100 Years of Banning Irish Democracy, Remembering September 1919.

Posted by Jim on August 27, 2019

by Tom Abernathy

We have been marking a variety of centennials in Irish history over the past few years, most prominently the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 2016. But one centennial is upon us now and is not getting the attention it deserves. On September 10, 1919, the British Government “outlawed” the Irish national assembly, Dáil Éireann, declaring it an “illegal assembly.” It could be argued that this act by the British Government is one of the signal events in the history of the Anglo-Irish conflict of the last decades. But for reasons that are not entirely clear, this fateful decision by the British Government has never received the attention it has deserved. With the anniversary approaching, now would be a good time to reflect on this seminal event in Irish history.

Dáil Éireann was the democratically elected parliament of the Irish people, assembled after the watershed General Election of December 1918, the first held under a greatly expanded franchise that abolished almost all property qualifications for men and provided for the first time, a (restricted) franchise to women. Irish separatists ran on a platform of sovereign independence and an Irish Republic. The advocates for Irish independence ran the election campaign under great difficulties, many of the independence activists were in jail, a great part of Ireland was under British military rule, and Britain censored and suppressed Irish newspapers. The whole electoral machinery was under British control. However, despite all the obstacles, the General Election resulted in advocates of Irish independence winning 73 out of 105 Irish seats. True to their election promise, instead of sitting in a British parliament, the elected representative of the Irish people met in Dublin on January 21, 1919 as Dáil Éireann and declared Irish Independence. The centennial of that momentous event in Irish history has just passed and perhaps did not get the attention it deserved. In any event, the Irish in 1919 were not content to merely proclaim independence, they set about to try to establish a counter-state to British rule in Ireland.

The Dáil government, in fact, was eventually able to supplant the British Government machinery in parts of Ireland, establishing, for example an Irish court system. The idea was simple, that an Irish government representing the democratic will of the Irish people and dedicated to the best interests of the Irish people had more legitimacy than a British government that had no democratic mandate to be in Ireland and that pursued British rather than Irish interests.

At first the British Government treated Dáil Éireann with contempt and largely ignored it. But when it became clear that Dáil Éireann meant business in governing Ireland, the British responded with repression. On September 11, 1919 after the British had issued a proclamation “banning” Dáil Éireann, British military and police raided the Dáil headquarters at 76 Harcourt Street in Dublin and arrested 9 staff members of the Dáil. This action by the British forced the Irish government to go underground for the rest of the War of Independence. The guerilla campaign in Ireland, in fact, did not really heat up until after the Dáil was “outlawed” by the British government. Having denied the Irish the right to self- government, the British then brought in the infamous Auxiliaries and the Black and Tan paramilitary forces as tools of ever more ferocious repression of the Irish. It was in a sense a coup by the British Government against the democratic government of Ireland. It is remarkable, therefore, that this fateful event in Irish history, the decision by the British
Government to “outlaw” a democratically elected government and to enforce that suppression by force and violence, is not centrally featured in discussions of the Many history books do not even mention this decision by the British Government, or do so in only cursory fashion. And yet there is probably no decision that was more consequential in terms of future Anglo-Irish “Troubles” than this decision taken by the British Government in September 1919.

The British could have accepted Irish democracy and worked to repair relations between Britain and Ireland on a basis of equality and mutual respect. Instead, the British ruling class chose violence and conflict. But despite the clear rejection of British rule by the voters of Ireland, not only in the General Election of 1918, but also the Local Elections of 1920 and the election of May 1921, Britain never doubted in own right to dictate terms and conditions to the Irish people. This was certainly true when it came to the imposition of Partition on Ireland by the British Government.

The people of Ireland were not evenly divided on partition; the overwhelming majority of Irish people were opposed to it. Following democratic norms, those who constituted a political minority in Ireland, pro-British unionists, would constitute a political minority in an Irish state. As historian Donnacha Ó Beacháin summarized, “[n]ot only was the concept of partition inherently undemocratic, considering that 80 per cent of the Irish population favored independence from Britain, the execution compounded the iniquity.” Historian Joseph J Lee in his major work, Ireland 1912-1985, accurately describes “a border (Northern Ireland) justifiable only the basis of racial supremacy” and also refers to the dedication with which Ulster Unionists laboured to “sustain a sense of racial superiority”.

The British contempt for Irish democracy has not lessened over the years. The British have no problem re-imposing a hard border separating one part of Ireland from the other as part of Brexit and yet criticize Irish politicians for insisting on a “backstop” whose purpose is to try to alleviate some of the disruption caused by British action in Ireland. British politicians even have the nerve to say that such a backstop would infringe on British sovereignty and would not give to the democratic will of the British people to leave the EU as demonstrated by the Brexit vote. This has been the argument, for example, of Owen Patterson, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a frontline Brexiteer. The irony of an ardent unionist such as Patterson talking about sovereignty and the will of the people seems to be lost not only on unionist such as Patterson, but also most sections of political and media class, which has failed to point out that partition itself is an affront to Irish sovereignty and democracy.

The contempt that Britain demonstrated toward Ireland in “banning” the first Irish national democratic assembly 100 years ago is still there. The British clearly neither knew nor cared about what effect the Brexit vote would have on Ireland. The only question is whether Irish people will still put up with this contempt shown them by the British pollical class. There are choices available to the Irish other than sitting back and waiting to see what British politicians have planned for Ireland. One option would be to insist that the British allow an all -Ireland vote on the question of unity. Certainly, the likes of Owen Patterson and the rest of the British establishment would fight tooth and nail against any all- Ireland referendum on Irish unity. As far as the British are concerned, ideas of sovereignty and democracy only
apply for England, not Ireland. Therefore a mass -based, democratic campaign is needed to insist that a unity vote take place in all Ireland and not limited to the British created jurisdiction of the Six Counties. Part of that campaign would need to focus on educating Irish people as to what has happened in the past, in particular the “banning” of the All Ireland Government of Dáil Éireann in September 1919 against all principles of democracy. We will have to insist that contrary to what happened in September 1919, that this time Britain respect the wishes of a majority of the people of Ireland for a unified country free of British control.