Poll verdict sent a very clear message

“I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody, not just a bum”... the comments by your columnist Steven King on the 1918 general election result (December 3) recall Terry Malloy’s whine in On the Waterfront.

In three provinces where nationalists and Sinn Féiners slugged it out toe-to-toe, the voters knocked the nationalists out of the ring in every constituency but one.

In Ulster, some of the five remaining nationalists kept their seats through pacts with Sinn Féin to keep them from falling to the unionists.

As in other elections, some seats were uncontested, for instance, 84 in 1906 and 66 in 1886, when unionists took most of the votes cast but nationalists took the lion’s share of the seats and nobody thought it unfair.

As 25 seats went to Sinn Féin uncontested in 1918 and 47% of the votes cast where anti-Sinn Féiners deigned to risk their deposits, it must be clear to all but the blind or prejudiced that Sinn Féin in 1918 had the overwhelming support of the majority of Irish voters.

Nationalists in their tens of thousands had faced all that Krupp could throw at them in Europe for more than four years.

Yet Steven King would have us believe they were intimidated from standing for election by an almost totally unarmed republican movement — many of whose leaders, candidates and supporters had allowed themselves to be rounded up, arrested and imprisoned by the British.

I don’t think the party of John Redmond and John Dillon, or even its non-contenders, were nobodies or bums.

Mr King, on the other hand, seems to me something of a political bum.

Donal Kennedy

Belmont Ave

London N13