Search Results for 'Irish Parliamentary Party'

UNTIL SINN Féin swept the boards at the 1918 general election, winning 73 seats - the overwhelming majority - the Irish Parliamentary Party had been the dominant force in Irish politics.

In the UK general election of 1918 Irish men, and for the first time, Irish women, struck a major blow for Ireland's right to self-determination, by electing 73 Sinn Féin MPs - almost 70 per cent of the vote.

Augusta Lady Gregory, and her husband Sir William, were away in Italy in May 1888, when her former lover Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was imprisoned in Galway for participating in an anti-eviction rally at Woodford the previous October. I described last week, that within two days of her return to Galway she visited his empty cell, and remained sometime.*

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At a time of feverish debate about Home Rule, and noisy Sinn Féin meetings, the fact that Christabel Pankhurst addressed a well attended meeting in Galway’s Town Hall on October 21 1911 was an important event in the political history of the town.

Home Rule, the campaign for self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom, was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I. It dominated all local and national papers in Ireland. Men fiercely argued its pros and cons while Ulster protested that if Home Rule was introduced it ‘would fight, and Ulster would be right.’

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On June 7 1917 Major Willie Redmond, MP for East Clare, was killed in action leading the Royal Irish Brigade to victory at the Battle of Messines Ridge at Ypres. A member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (his brother John was party leader), he had represented East Clare at Westminster for 25 years. At 53 years of age Redmond was too old to be a soldier. But he was convinced that an Ireland loyal to the Crown would succeed in achieving Home Rule, and so he joined the Irish troops at Flanders.