House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 1929 facts for kids

The House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 1929 was a law passed by the Parliament of Northern Ireland at Stormont. This law changed how people voted for members of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland. Before this Act, a system called single transferable vote (STV) was used. The new law changed it to first past the post (FPTP).

This Act also changed how voting areas, called constituencies, were set up. Most of the ten constituencies that elected many members were divided into 48 smaller constituencies, each electing only one member. The only area that kept the STV system was the Queen's University constituency. This Act was ready for the 1929 Stormont election.

What the Act Changed

This important law made two big changes to elections in Northern Ireland. It changed the way votes were counted and how voting areas were drawn on the map.

New Voting Rules

Before 1929, Northern Ireland used the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system for its main parliament. In STV, voters rank candidates in order of preference (1st choice, 2nd choice, etc.). This system often helps smaller parties or groups get elected.

The 1929 Act switched to the First Past the Post (FPTP) system. In FPTP, you vote for only one candidate. The candidate who gets the most votes in an area wins, even if they don't get more than half the votes. This system often leads to two main parties dominating elections.

Changing the Voting Map

Along with changing the voting system, the Act also redrew the election map. Most of the areas that used to elect several members to parliament were broken up.

• Before 1929: There were ten large voting areas, called constituencies. Most of these elected multiple members.
• After 1929: Nine of these large areas were divided into 48 smaller ones. Each of these new areas would elect only one member.

This meant that instead of voting for a group of people in a big area, people would now vote for just one person in a smaller, more local area. The only exception was the Queen's University constituency, which continued to use the STV system until it was removed in 1969.

Why the Act Was Passed

People have different ideas about why the 1929 Act was passed. It's a topic that historians and political experts still discuss.

Different Views on the Act

Many Irish nationalists, both at the time and later, believed the Act was a way for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to reduce the number of nationalist politicians in parliament. They thought it was designed to make it harder for nationalists to win seats.

However, some experts, like Dennis Pringle, offer a different view. He suggests that while some unfair practices happened in local elections to help unionist candidates, this wasn't the main goal at Stormont. The Ulster Unionist Party already had a strong majority there.

Instead, Pringle argues that the government at the time, led by Lord Craigavon, was more worried about protecting the middle-class members of the UUP. They were concerned about losing seats to working-class independent unionists and the Northern Ireland Labour Party. In the 1929 election, these groups actually lost more seats than the nationalists. This was because their support was spread out more evenly across different areas, which made it harder for them to win under the new FPTP system.