Belfast St Anne's (UK Parliament constituency)

Belfast St Anne's
Former Borough constituency
for the House of Commons
19181922
Number of members One
Replaced by Belfast West
Created from Belfast West

St Anne's, 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 southern third of West Belfast, and contained the then St Anne's and St George's wards of Belfast City Council.[1] The streets in St Anne's ward in 1911 are listed here and here, and the streets in St George's ward in 1911 are listed here. Between them, those wards contained the area between the Falls Road and the railway to Lisburn.

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 strongly unionist. The unionists ran a candidate from the Ulster Unionist Labour Association, a group affiliated with the Unionist Party, as a Labour Unionist. He easily won the seat. An Independent Unionist candidate was in second place. Sinn Féin was third with ten per cent of the vote.

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

ElectionMemberParty
1918 Thomas Henry Burn Labour Unionist
1922 constituency abolished

Election

General Election 1918: Belfast St Anne's
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Unionist Thomas Henry Burn 9,155 74.8 N/A
Independent Unionist William Hugh Alexander 1,752 14.3 N/A
Sinn Féin Dermot Barnes 1,341 11.0 N/A
Majority 7,403 60.4 N/A
Turnout 12,248 65.5 N/A
Labour Unionist win (new seat)

References

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

External links

Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 1)

See also

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