Tag Archives: Dáil Éireann

Greens join government coalition talks in Ireland

Three months after the Republic of Ireland’s Feb. 8 general election, three-party negotiations could lead to a new coalition government … or not.

First, center-right Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil parties agreed to govern together for the first time in order to block left-wing Sinn Féin, which topped the polling, from power. Now, the two historic rivals have invited the Green Party to join a coalition to control Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament.

The Dail chamber. Photo: Irish Times

The Greens’ insistence on tackling climate change and Fianna Fáil‘s concerns about the impact of that on farming and rural communities is a potential deal breaker. There also is reported tensions within the Greens about whether to enter such a coalition.

Even if elected lawmakers reach an agreement, the deal must be approved by two thirds of the Green’s grassroots members. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil need majority approval from their members.

Pat Leahy, political editor at The Irish Times, writes:

They may or may not come out with a government, though history suggests so. Normally if a party goes into negotiations on a program for government, it comes out with a program for government. And normally if a party produces a program for government, its members approve its adoption. Though these are not, of course, normal times. (My emphasis.)

The three-way talks are expected to last until the end of the month. Sinn Féin says it remains open to forming a left coalition government with the Greens, independents, and other minor party progressives. Don’t bet on it. Given the massive disruptions and challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, it will be easier to sit in opposition for several years and build toward a majority in the next election, when life hopefully will have returned closer to normal.

Ireland has been in political deadlock since the inconclusive election in February. The caretaker government of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael has been forced to implement costly and extensive fiscal and political policies in response to the health crisis. The country is taking its first small steps toward reopening from quarantine.

Election week countdown in Ireland

The Republic of Ireland holds a general election Saturday, Feb. 8. Voters will decide 159 seats in the Dáil Éireann, or parliament, including a leader of the government, the taoiseach, or prime minister. Leo Varadkar, the leader since 2017, is seeking reelection. Members are elected by single transferable vote (STV) system from 39 constituencies, each returning from three to five members. … Major issues include how to handle the post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland and trade relations with Britain. Domestic issues include health care and housing shortages. … Below, I’m posting a selection of coverage up to election day, with the most recent stories at the top. I’ll publish a new post once the outcome is clear.

The weekly countdown is now closed. MH

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Saturday, Feb. 8:

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time. About 3.5 million people are eligible to vote at 6,500 polling stations in 39 constituencies. Heavy rain and gusting winds are expected across the island, especially in the west.

Friday, Feb. 7:

Thursday, Feb. 6:

Wednesday, Feb. 5:

Tuesday, Feb. 4:

Monday, Feb. 3:

Sunday, Feb. 2:

1919 Revisited: American reporting of Irish independence

This year I explored 1919 U.S. mainstream and Irish-American newspaper coverage of events in the struggled for Irish freedom. I produced 32 stand-alone posts for my American Reporting of Irish Independence series about developments on both sides of the Atlantic, including:

  • Dáil Éireann, revolutionary parliament of the Irish Republic
  • Irish Race Convention
  • American Commission on Irish Independence
  • Éamon de Valera’s tour of America
  • News reporting and opinion pieces for and against the Irish cause

Many of my posts are focused on three Irish-American weeklies: The Irish Press, a short-lived (1918-1922) Philadelphia paper with direct political and financial ties to revolutionary Ireland; the Kentucky Irish American, published from 1898 to 1968 in Louisville; and The Irish Standard, circulated from 1886 to 1920 in Minneapolis, Minn. Since all three papers are digitized, my posts are laced with links to the original pages. The Irish American and Standard offered more moderate coverage of Ireland’s cause than the Press, reflecting a more conservative Irish America in the heartland, rather than the more activist immigrant pockets of the East Coast.

Ruth Russell’s 1919 passport photo.

I also produced a five-part monograph, Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland, about a young Chicago Daily News correspondent who reported from the early months of the revolution. Upon her return to America, Russell wrote a book about her experience, protested against British rule in Ireland; and testified before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland.

“They were extremely cool-headed and intelligent,” Russell said of the Sinn Féin leaders. “[They were] the most brilliant crowd of people that I have met in my life, and as a newspaper person I have mixed in at a good many gatherings.”1

Here’s the full series:

Thanks to the American Journalism Historians Association and the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland for the opportunity to present my research at conferences in Dallas and Belfast, respectively.

Presenting at the NPHFI conference, Queens University Belfast, November 2019.

June 1919: U.S. editorials on Senate support for Ireland

On June 6, 1919, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution requesting the Paris peace conference to give a hearing to the delegation appointed by Dáil Éireann, and expressing sympathy with the “aspirations of the Irish people for a government of their own choice.” The U.S. House of Representatives had voted in favor of self-determination for Ireland in early March, on the last day of the previous legislative session, but a parliamentary maneuver by opponents delayed consideration in the Senate.

The combined legislative action “prove that there is in this country a general feeling in favor of having the case of Ireland presented at the peace conference,” The Washington Post editorialized a day after the Senate vote.1 The capital daily continued:

The present condition of Ireland—with a dwindling population, industries destroyed, law flouted, and her people on the ragged edge of rebellion kept down only by a large army of occupation—is altogether anomalous and … alarming.  It surely is not expecting too much of the peace conference to ask it to clean off the slate in this matter before it brings its labors to a close. … It is inconceivable that President Wilson and the other members of the American delegation at Paris will not heed the combined appeal of the Senate and the House.

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1919.

The Irish Press, Philadelphia, which had direct ties to Ireland’s revolutionary government, correctly noted that such resolutions did not have the full force of legislation sent to Wilson to sign into law. It said such passage was critical, and continued:

If some step is not now taken by the United States to aid Ireland, there is little reason to hope that a situation will again soon present itself where anything can be done by the American government. … We have come to the end of a war in which the victory has rested with the powers which declared that they fought for world freedom and especially the rights of small nations. The spokesman of the United States [Wilson] has made very clear and specific declarations on this point. The people of Ireland have voted for separation from Great Britain, and have set up a government of their own. If under these conditions the government of this county does not take some action, it is hardly to be expected that it will do anything when the conditions are less favorable, as they undoubtedly will be later.2

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Irish Standard wondered if Ireland would have received her freedom at the peace conference if she had been among the oppressed nations of the German and Austrian empires.

But because the despotism under which she is groaning is the British brand, it is not to be interfered with. Was it then to curb the tyranny and autocracy of certain particular nations only that the world war was fought, or was it against all such anachronisms of government wherever found? … The world’s wounds are about to be sewed up while at least one dangerous source of infection is left within—that of the rankling Irish discontent at British domination.3

In Louisville, the Kentucky Irish American suggested that Britain’s “domineering and bulldog tactics” regarding Ireland and other matters “has aroused much indignation in this country. … Despite the efforts of the pro-English press on this side, the American public as a whole is fast discovering the hypocrisy and hoggishness of the English nation.”4

On June 17 in Dublin, Dáil Éireann passed a motion of thanks to the Senate to “assure the people of America that the ties of blood and friendship which subsisted between both nations in the days of their subjection to one common oppressor have endured and are indissoluble.”

America’s Irish press reports first Dáil…and more

The Jan. 25, 1919, front pages of the The Irish Press, Philadelphia, and the Kentucky Irish American, Louisville, each reported the opening of the first Dáil Éireann four days earlier in Dublin. Both papers also announced the upcoming Irish Race Convention, Feb. 22-23, in Philadelphia.

“The gathering will undoubtedly be the most momentous ever held by the Irish race outside of Ireland,” TIP proclaimed. “All Irish-American societies in good standing with their national organizations are entitled to five delegates each,” the KIA told its readers.

More about the Philadelphia convention in future posts.

As with their coverage three weeks earlier of the Sinn Féin election sweep in Ireland, reporting of the first Dáil in these two Irish-American newspapers demonstrated the differences of their editorial missions and audiences.

The Press, with its direct links to the revolutionary government, was writing to Irish activists on both sides of the Atlantic. It carried seven stories about Ireland on the front page under the top banner CONGRESS OF IRISH REPUBLIC MEETS. The coverage including the inaugural meeting of the American Council on Ireland, which occurred a few days earlier Philadelphia.

“It marks a new era in the history of the fight for Irish independence carried on in America,” the Press reported. “It is surely a matter of great significance to find Americans of non-Irish affiliations organizing a movement to champion the cause of Ireland.”

The Irish American’s front page story about the first Dáil appeared in the right-side column, a prominent placement, under a five-deck headline topped by IRELAND. The KIA appealed to a wider demographic–if smaller geographic–audience than The Irish Press with its mix of local, national, and international news. The stories included:

  • “Dangerous Extension of Eugenist Propaganda” on the left-side column.
  • Coverage of local Forward League Democrats and “old line Republicans” political meetings.
  • A republished letter from Father Francis P. Duffy in Europe, “teaming with interest and good humor.”
  • Several briefs, such as a Louisville’s couple’s golden wedding anniversary; a child’s death from an appendicitis; the honorable discharges of several soldiers stationed at nearby Camp Zachary Taylor; and the annual meeting of the Holy Name Society.

The Irish Standard of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a pro-Catholic but not religious newspaper, is another example of this balanced coverage. Its Jan. 25, 1919, issue featured the bold headline, Ireland a Republic in the Eyes of World, at the top center of the front page, with more Irish coverage inside, including a supportive editorial. Also above the front fold: a Catholic Press Association story about Rome’s postponement of the unification of Catechetical texts; and a piece about the lack of jobs for servicemen returning from the war.

We prefer to believe it is the suddenness of this happening rather than any lack of appreciation of the glorious work your fighting Yanks have been doing that is responsible for the present deplorable situation. Nevertheless, it seems necessary to recall the promises and pledges made to these young men as they went out on their great crusade to save the civilization of the world.

The Kentucky Irish American was more progressive about using photographs than the Press, Standard, and most newspapers in 1919. The front of the KIA‘s first Dáil issue included images of the former German Crown Prince and his dog; Queen Elizabeth, of Belgium, and Mrs. Poincare, wife of the French president, riding in a carriage through the Paris streets; Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.; Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, and Mrs. Vincent Astor, all returning from France; and renowned pianist Ignacy Paderewski, the Polish foreign affairs minister at the Paris peace conference.

As discussed in my last post, these ethnic newspapers complained about mainstream American press coverage of Irish issues. “News dispatches pertaining to affairs in Ireland, as distributed by some of the great American press agencies, continue to bear prima facie evidence of gross unfairness and inaccuracy,” the Standard declared in its editorial. The Press editorial offered hope for better future coverage:

Hitherto the American daily press has viewed the Sinn Féin program as something to be mocked and jeered at; but now that the Irish people have proved to the world that they are in earnest in their fight for international recognition as a sovereign nation, the tone of the great dailies has undergone something of a change.

This is only a snapshot of Irish-American newspaper coverage in January 1919, of course, not a complete or extensive analysis. Some Irish titles published at that time appear to be lost forever, while others are not yet digitized for review outside limited library and archive collections. 

First Dáil Éireann recalled at Embassy of Ireland, USA

The centenary of the first Dáil Éireann and preceding December 1918 election that swept Sinn Féin to power were marked at the Embassy of Ireland, USA. Irish Ambassador Dan Mulhall said the two events are often “overshadowed” by the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence.

Sinn Féin‘s use of the phrase Declaration of Independence “was not by accident,” Mulhall said, but deliberately meant to evoke the American political statement of July 4, 1776. The Irish declaration, however, was very much inspired by the Irish Proclamation of 1916.

As he wrote in a recent Embassy blog post:

The Declaration is best seen perhaps as a reiteration of the 1916 Proclamation. The difference between the two documents is the context in which they were issued. When it occurred, the Easter Rising expressed the will of a relatively small minority of Irish nationalists, whereas in January 1919 the members of the First Dáil had the wind in their sails in the wake of that decisive election result a month before. The quest for some form of independence now had the undoubted support of a majority of the Irish electorate.

Irish Ambassador to the USA Dan Mulhall, standing, joined by, left to right, Dr. Jennifer Wells of George Washington University; RTÉ Washington correspondent Brian O’Donovan, the panel moderator; and Dr. Shirley Graham of George Washington University.

Mulhall noted the Irish electorate in December 1918 was three times larger than in the 1910 general election, last before the Great War. Dr. Shirley Graham, a gender equality and international affairs associate professor at George Washington University, emphasized that women were a major factor in the 1918 outcome.

Before the British Parliament granted limited suffrage earlier in 1918, “Irish women were invisible, unknown, and without voice,” Graham said. Their decades-long fight for the vote, radicalized during the war years, was finally realized at the polls, if only to be set back in the new Irish state.

Dr. Jennifer Wells, assistant professor of History at George Washington University, noted Irish newspapers had mixed reactions to the first Dáil; from the “dismay” of The Irish Times; to the “bold and novel move” described by the Independent; and Cork Examiner‘s exclamation that 21 January 1919, was “a date that marked a turning point in the history of Ireland.”

[See my ongoing series about U.S. and Irish-American press reporting on these events.]

None of the papers were fully right, or completely wrong, said Wells, who warned not to “fetishize the assembly” a century later. The Dáil‘s “chaos created the inevitability of partition,” she said; but its members also “appealed quite brilliantly” to President Woodrow Wilson’s highest aspirations for the rights of small nations, and they “laid bare the gross tyranny” of the British Empire.

Ireland was the first and only country to secure independence from one of the prevailing powers of the war, rather than one of the defeated empires, Mulhall said. The first Dáil became the foundation for a century of parliamentary democracy.

“Who could have imagined that group could set the stage for the last 100 years,” he said, adding that London’s initial view was, “This thing isn’t serious; it’s just a bit of play acting.”

“From then on,” Mulhall said, “the clock would not be turned back.”

American press coverage of first Dáil Éireann

Dáil Éireann, the revolutionary parliament of the Irish Republic, on 21 January 1919, adopted the fledgling nation’s Declaration of Independence at Mansion House, Dublin. The political statement and same day IRA ambush of Royal Irish Constabulary officers (British police) at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary, marked the start of Ireland’s War of Independence.

“Nearly 100 American and European journalists are in Dublin” to cover the parliamentary meeting, The Washington (Washington, D.C.) Herald reported a day earlier. Their wire service dispatches and other cables appeared in newspapers across America, home to more than 1 million Irish immigrants and 3.1 million U.S. citizens with at least one parent from Ireland.1 Many of the stories read like mashups from multiple sources, with key details and phrases either rewritten or reordered in the long columns, typically without source attribution.

Some Irish Americans complained about the coverage. At a public gathering in Chicago, supporters of Irish independence suggested “the American press was ‘muzzled’ when it came to printing the truth about the Irish question.” Someone in the audience shouted, “Let’s boycott the press.”2

In Louisville, 300 miles south, the Kentucky Irish American editorialized under the headline:

England’s Tools

The majority of the reports of the convention in Ireland appearing in the American press are filled with slurs of the Irish people and their rights to freedom. They bear all the earmarks of being doctored in London, and only emphasize the fact that the English propagandists in this country are but hearkening to their master’s voice.3

In Philadelphia, The Irish Press bristled at perceived slights. Noting the declaration was read in Irish, the Press complained, “Some of the newspaper dispatches speak of the Irish language as ‘dead.’ … The correspondent evidently regards no language as living unless he can understand it.”4

The Irish Press had direct ties to the revolutionary government through its editor and Dáil Éireann member, Patrick McCartan. In his 1932 monograph (which some historians have criticized as mistake-filled and self-serving5), McCartan recalled, “To keep the Republic prominently before Irish-Americans, the Staff of the Irish Press were instructed to substitute the words Irish Republic for Ireland, as far possible, in all articles that appeared in the newspaper.”6 By this and other steps, he wrote, the American public was prepared for Ireland’s Declaration of Independence.

We were no longer an English domestic issue. Home Rule, Dominion Self Government, and such like phrases, in which the Irish issue had hitherto been concealed, had little meaning for Americans and no appeal to their republican tradition and sympathies. Now, for the first time, with a fearless demand for recognition, of the existing Irish Republic, the Irish issue was stated in terms that commanded American interest and respect.7 

In Ireland, the Dáil soon launched its official organ, The Irish Bulletin. “[T]he stenciled news sheet of the revolutionary movement … written in the restrained, neutral tone of the news itself” became part of a larger publicity operation devoted to the care of “potentially sympathetic correspondents.”8 In America, the Friends of Irish Freedom’s National Bureau of Information (or Irish National Bureau) also “supplied political and literary articles to Catholic papers and sympathetic politicians free of charge.”9 

Below are some colorful and controversial passages of U.S. press coverage of the first Dáil. The stories were datelined 21 January 1919, and published in the next day’s editions of big city dailies. 

The New York Times, page 1

“The rotunda of the Mansion House, where the congress met, is a dingy old place, lighted by stained glass windows overhead. The platform and half the floor were fitted with tables for officers and delegates. The remainder of the floor and the circular gallery were reserved for the public, admission being by ticket. A large portion of the audience consisted of women. The number of young priests was conspicuous. … The youthfulness of the Sinn Féin leaders was their most noticeable characteristic. There were hardly a half dozen gray heads in the group (of 27).”

Pittsburgh Daily Post, page 1

“Infuriated over their detention in jail while their comrades were inaugurating the ‘Irish parliament,’ and declaring their independence, Sinn Féin  prisoners–how many is not known–in jail at Belfast started a riot today. The police intervened and quelled the rioters. … The declaration of independence read to the assemblage and thunderous and constant cheers, asserts that ‘the Irish people alone have the power to make the laws binding on the Irish people.’ ”

The Chicago Tribune, page 2

“Some of their names may be made famous by future results of today’s work but none of the (Sinn Féin ) delegates impressed outsiders as national figures of the calibre of Redmond, Dillon, Healey, Devlin and other Nationalists, who in the epoch now apparently closed fought for home rule along constitutional and legal paths. The Dáil Éireann begins a new page in the many chaptered history of Irish protest against government by Great Britain. It throws down the gauntlet to British law. What may be the consequences to its members, if there be any consequences, no one in Dublin can foresee or predict. Dublin’s everyday life was undisturbed by the defiance to the government registered at Mansion House.”

The Houston Post, page 1

“Perhaps no country except Ireland could present an episode as remarkable as the assembly of the Dáil Éireann … Perhaps no writer except an Irishman like George Bernard Shaw could do justice to the paradoxical nature of the proceedings.”

The San Francisco Examiner, page 1

“The atmosphere … is tremendously charged. Any moment may bring an explosion. A spirit of restiveness, daring and defiance is sweeping the Isle of Erin on this, the day which the Sinn Féin proclaim the greatest in Irish history. The trouble near Tipperary is all that has been reported so far in the way of violence. One thing seems certain–that if there is any sort of recurrence of the disturbances and the bloodshed of Easter, 1916, some absolutely unexpected provocative action from either side will be responsible.”

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More coverage of the Dáil Éireann opening in the Kentucky Irish American and The Irish Press, Philadelphia, in a future post. Project home page.