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Important Irish Art | 7th December 2016
55 THE OATHPoster printed one side only, 75 x 51cm (29.5 x 20’’), issued by Sinn Fein, printed by Ardiff (Dublin), undated but circa 1930. Framed and
glazed.
The text reprints the oath required of deputies taking seats in the Free State Dail, to be ‘faithful to His Majesty George V, his heirs and
successors’, and contrasts it with the Republican oath taken by members of the first Dail in 1919, not to ‘yield a voluntary support to any
pretended government, authority or power within Ireland hostile or inimical thereto’. It points out that most of the present members of
the Dail had also taken the Republican oath eleven years earlier, and comments: ‘God rest the dead who neither broke their broke their
lawful oath to the Republic of Ireland nor took an unlawful one to Ireland’s only enemy!’ A document which crystallises the major issue
in Irish politics throughout the 1920’s . It is aimed at Eamon De Valera and the 57 Fianna Fail TDs elected in 1927, who signed the Free
State oath as ‘an empty formula’. In logic, Sinn Fein’s argument was unanswerable - but it ignored the politics of the situation and the
wishes of the electorate. In 1925 De Velera led a group of 44 Sinn Fein deputies, marooned impotently outside the Dail. After entering
the Dail in 1927, his numbers rose to 57. In 1932 he won 72 seats, and formed a government supported by Labour. In 1933, with an
absolute majority, he was able to abolish the oath of allegiance. By then Sinn Fein had become an irrelevance in national politics.
Provenance: Purchased in these rooms, Lot 33, Important Irish Art, 25th May 2005
€500-1,000