Political Career
Sinn Féin proved to be the big winner of the election in Ireland, capturing 73 Irish seats, 25 uncontested. Its manifesto promised abstentionism from the House of Commons in Westminster. On 21 January 1919, Sinn Féin's MPs who were not imprisoned assembled in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin and formed themselves into an Assembly of Ireland, known in the Irish language as Dáil Éireann. Cathal Brugha became Príomh Aire (First or Prime Minister), also called President of Dáil Éireann.
In April 1919 Brugha resigned and Éamon de Valera, the Sinn Féin leader, who had just escaped from prison with the help of Michael Collins using a key made from a candle, assumed the premiership instead. The new government and state, known as the Irish Republic, claimed a right to govern the island of Ireland. It also declared UDI, that is, a declaration of independence which remained until the end of the Republic unrecognised by any other world state except the Russian Republic under Lenin.
Read more about this topic: W. T. Cosgrave
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“Men conceive themselves as morally superior to those with whom they differ in opinion. A Socialist who thinks that the opinions of Mr. Gladstone on Socialism are unsound and his own sound, is within his rights; but a Socialist who thinks that his opinions are virtuous and Mr. Gladstones vicious, violates the first rule of morals and manners in a Democratic country; namely, that you must not treat your political opponent as a moral delinquent.”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows whats good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)