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House of Commons of Southern Ireland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
House of Commons of Northern Ireland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1925 → | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All 52 seats in theHouse of Commons 27 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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General elections took place inIreland on 24 May 1921 to elect members of theHouse of Commons of Northern Ireland and theHouse of Commons of Southern Ireland. These legislatures had been established by theGovernment of Ireland Act 1920, which grantedHome Rule to apartitioned Ireland within theUnited Kingdom.[1][2]
TheUlster Unionist Party (UUP) won a landslide majority in Northern Ireland. In the area designated asSouthern Ireland,Sinn Féin candidates were elected unopposed in 124 of the 128 seats.
Only the Northern Ireland House of Commons actually sat as a functional body; theSinn Féin candidates elected across Ireland boycotted both institutions, and instead assembled as theSecond Dáil.
On 21 January 1919, the Sinn Féin MPs elected to the British House of Commons at the1918 general election met asDáil Éireann and declared independence from the United Kingdom. This declaration was followed by theIrish War of Independence, which continued until a truce in July 1921.
In November 1920, the British Parliament passed theGovernment of Ireland Act 1920. This partitioned Ireland into two distinct polities, each with their own Home Rule Parliament:Northern Ireland andSouthern Ireland. Both parliaments would be composed of a directly elected House of Commons and an indirectly elected Senate, with both lower chambers being elected by the Single Transferable Vote system of proportional representation.[1][2]
When the date of the elections was announced in the House of Commons, the Conservative MPSir William Davison, who had been born inBroughshane, County Antrim, had asked "What is the object of holding elections in Southern Ireland when any candidates who do not support Sinn Fein would be shot?" Other members replied "How do you know?"[3]
John Dillon andT. P. O'Connor both agreed that the Irish Party should not fight Sinn Féin for seats for the Southern parliament as things stood.[4] FormerIrish Parliamentary Party MPStephen Gwynn, now a member of theIrish Dominion League, advocated putting up League candidates against Sinn Féin. In early March he met with southern UnionistsViscount Midleton andLord Oranmore, requesting them to pool their resources to contest the election and contest the election on a platform opposing the IRA's violence, under Midleton's leadership. Midleton declined the invitation, just as he had declined a previous request for hisUnionist Anti-Partition League to join the Dominion League.[5]
In the area designated asSouthern Ireland, no actual polling took place as all 128 candidates were returned unopposed. Of these, 124 were won by Sinn Féin and four by independent Unionists representingDublin University (Trinity College).[6]
A single Unionist candidate had been selected to contest the constituency ofDonegal: Major Robert L Moore, who had contestedEast Donegal in 1918.[7] Moore however later withdrew his candidacy just before the election.[8][9]
| 1921 Southern Ireland general election | ||||
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| Party | Leader | No. of seats | % of seats | |
| Sinn Féin | Éamon de Valera | 124 | 96.9 | |
| Independent Unionist | 4 | 3.1 | ||
| Totals | 128 | 100 | ||
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The general election to theNorthern Ireland House of Commons occurred on Tuesday, 24 May. Of 52 seats, includingQueen's University of Belfast, 40 were won byUnionists, 6 by the Nationalist Party and 6 bySinn Féin. Several well known republicans were elected:Éamon de Valera for South Down,Michael Collins for Armagh,Eoin MacNeill for Derry andArthur Griffith for Fermanagh and Tyrone. Voters in Fermanagh and Tyrone returned an anti-partition majority of 7,831.[10] Allegations were made claiming intimidation of Nationalist voters, arrests of candidates/organisers and the seizure of electoral literature.[11]
| 1921 Northern Ireland general election | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Party | Leader | Seats | % of seats | Votes | % of votes | |
| Ulster Unionist Party | James Craig | 40 | 76.9 | 343,347 | 66.9 | |
| Sinn Féin | Éamon de Valera | 6 | 11.5 | 104,917 | 20.5 | |
| Nationalist Party (NI) | Joe Devlin | 6 | 11.5 | 60,577 | 11.8 | |
| Belfast Labour Party | 0 | 0 | 3,075 | 0.6 | ||
| Independent | 0 | 0 | 926 | 0.2 | ||
| Totals | 52 | 100 | 512,842 | 100 | ||
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Although the elections were formally for two separate legislatures, Irish republicans considered all those elected to be members of theSecond Dáil. The composition of the Dáil following these elections was therefore as follows:
| Composition of the Second Dáil | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Leader | Seats won | % of seats | |
| Sinn Féin | Éamon de Valera | 130 | 72.2 | |
| Ulster Unionist Party | James Craig | 40 | 22.2 | |
| Nationalist | Joe Devlin | 6 | 3.3 | |
| Independent Unionist | 4 | 2.2 | ||
| Totals | 180 | 100 | ||
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In practice, however, the Dáil was composed of 125 Sinn Féin members.[nb 1] The Unionist and Nationalist Party members ignored the invitation to attend the Dáil, while the four independent unionists assembled as the Southern Ireland Commons for a single brief meeting.
The Northern Ireland House of Commons continued to function as a Home Rule legislature until it was abolished in 1973. The Southern Ireland Commons was largely ignored, and only formally met twice: first in a brief 1921 session that only the four unionists attended, and then again in 1922 to approve theAnglo-Irish Treaty which established theIrish Free State.
