Out with the old, in with the new: the East Clare by-election of 1917

A century ago, there was a by-election in East Clare, in Ireland. It represented a clash between two very different worlds, two very different visions of Ireland.

The party defending the seat was of the old order, the way that things had always been done. The sitting MP had been killed in combat on the Western Front. But he was no bull-headed imperialist. He was a scion of the Redmond family, who had carried the banner of Irish nationalism through the late 19th century and the early years of the 20th. His party, the Irish Parliamentary Party, had managed to get Home Rule for Ireland recognised as an issue. It had been about to go onto the statute book, when the shots fired in Sarajevo in June 1914 threw everything into chaos. The Irish Volunteers, the armed group determined to implement the law against unionist resistance, were encouraged to enlist in the British army, to prove to Britain that they were no threat, and to earn their autonomy in the eyes of the world. It was this that had led to the vacancy in East Clare; Major Willie Redmond had been killed leading Irish units into enemy gunfire at the Battle of Messines Ridge. As a symbol of an Ireland and a Britain that could yet be, the unit created from the Irish Volunteers fought alongside the Ulster Volunteers, who had armed themselves to divide the country in a civil war that had never come. It was a Protestant Ulsterman who carried Redmond back to the British lines.

If the party defending the seat represented the old world, then the challenger definitely represented the new. It was a miracle he was even alive, the young man chosen to take on the power and authority of the Redmonds. He had also been a member of the Irish Volunteers. But he had been inducted into the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood, and had taken part in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Here, he was the only battalion commander to be spared the firing squad. A late trial, growing outrage at the executions, and his American background, had sifted him from amongst the martyrs of the Irish Republic. After leaving prison, he joined Sinn Fein, and stood for election.

On offer were two competing visions of Ireland's future. Was it to finally become an autonomous part of the United Kingdom, and retain a relationship of nearly seven centuries? Or was it to turn its back on its nearest neighbour, and strike out its own course as an independent republic?

The verdict of the voters was decisive. By 71.1% to 28.9%, they opted for the future offered by Sinn Fein. The violent crackdown by the British military in response to the Easter Rising had caused support for the Union to collapse across much of Ireland.

This was not Sinn Fein's first electoral victory; that had come earlier in 1917. But this result is unique from another point of view- there can't be many examples of a government leader or head of state of one country being elected to the parliament of another country, and yet that is what we have here. For the young victor was Eamon de Valera, future head of state of the rebel Irish Republic, future leader of the Irish Free State, future Taoiseach and President of the Republic of Ireland. Given momentum by his victory, de Valera became Sinn Fein's leader. The clock was ticking for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Part of Eamon de Valera's election literature