Maurice Dockrell

Sir Maurice Edward Dockrell (21 December 1850 – 5 August 1929) was an Irish businessman and Unionist politician from Dublin.

Early life Maurice was the son of Thomas Dockrell and Anne Morgan Brooks, born on 21 December 1850 in Monkstown, Dublin. Dockrell vociferously opposed the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), going so far as to issue revolvers to strike-breakers. He served as chairman of the City of Dublin Recruiting Committee during World War I.

At the 1918 general election, he was elected as Irish Unionist Alliance Member of Parliament for Dublin Rathmines from 1918 to 1922. Dockrell was the only unionist elected outside of Ulster and the Dublin University constituencies. The nationalist vote had been split between the United Irish League and Sinn Féin. In 1919 he made a speech in Westminster where he declared that he "stands in the House today as the sole representative of 350,000 Unionists of the South of Ireland". The 1918 election was a watershed in Ireland. Following the Easter Rising in 1916, Sinn Féin had grown in popularity, eclipsing the Irish Parliamentary Party. Sinn Féin candidates treated the election as an Irish general election, pledging not to take their seats in the British House of Commons, but to unilaterally establish a separate parliament in Dublin.

At the election, the Dublin University constituency returned two Unionists, and Dockrell was the only other Irish Unionist returned outside Ulster. Rather than joining Sinn Féin in the First Dáil, Dockrell took his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. On 28 June 1921 Dockrell was one of five Unionist leaders invited by to a meeting to discuss the future government of Ireland by the republican leader, Éamon de Valera.

Personal life He married Margaret Shannon on 27 July 1875 in Dublin Ireland. They had seven children, including Henry Morgan Dockrell and George Dockrell. Margaret Dockrell was a suffragist, philanthropist, and councillor. His son Henry Morgan Dockrell was later a Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD), and his grandsons Percy and Maurice Dockrell were also long-serving Fine Gael TDs. He was knighted in 1905. Maurice ran the Dockrell family business of builders' providers in Dublin.

He died on 5 August 1929 in Dublin.