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Concept
1918 Irish general election
Summary
The 1918 Irish general election was the part of the 1918 United Kingdom general election which took place in Ireland. It is a key moment in modern Irish history because it saw the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a landslide victory for the radical Sinn Féin party. Sinn Féin had never previously stood in a general election, but had won six seats in by-elections in 1917–18. The party had vowed in its manifesto to establish an independent Irish Republic. In Ulster, however, the Unionist Party was the most successful party.
In 1918 a system called Plural voting was in place in both Britian and Ireland. Plural voting was a practice whereby one person might be able to vote multiple times in an election. Property and business owners could vote both in the constituency where their property lay and that in which they lived, if the two were different. This system often resulted in one person being able to cast multiple votes. In the newly formed Irish Free State this system was ended by the Electoral Act 1923 and was abolished in the UK by the Representation of the People Act 1948. Plural voting remained in effect in Northern Ireland until 1969.
The 1918 election was held in the aftermath of the First World War, the Easter Rising and the Conscription Crisis. It was the first general election to be held after the Representation of the People Act 1918. It was thus the first election in which women over the age of 30, and all men over the age of 21, could vote. Previously, all women and most working-class men had been excluded from voting.
In the aftermath of the elections, Sinn Féin's elected members refused to attend the British Parliament in Westminster (London), and instead formed a parliament in Dublin, Dáil Éireann ("Assembly of Ireland"), which declared Irish independence as a republic. The Irish War of Independence was conducted under this revolutionary government which sought international recognition, and set about the process of state-building.
Official source
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