Irish Independence

After winning 73 seats in the 1918 Election, Sinn Fein abstained from Westminster and set up the first Dail in Ireland (Parliament of Ireland) in January 1919. Not long after, the Irish War of Independence broke out which saw the British fighting against the Irish who wanted total independence rather than home rule. The battle went on from 1919 up until 1921 when the Anglo Irish Treaty was signed but another war would start called the Irish Civil War as it didn’t make Ireland a republic but rather gave it dominion status which meant that an oath of Allegiance to the King of England had to be used, and the British navy would control some ports like Cobh (then called Queenstown) and King George V was the head of state. After that war was over, W.T. Cosgrave created the Gardaí and the Electric Supply Board but it was Eamonn de Valera who made Ireland a republic in 1937 with Douglas Hyde as Ireland’s first president while the British crown was in a crisis when King Edward VIII wanted to marry a divorced lady named Wallis Simpson which saw him abdicate and his brother becoming King George VII. Today, Ireland is on its 9^th president Michael D. Higgins and when this fact card was made originally in 2020, the Taoiseach (prime minister) was Micheál Martin.