1918 Sinn Féin Election Manifesto

Sinn Féin's manifesto for the 1918 Irish general election was strongly separatist, continuing the party's policy of abstaining from the British parliament when elected and now pledging to create a new constituent assembly to establish the Irish Republic. After the party's reform in 1917, it campaigned against conscription in Ireland. Following the armistice of 11 November 1918, the British government called a general election for 14 December, in which Sinn Féin won 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland.

Significance

While by 1918 the Irish electorate knew of the rationale for the Dublin Easter Rising of 1916, it was not launched by or for the Sinn Féin party. The manifesto was the first formal address to the Irish electorate, from which followed the Declaration of Independence of the Irish Republic and its Democratic Programme on 19 January 1919.

An amended version, approved by the official censor, can be foun
here

Text

'GENERAL ELECTION --- MANIFESTO TO THE IRISH PEOPLE

THE coming general election is fraught with vital possibilities for the future of our nation.
Ireland is faced with the question whether this generation wills it that she is to march out into
the full sunlight of freedom, or is to remain in the shadow of a base imperialism that has brought
and ever will bring in its train naught but evil for our race.

Sinn Féin gives Ireland the opportunity of vindicating her honour and pursuing with renewed
confidence the path of national salvation by rallying to the flag of the Irish Republic.

Sinn Féin aims at securing the establishment of that Republic.

1. By withdrawing the Irish Representation from the British Parliament and by denying the right
and opposing the will of the British Government or any other foreign Government to legislate for
Ireland.

2. By making use of any and every means available to render impotent the power of England to
hold Ireland in subjection by military force or otherwise.

3. By the establishment of a constituent assembly comprising persons chosen by Irish
constituencies as the supreme national authority to speak and act in the name of the Irish people,
and to develop Ireland's social, political and industrial life, for the welfare of the whole people
of Ireland.

4. By appealing to the Peace Conference for the establishment of Ireland as an Independent
Nation. At that conference the future of the Nations of the world will be settled on the principle
of government by consent of the governed. Ireland's claim to the application of that principle in
her favour is not based on any accidental situation arising from the war. It is older than many if
not all of the present belligerents. It is based on our unbroken tradition of nationhood, on a unity
in a national name which has never been challenged, on our possession of a distinctive national
culture and social order, on the moral courage and dignity of our people in the face of alien
aggression, on the fact that in nearly every generation, and five times within the past 120 years
our people have challenged in arms the right of England to rule this country. On these
incontrovertible facts is based the claim that our people have beyond question established the right to be accorded all the power of a free nation.

Sinn Féin stands less for a political party than for the Nation; it represents the old tradition of nationhood handed on from dead generations; it stands by the Proclamation of the Provisional Government of Easter, 1916, reasserting the inalienable right of the Irish Nation to sovereign independence, reaffirming the determination of the Irish people to achieve it, and guaranteeing within the independent Nation equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens.

Believing that the time has arrived when Ireland's voice for the principle of untrammelled
National self-determination should be heard above every interest of party or class, Sinn Féin will oppose at the Polls every individual candidate who does not accept this principle.

The policy of our opponents stands condemned on any test, whether of principle or expediency.
The right of a nation to sovereign independence rests upon immutable natural law and cannot be made
the subject of a compromise. Any attempt to barter away the sacred and inviolate rights of
nationhood begins in dishonour and is bound to end in disaster. The enforced exodus of millions of our people, the decay of our industrial life, the ever-increasing financial plunder of our country,
the whittling down of the demand for the 'Repeal of the Union,' voiced by the first Irish Leader to
plead in the Hall of the Conqueror to that of Home Rule on the Statute Book, and finally the
contemplated mutilation of our country by partition, are some of the ghastly results of a policy
that leads to national ruin.

Those who have endeavoured to harness the people of Ireland to England's war-chariot, ignoring the
fact that only a freely-elected Government in a free Ireland has power to decide for Ireland the
question of peace and war, have forfeited the right to speak for the Irish people. The green flag
turned red in the hands of the Leaders, but that shame is not to be laid at the doors of the Irish
people unless they continue a policy of sending their representatives to an alien and hostile
assembly, whose powerful influence has been sufficient to destroy the integrity and sap the
independence of their representatives. Ireland must repudiate the men who, in a supreme crisis for
the nation, attempted to sell her birthright for the vague promises of English Ministers, and who
showed their incompetence by failing to have even these promises fulfilled.

The present Irish members of the English Parliament constitute an obstacle to be removed from
the path that leads to the Peace Conference. By declaring their will to accept the status of a
province instead of boldly taking their stand upon the right of the nation they supply England with
the only subterfuge at her disposal for obscuring the issue in the eyes of the world. By their
persistent endeavours to induce the young manhood of Ireland to don the uniform of our seven-century-old oppressor, and place their lives at the disposal of the military machine that holds our Nation in bondage, they endeavour to barter away and even to use against itself the one great asset still left to our Nation after the havoc of the centuries.

Sinn Féin goes to the polls handicapped by all the arts and contrivances that a powerful and
unscrupulous enemy can use against us. Conscious of the power of Sinn Féin to secure the freedom of Ireland the British Government would destroy it. Sinn Féin, however, goes to the polls confident that the people of this ancient nation will be true to the old cause and will vote for the men who stand by the principles of Tone, Emmet, Mitchel, Pearse and Connolly, the men who disdain to whine to the enemy for favours, the men who hold that Ireland must be as free as England or Holland, Switzerland or France, and whose demand is that the only status befitting this ancient realm is the status of a free nation.

ISSUED BY THE STANDING COMMITTEE OF SINN FÉIN'

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinn Fein Manifesto 1918
1918 in Ireland
Party platforms
1918 documents
1918, Sinn Fein
History of Ireland (1801–1923)
Manifesto 1918