HISTORY: Friday's vote in Offaly marks 125th anniversary of democratic local government

The council was predominantly nationalist in tone, but the unionist and Protestant minority were well represented, some of whom were ex-officio. The first councillors, about 29 in number, were almost all home rulers.

The unionist minded grand jury candidates had polled badly. In Eglish Edward Dooley was elected with 191 votes whereas Lord Rosse polled only 29. In Birr, John Powell, the editor of the Midland Tribune obtained 366 votes as against 116 for William Edward Woods. In Geashill, Joseph Ryan received 280 and Reginald Digby 87. The story was the same throughout the county.

Powell remarked that small as the Local Government Act might appear in O’Donovan Rossa’s eyes, “the realisation of the pleasure of being brought one step nearer to the goal for which so many have sacrificed themselves, is worth living for”. Powell did not long enjoy his new post as vice-chairman of the county council and died in 1901.

The contest for the Tullamore seat on the county council was fought between Williams Adams and Bernard Daly. Adams had served on the board of guardians for 35 years and also as a Tullamore town commissioner and was well known as the man who had championed the building of rural cottages for small farmers and farm labourers (hence the street name Adams Villas in Tullamore). Daly was a partner in the Tullamore distillery and spoke of the need for more employment. The farmers, he felt, should be busy improving output instead of getting involved in political issues.

Daly’s pragmatic approach has a modern ring about it but was unsuited to a time when great national questions remained to be settled. Besides, Daly was only nominally the distiller and it was D. E. Williams, the spirit merchant and maltster, who wielded the power in the Tullamore distillery. Daly polled 206 as against 385 for Adams. The policy statement read by Adams at the selection meeting in 1899 for council candidates was close to the agenda of all the nationalist politicians until 1917.

Henry Egan, the first chairman of the King’s County Council, held the post until his retirement in 1910. John Dooly of Birr took on the post in 1912 and held it until Sinn Féin voted him out in 1918 because of his attending the Irish Convention.

The 1898 act has rightly been described as the ‘legislative father of the Irish Free State’. It gave the vote to all male householders or occupiers. The democratic net had been considerably widened, but women were still excluded from the benefits of the parliamentary franchise until 1918. At local government level the franchise was granted to men and women as householders (head of the household) and occupants of portion of a house. They could also be elected to urban and rural councils, but not county councils until 1911.

By 1935 all restrictions on adult voting had been removed. F.S. L Lyons had put it more sharply in commenting that the 1898 act: “was not far short of revolutionary”, for it marked a decisive shift in power and influence over the country at large away from the landlord ascendancy class and towards “the democracy” of farmers, shopkeepers and publicans.The verdict of county secretary James P. Kingston on the county council elections of 2 June 1920 was that the election was not just remarkable and memorable but revolutionary. Kingston believed it was even more revolutionary than the 1899 elections that saw only three members of the old grand jury transfer to the new county council. In that election James Perry Goodbody was elected for Clara unopposed and William Adams defeated distiller and grand jury member Bernard Daly to secure the Tullamore seat. Goodbody was a leading Quaker businessman and Adams a large farmer and publican. Adams retired from the council in 1912 and was succeeded at the council by his son P.F. Adams who was married to Rosaleen Egan, a daughter of Henry Egan, chairman of the county council from 1899 to 1910. Goodbody served on the council as chair of the Finance and Proposals Committee from 1900 and was vice-chairman of the council from 1912. Both P.F. Adams and James P. Goodbody sought election to the new council of 1920 in the first post-war elections and both were defeated. Sinn Féin secured 19 of the 21 seats and acceptable Labour men two seats. For Secretary Kingston the election was also a turning point as he was forced out of office within a year, just as his predecessor Thomas Mitchell had been in 1899.It was clear that the outcome of the June 1920 election would bring significant change. The demand for Home Rule in 1912–14 would become the quest for a republic by 1918–19. The war years of 1914–18 were characterised by the growth of grievance. Every social question became a political question. As the by-election victories were chalked up for Sinn Féin in 1917 the local press became entirely supportive (excluding the Birr Chronicle). Birr man John Dooly who had been chairman of the county council since 1912 was defeated in the chairmanship in June 1918 due, it was said, to his voting at the Irish Convention and was succeeded by one of the candidates at the November 1914 by-election in Tullamore P.J. Bermingham.

Bermingham, a farmer from Ballycommon, was unanimously elected chairman of the county committee of agriculture in 1917 and chair of the county council in 1918. “He is an excellent chairman, and a practical farmer and 'the man in the gap' in the present crisis.” That was ironic in that Bermingham’s chairmanship survived only two years and he did not even stand for a seat on the council in 1920.

P.F. Adams had resigned from the county council in November 1916 due, it seems, to non-attendance and it was T.M. Russell who was co-opted to the seat. Russell had started in the county as a co-operative society organiser but switched to a full-time role for Sinn Féin. He came second only to Robbins in the election in 1920.

Midland Tribune editor, James Pike, in his usual laconic style, opined that Sinn Féin had done well at the elections. The country districts had been very solid but some of the towns had not been so good. The Birr results had not been good, but Birr has never been a strong nationalist centre. Tullamore has done splendidly in the county council contest. Soon after the election Fr Michael O’Flanagan, spoke in Birr at an aeridheacht on the cultural heritage of Ireland and how Birr had got away from its other name Parsonstown. The latter was a sample, he said, of the effort that had been made to change Ireland into being part of England. Solicitor J. Molloy (soon to be Offaly’s first district justice) who presided spoke of the “new spirit” in the country that had come about in the previous twelve years “thanks to a small band of unselfish workers” and that the people now looked to men like Fr O’Flanagan for direction. (MT 12 June 1920). O’Flanagan’s wishes would get a hearing at the first council meeting in mid-June and the name change from King’s County and Philipstown.

Sean Robbins’ outstanding vote in the June 1920 county council election (three times more than anyone else) was proof of how far the county had travelled with the benefit of the new voters on the register in December 1918. Robbins, was a Goodbody employee from Clashawaun, Clara (jailed for drilling in 1918) and defeated James Perry Goodbody, the town’s leading businessman with a county and national reputation. It was a big Sinn Féin victory in Offaly with Clara at the front. The old guard of the Land League days of the 1880s was swept away in the elections of 1918–20 and yet there were those such as Pat Egan of Tullamore (son of Henry Egan, died 1919) who remained prominent in local politics for many years. Egan was a TD for the county in 1923–27 and chairman of the county council from 1928 until 1934. He held the chair of the urban council in Tullamore from 1915 and secured the chairmanship of the urban council again in 1920 with his brother-in-law, P.F. Adams, having the deciding vote. P.J Egan, and James O'Connor, president of Tullamore Transport Union were both proposed. Egan was elected 7 to 6 when Adams, who was elected to the town council for the Labour party and J. Condron (independent labour) voted for Egan. Adams was told that the county council elections were coming and that his actions would not be forgotten.

It was Michael Henry White of Clara, prominent in the IPP and the UIL, but by 1918 in Sinn Féin who remarked that Ireland was one of the most ‘boarded countries’ in the world. He may have been looking forward to the day when the health functions of the four boards of guardians (serving all or part) in the county and that of the county infirmary would be subsumed into one local health authority (recommended generally by a majority report of a vice-regal commission in 1906). Up to 1921 the local authority representatives had to contend with the county council, its committees, the five rural district councils, two urban councils in Birr and Tullamore, town commissioners in Edenderry, the poor law unions at Birr, Edenderry, Tullamore, Mountmellick, Roscrea, and the board of governors of the county infirmary. A few of the councillors were also members of the county grand jury (effectively abolished in 1921)

The poor law unions were also abolished in 1921 with the county council taking on their health functions, and in 1925 also those of the rural district councils. It was a chaotic amalgamation that left the people of Edenderry and Birr very bruised at having lost their local hospitals. The infirmary closure had ripples too.

Staff at the county council and urban councils had a high volume of work and few to help. The county secretary was C.P. Kingston of the Birr family, and councillors appeared to be much more hands on with long meetings and heavy agendas, very different from the pre-1899 grand jury business

Only three of the old grand jury members were returned to the new council of 1899 and the clean-out was similar in 1920 with only two members of the old council returned to the June 1920 Sinn Féin dominated county council The original members of the county council, though nationalists, were basically conservative. Many did not move with public opinion and the swing to Sinn Féin, and as a result lost their seats to poorer, but more republican elements.

When the first republican council met in mid-1920 it elected Eamon Bulfin of Derrinlough as chairman. Bulfin was elected in his absence as he had been deported to Argentina. The Tricolour draped the Chairman's seat and the members answered the roll call in Irish. Resolutions were passed acknowledging Dáil Eireann and changing the name of King's County to Offaly and Philipstown to Daingean.

The council went on to repudiate the authority of the Local Government Board, thus helping to undermine British rule in Ireland. To protect the council's funds the Hibernian Bank (now part of the Bank of Ireland) was dismissed as the council's bankers and trustees appointed. This highly irregular mover combined with the departure of the county secretary in 1921 created difficulties for the council in the management of county affairs and led to the dissolution of the council in 1924 (under a Free State government) and its replacement by a commissioner for four years.