Any chance there was no Cabinet position for a TD from the west because none of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil TDs were good enough for a ministerial position? There’s been outrage throughout the province, but I don’t think Roscommon voters were as horrified or outraged as the neighbours were. You see, here we know plenty about the dearth of new or emerging talent in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael; we’ve rarely had a candidate of theirs who was under the age of forty with no family connections. There’s been a lot of mediocre politicians here in my lifetime, but has it always been like this in Roscommon?
Well yes. And no.
Farming has been front and centre of Roscommon’s voting since independence, and likely will continue to be. The farming vote has been crucial to electoral success here. We’ve long had a reputation for electoral turbulence and surprises, and this week’s events got me thinking about who and how we’ve voted in the past. As is history’s way, the past had plenty to tell me about the present.
This constituency has been Roscommon, Roscommon-Leitrim, Longford-Roscommon, Roscommon-South Leitrim and Roscommon-Galway – always a three or a four-seater constituency[1]. With a reputation for electoral surprises, Roscommon has been great for electing independents and candidates from smaller parties, though there was about forty years from the late 1960s onward where Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil got a seat apiece and battled it out among themselves for the third.
All TDs were men, bar Joan Burke (a TD for seventeen years, elected in 1964 to fill the seat vacated on the death of her husband) and one of our current TDs, Claire Kerrane.
A Roscommon constituency has never returned the same three TDs in successive general elections. The Seanad was a popular destination for the many TDs shown the door.
We are renowned for political surprises and turbulence, but have these been indications of tenacity or desperation? Were the surprise victories the result of losing a quarter of the population between 1911 and 1951[2] and struggling to survive on small farms? Or were they assertive victories; P45s for those not up to the job, thank-you-goodnight-next-please?
Populism has traditionally found a good home here. After the death of J.J. Kelly in 1917, less than a year after the Easter Rising, North Roscommon elected Sinn Féin’s first TD, Count Plunkett, in a by-election where the sun, the moon and the stars were promised[3]
In 1932, Frank MacDermot (Ind.) told voters he was sick of political parties and urged them to elect someone who would represent them (which, as is the way with populists, was himself). His National Centre Party later merged with others to become Fine Gael.
Clann na Tamhlan – an anti-establishment, agrarian political party – arrived on the scene in 1942 and held seats in Roscommon until 1961, long after the party had faded into obscurity elsewhere. Evidence of that anti-establishment thinking can be seen in the words of their leader who told a rally in Dunmore in 1942,
You could take all the TDs, all the senators, all the ministers and members of the judiciary and all the other nice fellows and dump them off Clare Island into the broad Atlantic[5].
Michael Donnellan, leader of Clann na Tamhlan.
It wasn’t just conservative parties that got a hearing though. I’m undecided on whether Clann na Poblachta (a radical republican and fairly progressive party) was populist or not, but a TD of theirs was elected here in 1948; former footballer Jack McQuillan. McQuillan was perhaps the most impressive TD the county has ever elected.
But the 1970s and beyond were like a bucket of cold water; one Fianna Fáil seat, one Fine Gael seat, and a battle between them for the third seat – year in, year out[6]. The old radicalism seemed dead.
And then the bank crash came in 2008, whereupon normal services resumed, and a radical was elected. Recently, the 2020 result brought us back to the 1940s when the status quo was shown the door.
What emerged from the wormhole of newspapers and Dáil debates I fell down was (and is) the importance of the farming vote in Roscommon. This is no recent phenomenon. Clann na Tamhlan won control of two county councils on its first run out in 1942, one of which was Roscommon [7]. Frank McDermott, the independent elected in 1932, came to attention as leader of the National Farmers and Ratepayers League. Tapping into a streak of small-farmer radicalism was a significant part of Jack McQuillan’s electoral success[8]. Almost every TD in the first fifty years identified as a farmer.
Old habits dies hard. As a constituency we still tend to rush to the candidate who stands in the farmers’ corner. What that candidate proposes to do about farmers’ problems is of far less importance than how loud he/she shouts. Achievements are difficult to discern in the fog of bluster.
Ahead of the February 2020 vote, one candidate told RTÉ’s Drivetime of farmers being on their knees, of their devastation and anxiety. When pressed, he admitted he had not read his party’s manifesto. Plenty of concern-voicing there, but pretty light on the what-to-do-about-it part (a tried-and-trusted strategy).
All that said, there is space for a candidate here who is serious about representing farmers’ concerns in a studied and considered way, and doing something about those problems.
Or another way of saying it; I can’t see how anyone aspiring to get elected here can do it without tapping into the farming vote.
A lot of mediocre candidates have been elected in this constituency, either through party disinterest or a lack of nurturing and developing of new talent by local cumainn. How did Greystones manage to produce two ministers in the one government, and we do well if one of ours makes it off the backbenches? No more former footballers[9]! No more shouters who make so much noise and say so little! No more of people’s sons and daughters! New talent is what we need here. If we don’t demand better in future elections, this won’t be the last government that leaves the west without representation at the Cabinet table.
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[1] Between 1922 and 2020, we’ve been Roscommon (1923-1969 and 1981-1992), Roscommon-Leitrim (1969-1981), Longford-Roscommon (1992-2007), Roscommon-South Leitrim (2007-2016) and more recently, Roscommon-Galway (2016 – now).
[2] Okay, seeing as you asked, 1911: 102,012 | 1926: 91,729 | 1936: 84,823 | 1951: 77,117. Each census saw a drop of about 10,000 people each decade. The population stabilized a bit from the 1960s onward and until 1991, the census returned about 70,000 people in Roscommon (1961: 69,874 | 1971: 69,920 | 1981: 68,158 | 1991: 65,573). The population in 2002 was 67,561. As of 2016, the population was 64,544.
[3] I mention J.J. Kelly only because his backstory is fascinating. He doesn’t get an entry into the Dictionary of Irish Biography but you can read about him here. Also, the electorate in 1917 was just 7,997 so perhaps we should not read too much into that by-election. In 1918, the franchise was vastly expanded and the 1918 election was the first election in which women over the age of 30, and all men over the age of 21, could vote. Previously, all women and most working-class men had been excluded from voting. Plunkett was initially elected in 1917. He was elected unopposed in 1918.
[5] History Ireland, ‘Clann na Talmhan: Ireland’s last farmers’ party’ Issue 2 (Summer 1995), Volume 3.
[6] In 1989, there was an exception when Tom Foxe, the hospital candidate, got elected.
[7] The other county was Kerry. I found that a man from Coolatinny ran for the council that year as a Clann na Tamhlan banner. Also, for more on Clann na Tamhlan, take a read of the article from History Ireland cited above.
[8] Dictionary of Irish Biography, Jack McQuillan.
[9] Fianna Fail 2016, I’m looking at you
doireann.ie 