The East Clare By-election
BUOYED ON by the tremendous result in getting Joe McGuinness elected on 9
May 1917, the Sinn Féin election machine was eagerly awaiting further
contests. They didn't have long to wait. Even prior to release of the
sentenced 1916 POWs on 16 June, republicans in Ireland had already become
immersed in the next electoral battle and their candidate still hadn't been
told.
As Eamonn de Valera emerged along with the other POWs from Pentonville
Prison in London, he was handed a telegram informing him that he was the
Sinn Féin candidate in the forthcoming by-election in the constituency of
East Clare. The vacancy in the single-seat constituency had arisen when, on
7 June, as part of the First World War Messines campaign battle at
Wytschaete, in Belgium, the death occurred of the East Clare MP, Major
Willie Redmond of the 6th Royal Irish Regiment and the brother of the Irish
Independence Party leader.
Redmond died along with tens of thousands of other Irish men who
volunteered to fight for Britain in the First World War. The majority of
those who came from a nationalist background did so in the misguided belief
that they would be furthering ``the cause of the small nations''. This was a
belief instilled in them in no small measure by the likes of Willie
Redmond, his brother John and the other MPs of the Irish Independence
Party.
Willie Redmond had been MP for the constituency since 1892 and had been
returned unopposed since 1900. His party pulled out all the stops to hold
on to this seat, having already suffered two defeats at the hands of Sinn
Féin and hoping to cash in on his memory. On 17 June, the Irish
Independence Party held a public `funeral' [Redmond was buried near Lorcre
in Belgium] through the streets of Ennis. A hearse, drawn by four horses,
carried an empty coffin while the Ennis National Volunteers marched with
draped flags.
Opinion turning
Back in Westminster, the British government, the unionists and his own
party colleagues used his death to try to bolster the Irish Convention,
which Prime Minister Lloyd George was forcing on the Irish people [more on
that later].
A former prime minister, Herbert Asquith, said that the success of the
convention would be ``the best and most enduring tribute and monument we can
raise to [Willie Redmond's] memory''.
The London Times spoke of Willie Redmond's ``voice from the grave, calling
upon the coming convention to work hard for a decision''.
Laurence Ginnell, the nationalist MP who had supported Count Plunkett
earlier in the year, lamented the fact that he had not died not for
Ireland. After de Valera's victory he resigned his seat in the House of
Commons and joined Count Plunkett, Joe McGuinness and Eamonn de Valera as
abstensionist MPs for Ireland.
Sinn Féin was not put off by the huge effort being made by the Redmondites
to retain the seat. It was said that the activities of Sinn Féin as a whole
were transferred to Clare until polling day. They were also buoyed by the
fact that, even prior to Willie Redmond's death, opinion in the main town
in the constituency was turning against the Irish Parliamentary Party.
A few days before Willie Redmond's death, Ennis Rural District Council
passed a motion which called for the Irish Parliamentary Party MPs ``to
resign their seats in parliament as they no longer represent the views and
wishes of the Irish people either at home or abroad''.
Military precision
Polling day was 10 July and the Republican Movement mobilised its followers
in the area with a campaign said to have been conducted with military
precision. It was conducted as a military operation by the Volunteers more
so than Sinn Féin. Eamonn de Valera spoke everywhere in Volunteer uniform
and Volunteer companies marched to and from his meetings which ended with
the singing of The Soldier's Song.
There was no ambiguity in where de Valera stood. ``He stood there for a
principle - for the Irish Republic'' and that ``he owed his allegiance only
to the Irish Republic'' and put it up to the Redmondite candidate, Patrick
Lynch, a well-known figure in the area, by asking:
``Did the people want an absolutely sovereign Irish nation or a province or
a fraction of a province''?
(More on the campaign in East Clare, 1917, next week.)
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)