141-735: The Northern Ireland Unionist Party (NIUP) was a small unionist political party in Northern Ireland that campaigned against the Belfast Agreement . It was formed in January 1999 as a splinter party from the UK Unionist Party (UKUP). This split was caused by disagreement between the five UKUP members of the Northern Ireland Assembly . Four of the members disagreed with UKUP leader Robert McCartney 's policy of resigning from
282-707: A hunger strike demanding release from prison, and reinstatement of their status as political prisoners ( 1920 Cork hunger strike ). Three men died during this time including the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney . Among the most infamous of the Black and Tans actions were the Bloody Sunday massacre in November 1920 and the burning of half the city of Cork in December that same year. These actions, together with
423-642: A Belfast parliament (they did not develop an express nationalism of their own), but in summarising The Case Against Home Rule (1912), L. S. Amery did insist that "if Irish Nationalism constitutes a nation, then Ulster is a nation too". Faced with the eventual enactment of Home Rule, Carson appeared to press this argument. On 28 September 1912, Ulster Day, he was the first to sign, in Belfast City Hall, Ulster's Solemn League and Covenant . This bound signatories "to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our position of equal citizenship in
564-574: A Catholic tradition of support for the union, focused on the value of stability and of empire, survived the first home-rule crisis. But it did not share the majority unionist conviction that any measure of devolution within the United Kingdom must lead to separation. Nor did it supply unionism with the equivalent of the Protestants who, individually, played a prominent role in home-rule and separatist politics. A handful of Irish Conservatives, drawn from
705-491: A Catholic, had helped devise a scheme for administrative devolution involving an Irish council of both elected and nominated members. Balfour, now prime minister, was obliged to disavow the scheme and Wyndham, pressed to deny his complicity, resigned. The uproar assisted the Liberal return to office in December. The road to Catholicism's identification with constitutional Irish nationalism was "far from smooth and immediate", and
846-405: A The Government of Ireland Bill that was largely of his own drafting. Unionists were not persuaded by his inclusion of measures to limit the remit of a Dublin legislature and to reduce the weight of the popular vote (the 200 or so popularly elected members were to sit in session with 28 Irish Peers and a further 75 Members elected on a highly restrictive property franchise). Regardless of how it
987-449: A Young Irelander, addressing the peace resolutions, delivered his 'Sword Speech', in which he stated, "I do not abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights ... Be it for the defence, or be it for the assertion of a nation's liberty, I look upon the sword as a sacred weapon." John O'Connell , Daniel O'Connell's son, was present at the proceedings and interrupted Meagher's speech, claiming that Meagher could no longer be part of
1128-635: A conquered community and nothing else". By July 1914, the Ulster Covenant had been complemented by a British Covenant organised by Alfred Milner through the Union Defence League . Nearly two million signatories declared themselves willing to "supporting any action that may be effective" to prevent the people of Ulster being deprived "of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". Irish republican Inactive Defunct Irish republicanism ( Irish : poblachtánachas Éireannach )
1269-518: A constructive course. He pursued reforms intended, as some saw it, to kill home rule with "kindness". For the express purpose of relieving poverty and reducing emigration, in the Congested Districts of the west Balfour initiated a programme not only of public works, but of subsidy for local craft industries. Headed by the former Unionist MP for South Dublin , Horace Plunkett , a new Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction broke with
1410-598: A dynamite campaign in Britain. A total of twenty-five major explosions beset Irish nationalism's perception and dictated Britain's approach towards Ireland and the " Irish question ". In 1865 the Fenian Brotherhood in America had split into two factions. One was led by O'Mahony with Stephens' support. The other, which was more powerful, was led by William R. Roberts . The Fenians had always planned an armed rebellion, but there
1551-618: A home-rule dispensation for the six north-east counties remaining in the United Kingdom. For the next 50 years, the Ulster Unionist Party exercised the devolved powers of the Northern Ireland Parliament with little domestic opposition and outside of the governing party-political system at Westminster . In 1972, the British government suspended this arrangement. Against a background of growing political violence, and citing
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#17328724418301692-762: A low-level tenant-landlord war came to Westminster in 1852 when the all-Ireland Tenant Right League helped return 48 MPs to Westminster where they sat as the Independent Irish Party . What the Young Irelander Gavan Duffy called the League of North and South soon fell apart. In the South the Church approved the Catholic MPs breaking their pledge of independent opposition and accepting government positions. In
1833-467: A majority of the anti-treaty Sinn Féin of these views and the movement split again. In 1926, he formed a new party called Fianna Fáil ("Soldiers of Destiny"), taking most of Sinn Féin's TDs with him. In 1931, following the enactment of the Statute of Westminster , the country became a sovereign state along with the other Dominions and the United Kingdom. The following year, De Valera was appointed President of
1974-565: A member of the Commonwealth. As a result of this – and also because continuing struggle against the Dublin government was futile – the republican movement decided to focus on Northern Ireland from then on. The decision was announced by the IRA in its Easter statement of 1949. The area that was to become Northern Ireland amounted to six of the nine counties of Ulster, in spite of
2115-654: A minority and monarchy was the norm, with few long-lasting republics of note at time, such as the fully-fledged Dutch Republic and the Republic of Venice , as well as the Old Swiss Confederacy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , which had republican aspects. However, as noted by Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich , the first ever document proposing a republic of Ireland independent from connections to England dates from 1627. Summaries of these plans are held in
2256-686: A minority within the United Kingdom may have passed. In 1830, the leader of the Catholic Association , Daniel O'Connell , invited Protestants to join in a campaign to repeal the Union and restore the Kingdom of Ireland under the Constitution of 1782 . At the same time, the security in Ireland for emancipation was a fivefold increase in the threshold for the property franchise . O'Connell's Protestant ally in
2397-537: A new Northern Ireland legislature and executive. Renegotiated in 2006, relations within this consociational arrangement remained fraught. Unionists, with diminishing electoral strength, charged their nationalist partners in government with pursuing an anti-British cultural agenda and, post- Brexit , with supporting a trade regime, the Northern Ireland Protocol , that advances an all-Ireland agenda. In February 2024, two years after their withdrawal collapsed
2538-569: A pejorative term for Irish Catholics. Public support for the Fenian movement in Ireland grew in November 1861 with the funeral of Terence MacManus , a member of the Irish Confederation, which Stephens and the Fenians had organised – having "recognized the potential of street parades for mobilizing supporters and influencing onlookers". The popularity endowed by the procession and oration established
2679-576: A premature explosion at an arms depot attracted the attention of police, they were unaware of the United Irishmen activities at the time and did not have any information regarding the planned rebellion. Emmet had hoped to avoid the complications of the previous rebellion and chose not to organise the county outside of Dublin to a large extent. It was expected that the areas surrounding Dublin were sufficiently prepared for an uprising should one be announced, and Thomas Russell had been sent to northern areas of
2820-622: A pro-Treaty general. The new government , responding to this provocation and to intensified British pressure following the assassination by an anti-treaty IRA unit in London of Henry Wilson , ordered the regular army to take the Four Courts , thereby beginning the Irish Civil War . It is believed that Collins continued to fund and supply the IRA in Northern Ireland throughout the civil war, but, after his death, W. T. Cosgrave (the new President of
2961-418: A reformed Northern Ireland Assembly . As of February 2024, they no longer do so as the larger faction: they serve in an executive with an Irish republican ( Sinn Féin ) First Minister . Unionism became an overarching partisan affiliation in Ireland late in the nineteenth century. Typically Presbyterian agrarian-reform Liberals coalesced with traditionally Anglican Orange Order Conservatives against
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#17328724418303102-640: A separation of north and south, with Belfast as the capital of its own "distinct kingdom". In response to the First Home rule Bill in 1886, Radical Unionists (Liberals who proposed federalising the relationship between all countries of the United Kingdom) likewise argued that "the Protestant part of Ulster should receive special treatment . . . on grounds identical with those that support the general contention for Home Rule" Ulster Protestants expressed no interest in
3243-605: A stroke in 1898 to democratically elected councils), the old landlord class had the terms of their retirement fixed by the Wyndham Land Act of 1903. This reduced, but did not in itself resolve, agrarian tensions, even in the north. In 1906, Thomas Russell, MP , the son of an evicted Scottish crofter , broke with the Conservatives in the Irish Unionist Alliance to be returned to Westminster from South Tyrone as
3384-511: A subsequent trial, WPSU organiser Dorothy Evans created an uproar by demanding to know why James Craig, then arming Ulster Volunteers with German rifles, was not appearing on the same weapons and explosives charges. In August 1914, suffragists in Ulster suspended their agitation for the duration of the European war. Their reward was a women's franchise in 1918 and (six years after it was granted in
3525-580: Is the political movement for an Irish republic , void of any British rule . Throughout its centuries of existence, it has encompassed various tactics and identities, simultaneously elective and militant and has been both widely supported and iconoclastic. The modern emergence of nationalism, democracy, and radicalism provided a basis for the movement, with groups forming across the island in hopes of independence. Parliamentary defeats provoked uprisings and armed campaigns, quashed by British forces. A rising , amidst World War I, that ended in execution provided
3666-542: Is to establish a free and independent republic in Ireland: that the pursuit of this object we will relinquish only with our lives ... We war against no religious sect ... We war against English dominion. However, failed communications and arrangements produced a considerably smaller force than had been anticipated. Nonetheless, the rebellion began in Dublin on the evening of 23 July. Emmet's forces were unable to take Dublin Castle, and
3807-639: The Archives générales du Royaume in Belgium and were made familiar to Irish historians by the work of Fr. Brendan Jennings, a Franciscan historian, with his work Wild Geese in Spanish Flanders, 1582–1700 (1964). This early republican spirit was not ecumenical and was formed by exiled Irish Catholic Gaels with the support of Habsburg Spain as part of the Irish military diaspora who had fled into Spanish service in
3948-696: The Conservative and Orange-Order candidates of the landed Ascendancy . But as the Irish party-political successors to O'Connell's Repeal movement gained representation and influence in Westminster, Cooke's call for unity was to be heeded in the progressive emergence of a pan-Protestant unionism. Up to, and through, the Great Famine of the 1840s, successive governments, Whig and Tory, had refused political responsibility for agrarian conditions in Ireland. The issues of
4089-773: The Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), fraternal organisations founded in the United States and Ireland respectively with the aim of establishing an independent republic in Ireland. The IRB was founded on Saint Patrick's Day 1858 in Dublin. Members present at the first meeting were James Stephens , Thomas Clarke Luby , Peter Langan, Joseph Denieffe, Garrett O'Shaughnessy, and Charles Kickham . Stephens had previously spent time exiled in Paris, along with John O'Mahony , having taken part in
4230-474: The Great Famine and the suspension of habeas corpus , which allowed the government to imprison Young Irelanders and other political opponents without trial, was hastily planned and quickly suppressed. Following the abortive uprising, several rebel leaders were arrested and convicted of sedition. Originally sentenced to death, Smith O'Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation were transported to Van Diemen's Land . The Fenian movement consisted of
4371-725: The Irish Confederate Wars . In the summer of 1642, the Catholic upper classes formed the Catholic Confederation , which essentially became the de facto government of Ireland for a brief period until 1649, when the forces of the English Parliament carried out the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the old Catholic landowners were permanently dispossessed of their lands. The most explicit Irish separatist viewpoint from
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4512-660: The Irish Free State ) equal voting rights in 1928 . In 1911 a Liberal administration was once again dependent on Irish nationalist MPs. In 1912 the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith , introduced the Third Home Rule Bill . A more generous dispensation than the earlier bills, it would, for the first time, have given an Irish parliament an accountable executive. It was carried in the Commons by a majority of ten. As expected, it
4653-573: The Irish Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. Joined by loyalist labour, on the eve of World War I this broad opposition to Irish self-government concentrated in Belfast and its hinterlands as Ulster unionism and prepared an armed resistance—the Ulster Volunteers . Within the partition settlement of 1921 by which the rest of Ireland attained separate statehood , Ulster unionists accepted
4794-597: The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). In his first ministry (1868-1874), the Liberal premier William Ewart Gladstone had attempted conciliation. In 1869, he disestablished the Church of Ireland , and in 1870 introduced the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act . In both measures conservative jurists identified threats to the integrity of the union. Disestablishment reneged on the promise of "one Protestant Episcopal Church" for both Britain and Ireland under Article V of
4935-469: The Irish Trades Union Congress as tantamount to support for Home Rule. Yet loyalist workers resented the idea that they were the retainers of "big-house unionists". A manifesto signed in the spring of 1914 by two thousand labour men, rejected the suggestion of the radical and socialist press that Ulster was being manipulated by "an aristocratic plot". If Sir Edward Carson led in the battle for
5076-617: The Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union —sought to connect. With Gladstone's conversion to home rule, politicians who had held aloof from the Order now embraced its militancy. Colonel Edward Saunderson , who had represented Cavan as a Liberal, donned an Orange sash "because", he said "the Orange society is alone capable of dealing with the condition of anarchy and rebellion which prevail in Ireland". In February 1886, playing, in his own words,
5217-728: The Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War , and a smaller number of ex-IRA members, communists and others participated on the Republican side. In 1937, the Constitution of Ireland was drafted by the de Valera government and approved via referendum by the majority of the population of the Free State. The constitution changed the name of the state to Éire in the Irish language ( Ireland in English) and asserted its national territory as
5358-725: The Protestant Ascendancy . It also attracted support and membership from Catholic agrarian resistance groups, such as the Defenders organisation, who were eventually incorporated into the Society. The Society sought to unite the denominations of the island under the simple distinction of Irish. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 began on 23 May, with the first clashes taking place in County Kildare on 24 May, before spreading throughout Leinster , as well as County Antrim and other areas of
5499-547: The Provisional Irish Republican Army , who waged a campaign against the British state for approximately three decades. Represented by Sinn Féin , republicans would gradually invest in political action, including the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The PIRA have since decommissioned and republicans have been elected to various echelons of government: those within
5640-441: The Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Police Service Northern Ireland . They described their position as "principled unionism." In its first electoral test, the party polled very poorly in the 2001 General Election and in local elections held on the same day, winning no Westminster or council seats. In the 2003 Assembly Election , the NIUP won no seats at all. The NIUP consistently had a low level of support and mainly contested
5781-426: The Second Dáil , thus ending the conflict. Though many across the country were unhappy with the Anglo-Irish Treaty (since, during the war, the IRA had fought for independence for all Ireland and for a republic, not a partitioned dominion under the British crown ), some republicans were satisfied that the Treaty was the best that could be achieved at the time. However, a substantial number opposed it. Dáil Éireann ,
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5922-518: The Strangford constituency at the 2007 Assembly Election where he polled 305 votes (0.8%), thus finishing last out of the fifteen candidates. The NIUP voluntarily deregistered as a political party on 10 March 2008. Unionism in Ireland Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to the crown of the United Kingdom and to the union it represents with England , Scotland and Wales . The overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority , unionism mobilised in
6063-487: The Ulster Unionist Council was established to bring together unionists in the north including, with 50 of 200 seats, the Orange Order . Until then, unionism had largely placed itself behind Anglo-Irish aristocrats valued for their high-level connections in Great Britain . The UUC still accorded them a degree of precedence. Castlereagh's descendant and former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland , The 6th Marquess of Londonderry , presided over its executive. The Council also retained
6204-408: The Whigs .' William Smith O'Brien , who had previously worked to achieve compromise between O'Connell and The Nation group, was also concerned, and claimed that he feared these resolutions were an attempt to exclude the Young Irelanders from the Association altogether. At an Association meeting held in July 1846 at Conciliation Hall , the meeting place of the Association, Thomas Francis Meagher ,
6345-471: The " Black and Tans ", to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary 's Auxiliary Division . Republicans were the primary adversary of these forces, whose warfare included pillaging and extrajudicial executions. Both sides used similar tactics: hair cutting , arson attacks, taking of hostages and executions. Republicans also established sovereign courts , a considerable symbol of the movement's public support. In August 1920 Irish Republican prisoners went on
6486-413: The "Orange card", Lord Randolph Churchill assured a "monster meeting" of the Anti-Repeal Union in Belfast, that English Conservatives would "cast in their lot" with loyalists in resisting Home Rule, and he later coined the phrase that was to become the watchword of northern unionism: "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right". Gladstone's own party was split on Home Rule and the House divided against
6627-443: The 1798 rebellion, Emmet was a member of the United Irishmen, as was his brother Thomas Addis Emmet , who had been imprisoned for membership in the organisation. Emmet and his followers had planned to seize Dublin Castle by force, manufacturing weaponry and explosives at a number of locations in Dublin. Unlike those of 1798, preparations for the uprising were successfully concealed from the government and law enforcement, and though
6768-416: The 1887 Act creating a new city-status municipal franchise for Belfast (piloted through the Commons by William Johnston ) conferred the vote on persons rather than men. This was eleven years before women elsewhere Ireland gained the vote in local government elections. The WSS had not been impressed by the women's Ulster Declaration or by the Ulster Women's Unionist Council (UWUC)—with over 100,000 members
6909-428: The Act of Union (the Ulster Protestant Defence Association claimed breach of contract), and weak as they were, provisions for tenant compensation and purchase created a separate agrarian regime for Ireland at odds with the prevailing English conception of property rights. In the Long Depression of the 1870s the Land War intensified. From 1879 it was organised by the direct-action Irish National Land League , led by
7050-451: The Acts of Union 1800, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, by a vote of 158 to 115. A number of tactics were used to achieve this end. Lord Castlereagh and Charles Cornwallis were known to use bribery extensively. In all, a total of sixteen Irish borough-owners were granted British peerages . A further twenty-eight new Irish peerages were created, while twenty existing Irish peerages increased in rank. Furthermore,
7191-417: The Anglo-Norman settlers who settled during the Norman Invasion) rebelling against the English rulers. While some ideas from the 1627 proposals were carried on, the attempt to rally both Gaels and Old English to the banner, mean't trying to find common ground and one of these concessions was support for the Stuart monarchy under Charles I of England whom the Old English were strongly attached to. The motto of
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#17328724418307332-426: The Assembly should Sinn Féin become part of the power-sharing executive. Cedric Wilson , Patrick Roche , Norman Boyd and Roger Hutchinson disagreed with McCartney, wanting to remain in the Assembly to challenge unionists in favour of the Belfast Agreement . McCartney disciplined these members in their absence and, in response, they left the UKUP and formed the NIUP. Led by Wilson, the new party argued that it had
7473-425: The British Army continued for a short time afterward in the Wicklow Mountains under the leadership of Michael Dwyer and Joseph Holt , involving attacks on small parties of yeomen . These activities were perceived by some to be merely "the dying echoes of an old convulsion", but others feared further large-scale uprisings, due to the United Irishmen continuing to attract large numbers of Catholics in rural areas of
7614-406: The Catholic gentry , were returned to the Commons before the 1884 Reform Act. A "unique place" was occupied by Sir Denis Henry (1864-1925). When he won his native South Londonderry seat in a 1916 by-election, he was the first Catholic to represent a unionist constituency in Ulster, and when he retained the seat in 1918, the future Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland was the last. In 1905,
7755-608: The Church of Rome", then undergoing its own devotional revolution. The leading Presbyterian evangelist, Henry Cooke took the occasion to preach Protestant Unity. In 1834, at a mass demonstration hosted upon his estate by the 3rd Marquess of Downshire , Cooke proposed a "Christian marriage" between the two main Protestant denominations (Anglican and Presbyterian). Setting their remaining differences aside, they would cooperate on all "matters of common safety". Presbyterian voters tended to favour reform-minded Whigs or, as they later emerged, tenant-right and free-trade Liberals , over
7896-407: The Confederation would thus become Pro Deo, pro Rege et Patria, Hibernia unanimis ('Irishmen United for God, King and Country'), with any idea of a republic ditched. Beginning as a coup d'état with the aim of restoring lost lands in the north of Ireland and defending Catholic religious and property rights, (which had been suppressed by the Puritan Parliament of England ) it evolved into
8037-410: The English-controlled Kingdom of Ireland and set up an Irish government loosely aligned with the Habsburg Empire . One of the main problems was that within the leadership of the Hispano-Irish diaspora, there were rivalries and factionalism between two primary contenders, Shane O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell , over who should be the overall leader and thus have rights to an Irish throne if the project
8178-430: The Executive Council , or prime minister) discontinued this support. By May 1923, the war ended in the order by Frank Aiken , telling IRA members to dump arms. However, the harsh measures adopted by both sides, including assassinations, executions and other atrocities , left a bitter legacy in Irish politics for decades to follow. In October 1923 mass hunger strikes were undertaken by Irish republican prisoners protesting
8319-541: The Executive Council of the Free State and began a slow process of turning the country from a constitutional monarchy to a constitutional republic, thus fulfilling Collins's prediction of "the freedom to achieve freedom". By then, the IRA was engaged in confrontations with the Blueshirts , a quasi-fascist group led by a former War of Independence and pro-Treaty leader, Eoin O'Duffy . O'Duffy looked to Fascist Italy as an example for Ireland to follow. Several hundred supporters of O'Duffy briefly went to Spain to volunteer on
8460-458: The Irish parliament was unlamented. Having refused calls for reform—to broaden representation and curb corruption—few saw cause to regret its passing. It took the Union thirty years to deliver on the promise of Catholic emancipation (1829)—to admit Catholics to Parliament—and permit an erosion of the Protestant monopoly on position and influence. An opportunity to integrate Catholics through their re-emerging propertied and professional classes as
8601-422: The Irish parliament, voted by 64 votes to 57 to ratify it, the majority believing that the treaty created a new base from which to move forward. Éamon de Valera , who had served as President of the Irish Republic during the war, refused to accept the decision of the Dáil and led the opponents of the treaty out of the House. The pro-Treaty republicans organised themselves into the Cumann na nGaedheal party, while
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#17328724418308742-414: The National Council remained in existence as a pressure group with the aim of increasing nationalist representation on local councils. The first annual convention of the National Council on 28 November 1905 was notable for two things: the decision, by a majority vote (with Griffith dissenting), to open branches and organise on a national basis; and the presentation by Griffith of his 'Hungarian' policy, which
8883-470: The North, the Protestant tenant righters, William Sharman Crawford and James MacKnight had their election meetings broken up by Orangemen . For unionism the more momentous challenge lay in the wake of the Reform Act 1867 . In England and Wales it produced an electorate that no longer identified instinctively with the conservative interest in Ireland and was more open to the "home-rule" compromise that nationalists now presented. Ireland would remain within
9024-421: The O'Mahony wing of the movement itself tried and failed to capture Campobello Island in New Brunswick in April 1866. Following this failure, the Roberts faction of the Fenian Brotherhood carried out its own, occupying the village of Fort Erie, Ontario on 31 May 1866 and engaging Canadian troops at the battles of Ridgeway and Fort Erie on 2 June. It was in reference to Fenians fighting in this battle that
9165-506: The UWUC that draft articles for an Ulster Provisional Government included votes for women. The nationalists would make no such undertaking with regard to a Dublin parliament. The marriage was short lived. In March 1914, Carson , after being door-stepped for fours days by the WSPU, ruled women's suffrage too divisive an issue for unionists. There followed a series of arson-attacks on unionist-owned and associated property that culminated in Lillian Metge 's bombing of Lisburn Cathedral . In
9306-407: The Ulster Women's Declaration; 237,368 men signed the Solemn League and Covenant . Unionist women had been involved in political campaigning from the time of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. Some were active suffragettes . Isabella Tod , an anti-Home Rule Liberal and campaigner for girls education, was an early pioneer. Determined lobbying by her North of Ireland Women's Suffrage Society ensured
9447-585: The Union it was "because we, the workers, the people, the democracy of Ulster, have chosen him". The majority of the signatories would have been organised in British-based unions, and could point to the growing political weight of British labour in reform measures such as the Trade Disputes Act 1906 , the People's Budget 1910 , and the National Insurance Act 1911 . Nationalists did not seek to persuade them that collective bargaining, progressive taxation and social security were principles for which majorities could be as readily found in an Irish parliament. At what
9588-404: The Unionist government was undemocratic, bigoted and favoured Protestants. Emigration for economic reasons kept the nationalist population from growing, despite its higher birth rate. Although poverty, (e)migration and unemployment were fairly widespread (albeit not to the same extent) among Protestants as well, on the other hand the economic situation in Northern Ireland (even for Catholics) was for
9729-405: The United Kingdom but with a parliament in Dublin exercising powers devolved from Westminster. Meanwhile, in Ireland, a combination of the secret ballot and increased representation for the towns, reduced the electoral influence of land owners and their agents, and contributed to the triumph, in 1874 , of the Home Rule League . Fifty-nine members were returned to Westminster where they sat as
9870-485: The United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland". In January 1913, Carson declared for the exclusion of Ulster and called for the enlistment of up to 100,000 Covenanters as drilled and armed Ulster Volunteers . On 23 September, the second Ulster Day, he accepted Chairmanship of a Provisional Government organised by Craig. If Home Rule were imposed "we will be governed as
10011-405: The Young Irelanders) and 1865 and 1867 (by the Fenians) were followed by harsh reprisals by British forces. The National Council, was formed in 1903, by Maud Gonne and Arthur Griffith , on the occasion of the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin. Its purpose was to lobby Dublin Corporation to refrain from presenting an address to the king. The motion to present an address was duly defeated, but
10152-590: The Younger that he would bring about Catholic emancipation , though after the Acts of Union were successfully voted through, King George III saw that this pledge was never realised, and as such Catholics were not granted the rights that had been promised prior to the Acts. A second attempt at forming an independent Irish republic occurred under Robert Emmet in 1803. Emmet had previously been expelled from Trinity College , Dublin for his political views. Like those who had led
10293-889: The aftermath of the Flight of the Earls during the Thirty Years' War . This was in the context of the break-down of the Spanish match and the onset of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1625–1630. Proposals were made at Madrid, with the involvement of Archbishop Florence Conry and Owen Roe O'Neill , for the Irish Regiment in the Spanish Netherlands then in the service of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia , to invade and reconquer
10434-608: The anti-Treaty republicans retained the Sinn Féin name. The IRA itself split between pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty elements, with the former forming the nucleus of the new Irish National Army . Michael Collins became Commander-in-Chief of the National Army. Shortly afterwards, some dissidents, apparently without the authorisation of the anti-Treaty IRA Army Executive, occupied the Four Courts in Dublin and kidnapped JJ "Ginger" O'Connell ,
10575-563: The basis for success, including electorally. An Irish republic was declared in 1919 and officialized following the Irish War of Independence . The Irish Civil War , beginning in 1922 and spurred by the partition of the island , then occurred. Republican action, including armed campaigns, continued in the newly-formed state of Northern Ireland, a region of the United Kingdom. Tensions in the territory culminated in widespread conflict by 1969. This prompted paramilitaries: republicans assembled under
10716-522: The bill, which did allow for Irish MPs, was passed by a narrow majority in the Commons but went down to defeat in the overwhelmingly Conservative House of Lords . The Conservatives formed a new ministry. Gladstone's Tory successor in 1886, Lord Salisbury , believed his government should "leave Home Rule sleeping the sleep of the unjust". In 1887 Dublin Castle was given standing power to suspend habeas corpus . However, as Chief Secretary for Ireland , Salisbury's nephew Arthur Balfour determined upon
10857-575: The champion of the Ulster Farmers and Labourers Union. With the Cork City MP, William O'Brien , Russell helped initiate a programme that built some 40,000 one-acre labourer-owned cottages. During the constructivist 1890s, and before a Liberal government revived the prospects for home rule, unionists appeared more at ease with interest in Irish culture. The first Ulster branch of the Gaelic League
10998-612: The coalition government, announced his intention to declare Ireland a republic. The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 , which "described" the state as the Republic of Ireland (without changing its name or constitutional status), led the British government to pass the Ireland Act 1949 , which declared that Northern Ireland would continue as part of the United Kingdom unless the Parliament of Northern Ireland consented to leave; and Ireland ceased to be
11139-482: The constituencies represented by its four Assembly members. In 2001, it received 1,794 votes in the general election and 1,818 votes in the local elections . This fell to 1,350 in the 2003 Assembly election. Its share of the vote across Northern Ireland was around 0.2% in each case. The party's submission of accounts for 2004 stated that the party was "inactive" during this period and there is no evidence of subsequent activity. Wilson stood as an independent candidate in
11280-714: The continuation of their internment without trial by the newly formed Irish Free State - three men died during the 1923 Irish Hunger Strikes . De Valera, who had strongly supported the Republican anti-treaty side in the Civil War, reconsidered his views while in jail and came to accept the ideas of political activity under the terms of the Free State constitution. Rather than abstaining from Free State politics entirely, he now sought to republicanise it from within. However, he and his supporters – which included most Sinn Féin TDs – failed to convince
11421-528: The country and arms raids being carried out on a nightly basis. It was also feared that rebels would again seek military aid from French troops, and another rising was expected take place by 10 April. This perceived threat of further rebellion resulted in the Parliamentary Union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After some uncertainty, the Irish Parliament voted to abolish itself in
11562-482: The country to prepare republicans there. A proclamation of independence, addressed from 'The Provisional Government' to 'The People of Ireland' was produced by Emmet, echoing the republican sentiments expressed during the previous rebellion: You are now called on to show to the world that you are competent to take your place among nations, that you have a right to claim their recognisance of you, as an independent country ... We therefore solemnly declare, that our object
11703-562: The country. French soldiers landed in Killala on 22 August and participated in the fighting on the rebels' side. Even though they had considerable success against British forces in County Wexford , rebel forces were eventually defeated. Key figures in the organisation were arrested and executed. Though the Rebellion of 1798 was eventually put down, small republican guerrilla campaigns against
11844-476: The decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Irish parliament . Since Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an all-Ireland republic . Within the framework of the 1998 Belfast Agreement , which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in
11985-585: The devolved institutions, on the basis of new British government assurances they returned to the Assembly to form the first Northern Ireland government in which unionists are a minority. In the last decades of the Kingdom of Ireland (1542–1800), Protestants in public life advanced themselves as Irish Patriots. The focus of their patriotism was the Parliament in Dublin . Confined on a narrow franchise to landed members of
12126-584: The established Anglican communion (the Anglo-Irish " Protestant Ascendancy "), the parliament denied equal protection and public office to Dissenters (non-Anglican Protestants) and to the Kingdom's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority. The high point of this parliamentary patriotism was the formation during the American War of Independence , of the Irish Volunteers and, as that militia paraded in Dublin,
12267-421: The fact that in the last all Ireland election ( 1918 Irish general election ) counties Fermanagh and Tyrone had Sinn Féin/Nationalist Party (Irish Parliamentary Party) majorities. In 1921, Ireland was partitioned. Most of the country became part of the independent Irish Free State . However, six out of the nine counties of Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. During this time (1920–1922)
12408-493: The government of Great Britain sought to replace Irish politicians in the Irish parliament with pro-Union politicians, and rewards were granted to those that vacated their seats, with the result being that in the eighteen months prior to the decision in 1800, one-fifth of the Irish House of Commons changed its representation due to these activities and other factors such as death. It was also promised by Prime Minister William Pitt
12549-437: The hope that they might be assisted by republican France , these United Irishmen sought a revolutionary union of "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter" (i.e. of Catholics and Protestants of all persuasions). Their resolve was broken with the defeat of their uprising in 1798 , and by reports of rebel outrages against Protestant Loyalists in the South. The British government, which had had to deploy its own forces to suppress
12690-451: The island had occurred prior to the emergence of the Irish republican ideology. In the 1590s and early 1600s, resistance was led by Hugh O'Neill (see the Nine Years' War ). The Irish chieftains were ultimately defeated, leading to their exile (the ' Flight of the Earls ') and the aforementioned Plantation of Ulster in 1609. In Europe, prior to the 18th and 19th centuries, republics were in
12831-505: The island. The Tudor conquest of Ireland took place in the 16th century. This included the Plantations of Ireland , in which the lands held by Gaelic Irish clans and Hiberno-Norman dynasties were confiscated and given to Protestant settlers ("Planters") from England and Scotland . The Plantation of Ulster began in 1609, and the province was heavily colonised with English and Scottish settlers. Campaigns against English presence on
12972-502: The largest women's political organisation in Ireland. Elizabeth McCracken noted the failure of unionist women to formulate "any demand on their own behalf or that of their own sex". Yet in September 1913 McCracken was celebrating a "marriage of unionism and women's suffrage". Following reports that the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU) would begin organising in Ulster, the secretary of Ulster Unionist Council had informed
13113-458: The law of God [ 'laws of morality'] to the commands of my superior officers; and that I shall preserve inviolable secrecy regarding all the transactions [ 'affairs'] of this secret society that may be confided in me. So help me God! Amen. The Fenian Brotherhood was the IRB's counterpart organisation, formed in the same year in the United States by O'Mahony and Doheny. The Fenian Brotherhood's main purpose
13254-596: The leadership of the tenant-right movement men, like the Rev. James Armour of Ballymoney , who were at best agnostic on the union, while in the west of the province (in counties Armagh , Cavan , Fermanagh and Tyrone ) even Orangemen had started joining the Land League. The final and decisive shift in favour of constitutional concessions came in the wake of the Third Reform Act of 1884 . The near-universal admission to
13395-724: The leadership of unionism. Together with R. Lindsay Crawford and their Independent Orange Order , Sloan supported dock and linen-mill workers, led by the syndicalist James Larkin , in the great Belfast Lockout of 1907 . In July 1912, loyalists forced some 3,000 workers out of the shipyards and engineering plants in Belfast. Unlike previous incidents, the expellees included not only Catholics but also some 600 Protestants, targeted mainly because they were seen to support labour organising across sectarian lines. The unionist press depicted any connection with either British Labour (who had held their first party conference in Belfast in 1907) or with
13536-416: The likes of John Locke and Thomas Paine , they initially propagated parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation . Degradation in the legal achievement of these outcomes, coupled with the burgeoning perception of England as a foreign conqueror, inspired revolutionary sentiment and eventual action. At this stage, the movement was led primarily by liberal Protestants, particularly Presbyterians from
13677-491: The link between Ireland and Great Britain were weakened or severed". That same link was critical for all those employed in the great export industries of the North—textiles, engineering, shipbuilding. For these the Irish hinterland was less important than the industrial triangle that linked Belfast and region with Clydeside and the north of England. Yet the most popular summary of case against Irish self-government remained
13818-401: The manufacturers and merchants of Belfast and neighbouring industrial districts could generally count on voting with the majority of their own workforce. But the loyalty of the Protestant worker was not unconditional. In the mind of many working-class unionists there was no contradiction between the defence of Protestant principle and political radicalism, "indeed, these were often seen as one and
13959-621: The measure. In 1891 Ulster's Liberal Unionists , part of a larger Liberal break with Gladstone, entered Saunderson's Irish Unionist Alliance , and at Westminster took the Conservative whip . In 1892, despite bitter division over the personally compromised leadership of Parnell, the Nationalists were able to help Gladstone to a third ministry. The result was a second Home Rule bill . It was greeted by an Ulster opposition more highly developed and better organised. A great Ulster Unionist Convention
14100-657: The message broadcast in a "great revival" of the Orange Order — "Home Rule means Rome Rule ". In the north, the competition represented by the growing numbers of Catholics arriving at mill and factory gates had already given the once largely rural (and Anglican ) Orange Order a new lease among Protestant workers. The pattern, in itself, was not unique to Belfast and its satellites. Glasgow , Manchester , Liverpool and other British centres experiencing large-scale Irish immigration developed similar Orange and nativist ward and workplace politics with which unionists—organised in
14241-471: The movement opposed to this outcome are often referred to as dissident republicans . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century, Ireland, or parts of it, had experienced alternating degrees of rule from England. While some of the native Gaelic population attempted to resist this occupation, a single, unified political goal did not exist amongst the independent lordships that existed throughout
14382-521: The name "Irish Republican Army" was first used. These attacks (and those that followed) in Canada are collectively known as the " Fenian raids ". Irish republican and other independence movements were suppressed by the British authorities following the merging of Ireland with Britain into the United Kingdom after the Act of Union in 1801 . Nationalist rebellions against British rule in 1803, by Robert Emmet, 1848 (by
14523-625: The need to consider how Catholics in Northern Ireland could be integrated into its civic and political life, it prorogued the parliament in Belfast. Over the ensuing three decades of The Troubles , unionists divided in their responses to power-sharing proposals presented, in consultation with the Republic of Ireland , by successive British governments. Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement , under which both republican and loyalist paramilitaries committed to permanent ceasefires, unionists accepted principles of joint office and parallel consent in
14664-601: The newly formed Northern Ireland saw "savage and unprecedented" communal violence between unionists and nationalists (see The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922) ). In the 1921 elections in Northern Ireland: This territory of Northern Ireland, as established by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 , had its own provincial government which was controlled for 50 years until 1972 by the conservative Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The tendency to vote on sectarian lines and
14805-495: The north, George Ensor , observed that this broke the link between Catholic inclusion and democratic reform. In Ulster, resistance to O'Connell's appeal was stiffened by a religious revival. With its emphasis upon "personal witness", the New Reformation appeared to transcend the ecclesiastical differences between the different Protestant denominations. while launching them into "a far more conscious sense of separateness from
14946-538: The old-fashioned Tories of the Counties ... modern Conservatives ... Orangemen ... All these various elements—Whig, Liberal, Radical, Presbyterian, Episcopalian , Unitarian and Methodist ... united as one man." While references to Catholics were conciliatory the Convention resolved: to retain unchanged our present position as an integral portion of the United Kingdom, and protest in the most unequivocal manner against
15087-538: The passage of any measure that would rob us of our inheritance in the Imperial Parliament, under the protection of which our capital has been invested and our home and rights safeguarded; that we record our determination to have nothing to do with a Parliament certain to be controlled by men responsible for the crime and outrage of the Land League . . . many of whom have shown themselves the ready instrument of clerical domination. After mammoth parliamentary sessions
15228-594: The period, found in Disputatio Apologetica , written in Lisbon in 1645 by Fr. Conor O'Mahony , a Jesuit priest from Munster, argued instead for a Gaelic monarchy to be set up in an explicitly Catholic Ireland, with no mention of a republic. The origin of modern Irish republicanism exists in the ideology and action of the United Irishmen. Founded in 1791 and informed by the Enlightenment , popular sovereignty and
15369-459: The popularity of the republican ideals in Ireland and repression of republican political expressions by the British government, led to widespread support across Ireland for the Irish rebels. In 1921, the British government led by David Lloyd George negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty with republican leaders led by Arthur Griffith who had been delegated as plenipotentiaries on behalf of
15510-535: The press in Britain to describe members of the Repeal Association (a group campaigning for the repeal of the Acts of Union 1800 which joined the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain) who were involved with the Irish nationalist newspaper The Nation . Encouraging the repeal of the Acts of Union, members of the Young Ireland movement advocated the removal of British authority from Ireland and
15651-642: The proportions of each religious denomination ensured that there would never be a change of government. In local government, constituency boundaries were drawn to divide nationalist communities into two or even three constituencies and so weaken their effect (see Gerrymandering ). The (mainly Catholic) Nationalist population in Northern Ireland, besides feeling politically alienated, was also economically alienated, often with worse living standards compared to their Protestant (mainly Unionist) neighbours, with fewer job opportunities, and living in ghettos in Belfast , Derry, Armagh and other places. Many Catholics considered
15792-436: The province of Ulster . The founding members of the United Irishmen were mainly Southern Irish Protestant aristocrats. The key founders included Wolfe Tone , Thomas Russell , Henry Joy McCracken , James Napper Tandy , and Samuel Neilson . By 1797, the Society of United Irishmen had around 100,000 members. Crossing the religious divide in Ireland, it had a mixed membership of Catholics, Presbyterians, and even Anglicans from
15933-569: The re-establishment of the Irish Parliament in Dublin. The group had cultural aims also, and encouraged the study of Irish history and the revival of the Irish language . Influential Young Irelanders included Charles Gavan Duffy , Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon , the three founders of The Nation . The Young Irelanders eventually seceded from the Repeal Association. The leader of the Repeal Association, Daniel O'Connell , opposed
16074-465: The rebellion in Ireland and to turn back and defeat French intervention, decided on a union with Great Britain. Provision for Catholic emancipation was dropped from the Act of Union pushed with difficulty through the parliament in Dublin. While a separate Irish executive in Dublin was retained, representation, still wholly Protestant, was transferred to Westminster . In the Presbyterian north east
16215-485: The rising broke down into rioting, which ensued sporadically throughout the night. Emmet escaped and hid for some time in the Wicklow Mountains and Harold's Cross , but was captured on 25 August and hanged on 20 September 1803, at which point the Society of United Irishmen was effectively finished. The Young Ireland movement began in the late 1830s. The term 'Young Ireland' was originally a derogatory one, coined by
16356-693: The said Republic and one could exercise his office on land and the other at sea." These proposals were approved by Philip IV and forwarded to Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia in Brussels. As the Anglo-Spanish War became more tepid, the plans were never put into practice. A decade later, the Irish Rebellion of 1641 began. This consisted of a coalition between the Irish Gaels and the Old English (descendants of
16497-573: The same association as O'Connell and his supporters. After some protest, the Young Irelanders left Conciliation Hall and the Repeal Association forever, founding the Irish Confederation 13 January 1847 after negotiations for a reunion had failed. The Young Ireland movement culminated in a failed uprising (see Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 ), which, influenced by the French Revolution of 1848 and further provoked by government inaction during
16638-497: The same because it was the wealthy who were most prone to conciliation and treachery". Exercising the new workingman's vote , in 1868 loyalists in Belfast had chosen their own "Conservative", rejecting a millowner and returning an evangelical Orangeman, William Johnston , to Westminster. Johnston proceeded to propose and vote for labour protection , tenant right , the secret ballot and woman's suffrage In 1902, Johnston's successor as MP for South Belfast , Thomas Sloan , again
16779-541: The securing in 1782 of the parliament's legislative independence from the British government in London. In the north-east, combinations of Presbyterian tradesmen, merchants, and tenant farmers protested against the unrepresentative parliament and against an executive in Dublin Castle still appointed, through the office of the Lord Lieutenant , by English ministers. Seeing little prospect of further reform and in
16920-531: The services of Carson, from 1892 MP for Trinity College Dublin and supported him from 1910 as leader of the Irish Unionist parliamentary party. But marshalled by Captain James Craig , a millionaire director of Belfast's Dunville Whiskey , it was northern employers who undertook the real political and organisational work. Unlike the southern landowners who were politically opposed by their Catholic tenants,
17061-413: The southern Protestant Charles Stewart Parnell . In 1881, in a further Land Act , Gladstone conceded the three F's —fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure. Recognising that "the land grievance had been a bond of discontent between Ulster and the rest of Ireland and in that sense a danger to the union", Irish Conservatives did not oppose the measure. Protestants in the eastern counties had admitted to
17202-411: The suffrage of male heads of household tripled the electorate in Ireland. The 1885 election returned an IPP, now under the leadership of Parnell, of 85 Members (including 17 from Ulster where Conservatives and Liberals split the unionist vote). Gladstone, whose Liberals lost all 15 of their Irish seats, was able to form his second ministry only with their Commons support. In June 1886, Gladstone tabled
17343-684: The support of the grassroots membership of the UKUP, but McCartney disputed this. Subsequently, Hutchinson left the NIUP on 30 November 1999, sitting as an independent Unionist for a period before joining the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). He then left the DUP and unsuccessfully contested the 2003 Assembly Election as an independent Unionist. The NIUP opposed the Belfast Agreement and the reformation of
17484-566: The support of the splinter Liberal Unionist Party , Salisbury returned to office in 1895. The Land Act of 1896 introduced for the first time the principle of compulsory sale to tenants, through its application was limited to bankrupt estates. "You would suppose", said Sir Edward Carson , Dublin barrister and the leading spokesman for Irish Conservatives, "that the Government were revolutionists verging on Socialism". Having been first obliged to surrender their hold on local government (transferred at
17625-502: The tradition of republican funerals , a ritual instrumental as evidenced by the oration at Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa's funeral . Popular perception elsewhere deemed the movement as terrorisitic – a persistent perception of republicanism thereafter. Nevertheless, the likes of Rossa would raise the public profile of the movement by their evocation of martyrdom and highlighting of prisoner maltreatment. Support from America proved both lucrative and troublesome as transatlantic members waged
17766-480: The traditions of Irish Boards by announcing that its aim was to "be in touch with public opinion of the classes whom its work concerns, and to rely largely for its success upon their active assistance and cooperation". It supported and encouraged dairy cooperatives, the Creameries, that were to be an important institution in the emergence of a new class of independent smallholders. Greater reform followed when, with
17907-652: The uprising of 1848 and fleeing to avoid capture. O'Mahony left France for America in the mid-1850s and founded the Emmet Monument Association with Michael Doheny . Stephens returned to Ireland in 1856. The original oath of the society, drawn up by Luby under Stephens' direction, read: I, AB., do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will do my utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to make [other versions, according to Luby, establish in'] Ireland an independent Democratic Republic; that I will yield implicit obedience, in all things not contrary to
18048-423: The use of physical force to enact repeal, and passed 'peace resolutions' declaring that violence and force were not to be employed. Though the Young Irelanders did not support the use of violence, the writers of The Nation maintained that the introduction of these peace resolutions was poorly timed, and that to declare outright that physical force would never be used was 'to deliver themselves bound hand and foot to
18189-517: The whole of Ireland. The new state was headed by a President of Ireland elected by universal suffrage. The new Constitution removed all reference to the monarchy but foreign diplomats continued to present their credentials to the King in accordance with the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 which had not been repealed. The new state had the objective characteristics of a republic and
18330-486: Was a success. A third option was to resolve the conflict between the two factions before an invasion by making them family, with a marriage proposed between Hugh O'Donnell's sister Mary Stuart O'Donnell and Shane O'Neill, but this broke down. Ministers in Madrid , to Philip IV of Spain , instead drew up proposals on 27 December 1627 for a "Kingdom and Republic of Ireland" and that "the earls should be called Captains General of
18471-615: Was a turning point in Irish history, leading to the War of Independence and the end of British rule in most of Ireland. From 1919 to 1921 the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was organised as a guerrilla army, led by Richard Mulcahy and with Michael Collins as Director of Intelligence and fought against the British. During the Anglo-Irish War , the British government formed a paramilitary police force consisting of former soldiers, known as
18612-457: Was constituted, they believed that an Irish parliament would (egged on by the "American Irish") enter into conflicts with the "imperial parliament" in London that could only be resolved through "complete separation". The upper and middle classes found in Britain and the Empire "a wide range of profitable careers--in the army, in the public services, in commerce--from which they might be shut out if
18753-506: Was defeated in the Lords, but as result of the crisis engendered by the opposition of the peers to the 1910 People's Budget the Lords now only had the power of delay. Home Rule would become law in 1914. There had long been discussion of giving "an option to Ulster". As early as 1843, The Northern Whig reasoned that if differences in ethnicity ("race") and interests argue for Ireland's separation from Great Britain, they could as easily argue for
18894-467: Was formed in 1895 in east Belfast under the patronage of the Rev. John Baptiste Crozier and Dr. John St Clair Boyd , both avowed unionists, and of the Orange Order Grand Master, the Rev. Richard Rutledge Kane . But for many Irish unionists the chief-secretaryship of George Wyndham was "a last straw". In February 1905, they learned that his undersecretary, Sir Anthony MacDonnell ,
19035-625: Was held in Belfast organised by the Liberal Unionist Thomas Sinclair , whom the press noted had been a critic of Orangeism. Speakers and observers dwelt on the diversity of creed, class and party represented among the 12,300 delegates attending. As reported by the Northern Whig there were "the old tenant-righters of the 'sixties' ... the sturdy reformers of Antrim ... the Unitarians of Down, always progressive in their politics ...
19176-590: Was not the choice of employers. The campaign of the Belfast Protestant Association candidate was marked by what his opponents considered a classic piece of bigotry. Sloan protested the exemption of Catholic convents from inspection by the Hygiene Commission (the Catholic Church should not be "a state within a state"). But it was as a trade unionist that he criticised the "fur-coat brigade" in
19317-426: Was now called the Sinn Féin policy. This meeting is usually taken as the date of the foundation of the Sinn Féin party. In 1916 the Easter Rising , organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood , was launched in Dublin and the Irish Republic was proclaimed, albeit without significant popular support. The Rising was suppressed after six days, and most of its leaders were executed by the British authorities. This
19458-420: Was now disagreement as to how and where this rebellion might be carried out. Roberts' faction preferred focusing all military efforts on British Canada (Roberts and his supporters theorised that victory for the American Fenians in nearby Canada would propel the Irish republican movement as a whole to success). The other, headed by O'Mahony, proposed that a rising in Ireland be planned for 1866. In spite of this,
19599-454: Was referred to as such by de Valera himself, but, it remained within the British Commonwealth and was regarded by the British as a Dominion, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Furthermore, the claim to the whole of the island did not reflect practical reality and inflamed anti-Dublin sentiment among northern Protestants. In 1948, Fianna Fáil went out of office for the first time in sixteen years. John A. Costello , leader of
19740-484: Was to be the high point of mobilisation in Ulster against Home Rule, the Covenant Campaign of September 1912, the unionist leadership decided that men alone could not speak for the determination of the unionist people to defend "their equal citizenship in the United Kingdom". Women were asked to sign, not the Covenant whose commitment to "all means which may be found necessary" implied a readiness to bear arms, but their own Associate Declaration. A total of 234,046 women signed
19881-477: Was to supply weapons and funds for its Irish counterpart and raise support for the Irish republican movement in the United States. The term "Fenian" was coined by O'Mahony, who named the American wing of the movement after the Fianna – a class of warriors that existed in Gaelic Ireland . The term became popular and is still in use, especially in Northern Ireland and Scotland, where it has expanded to refer to all Irish nationalists and republicans, as well as being
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