ABSTRACT
The rise of Sinn Fein The months following the Easter Rising saw the Irish Party desperately attempting to regain its influence over the nationalist community. An agitation had begun to free the internees held after the insurrection; but when, in December 1916, six hundred untried internees were freed from Frongoch in Wales and Lewes jail in England, the returning prisoners were hailed as heroes. The most vivid display of disaffection with the Irish Party occurred in February 1917 when Count Plunkett defeated T.J.Devine, a home rule candidate, by 3,022 votes to 1,708 in the Roscommon North by-election. This, together with the release of the prisoners, proved the launching pad for a reconstructed Sinn Fein movement, far larger but more diverse in its make-up than its preinsurrection predecessor. In April 1917, a Sinn Fein National Council was established to deny the ‘right of any foreign parliament to make laws for Ireland’. This was followed, on 9 May 1917, by another Sinn Fein victory, in the South Longford byelection, which saw Joseph McGuinness, a prisoner at Lewes, defeat the home ruler, Patrick McKenna, by 1,493 votes to 1,461. Following the death in action on the Western Front of John Redmond’s brother, Major Willie Redmond MP, Eamon de Valera, who had commanded a contingent of Irish Volunteers during the rising, defeated Patrick Lynch KC in the ensuing Clare East byelection by 5,010 votes to 2,035 in July 1917. This was followed by yet another Sinn Fein victory, in August 1917, when Alderman W.T.Cosgrave defeated John Magennis by 722 votes to 392 in the Kilkenny City by-election. Sinn Fein’s fortunes were further boosted by the death, on hunger strike, of Thomas Ashe in September 1917 after he was forcibly fed in prison; his funeral became the focus for a huge outpouring of sympathy. A formal structure to the new movement was completed on 26 October
1917 when the Sinn Fein Ard-Fheis elected de Valera as President, and Arthur Griffith as Vice-President. The following day, de Valera was elected President of the Irish Volunteers as well.
