The 1924 Northern Irish local elections were held in January & June 1924 for the various county & district councils of Northern Ireland. The election followed changes by the Unionist government, which had redrawn electoral districts, abolished PR for local elections, and implemented a requirement for members of local authorities to take an

oath of allegiance An oath of allegiance is an oath whereby a subject or citizen acknowledges a duty of allegiance and swears loyalty to a monarch or a country. In modern republics, oaths are sworn to the country in general, or to the country's constitution. For ...

.A New History of Ireland Volume VII: Ireland, 1921-84, p.124
/ref> These changes are now widely considered by historians as

gerrymandering In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...

intended to manipulate the election outcome in favour of the

Ulster Unionists The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movem ...

. As a result unionists won the majority of seats in several nationalist areas and most nationalists victories from the

1920 Irish local elections Nineteen or 19 may refer to: * 19 (number), the natural number following 18 and preceding 20 * one of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019 Films * ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film * ''Nineteen'' (film), a 1987 science fiction film Music ...

were overturned.

Background

The elections were the first local elections to be held in Northern Ireland, which had been created by the

Government of Ireland Act 1920 The Government of Ireland Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo. 5 c. 67) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act's long title was "An Act to provide for the better government of Ireland"; it is also known as the Fourth Home Rule Bill ...

. Northern Irelands' county & district councils had last been elected in the all-Ireland

using the

Single transferable vote Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate p ...

voting system, which had been introduced in the hopes of preventing

Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Gri ...

from winning the same kind of landslide that the

FPTP In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

ward system had allowed it in the 1918 general election. Whilst Unionists in Southern Ireland had supported the introduction of STV for local elections, Ulsters Unionists had opposed it, with the UUPs' leader James Craig favouring retention of the FPTP ward system used in the rest of Britain, and the UUP was committed to returning to the old system. In contrast, Nationalists favoured the retention of a proportional representation based system as a safeguard for minorities. The Northern Irish parliament, dominated by the UUP who held 75% of the seats following the 1921 election, legislated for a return to the old FPTP system in 1922,The Northern Ireland Question: Nationalism, Unionism and Partition
/ref> and also legislated for the redrawing of electoral divisions.

Results

As a result of the nationalist boycott Unionists regained control of the county councils for Fermanagh and Tyrone, with no contests taking place in either county. Unionists also retook 8 rural district councils: * Cookstown * Dungannon * Kilkeel * Lisnaskea * Newry No. 1 * Newry No. 2 * Omagh * Strabane In Belfast Unionists focused their campaigning on the wards most at risk of falling to the new

Northern Irish Labour Party The Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) was a political party in Northern Ireland which operated from 1924 until 1987. Origins The roots of the NILP can be traced back to the formation of the Belfast Labour Party in 1892. William Walker stood ...

. Overall the results saw large defeats for Nationalists, Sinn Féin, and Labour candidates. After 1920 these parties had together controlled 24 of the 75 local authorities in Northern Ireland; by 1927 they controlled 12.

Detailed results by council type

County councils

County Borough councils

District councils

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Northern Ireland Local Government Elections, 1924

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

1924 elections in Northern Ireland 1924 Northern Ireland local elections