The Irish Constitution

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan F. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Sinn Fein ◽  
Political Drama ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Government ◽  
Almost Continuous

The Constitution of the Irish Free State is the result of a political drama extending over a period of eight years. From the Ulster Rebellion and the Home Rule Act of 1914, the action has been tense and almost continuous. The threats and concessions of that time played into the hands of the radical Sinn Fein, and with the Easter Rebellion of 1916 it became evident that the issue was no longer one of home rule but of independence. The government at London, however, did not realize this until once more the traditional methods of settlement had been tried.

Models of Government and Anglo-Irish Relations

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan J. Ward
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The People ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Irish People ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Government

In 1922 the Irish Free State began life with a constitution which embodied two contradictory principles. The first recognized that all powers of government derive from the people and provided for a system of government in which the Irish Cabinet was clearly responsible to the popularly elected Irish lower house, Dail Eireann. The second recognized a monarch, King George V, as head of the Irish executive, with substantial prerogative powers derived not from the Irish people but from British common law. The constitution was a compromise between Britain and Irish republicans to end the Irish War of Independence. Though not every compromise in politics makes complete sense, for Britain this one represented more than a short-range expedient. Its contradictions represented the dying gasp in a long, often anguished, and ultimately futile attempt by Britain to devise a formula which would simultaneously permit the Irish a measure of self-government and protect vital British interests in Ireland.This essay will review the attempts to construct a satisfactory Anglo-Irish relationship in the years between 1782 and 1949. It will concentrate on four models of government proposed for Ireland: (a) the independent Irish Parliament of the period from 1782 to 1800, (b) O'Connell's proposals to repeal the union with Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, (c) the devolution proposed in the home rule bills of 1886, 1893, 1912, and the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, and (d) the independence provided in the Irish Free State constitution of 1922 and its successor, the Irish constitution of 1937. It will also place these models in the context of the constitutional evolution of the British Empire. In the Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, and South African colonies, colonial self-government and British imperial interests were reconciled, beginning in Nova Scotia in 1848, by using a kind of constitutional double-think involving the Crown and the colonial Governor. But the problem of the troubled Anglo-Irish relationship could not be resolved so easily.

Adaptive Coexistence? Lord Farnham (1879–1957) and Southern Loyalism in Pre- and Post-Independence Ireland

2020 ◽  
pp. 293-314
Author(s):  
Jonathan Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Free State ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Government

This chapter traces the career and experiences of Arthur Kenlis Maxwell, 11th Baron Farnham (1879-1957) of county Cavan as a southern loyalist in pre and post-independent Ireland. Up to 1920 he was a prominent representative of southern unionism and his impassioned speeches during the debate on the Government of Ireland bill convey the sense of abandonment and betrayal felt by many southern loyalists. In April 1922 he and his family left Farnham House for England. Unlike many of his peers who made similar journeys, Farnham returned to his ancestral home in 1926 and enjoyed a relatively peaceful and easy transition back into life there. The latter part of the chapter illustrates Farnham’s personal experience of adaptive coexistence and the complexity of southern unionist identities and loyalties in this ‘new’ Ireland. Personal connections made prior to his departure, his interest in agricultural improvement and promotion of various sports in Cavan had meant that he had cultivated a wide and diverse range of friends and networks which he could tap into on return. Although he never formally entered politics in the Irish Free State, Farnham remained an important leadership figure within the Protestant community in Cavan and further afield and symbolically maintained displays of his loyalism attending both the 1937 and 1953 coronations in London.

Southern Irish Loyalism from Home Rule Crisis to Republic: An Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Brian Hughes ◽  
Conor Morrissey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Final Section ◽  
General Election ◽  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The Third ◽  
Thematic Framework ◽  
Irish Free State

This chapter-length introduction provides a chronological, historiographical, and thematic framework for the volume. It begins by setting out the book’s remit, outlining its understanding of loyalism, and broadly defining the individuals and groups under consideration. The introduction then provides an overview of the history and historiography of southern Irish loyalism in three sections. The first covers the period from the third Home Rule bill in 1912 to the 1918 general election while the second takes in the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) and Irish Civil War (1922–23). This is followed by a final section on southern loyalists and loyalism after southern Irish independence, from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the exit from the commonwealth and declaration of a republic in 1949.

Northern Ireland and ‘Ulster Nationalism’

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-201
Author(s):  
David Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Republic Of Ireland ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Uk

Many analysts of the politics of Northern Ireland have argued that there exists some form of ‘Ulster nationalism’, particularly among Ulster Unionists. After 1886, when Gladstone promised Home Rule for Ireland, Unionists fashioned an Ulster identity predicated on Protestantism and ‘loyalty’ to the British Crown. This was contrasted with the ‘disloyalty’ of Catholics in what would become the Republic of Ireland. This form of ‘nationalist unionism’ was more ethnic in character than the civic variety which existed in Scotland and Wales. It too contained contradictions, not least its suspicion of Westminster and paranoia as to the intentions of successive UK governments towards the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. At various points after 1921, some Ulster Unionists even toyed with the idea of Northern Ireland becoming a ‘Dominion’ (like the Irish Free State) or else pursuing some other form of ‘independence’ from the UK.

scholarly journals Historical revisit: Edmund Curtis, A history of medieval Ireland (1923, 1938)

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (124) ◽  
pp. 535-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Lydon
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Medieval Ireland

These verses were written by the Irish poet to express his grief at the impact of the Williamite victory at the battle of the Boyne and all that followed for Ireland. They were chosen two hundred years later by the historian Edmund Curtis to make clear his attitude towards Ireland’s past. In 1923, just after home rule was secured for what was officially known as Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State), he published his history of medieval Ireland, and where a dedication would normally be printed he inserted ‘The Absentee Lordship’ and followed it with these verses. In doing this, Curtis left no doubt that in his view medieval Ireland was a lordship wrongfully attached to the English crown and that it should rightfully have been a kingdom under its own native dynastic ruler. For this he was subsequently denounced as unhistorical, and to this day, especially in the view of the so-called revisionists, he is commonly regarded as not only out of date, but dangerous as well. It was argued that Curtis used the medieval past to justify the emergence of a self-governing state in Ireland. To quote just one example, Steven Ellis, the best of the medieval revisionists, wrote in 1987 that ‘historians like Edmund Curtis concentrated on such topics as friction between the Westminster and Dublin governments, the Gaelic revival, the Great Earl uncrowned king of Ireland, the blended race and the fifteenth-century home rule movement’.

Venereal disease in the Irish Free State: the politics of public health

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (139) ◽  
pp. 345-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susannah Riordan
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
Free State ◽  
Moral Regulation ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
Irish Free State ◽  
The Government

In his article ‘Venereal disease and the politics of prostitution in the Irish Free State’ Philip Howell argues that in 1926, following the submission of the Report of the interdepartmental committee of inquiry regarding venereal disease, the Irish government was confronted with ‘a series of proposals to regulate prostitution in the Free State’ These proposals are associated with the influence brought to bear by the army on the committee’s deliberations, and it is suggested that this preferred military solution to venereal disease falls into a European pattern in which state formation was frequently accompanied by such regulation. The example of Italy is offered as the most pertinent. However, Howell suggests, the government rejected the regulation of prostitution in favour of ‘a moral regulation of sexuality marked by elements of Catholic social purity’.

The Legacy of the Irish Party in Free State Politics, 1922–5

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-52
Author(s):  
Martin O'Donoghue
Keyword(s):  
State Politics ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Personnel Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Cumann Na Ngaedheal ◽  
Special Assessment

Chapter One provides the first statistical illustration of individuals from home rule backgrounds who entered representative politics in the early years of the Free State with the number of TDs with home rule heritage in each political grouping detailed in a number of tables. Given the historiographical attention drawn to the character of Cumann na nGaedheal, there is detailed attention devoted to comparisons between the government party and the Irish Party in personnel, policy and organisation. While the Farmers’ Party and Labour are also considered for continuities between membership of both parties and the earlier agrarian and labour associations of the home rule era, there is special assessment of former MPs who were elected as independent TDs such as Capt. William Redmond, Alfie Byrne and James Cosgrave and the persistence of the IPP’s methods. This chapter thus highlights the continuities between pre- and post-independence Ireland, helping to explain the party fragmentation experienced in the early 1920s.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Matthew Huculak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
William Butler Yeats ◽  
Free State ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Irish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irish Free State

Irish poet, playwright, editor, writer, senator, William Butler Yeats is among the most accomplished authors of the twentieth century; in 1923 he was awarded Nobel Prize in Literature "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats’ life spanned a turbulent time in Irish history that began with the rise of the modern home rule movement in the 1860s to the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922. T. S. Eliot noted Yeats was "one of those few poets whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."

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