Electoral personation and intimidation

I used not understand the idea of electoral intimidation. Electoral personation – that I’ve   understood for some time. Bernadette McAliskey explained  to me the way it worked, at least as it was explained to her and others by Lord Fitt, at the time known as plain Gerry Fitt. The clever use of personation at the polls was to select a solid middle-of-the-road nationalist couple of advanced years. These, you could bet, would vote for a middle-of-the road nationalist candidate. So what you did was, you got two  of your people to the polls early, had them claim to be the aforementioned couple, and cast their votes for them. Later in the day, the elderly couple would turn up and be turned away – their vote was gone. They’d kick up stink and everyone would conclude it must have been some damned unionist personators at work again – or maybe even republicans. Net result: two votes in the bag and political opponents saddled with the blame.

As to electoral intimidation, I know how it works backways, thanks to one Professor John P McCarthy, I used to be baffled. How could you intimidate someone into voting one way or another? In the secrecy of the ballot-booth, they could vote as they chose and not let on. But Professor McCarthy explained when writing in The Irish Times recently.  Twenty-five constituencies in the 1918 election, he said,  returned Sinn Féin candidates unopposed, something that was “was in no small part the consequence of intimidation”.  So now I hope that’s clear.

But hold. In today’s Irish Times, a letter writer has pulled the good Professor up short. This letter-writer points out that the prof  offered no evidence of any kind for his contention that intimidation happened. In fact, today’s letter-writer says, “No party or candidate challenged Sinn Féin’s victories in the 73 constituencies it won, or its conduct in the other constituencies it contested.” He adds that, in the 1910 general election, two winning Redmondite candidates were disqualified on grounds of intimidation and fraud by their agents or supporters in East Cork, East Kerry and Louth.

Loud tinkle-crash! That was the sound of a  man in a glass house throwing stones.

• After an interview once with Bernadette McAliskey, she told me who’d explained the way personation worked to her: Gerry Fitt, later to morph into Lord Fitt. You’d locate an elderly couple who were pretty well certain to vote for you. Before they got to the voting centre, you’d have two people in before them, claiming to be the couple. They’d get their ballot slips and vote for your party. Later in the day when the