{"id":4342,"date":"2020-06-04T09:47:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T09:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kildare.ie\/ehistory\/?p=4342"},"modified":"2020-06-04T09:47:22","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T09:47:22","slug":"local-elections-june-1920","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/local-elections-june-1920\/","title":{"rendered":"LOCAL ELECTIONS JUNE 1920"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>June Elections 1920<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>James Durney<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The critical year of the independence struggle was 1920. It began with the urban elections in January and continued with offensive actions by the IRA which brought new, more ruthless, players \u2013 the Black and Tans \u2013 onto the scene.<br \/>\nFor the first time in Ireland a new system \u2013 proportional representation with a single transferable vote \u2013 was used. The introduction of proportional representation and the single transferable vote throughout Ireland had required an Act of Parliament, the Local Government Act, 1919. Clearly, the Act was designed to undermine Sinn F\u00e9in following its resounding victory in the 1918 General Election. However, it did not work. The urban elections gave Sinn F\u00e9in control of nine of the countries eleven corporations.<br \/>\nIn the local elections held in June Sinn F\u00e9in won control of twenty-nine out of thirty-three county councils and 172 out of 206 rural district councils. The D\u00e1il cabinet now had the opportunity to establish a dual-power structure as all newly elected councils with a republican majority were asked to declare their allegiance to D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann. During the local elections Kildare volunteers were engaged as guards at public meetings, and at polling stations. Of the twenty-nine members elected to Kildare County Council, twenty-eight were Sinn F\u00e9in or Labour \u2013 the Labour Party were strong supporters of the republican ideal.<br \/>\nAt its first council meeting in Naas it was decided to pledge allegiance to D\u00e1il Eireann and to repudiate any claim by the British government to legislate in Irish affairs. The chairman elected was Domhnall Ua Buachalla, while Michael Smyth and Thomas Harris were also elected. Comdt. \u00c9amon \u00d3 Modhrain, 6th Battalion, Carlow Brigade, was elected vice-chairman. Every effort was made by the British to compel the Council to recognise the British Local Government Board, including the issuing of writs. The new council deleted the resolutions condemning the Easter Rising, passed by Kildare County Council in 1916, from the minutes. The interest of the new members of the county council in the Irish language was demonstrated in the publication of the council\u2019s proceedings in both Irish and English in the Leinster Leader. Naas Urban District Council and Newbridge Town Commission showed similar interest in the language in the autumn of that year when both bodies, dominated by Sinn F\u00e9in, proposed that the names of their towns should be changed to the Gaelic forms. The proposals were adopted at the quarterly meeting of the County Council on 22 November 1920, and henceforth the towns were to be known as Nas Ni Riogh and Droichead Nua.<br \/>\nThe elections in January and June 1920 were the last thirty-two county all-Ireland elections. A year later the country would be partitioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June Elections 1920 James Durney The critical year of the independence struggle was 1920. It began with the urban elections in January and continued with offensive actions by the IRA which brought new, more ruthless, players \u2013 the Black and Tans \u2013 onto the scene. For the first time in Ireland a new system \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[81,87],"class_list":["post-4342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-county-kildare","tag-kildare-county-council","tag-local-elections"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}