Free The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 by Marie Coleman Page B

the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which owed much to the controlling influence of the Belfast MP, Joe Devlin. The strength of unionism as a political opponent of nationalism also meant that the home rule movement remained stronger in Ulster than much of the rest of the country.
    The third seat held by the IPP was in Waterford City in March, where the vacancy was occasioned by the death of its leader John Redmond. The seat was held comfortably by his son, William Archer Redmond. The younger Redmond was already an MP for Tyrone East and had to resign this seat on his transfer to Waterford; the party held onto his old seat, though by a small margin. The Waterford City by-election was also notable for being the first contest held in Ireland after the passing of the Representation of the People Act (1918) , which made it the first Irish parliamentary election in which women were entitled to vote (Laffan, 1999: 112–28).
    Representation of the People Act (1918) : Legislation extending the vote to women over 30 and widening the franchise generally.

THE POST-RISING VOLUNTEERS
    The arrests that followed the Rising did further damage to Eoin MacNeill's rump Irish Volunteers. Martial law prohibited all public gatherings and meetings with the result that there was very little organised republican activity for theremainder of the year. However, a recovery was noticeable in early 1917 as republicanism began to gain a new stimulus from Sinn Féin's by-election victories. In Clare a new county brigade and a number of battalions were formed in February 1917 under the guidance of the county's three leading republican families – the O’Donnells, Brennans and Barretts (Fitzpatrick, 1977: 205). The re-emergence of the Volunteers was especially noticeable in areas of the country where Sinn Féin was growing on the back of its electoral successes. In Longford, a small Volunteer company was formed in Ballinalee at Easter 1917, around the time of the Longford by-election and the organisation continued to spread throughout the county in the second half of the year (Coleman, 2003: 78). Frequently, branches of both Sinn Féin and the Volunteers were formed at the same time in the same locations and consisting largely of the same personnel. There was very little distinction between both organisations at local level at this stage in 1917, which was partly deliberate as meetings of Sinn Féin clubs were often used as cover for Volunteer activity. This was also the case at national level where the Volunteer convention took place secretly in October 1917 at the same time as the Sinn Féin ard fheis .
    Much of the reorganisation was carried out by 1916 veterans who had been released at Christmas. The communal experience of prison camps, such as Frongoch in north Wales, had provided them with an important opportunity to forge networks and make plans for reorganisation which were duly acted upon after their release. The release of the remaining internees from the Rising in June 1917 was a further fillip to the Volunteers. A third republican organisation to undergo a post-Rising recovery at this time was the IRB, with the re-establishment of a permanent Supreme Council under the presidency of Thomas Ashe after the prisoners' release in June (Hart, 2005: 141). Many of those who were travelling around the country setting up Volunteer corps, including Collins, Ashe and Mulcahy, were leading figures in the IRB and its recovery also had an impact on the continuing progress of the Volunteers.
    Frongoch : Prison camp in north Wales where many of the 1916 prisoners were interned.
    Alarmed at the rising tide of republicanism the authorities began to apply the war-time Defence of the Realm Regulations more thoroughly and this new policy resulted in the arrest of Ashe for making what was deemed to be a seditious speech at Ballinalee in County Longford in August. His death the following month – as a result of force-feeding in Dublin's Mountjoy Prison where he had