Joseph O'Doherty

Joseph O'Doherty (1891 – 10 August 1979) was an Irish politician. Born in Derry, Ireland, he was a teacher and a barrister and a member of the Irish Volunteers Executive from 1917–21.

He was elected as a Sinn Féin Member of Parliament for Donegal North in the 1918 Westminster Election defeating his Irish Parliamentary Party opponent.

In 1919 Sinn Féin candidates who had been elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled as a unicameral, revolutionary parliament called "Dáil Éireann".

The establishment of the First Dáil occurred on the same day as the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War.

He was re-elected at the 1921 General Election and opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He was subsequently re-elected as Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin and as an abstentionist republican in 1922 and 1923 respectively. He was part of the Republican mission to the United States of America from 1922–24 and 1925–26.

In 1926 he left the party's Ard Fheis with Éamon de Valera and became a founder member of Fianna Fáil. He lost his seat at the June 1927 General Election and was elected to the Seanad in 1928, serving as one of Fianna Fáil's first six elected Senators under the leadership of Joseph Connolly. He was re-elected to the Dáil in the 1933 General Election. From 1929–33 Joseph also served as the County Manager of Carlow and Kildare

In 1936 O'Doherty successfully sued Ernie O'Malley for libel. The incident in question involved a raid Michael Collins had proposed to take place on 1 October 1919 at Moville, County Donegal. O'Malley, in his book On Another Man's Wound, had implied that O'Doherty had refused to go. In fact it had been agreed, without O'Doherty's intervention, that it would be inapproriate for a member of the Dáil to be involved.

References

• Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922, edited by B.M. Walker (Royal Irish Academy 1978)
• This page incorporates information from the Oireachtas Members Database