Electioneering, party organisation and political discourse in post-Civil War County Kerry, 1923-1933

This dissertation examines the political and electoral consequences of the Irish Civil War in a county in which the conflict was more violent, visceral and protracted that any other. As a location where the fratricide of 1922-3 was most pronounced and longer lasting, the war cast a long shadow on party politics and elections in subsequent years. Within a relatively short time however, the county’s new political class oversaw an embedding of a stable political and electoral system, which, despite the underlying tensions and a profound legacy of suffering and loss, endured in the years after the war. The results of elections and particularly the level of popular support for the parties on either side of the Civil War divide offer important insights into political opinion in the aftermath of the conflict so each of the five general elections in the seminal decade between 1923 and 1933 is examined in turn. The key influences on electoral behaviour in post-Civil War Kerry are considered including the extent of party organisation and the activities of party members, the dynamics of election campaigns, how language was used to convince electors and whether that language consisted of a rhetoric based on or influenced by the Civil War, and finally, the role of newspapers and their coverage of elections in this period as well as their contribution to the wider political discourse. By examining electioneering, political discourse and electoral behaviour from a single county perspective, the aim is to offer insights not only into politics in a county so deeply scarred by the conflict but also to generate new perspectives on the wider political and electoral history of the Irish Free State in the first decade after the Civil War.