Michael O'Flanagan States in April 1925 to help Sinn Féin contest a number of by-elections. That summer he was suspended from clerical duties and forbidden to say mass because of his nationalist activities and anti-clerical speeches he had made in America. In March 1926, the Sinn Féin ard fheis narrowly defeated de Valera's proposal to enter the Free State Oireachtas if the Oath of Allegiance were removed. O'Flanagan sided with the majority. De Valera left to found Fianna Fáil, which eclipsed Sinn Féin at the June 1927 election. O'Flanagan remained with the reduced Sinn Féin. Bishop Coyne died in July 1926, but
United Irishman United Irishman The United Irishman was an Irish nationalist newspaper co-founded by Arthur Griffith and William Rooney. It was first published on the 4th of March 1899 and ran from 1899 to 1906. Contributors included Oliver St. John Gogarty, Padraig Pearse, Maud Gonne and Roger Casement. The writer James Joyce is quoted as saying that the United Irishman was "the only newspaper of pretensions in Ireland". In 1906 the "United Irishman" collapsed under a libel suit and was refounded as "Sinn Féin", which ran until 1914 when it was suppressed by the British government. A Most Seditious Lot: The Militant-Separatist