promote the interests of tenant farmers; the Unionist Party adopted a contrary position on each of these ­issues. The two p­ arties were supported by two clearly defined communities, the line of division coinciding with the religious cleavage. As an instance of early electoral mobi- lisation behind m­ onolithic ethnic blocs, this development was without parallel in the Europe of the time (see Coakley 2004). Strikingly, this overlap of nationalist, agrarian and r­eligious interests left little space for other contenders. The attempts of socialists (whether m ­ oderate reformists or radical Marxists) to break into this system were easily brushed aside. As in other contemporary states, the interests of women and their efforts to find an independent place on the political agenda were rebuffed (see Connolly 2020). Nationalists successfully pushed most feminists and socialists alike into deferring their own projects and supporting instead the nationalist programme, presented as a first step in advancing their long-term interests. The transition to independence The deep divisions in Irish party political life had profound consequences for future constitutional arrangements. Election results made it clear that most voters endorsed the policy of ‘Home Rule’ or devolved government for Ireland. But the outcome of the struggle between supporters and opponents of Home Rule was the partition of Ireland into two states in 1921. Each of these was itself deeply divided (though the Protestant minority in the South was much smaller than the Catholic minority in the North). This development may be traced by considering in turn the outcome of the indepen­ dence struggle and the form taken by partition (for overviews, see Augusteijn 2002; Costello 2003). Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. The rise of militant nationalism Notwithstanding strong support for Home Rule in Ireland, the Nationalist Party was able to claim little success in delivering it. Nevertheless, on occasions when it held the balance of power in the House of Commons, it was able to pressurise British govern- ments to bring forward Home Rule bills (O’Day 1998; Jackson 2003). The first such bill proposed to create an autonomous parliament in Dublin that would be responsible for a wide range of devolved powers, but it was defeated in the House of Commons in 1886. A second similar bill was passed by the House of Commons but was blocked by the House of Lords in 1893. The third Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, eventually became law in 1914, facilitated by the transformation of the Lords’ veto from an absolute into a suspensory one in 1911. This bill proposed to establish a bicameral parliament in Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  The foundations of statehood 13 Dublin that would legislate in areas of domestic concern (essentially, those covered by the ‘Irish’ government departments described above), with a separate Irish executive or cabinet. Ireland would continue to send MPs to Westminster, but their numbers would be greatly reduced. Implementation of the provisions of the bill was, however, postponed because of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and powerful opposition in Ulster. The Prote­ stant population of Ireland for the most part saw itself as being connected by a wide range of historical ties to Britain, from where the ancestors of many Irish Protestants had come as colonists in the seventeenth century. In addition to valuing the British link as a guarantee of civil and religious liberties in a Catholic island, many Protestants, especially in the north east, regarded the Act of Union as having brought significant economic benefits and as having assisted the industrialisation of Belfast and its hinter- land; these benefits, they believed, would be threatened by Irish self-rule (see Laffan 1983; Fitzpatrick 1998). Stalemate on the implementation of Home Rule opened the door to a more militant alternative. This shared certain features with nationalist ideology elsewhere (Coakley 2012: 94–115). In this view, the British presence in Ireland was based on military con- quest; the lands of Irish Catholics had been confiscated and the Catholic religion had been suppressed; British trade policy had sought to stifle nascent Irish industrialisation in the eighteenth century; and the Act of Union had been procured by bribery and cor- ruption. The catastrophic famine of 1845–49, in the course of which a million people died and a million emigrated, was later cited by nationalist ideologists as highlighting Britain’s indifference to the terrible problems of Irish poverty. This version of history was widely shared among Irish Catholics. It projected British rule as damaging, and largely overlooked the material benefits that it had brought. This ideological package was disseminated in the oral tradition and in popular literature and, to some extent, even through the state primary school system in the last two decades before 1922. While Irish Catholic opinion in general drew the conclusion from this version of history that some form of self-government for Ireland was a necessary antidote, a more radical strand went further. Since British rule in Ireland had been achieved by military force, the argument ran, it could be reversed only by the same means: by armed rebel- lion, not by parliamentary or constitutional action. Furthermore, the delegitimisation of British rule implied a complete break, with a separate Irish republic as the ultimate goal. This perspective was reinforced by powerful cultural arguments: among other organisations, the Gaelic Athletic Association (1884) and the Gaelic League (1893) emphasised, respectively, the distinctiveness of Ireland’s sporting traditions and its Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. language, and sought to cultivate these to counter English influence (Hutchinson 1987: 114–50). The most significant expression of political separatism was the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), established in 1858 and committed to setting up an independent republic by force of arms (McGee 2007). Although the IRB’s attempted insurrection in 1867 was a failure, it had sympathisers in prominent places: many members and supporters of the parliamentary Nationalist Party may well have seen Home Rule as a half-way house to complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain, and a number of Nationalist MPs had IRB associations. Nevertheless, militant nationalist organisations were unable to challenge the electoral machine of the Nationalist Party. This is clear from the experience of Sinn Féin, a radical nationalist group founded in 1905 by a jour- nalist, Arthur Griffith, whose objective was to establish a separate Irish state linked to Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  14 John Coakley Great Britain only through a shared head of state, the King. But Sinn Féin was unable to mount a serious challenge to the Nationalist Party at parliamentary elections, and its few successes were at local level, notably in Dublin Corporation. A spiral of paramilitary-style developments began in the years immediately before the First World War (1914–18). This was kicked off by the formation in January 1913 of the Ulster Volunteers, an armed force organised by the political leaders of Ulster unionism and committed to opposing Home Rule for Ireland. In reaction to this, the Irish Vol- unteers were founded later in the same year to support Home Rule. But most volunteers abandoned the organisation on the outbreak of the First World War, formed a separate body and enlisted in large numbers in the British army, as advocated by the Nationalist Party leadership. The core group that remained was infiltrated by the IRB, and engaged in armed rebellion in April 1916 (the Easter Rising). The rebels took over a number of prominent buildings in Dublin, including the General Post Office, and declared Ireland to be an independent republic (McGarry 2010; Townshend 2015). The 1916 Rising lasted less than a week. It resulted in 504 deaths (17 per cent IRA, 3 per cent police, 25 per cent British army and 55 per cent civilian; O’Halpin and Ó Corráin 2020: 543). The rebels, led by a schoolteacher, Patrick Pearse, were reinforced by a Citizens’ Army under the socialist leader, James Connolly, but were hopelessly outgunned by the British Army. The British reaction following the rebels’ surrender was immediate and harsh, reflecting a widespread British perception that their country had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the Irish rebels. Those suspected of involvement in the rebellion were interned, and 16 leaders, including Pearse and Connolly, were ­executed. Irish public opinion, initially largely unsympathetic to the rebels, shifted steadily as the relentless calendar of executions was announced. The rebel leaders came ultimately to be seen as heroes, and public alienation from the government was reinforced by a threat to introduce conscription in April 1918 and by a pan-European climate of polit- ical radicalism in the closing months of the war. The main beneficiary was Sinn Féin, ­reconstituted in 1917 as a broad nationalist front under the leadership of Éamon de Valera, another teacher and senior surviving commander of the 1916 rebels. As ­Table 1.1 shows, Sinn Féin gained an overwhelming electoral victory in the 1918 general election, when it won 73 of Ireland’s 105 seats, crushing the Nationalist Party, which was left with only six seats, four of them in the North. Sinn Féin took this result as a mandate to pursue its separatist policy (see Laffan 1999). Its members refused to take their seats in the British Parliament, and instead ­established their own revolutionary assembly, Dáil Éireann, in January 1919 (see Farrell 1994). The Dáil (later to achieve iconic status as the ‘first Dáil’) ratified the 1916 rebels’ Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. proclamation of Ireland as an independent republic, set up its own government under de Valera, and in 1919–21 accepted responsibility for a guerrilla war fought by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), reconstituted from the Irish Volunteers (Hopkinson 2002; Kostick 2009; Townshend 2013; for the British response, Fanning 2013). These efforts were reinforced by an attempt, which inevitably had strictly limited success, to set up a separate state and to obtain international recognition for it, especially by bringing American pressure to bear on the British. The Dáil could not hope to control the offi- cial Irish government agencies, and itself had only a small administrative service, which operated in difficult circumstances. Nevertheless, after the local elections of 1920 it was able to detach the loyalty of most local authorities from the Local Government Board, and it enjoyed some success in establishing a network of local courts (see Mitchell 1995; Garvin 1996: 63–91). Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  The foundations of statehood 15 The partition of Ireland The outcome of the conflict between two radically different proposals for the future government of Ireland was a decision by the British government to partition the island. This was given effect through the Government of Ireland Act (1920), based on the prin- ciples of the 1914 Home Rule Act. But instead of concentrating power in a single capital it made provision for two new Irish states, with parallel institutions in Belfast (to govern six north-eastern counties that contained 71 per cent of the Irish Protestant population) and Dublin (to govern the remaining 26 counties). The Act came into effect in 1921, and was successfully implemented, if in contested form, in Northern Ireland, where it formed the basic constitutional document until 1972 (see Chapter 13; Walker 2012). Although the Act proved largely ineffective in the south, its provisions for the govern­ ment of ‘Southern Ireland’ formed an important precedent for constitutional develop- ment, and its underlying principles became deeply ingrained in the public culture of the new Irish state. Alongside the Irish government there was to be a parliament of two houses: a House of Commons of 128 members elected by proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote, and a 64-member Senate, made up of three ex officio members, 17 nominees of the Lord Lieutenant (representing commerce, labour and the scientific and learned professions) and 44 elected by five other groups (Catholic bishops, Protestant bishops, peers, privy councillors and county councillors). In the first election to the House of Commons in 1921, Sinn Féin won 124 seats, all uncontested, and interpreted this election and that to the Northern Ireland House of Commons as elections to the ‘second Dáil’. Since only four MPs turned up for the first meeting of the legally constituted Southern Ireland House of Commons (all from Trinity College Dublin) and two for the second, it adjourned, never to meet again. The Senate suffered the same fate: although 18 senators attended at least one of its two meetings, it clearly lacked public support, and the Act ceased to have real effect in the south. In any case, the provisions of the Government of Ireland Act for Southern Ireland were replaced by the provisions of the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921. Drawn up by representatives of the Dáil government (led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins) and of the British government (led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George), this went much further than conceding Home Rule, but stopped well short of permitting comp­ lete separation. Instead, a state would be established that would be almost fully indepen­ dent. It would be a member of the British Commonwealth and would recognise the King as its head. There would be a representative of the crown to stand in for the King in Ireland on the model of the Governor-General in other British dominions, and con- Copyright © 2023. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. stitutional provision would be made for an oath of allegiance to the constitution and fidelity to the King to be taken by all parliamentarians. The British would also retain naval facilities in certain seaports. Partition would remain, but the location of the border line would be determined by an intergovernmental boundary commission. Since two of the six counties of Northern Ireland and other border areas had Catholic majorities, the Irish negotiators believed that this would result in a major revision of the line of the border, and that this in turn might undermine the viability of the northern state. The Treaty was narrowly ratified by the Dáil in January 1922, by a majority of 64 to 57. The division that it generated was bitter and saw the resignation of de Valera as head of government and the departure of his anti-Treaty supporters from the Dáil. The constitu- tional position that followed was complex, and it required the pro-Treaty government to ride two horses, the Irish revolutionary experience and the British constitutional heritage.1 Coakley, J, Gallagher, M, O'Malley, E, & Reidy, T (eds) 2023, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 September 2023]. Created from dcu on 2023-09-06 14:55:12.  16 John Coakley First, the second Dáil continued to exist, though only pro-Treaty Sinn Féin members now attended. On 10 January 1922 Arthur Griffith was elected President of the Dáil government in succession to de Valera and a new Dáil government was appointed; on Griffith’s death on 12 August 1922 he was succeeded as President by William T. Cosgrave. Second, the Treaty made provision for a meeting of ‘members of parliament elected for constituencies in Southern Ireland’, who duly came together on 14 January for their one and only meeting (the anti-Treaty group did not attend, but the four unionist members from Trinity College were present). This body formally approved the Treaty and elected a Provisional Government with Michael Collins, guiding force of the IRA campaign and head of the IRB, as its Chairman. On Collins’s death on 22 August 1922, he was succeeded as Chairman by Cosgrave. Although Cosgrave’s succession to both of these posts helped to disguise the anom- alous existence of two governments, both pro-Treaty, with overlapping membership, this overlap was not complete. A general election took place in June 1922, and when the new (third) Dáil eventually met on 9 September 1922, again in the absence of the anti-Treaty deputies, it removed this anomaly by electing Cosgrave to the single post of President. Notwithstanding enormous political pressures, a new constitution was speedily drafted (Cahillane 2016). The Dáil approved it on 25 October 1922, and it was enacted by the British parliament on 5 December. When it came into force the follow- ing day, Cosgrave became President of the Executive Council (yet another title for the prime minister). The consolidation of statehood