Alexander Blane[1] (c. 1850–7 February 1917) was an Irish nationalist politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for South Armagh, 1885–92.
[citation needed] In 1881 Blane was asked by the Land League at Armagh to stand for parliament for the county if there was an election, without result.
He helped organise the Plan of Campaign, aimed at agricultural rent reductions, in Gweedore, Co. Donegal, together with the local priest, Father James McFadden, and the two of them were put on trial at Dunfanaghy in January 1888 as a result.
[6] O'Brien [7] said Blane was ‘reputed to be one of the simpler members of the party’, adding that in the debates in Committee Room 15 of the House of Commons leading to the Split he ‘achieved the tour de force of defending Parnell....from an extremist Catholic and patriotic point of view.....This defence (was) exhilarating in its combination of classicism and audacity....’.
On 7 June 1896 he chaired an open-air meeting on the steps of the Custom House in Dublin which launched the Irish Socialist Republican Party, although he declined to join it himself.
[8] The first elections for Dublin Corporation under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, held on 17 January 1899, involved a huge extension of the municipal franchise, from 7,954 to 38,769 in the constabulary borough, and opened up new possibilities for working class politics.