Pierce Charles de Lacy O'Mahony - Irish Nationalism

Irish Nationalism

He was elected unopposed as Member of Parliament (MP) for North Meath in the July 1886 general election, taking his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. When the Irish Parliamentary Party split over Parnell’s leadership in 1890, Mahony was one of the four Protestant MPs who supported Parnell. He remained close to Parnell, entertaining him in Kerry shortly before he died. At the general election of 1892, he was defeated in North Meath by the prominent land campaigner Michael Davitt, who had taken a particularly strong and clericalist line against Parnell from early in the crisis, by 54% to 46%. This general election was characterised by ferocious hostility to the Parnellites on the part of the Catholic Church. Mahony successfully petitioned the courts to set aside the result on the basis of clerical intimidation of the voters. In the re-run election in February 1893, Davitt did not stand, having been elected unopposed to a vacancy at Cork North East. However clerical Anti-Parnellite influence continued to be strong. The Times reported that ‘the priests...swarmed at all the polling stations, and kept the voters constantly in view’. Mahony again lost, by the fractionally smaller margin of 53% to 47%.

Mahony remained active in the Nationalist movement, and made three further unsuccessful attempts to return to Parliament. He stood as Parnellite candidate for Dublin St Stephen’s Green at a by-election in September 1895 but failed to unseat the Liberal Unionist member, William Kenny. He contested another by-election, for Dublin Harbour, in 1915 but came well short of election with 24% of the vote. In the general election of 1918 he fought West Wicklow for the Irish Parliamentary Party but lost to the Sinn Féin candidate Robert Barton by the particularly wide margin of more than four to one.