1918’s foundation election: All changed and without a shot fired

Today marks the centenary of the most important moment in the long, difficult journey that eventually led to the establishment of an independent, democratic Irish State.

The general election held on December 14, 1918, gave unstoppable momentum to the process that passed an unprecedented milestone this week when Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil agreed to co-operate and defer an election until sometime in the spring of 2020.

A century ago, the idea of Irish political parties, traditionally at daggers drawn, ordering this country’s affairs in such a calm, independent way was unimaginable.

That this pact is a consequence of terrible uncertainty in the very country that blocked free elections on this island for centuries is, at the very least, ironic.

It may not always be easy to get the brass bands to march or to raise the flags high to mark an anniversary of an election but such a response, such a celebration, would be entirely appropriate today — especially as the bands will have to play very loudly to be heard over the cacophony carried on the cold December winds from Westminster.

That the 1918 election was the moment the people of this island concentrated the efforts of centuries and, without firing a shot, without spilling even a drop of blood, made our lives today possible.

It was the great democratic event from which all others flow.

That it was held just weeks after the last century’s first great catastrophe ended, weeks after the guns fell silent all along the Western Front may just be coincidental but it is also hugely significant.

Our commitment to marking the anniversary of this election is, understandably enough, inconsistent but it does stand in stark contrast to our enthusiasm for marking and almost tacitly celebrating, acts of violence.

Annual commemorations at Béal na Bláth or Arbour Hill, ceremonies marking the career of Liam Lynch in Limerick or, say, the Easter Rising all, like it or not, depend on a tolerance, an endorsement of the violence we reject in every other sphere.

Just as today’s remembering cannot ignore the deepening chaos in Theresa May’s government, the election of 1918 can’t be remembered without wondering how many of the 250,000 Irish people who took part in the First World War would have voted as so many enlisted to “save small nations”.

It is not hard to imagine, either, how the 35,000 Irish First World War dead would view the petulant tribalism that, for almost two years, has denied democracy in Stormont.

Because of the First World War, there had not been a general election in Britain since 1910 — and there would never be one like the landlord-directed pre-war elections again.

All was changed, changed utterly, even before Lloyd George’s government ignored military advice from Dublin and extended conscription to Ireland.

Mass democracy could no longer be deferred or denied. The millions whose lives had been reshaped by the war would be heard.

The Representation of the People Act increased almost by a factor of three the electorate from 700,000 in 1910 to 1.93m in 1918.

Women over the age of 30 and working-class men over 21 could, for the first time, vote.

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The results resonate today, even in the recognition that women are still underrepresented in our politics and parliament.

Despite the horrors of our Civil War, decades of grinding poverty, a near theocracy, and sectarianism and the terrorism it made inevitable, the core truth of December 1918 stands as unchallengeable today as it has for a century.

Our forefathers rejected the state they were born into because they imagined a better one where their voices might be heard, where their talents might have a stage.

They made the most profound change not by violence — violence against the state had failed every time — but by marking a piece of paper.

In today’s darkening, ever-more fraught, and insular world, that truth remains as inspiring as it is reassuring.