Belfast Falls (UK Parliament constituency)

Belfast Falls
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1918–1922
Number of members	one
Replaced by	Belfast West
Created from	Belfast West

Falls, a division of Belfast, was a UK parliamentary constituency in Ireland. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1918 to 1922, using the first past the post electoral system.

Boundaries and Boundary Changes

This constituency comprised the central third of West Belfast, and contained the then Falls and Smithfield wards of Belfast City Council.^[1] The streets in Falls Ward in 1911 are listed here and here, and the streets in Smithfield Ward in 1911 are listed here and here. Prior to the 1918 general election and after the dissolution of Parliament in 1922 the area was part of the Belfast West constituency.

Politics

The constituency was a nationalist area. Joe Devlin defeated Sinn Féin by better than 2 to 1. The Unionists did not contest the seat.

The First Dáil

Sinn Féin contested the general election of 1918 on the platform that instead of taking up any seats they won in the United Kingdom Parliament, they would establish a revolutionary assembly in Dublin. In republican theory every MP elected in Ireland was a potential Deputy to this assembly. In practice only the Sinn Féin members accepted the offer.

The revolutionary First Dáil assembled on 21 January 1919 and last met on 10 May 1921. The First Dáil, according to a resolution passed on 10 May 1921, was formally dissolved on the assembling of the Second Dáil. This took place on 16 August 1921.

In 1921 Sinn Féin decided to use the UK authorised elections for the Northern Ireland House of Commons and the House of Commons of Southern Ireland as a poll for the Irish Republic's Second Dáil. This constituency was, in republican theory, incorporated in a four-member Dáil constituency of Belfast West.

Members of Parliament

Election		Member	Party
	1918	Joseph Devlin	Nationalist
1922		constituency abolished

Election

General Election 14 December 1918: Belfast Falls
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Irish Nationalist	Joseph Devlin	8,488	72.3	N/A
	Sinn Féin	Éamon de Valera	3,245	27.7	N/A
Majority			5,243	44.7	N/A
Turnout			11,733	74.5	N/A
	Irish Nationalist gain from new seat		Swing	N/A

References

↑ Redistribution of Seats (Ireland) Act 1918, Second Schedule, Part I

Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922, edited by B.M. Walker (Royal Irish Academy 1978)
Who's Who of British Members of Parliament: Volume III 1919–1945, edited by M. Stenton and S. Lees (The Harvester Press 1979)
(Information about boundaries of the constituency derived from the map of Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies (in force from 1921) and the wards included in the Belfast UK Parliament seats (in force 1922) for which see Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results 1921–1972, by Sydney Elliott (Political Reference Publications 1973) and Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885–1972, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1972) respective
Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "F"