Page 13 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 9

later generation, Percy La Touche was involved in the
management of the Punchestown Race Course. His mother
Maria was not in the vanguard of those pushing for what she
called ‘Home Ruin’ or for democratic local government. Bellevue
was demolished in the 1950s. Ainsi passe la gloire de ce monde.

It is appropriate that the sweeping democratic mandate for an
independent Irish state secured in the December 1918 General
Election coincided with the virtual introduction of a universal
franchise, with women over 30 voting for the first time. The 1922
Irish Free State Constitution completed the process by lowering
the voting age for women to 21, the same as for men. In that
respect, the promise of the 1916 Proclamation was fulfilled,
though further progress towards gender equality then stalled for
half a century.

As I am sure has been said already, the political achievement
of an independent Ireland over the past 100 years has been
considerable. If one were to ask the question why has the Irish
revolution, which inspired and encouraged many liberation
movements round the British Empire beginning with the Indian
National Congress, been more enduring than the internationally
much more famous Russian one of October 1917, part of the
answer has to be that Ireland forged a strong parliamentary
tradition under the Union, albeit in opposition to it. Tsarist Russia
left only a weak parliamentary tradition, and Lenin simply
scrapped the Constituent Assembly, when the Bolsheviks won
less than a quarter of the popular vote.

One of the fallacies of public discourse today is the notion
that clientelism is rife in independent Ireland, because of our PR
electoral system, which the people have no desire to change.
Has no one heard of ‘pork-barrelling’ in the US Congress, a
regular or rather irregular add-on to the legislative process?
According to a book by James McConnel, Irish Parliamentary
9