This short Topical Budget item records the by-election that took place on 30 January 1913, in which David C. Hogg of the Irish Parliamentary Party defeated his Unionist rival Colonel Pakenham by 2699 votes to 2642 - a wafer-thin 67-vote margin. This was a blow to the Unionists as it meant that the Nationalists held a narrow majority of one seat in the nine-county province of Ulster. This film is also important historically for being one of the earliest surviving examples of what would become one of Topical Budget's most important contributions to recorded 20th-century history: its comprehensive coverage of Anglo-Irish matters during a turbulent decade that began, as here, with the British firmly in control, and ended with Irish independence. Michael Brooke
|