Sent: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:55
Subject: OLDEST PARTY IN THE DAIL
Madam,
According to your political editor, Stephen Collins (Nov 19) Labour is the oldest party in the Dail and its 100th anniversary is coming up in 5 years. Only the second part of that assertion should go unchallenged, as the Irish Labour Party was indeed founded in 1912.
Amongst the authorities I could cite to challenge the first part is Brian Feeney, a former member of the executive of the SDLP,which has fraternal relations with Labour. Like Stephen Collins, Mr Feeney is a political journalist. Furthermore, he is a historian by profession.
Mr Feeney records that Sinn Fein had been winning seats on Dublin Corporation since 1905, seven years before the foundation of the Labour Party. Like many commentators then and since he records the landslide victory of Sinn Fein in the 1918 General Election, and the meeting of those victorious Sinn Fein candidates not imprisoned by the British, in Dublin’s Mansion House in January 1919 as Dail Eireann.
Sinn Fein Veterans of the First Dail Eireann and the Second Dail dominated Irish politics for the next forty years in the leadership and ranks of the two largest parties. Labour took no part in the First or Second Dail Eireann.
Other parties with their origins in Sinn Fein, notably Clann na Poblachta, passed though Dail Eireann and there is even a rumour that prominent members of today’s Labour Party cut their political teeth in Sinn Fein.
And, of course, today’s Dail has some Sinn Fein Teachtai.
Yours faithfully
Donal Kennedy
LONDON
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