1920 Irish local elections

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First party Second party Third party   Leader Éamon de Valera Thomas Johnson Edward Carson Party Sinn Féin Labour Irish Unionist Councillors 550 394 355

Elections were held in January and June 1920 for the variouscounty and district councils of Ireland. The elections were organised by theDublin Castle administration under the law of the thenUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK), and held while theIrish War of Independence was pitting UK forces against those of theIrish Republic proclaimed in 1919 by theFirst Dáil. Elections were held in two stages: borough and urban district councils in January; and county and rural district councils in June.Sinn Féin, which had established the First Dáil, won control of many of the councils, which subsequently broke contact with Dublin Castle'sLocal Government Board for Ireland and instead recognised the republicanDepartment of Local Government. The election results provide historians with a barometer of public opinion in what would be the last elections administered on an all-island basis: theGovernment of Ireland Act 1920 passed at the end of the year effected thepartition of Ireland from 1921, though the elections for the two home rule Parliaments envisaged by itwere held on the same day; no further elections would be held simultaneously across the island of Ireland until 1979, when representatives ofthe Republic of Ireland andNorthern Ireland to theEuropean Parliament were elected. The next local elections were heldin 1924 inNorthern Ireland andin 1925 in theIrish Free State.

In the1918 general elections the newly reformedSinn Féin party had secured a large majority of Irish seats in theParliament of the United Kingdom. Many of the seats won by Sinn Féin were uncontested and thus were secured by acclamation. Where the seats were contested, the elections used thefirst-past-the-post voting system. Those two reasons explain how the Sinn Féin took a majority of seats in the chamber even though in the districts where the seat wascontested the party received less than half the vote.^[1] Sinn Féin's electoral success was a propaganda coup for the party, so theBritish Government introduced theLocal Government (Ireland) Act 1919, which allowed for municipal elections byproportional representation in all of Ireland for the first time, by the system of thesingle transferable vote in multi-member districts. The Bill's second reading debate and vote were on 24 March. The government hoped that the new system would reveal less-than-monolithic support for Sinn Féin, and it was first tested in the 1920 local elections.^[2][3]

Some Sinn Féin members includingArthur Griffith had also helped to form theProportional Representation Society of Ireland in the different circumstances of 1911. By 1920 the party was in a far stronger electoral position, and had no reason to oppose proportional representation, and it treated these elections as internal Irish elections for local authorities that were expected to swear allegiance to the newIrish Republic.

STV, the electoral system introduced by the 1919 Act, is still used today inelections in the Republic of Ireland and mostelections in Northern Ireland.

The 1919 act mandated elections for all urban councils exceptSligo Corporation, which had been reconstituted andelected in 1919.^[4] The cumulative first preference votes in the 1920 urban elections were:

Excluding the moreunionist province ofUlster, the urban results were:^[8]

The 15 January elections saw Sinn Féin, Labour, and other nationalists winning control of 172 of Ireland's 206 borough and urban district councils. The subsequent mayoral elections on 30 January saw a Unionist elected for Belfast, a Nationalist in Derry, Labour in Wexford, and Sinn Féin in eight boroughs.^[9]

InWestport, only 4 candidates were nominated for the 18 seats on the urban district council, and only 2 of those accepted office. Since 5 councillors was aquorum, Mayo County Council mandated a special election for 15 March, but only one extra candidate was nominated.^[11]

The rural elections showed a much greater level of support for Sinn Féin in its core support area. It took control of 338 out of 393 local government bodies, county councils, boards of guardians and rural district councils across the whole island. The county and rural district elections saw virtually no contests outside of Ulster.^[12]

Sinn Féin's success allowed them to take control of virtually every county council and rural district council outside of Ulster.^[13] Sinn Féin success in 12 June rural and county elections extended even to Ulster, with the party winning control of 36 of Ulsters 55 rural districts.^[9]

• Fitzgerald, Desmond (May 1920)."Local government elections, January 1920: analysis for propaganda purposes".Digital Repository of Ireland. Retrieved10 September 2020.
• Local Government Archivists and Records Managers (September 2020).Democracy and Change: The 1920 Local Elections in Ireland(PDF). Dublin:Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government.ISBN 978-0-95084-702-7. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 6 October 2020. Retrieved5 October 2020.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ignored ISBN errors (link)
• Local Government Board for Ireland (1921)."Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1919: Elections".Annual report for the year ended 31st March 1920.Command papers. Vol. Cmd.1432. Dublin: HMSO. pp. i–xi, Appendix 1–49.

• 1920 Irish local elections
• Council elections in the Republic of Ireland by year
• Politics of Ireland (1801–1923)
• Irish War of Independence
• January 1920 in Europe
• June 1920 in Europe
• 1920 elections in Ireland

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