1917 North Roscommon by-election

The North Roscommon by-election of 1917 was held on 3 February 1917. The by-election was held due to the death of the incumbent Irish Parliamentary MP, James Joseph O'Kelly. The election took place nine months after the 1916 Rising. The election was contested by Thomas Devine, standing for the Irish Parliamentary Party, who was expected to win comfortably, and Jasper Tully, a local newspaper owner who was running as an independent.

An outsider candidate was proposed as an Independent candidate: Count George Noble Plunkett;[1] the father of Joseph Plunkett, who had been executed for his role in the Easter Rising. Count Plunkett was proposed by John J. O'Kelly (Sceilg), P. T. Keohane and Fr. Michael O'Flanagan, the curate of Crossna in North Roscommon. Fr. O'Flanagan was main organiser of the election, assisted by Larry Ginnell, and many others who came down from Dublin to take on the Irish Parliamentary Party.

It was Sinn Féin's first victory for a Parliamentary election and would presage the virtual clean sweep of Southern Irish seats in the 1918 Irish general election.

Result
North Roscommon by-election, 1917
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Sinn Féin George Noble Plunkett 3,022 55.9 N/A
Irish Parliamentary Thomas Devine 1,708 31.6
Independent Jasper Tully 687 12.7
Majority 1,314 24.3
Turnout 5,403
Sinn Féin gain from Irish Parliamentary Swing N/A
gollark: I don't know about that.
gollark: People complain about "processed" food a lot but generally fail to explain what it is. As far as I can tell it mostly appears to just mean that it has lots of bad additives and whatever such as, er, fructose corn syrupy stuff.
gollark: Huh? People claim it's ethically bad. Not health-bad. Mostly.
gollark: I could still go in, though, they weren't the annoying sort of protestors.
gollark: I was once in Edinburgh consuming food from a Subway and found that there was actually a vegan protest in front of it.

References
  1. http://www.leighrayment.com/commons.htm


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.