Abstentionism is standing for election to a deliberative assembly while refusing to take up any seats won or otherwise participate in the assembly's business. Abstentionism differs from an election boycott in that abstentionists participate in the election itself. Abstentionism has been used by Irish republican political movements in the United Kingdom and Ireland since the early 19th century. It was also used by Hungarian and Czech nationalists in the Austrian Imperial Council in the 1860s.
When suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Austrian Empire abolished the Diet of Hungary. Austria's 1861 February Patent reserved places for Hungary in the indirectly elected Imperial Council, but the Hungarians did not send representatives, arguing the council was usurping authority properly belonging to the Diet. Emulating the Hungarians, the Czech delegates for Bohemia withdrew in 1863, and those from Moravia in 1864. Hungarian demands were met by the Compromise of 1867, with the empire becoming the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in which the Hungarian half was ruled by a revived Diet. In 1904, Arthur Griffith published The Resurrection of Hungary arguing for a British–Irish dual monarchy similar to the 1867 compromise. Griffith's subsequent "Sinn Féin policy" developed this model. Tom Kettle of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) countered that Bohemia had remained in the Austrian half of the post-1867 empire, and its delegates abandoned abstentionism in 1879.
After the Act of Union 1800, Ireland was represented in the British Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Repeal of the Act of Union was a goal of many Irish nationalists.
In 1845, a motion was carried at the Repeal Association's committee for all Irish members of parliament (MPs) to withdraw from Westminster. It was proposed by Thomas Osborne Davis of the Young Ireland movement. However, the committee felt that MPs already sitting could not withdraw without breaking the oath of office they had taken upon election.
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The House of Commons of Northern Ireland was the lower house of the Parliament of Northern Ireland created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The upper house in the bicameral parliament was called the Senate. It was abolished with the passing of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. The House of Commons had a membership of 52. Until 1969, 48 were from territorial constituencies and 4 were for graduates of The Queen's University of Belfast; in that year the QUB seats were abolished and four extra territorial constituencies created on the outskirts of Belfast, where the population had grown.
Gerard Adams (Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician who was the president of Sinn Féin between 13 November 1983 and 10 February 2018, and served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth from 2011 to 2020. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he followed the policy of abstentionism as a Member of Parliament (MP) of the British Parliament for the Belfast West constituency. Adams first became involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s, and had been an established figure in Irish activism for more than a decade before his 1983 election to Parliament.
The partition of Ireland (críochdheighilt na hÉireann) was the process by which the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland divided Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. It was enacted on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The Act intended both territories to remain within the United Kingdom and contained provisions for their eventual reunification. The smaller Northern Ireland was duly created with a devolved government (Home Rule) and remained part of the UK.