50 Years Ago

SINN FÉIN FIGHTS NORTHERN ELECTION

On February 24, 1950 the British general election took place, the first since July 1945 when the British Labour Party won an overall majority for the first time.

In 1950 Prime Minister Clement Atlee's Labour Party was returned again to power but with a decreased majority. Winston Churchill's Tories were again defeated.

In the Six Occupied Counties of Ireland there were 12 constituencies. Three of these had nationalist majorities. Originally Sinn Féin had proposed contesting four with prisoner candidates.

Co Armagh Republicans opted out of a contest but guaranteed to organise the county immediately for Sinn Féin. This was done and by summer 1950 there were two comhairlí ceantair -- in north and south Armagh and many cumainn functioning. It was the most highly organised of the Six Counties.

Liam Burke was put forward in Mid-Ulster and Jimmy Steele in West Belfast, two of the nationalist majority constituencies. After a nationalist convention decided to run Anthony Mulvey as an Abstentionist Nationalist candidate, Sinn Féin withdrew their man.

In West Belfast, however, Irish Labour's Jack Beattie insisted on standing on a programme of participating in the British parliament. In the face of this Sinn Féin would not back down and a three-way contest ensued.

A letter to the daily papers from Sinn Féin's two Ard-Rúnaithe was denied publication. The Easter edition of An tÉireannach Aontaithe /The United/Irishman carried it in full.

Answering the charges of "splitting the nationalist vote" and dated February 8, 1950, the letter from 9 Parnell Square, then the headquarters of Sinn Féin, read:
"In today's issue of your paper under the sub-heading 'Mr Beattie's Seatī you state

" 'The entry of Sinn Féin at this election into Anti-Partition Constituencies in opposition to Anti-Partition and Irish Labour candidates is causing uneasiness in Nationalist circles because, our Belfast reporter writes, there is a serious danger that the Unionists may with a more efficient election machine and organisation gain seats as a result of this division.'

"Would it ever occur to your Belfast reporter, or to anyone else for that matter outside the ranks of the Republican Movement that Sinn Féin is not entering the contest of these elections for the mere purpose of opposing Anti-Partition and Irish Labour candidates?

"Sinn Féin is entering the contest primarily because it feels that the time has come to raise again the standard of Republicanism and to provide our people with the alternatives of a united and virile national movement as opposed to the political parties and cliques that serve but to create confusion and dissension, thus preventing that unity of effort so essential if the Republican Government, disrupted in 1922, is to be restored.

"Again, Sinn Féin is opposed not to individuals but to the practice of sending representatives, no matter what their shade of politics, to Westminster thereby giving to the British parliament a semblance of authority to legislate for the Irish people.

"In conclusion, attention may be drawn to the fact that if Sinn Féin is to be indicted on the score that it's entering into the contest is a cause of splitting the 'Nationalist' vote then the selfsame charge can be made against the Anti-Partition and Irish Labour candidates who enter the contest in opposition to the candidates sponsored by the Republican Movement.

"If withdrawal of the Republican candidates eliminates the danger of 'splitting the vote', surely an identical result would be relieved by the withdrawal of Mr Beattie's candidature in West Belfast or Mr Mulvey's in Mid-Ulster?

"It is high time that people should realise that the Republican Movement has at least equal rights with all others in seeking the support of the electorate for its programme as a medium for expounding its aims and objectives to the people of Ireland."

The letter had appended to it the names of Tomás Ó Dubhghaill and Séamus Ó Ruiséil (brother of Seán Russell, Chief-of-Staff 1938-40).

The Sinn Féin organisation was galvanised in support of its candidates. A church gate collection was held in Dublin city on successive Sundays -- northside one week and southside the following -- and in other centres. A large advertisement was placed in the daily papers announcing this and appealing for subscriptions.

Speakers and election workers went north each weekend to Belfast and Derry -- where Hugh MacAteer was standing. Noteworthy was the turnout on every occasion of driver Sandy McNabb in his Baby Ford (Model Y) car to ferry speakers from Dublin.

A native of Castlewellan, Co Down McNabb was garrulous, of unfailing good humour and totally reliable. In his Bray, Co Wicklow home where Tomás Mac Curtáin stayed many weekends, Sandy would proudly indicate the printed notices framed and hanging on the wall on either side of his living-room fireplace.

One was signed by Sir Samuel Hoare, British Home Secretary in 1939, deporting him from England under the Prevention of Violence Act of that year. The other was endorsed by Sir Dawson Bates, Stormont Home Affairs Minister, ordering McNabb to be interned without trial in 1940.

When arrested in London the Special Branch asked him about his (to them) unusual surname. Was he any relation of the famous Father Vincent McNabb, a Catholic Order priest and noted preacher? The irrepressible Sandy answered, "Yes, he's my father!"

Curiously enough, McNabb is the English corruption of the Irish "Mac an Aba", son of the abbot.

With a fund of stories McNabb kept the election workers amused on the 100-mile journey to Belfast, or the even further excursion to Derry, and back, with a rope tying the two doors of the crowded baby Ford together to keep them closed.

In the outcome Sinn Féin was vindicated. The Anti-Partitionist Mulvey was elected; he then summoned a new constituency convention and secured a directive to reverse his election policy and to sit in Westminster -- which he promptly did.

But the point was made. Never again would Sinn Féin be misled by "nationalist constituency conventions". The lesson had been learned the hard way.

In West Belfast Sinn Féin paid the price for standing by its principles. It secured only 1,482 votes as opposed to Beattie's 30,539. The unionist Rev McManaway polled 33,917 and won the seat. Republicans' grief was not that the unionist won. Any Irish representative going to the British parliament was in fact a unionist, if not a Unionist Party representative, in their eyes. Their regret was the low vote for Jimmy Steele, who had been in Belfast jail since 1938 -- with the exception of nine months on the run between his escape and recapture in 1943.

They took solace in the turnout of 21,880 in his native Derry for former IRA Chief-of-Staff Hugh MacAteer, almost the entire nationalist vote. The unionist, Sir Ronald Ross won the seat as expected with 36,602.

The vote for MacAteer was unexpected because of the lack of organisation. Ross had said publicly that "The main-spring -- and the only spring -- of Sinn Féin in this constituency is solicitor Kevin Agnew of Maghera." (A part only of Co Derry was then included with the city in the constituency.)

Ross also said that the real nature of Sinn Féin's "intervention" in the election was an attempt by the extreme physical force Republicans to take over the nationalist electorate."

An unusual feature of the election in the Six Counties was the participation of two Dublin government ministers. Seán MacBride, Minister for External Affairs and Noel Browne, Minister for Health spoke at a public meeting in Enniskillen in support of the Anti-Partition candidate, Cahir Healy.

They called for support for all Anti-Partition, Sinn Féin and Irish Labour candidates. The Anti-Partition candidate in Fermanagh-South Tyrone won the seat and took part in the British parliament the following year, 1951.

Incidentally, the move by Mulvey in Mid-Ulster to declare as an abstentionist and later renege on this was inspired by a strategy of the Nationalist Party in 1935. In order to head off two Republican candidates in Tyrone and Fermanagh in the election of that year the Nationalists withdrew and put up two non-party men as abstentionists.

The Republicans felt under pressure and withdrew. But the non-party men, Mulvey and Cunningham, kept their word and did not attend Westminster from 1935 to 1945. (There was no election during WWII.)

Meanwhile in 1950 repression and harassment of all expressions of national feeling grew. A victory parade through Enniskillen for the election of the Anti-Partitionist Cahir Healy was baton-charged by the RUC and the Irish Tricolour seized after fierce fighting.

An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman of February 1950 in a report gives the flavour of the time:
"At a Special Crimes Court in Armagh (doesn't the name ring very familiar?) two men were charged with 'displaying a tricolour consisting of three vertical stripes, green, white and yellow' (the RUC would not admit to orange). In the course of the proceedings the following questions and answers ensued:

Council to Sergt Nethercott: I suggest if you had not interfered with the flag, it would have remained an orderly procession?

Witness: It is quite possible. If the flag had not been raised, it would have remained orderly.

Council: Supposing that it had been the Soviet flag, would you have interfered with it?

District Inspector Ferris (prosecuting): That is an unfair question.

Council pressed the question.

Witness: I would not have interfered with the Soviet flag unless I had received instructions to do so.

The men were given the benefit of the Probation of Offenders Act." Tomás Ó Glaisigh in the News Commentary spoke about a "psychological partition which must be smashed. Without in any way conceding our principles of freedom, we must achieve a liaison of minds".

There is no better way to conclude this account of the 1950 election than to quote from the Sinn Féin election manifesto:

"Today, Saturday 21st January, Sinn Féin opens its election campaign in support of the Republican candidates in the North. We have deliberately chosen this date . . .

"Why is Sinn Féin contesting this particular election?
"In the Six Counties any candidate going forward for Stormont must give a prior guarantee that, if elected, he (sic) will take his seat. No such guarantee is required for the Westminster elections . . .

"Why go forward as abstentionists?
"The main objection to taking seats is that all sitting representatives must take an oath of loyalty to the King of England; also by taking his (sic) seat a representative gives his tacit consent to the claim of England to rule Ireland.

"Therefore no Irishman willing to sit in Westminster can truthfully claim to be a Republican or even an Anti-Partitionist.".

"What is the attitude to the Anti-Partition League, etc?
"We hold that the term 'anti-partition' is a very definite under-statement of the National demand. At best an anti-partition campaign is only a negative policy.

"We demand that the Republican parliament for the Thirty-Two Counties must be re-assembled and that it alone has the right to rule Ireland. This is a positive aim as apart from mere talk about doing away with the Border.

"It is to emphasise this aim that we are choosing Republican prisoner candidates. These men, by their service to the Republican cause and more particularly by their long-suffering for it, personify the will to resist British aggression.

"They symbolise the national demand for freedom and for that reason are the best possible standard-bearers for our cause," the manifesto concluded.

In January-February fifty years ago a new generation, standing on the shoulders of the previous generation (the prisoners) took political action which showed clearly they were flexible (Mid-Ulster), serious (Derry) and determined (West Belfast).

Under the leadership of veterans of the 1940s including a few from the 1920s the Republican Movement was flexing its muscles again and giving a clear lead to the youth of the upcoming generation . . .

(More next month. Refs. Northern Ireland: the Orange State by Michael Farrell, published 1976 by Pluto Press and An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman, January, February and Easter 1950.)
Contents

Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom February 13, 2000 Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie marked "attention web-editor".