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138-655: The Irish National League (INL) was a nationalist political party in Ireland . It was founded on 17 October 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell as the successor to the Irish National Land League after this was suppressed. Whereas the Land League had agitated for land reform , the National League also campaigned for self-government or Irish Home Rule , further enfranchisement and economic reforms. The League

276-551: A Quaker neighbour who had been a United Irishman and had laughed at the idea that the issue was kings and governments. What mattered was the land from which the people got their bread. Instead of singing the La Marseillaise , he said that what the men of '98 should have borrowed from the French was "their sagacious idea of bundling the landlords out of doors and putting tenants in their shoes". But Duffy's objection to "Lalor's theory"

414-546: A Viceroy of Irish birth, would content the country... Such a parliament would inevitably establish Tenant Right, abolish the Established Church..., and endeavour to settle the claims of labour upon some solid and satisfactory basis. But one step further in the direction of Revolution... it would not go. Other peoples in Europe had been protected from starvation because their rulers were "of their own blood and race". That this

552-622: A devolved Irish parliament within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . The first two Irish Home Rule Bills were put before the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1886 and 1893, but they were bitterly resisted and the second bill ultimately defeated in the Conservative's pro- Unionist majority controlled House of Lords . Following the fall and death of Parnell in 1891 after

690-544: A " National Petition " for a referendum on repeal of the union; in 1861 Daniel O'Donoghue submitted the 423,026 signatures to no effect. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and Fenian Brotherhood were set up in Ireland and the United States, respectively, in 1858 by militant republicans, including Young Irelanders . The latter dissolved into factions after organising unsuccessful raids on Canada by Irish veterans of

828-519: A breach came when Duffy through an open letter in The Nation Duffy pressed O'Connell to affirm Repeal as his object. While insisting he would "never ask for or work" for anything less than an independent legislature, O'Connell had suggested he might accept a "subordinate parliament" (an Irish legislature with powers devolved from Westminster) as "an instalment". A further, and more serious, rift opened with Davis. Davis had himself been negotiating

966-567: A broader vision. In the journal's prospectus, Davis wrote of a "nationality" as ready to embrace "the stranger who is within our gates" as "the Irishman of a hundred generations". Davis (conscious of his family's Cromwellian origin) was persuaded by Johann Gottfried von Herder : nationality was not a matter of ancestry or blood but of acclimatising influences. Cultural traditions, and above all language, "the organ of thought", could engender in persons of diverse origin common national feeling. Davis

1104-579: A committee to adjust the dispute between Old and Young Ireland had been rejected by John O'Connell in reportedly "very saucy and unbecoming language". An offer of mediation from the abolitionist and pacifist James Haughton was also spurned. The Young Irelanders withdrew from the Repeal Association, but not without considerable support. In October 1846, the Association chairman in Dublin was presented with

1242-482: A concerted campaign for self-government. Mass nationalist mobilisation began when Isaac Butt 's Home Rule League (which had been founded in 1873 but had little following) adopted social issues in the late 1870s – especially the question of land redistribution. Michael Davitt (an IRB member) founded the Irish Land League in 1879 during an agricultural depression to agitate for tenant's rights. Some would argue

1380-512: A consciousness of dispossession and defeat at the hands of British and Protestant forces, became enduring features of Irish nationalism. However, the Irish Catholic movements of the 16th century were invariably led by a small landed and clerical elite. Professor Kevin Whelan has traced the emergence of the modern Catholic-nationalist identity that formed in 1760–1830. Irish historian Marc Caball , on

1518-557: A disarmed people was little short of insanity. James Connolly , however, was to argue that the response to arrest the Young Ireland leaders suggests that in the towns, people would have taken to arms if only the signal been given. He writes that when Duffy was arrested on July 9, Dublin workers surrounded the military escort, pressed up to Duffy and offered to begin an insurrection then and there. “Do you wish to be rescued?” “Certainly not,” said Duffy. In Cashel , Tipperary, people stormed

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1656-666: A divorce crisis, which enabled the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy to pressure MPs to drop Parnell as their leader, the Irish Party split into two factions, the INL and the INF , becoming practically ineffective from 1892 to 1898. Only after the passing of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 which granted extensive power to previously non-existent county councils, allowing nationalists for

1794-406: A few lines out to The Nation but the issue that would have carried his declaration, that there was no remedy now but the sword, was seized and the paper suppressed. Planning for an insurrection had already advanced. Mitchel, although the first to call for action, had scoffed at the necessity for systematic preparation. O'Brien, to Duffy's surprise, attempted the task. In March he had returned from

1932-772: A guerilla war broke out between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) (as the Irish Volunteers were now calling themselves) and the British security forces (See Irish War of Independence ) . The campaign created tensions between the political and military sides of the nationalist movement. The IRA, nominally subject to the Dáil, in practice, often acted on its own initiative. At the top, the IRA leadership, of Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy , operated with little reference to Cathal Brugha ,

2070-473: A means of putting pressure on parliament. Coinciding as it did with the extension of the franchise in British politics – and with it the opportunity for most Irish Catholics to vote – Parnell's party quickly became an important player in British politics. Home Rule was favoured by William Ewart Gladstone , but opposed by many in the British Liberal and Conservative parties. Home Rule would have meant

2208-540: A million. With its focus upon editorials, historical articles and verse, all intended to shape public opinion, copies continued to be read in Repeal Reading Rooms and to be passed from hand to hand long after their current news value had faded. It may have been a "reinforcement for which O’Connell had scarcely dared to hope", but the journal's role in the revived fortunes of the Repeal Association has to be weighed against other contributions. Legislative independence

2346-418: A partition amendment. Redmond rejected their proposals. The amended Home Rule Act was passed and placed with Royal Assent on the statute books, but was suspended after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, until the end of the war. This led radical republican groups to argue that Irish independence could never be won peacefully and gave the northern question little thought at all. The Irish Volunteer movement

2484-462: A political tradition that favours an independent, united Ireland achieved by non-violent means. The more militant strand of nationalism, as espoused by Sinn Féin , is generally described as "republican" and was regarded as somewhat distinct, although the modern-day party is a constitutional party committed to exclusively peaceful and democratic means. 55.8% of voters in Northern Ireland voted for

2622-512: A public outpouring, the government commuted their death sentences to penal transportation to Van Diemen's Land , where they joined John Mitchel . Duffy alone escaped conviction. Thanks to a token Catholic juror whose character the government had misjudged, and able defence of Isaac Butt , Duffy was released in February 1849, the only major Young Ireland leader to remain in Ireland. In a judgement shared by many of their sympathisers, John Devoy ,

2760-655: A purely defensive body, under Connolly's leadership, the ICA became a revolutionary body, dedicated to an independent Workers Republic in Ireland. After the outbreak of the First World War, Connolly became determined to launch an insurrection to this end. Home Rule was eventually won by John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party and granted under the Third Home Rule Act 1914 . However, Irish self-government

2898-592: A reconvening of the College Historical Society in Dublin. The club at Trinity College had a history, stretching back through the student participation of the United Irishmen Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet to Edmund Burke , of debating patriotic motions. Not for the first time, the club had been expelled from college for breaching the condition that it not discuss questions of "modern politics". Those present for meeting in

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3036-536: A remonstrance protesting Young Irelanders exclusion signed by fifteen hundred of the city's leading citizens. When John O’Connell ordered this to be flung into the gutter, a large protest meeting was held, suggesting the possibility for a rival organisation. In January 1847, the seceders formed themselves as the Irish Confederation . Michael Doheny recalls "no declarations or calls for rebellion, and no pledges [given] of peace". The objectives were "independence of

3174-532: A republic, but with the formation of tenant protection societies they were beginning to see value in an open and legal combination for furtherance of their interests. Seeking to link the new tenant agitation to his vision of an independent parliamentary party, in August 1850 Duffy, with James McKnight , William Sharman Crawford and Frederick Lucas , moved the formation of an all-Ireland Tenant Right League . In addition to tenant representatives, among those gathered for

3312-450: A sizeable portion of the country, particularly in the north, was Protestant and chiefly descended from people of Great Britain who colonised the land as settlers during the reign of King James I in 1609. Partition was along these ethno-religious lines, with most of Ireland gaining independence, while six northern counties remained part of the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists support Irish reunification . Generally, Irish nationalism

3450-752: A visit to revolutionary Paris with hopes of French assistance. (Among the leading republicans in France, Ledru-Rollin had been loud in his declaration of French support for the Irish cause). There was also talk of an Irish-American brigade and of a Chartist diversion in England (Allied with the Chartists, the Confederation had a relatively strong organised presence in Liverpool , Manchester and Salford ). With Duffy's arrest, it

3588-412: Is a nationalist political movement which, in its broadest sense, asserts that the people of Ireland should govern Ireland as a sovereign state . Since the mid-19th century, Irish nationalism has largely taken the form of cultural nationalism based on the principles of national self-determination and popular sovereignty . Irish nationalists during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries such as

3726-508: Is not an exaggeration to term it a social revolution, and it was the first large-scale rural public-housing scheme in the country, with up to a quarter of a million housed under the Labourers Acts up to 1921, the majority erected by 1916", changing the face of rural Ireland. The combination of land reform and devolved local government gave Irish nationalists an economic political base on which to base their demands for self-government. Some in

3864-755: Is regarded as having emerged following the Renaissance revival of the concept of the patria and the religious struggle between the ideology of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation . At this early stage in the 16th century, Irish nationalism represented an ideal of the native Gaelic Irish and the Old English banding together in common cause, under the banner of Catholicism and Irish civic identity ("faith and fatherland"), hoping to protect their land and interests from

4002-490: The 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election , Sinn Féin won the highest number of seats, the first time a nationalist party had done so in Northern Ireland's 101-year history. This resulted in the Assembly's first nationalist First Minister, Michelle O'Neill being selected in February 2024. Young Ireland Young Ireland ( Irish : Éire Óg , IPA: [ˈeːɾʲə ˈoːɡ] ) was a political and cultural movement in

4140-648: The All-for-Ireland Party as well as Sinn Féin and other national bodies. It resulted in the Conscription Crisis of 1918 . In May at the height of the crisis 73 prominent Sinn Féiners were arrested on the grounds of an alleged German Plot . Both these events contributed to a widespread rise in support for Sinn Féin and the Volunteers. The Armistice ended the war in November, and was followed by elections. In

4278-577: The American Civil War , and the IRB launched Clan na Gael as a replacement. In Ireland itself, the IRB tried an armed revolt in 1867 but, as it was heavily infiltrated by police informers, the rising was a failure. In the late 19th century, Irish nationalism became the dominant ideology in Ireland, having a major Parliamentary party in the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster that launched

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4416-497: The Canadian Confederation ") Thomas D'Arcy McGee ; and the renowned Repeal orator Thomas Francis Meagher . It was an English journalist who first applied to this growing circle the label "Young Ireland". Although there was no direct connection, the reference was to Young Italy and to other European national-republican movements (Young Germany, Young Poland... ) that Giuseppe Mazzini had sought loosely to federate under

4554-508: The Celtic Revival , grew up in the late 19th century. Though largely initiated by artists and writers of Protestant or Anglo-Irish background, the movement nonetheless captured the imaginations of idealists from native Irish and Catholic background. Periodicals such as United Ireland , Weekly News , Young Ireland , and Weekly National Press (1891–92), became influential in promoting Ireland's native cultural identity. A frequent contributor,

4692-700: The Curragh Camp indicated that they would be unwilling to act against the Ulster Volunteers should they be ordered to. In response, Nationalists formed their own paramilitary group, the Irish Volunteers , to ensure the implementation of Home Rule. It looked for several months in 1914 as if civil war was imminent between the two armed factions. Only the All-for-Ireland League party advocated granting every conceivable concession to Ulster to stave off

4830-549: The General election of 1918 , Sinn Féin won 73 seats, 25 of these unopposed, or statistically nearly 70% of Irish representation, under the British " First past the post " voting-system, but had a minority representation in Ulster. They achieved a total of 476,087 (46.9%) of votes polled for 48 seats, compared to 220,837 (21.7%) votes polled by the IPP for only six seats, who due to the "first past

4968-601: The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. The Jacobites demanded that Irish Catholics have a majority in an autonomous Irish Parliament, the restoration of confiscated Catholic land, and an Irish-born Lord Deputy of Ireland . Similarly to the Confederates of the 1640s, the Jacobites were conscious of representing the "Irish nation" but were not separatists and largely represented the interests of the landed class as opposed to all

5106-575: The Home Rule League in 1873. Charles Stewart Parnell (somewhat paradoxically, a Protestant landowner) took over the Land League and used its popularity to launch the Irish National League in 1882 as a support basis for the newly formed Irish Parliamentary Party , to campaign for Home Rule . An important feature of Irish nationalism from the late 19th century onwards was a commitment to Gaelic Irish culture. A broad intellectual movement,

5244-609: The Irish Parliament , full rights for Catholics and an end to the confiscation of Catholic-owned land. However, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653) destroyed the Confederate cause and resulted in the permanent dispossession of the old Catholic landowning class. A similar Irish Catholic monarchist movement emerged in the 1680s and 1690s, when Irish Catholic Jacobites supported James II after his deposition in England in

5382-496: The Irish Patriot Party , led by Henry Grattan , who achieved substantial legislative independence in 1782–83 . Grattan and radical elements of the 'Irish Whig' party campaigned in the 1790s for Catholic political equality and reform of electoral rights. He wanted useful links with Britain to remain, best understood by his comment: 'The channel [ the Irish sea ] forbids union; the ocean forbids separation'. Grattan's movement

5520-601: The Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin. Connolly's party was small and unsuccessful in elections, but his fusion of socialism and Irish republicanism was to have a sustained impact on republican thought. In 1913, during the general strike known as the Dublin Lockout , Connolly and James Larkin formed a workers militia, the Irish Citizen Army , to defend strikers from the police. While initially

5658-757: The National Volunteers , and were among the 180,000 Irishmen who served in Irish regiments of the Irish 10th and 16th Divisions of the New British Army formed for the War. A minority of the Irish Volunteers, mostly led by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), refused to support the War and kept their arms to guarantee the passage of Home Rule. Within this grouping, another faction planned an insurrection against British rule in Ireland , while

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5796-766: The New English Protestant forces sponsored by England . This vision sought to overcome the old ethnic divide between Gaeil (the native Irish) and Gaill (the Normans) which had been a feature of Irish life since the 12th century, following the Norman invasion of Ireland . Protestantism in England introduced a religious element to the 16th-century Tudor conquest of Ireland , as many of the native Gaels and Hiberno-Normans remained Catholic. The Plantations of Ireland dispossessed many native Catholic landowners in favour of Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. In addition,

5934-542: The Pilot , recognised but one "positive and unmistakable" marker of the national distinction between English and Irish—religion. O'Connell "treasured his few Protestant Repealers", but he acknowledged the central role of the Catholic clergy in his movement and guarded the bond it represented. In 1812/13 he had refused emancipation conditioned on Rome having to seek royal assent in the appointment of Irish bishops. Throughout much of

6072-600: The Plantation of Ulster , which began in 1609, "planted" a sizeable population of English and Scottish Protestant settlers into the north of Ireland. Irish aristocrats waged many campaigns against the English presence. A prime example is the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill which became known as the Nine Years' War of 1594–1603, which aimed to expel the English and make Ireland a Spanish protectorate . A more significant movement came in

6210-547: The UK general election saw more nationalist MPs elected in Northern Ireland than unionist ones for the first time ever (nine nationalists and eight unionists). Two months later, Sinn Féin won the most votes in the 2020 Irish general election , thus ending 100 years of dominance in the Republic by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil , but still finished one seat behind the latter in the Daíl. Finally, at

6348-435: The United Irish League and the Irish National Federation (INF) to form a reunited Irish Parliamentary Party under Redmond's leadership returning 77 seats in the September 1900 general election , together with five Independent Nationalists , or Healyites , in all 82 pro-Home Rule seats. The National League maintained a code based on the writings of Young Irelander James Fintan Lalor which regulated transactions relating to

6486-429: The United Irishmen in the 1790s, Young Irelanders in the 1840s, the Fenian Brotherhood during the 1880s, Fianna Fáil in the 1920s, and Sinn Féin styled themselves in various ways after French left-wing radicalism and republicanism . Irish nationalism celebrates the culture of Ireland , especially the Irish language , literature, music, and sports. It grew more potent during the period in which all of Ireland

6624-437: The harp , and located its mass meetings in sites such as Tara and Clontarf which had a special resonance in Irish history. The Great Famine of 1845–1849 caused great bitterness among Irish people against the British government, which was perceived as having failed to avert the deaths of up to a million people. British support for the 1860 plebiscites on Italian unification prompted Alexander Martin Sullivan to launch

6762-416: The " Land War ", turned increasingly violent when Land Leaguers resisted attempts by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) to evict tenant farmers by force. This upheaval eventually resulted in the British government subsidising the sale of landlords' estates to their tenants in the Irish Land Acts authored by William O'Brien . It also provided a mass base for constitutional Irish nationalists who had founded

6900-411: The "Anti-Parnellite" Irish National Federation (INF) under John Dillon . John Redmond assumed the leadership of the minority Pro-Parnellite (INL) group who remained faithful to Parnell. Despite the split, in the 1892 general election the combined factions still retained the Irish nationalist pro-Home Rule vote and their 81 seats. Early in 1900, the Irish National League (INL) finally merged with

7038-440: The "League of North and South", however, was less than it appeared. Many of the MPs had been sitting Repealers who had broken with the Whig government over the Ecclesiastical Titles Act , and only one pledged MP, William Kirk for Newry , was returned from Ulster. After a modest land bill was defeated in the Lords, the " Independent Irish Party " began to unravel. Catholic Primate of Ireland , Archbishop Paul Cullen approved

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7176-441: The 1640s, after the Irish Rebellion of 1641 , when a coalition of Gaelic Irish and Old English Catholics set up a de facto independent Irish state to fight in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms ( see Confederate Irelan d ). The Confederate Catholics of Ireland, also known as the Confederation of Kilkenny, emphasised the idea of Ireland as a Kingdom independent from England, albeit under the same monarch. They demanded autonomy for

7314-406: The 1790s with the founding of the Society of the United Irishmen . It sought to end discrimination against Catholics and Presbyterians and to found an independent Irish republic. Most of the United Irish leaders were Catholic and Presbyterian and inspired by the French Revolution , wanted a society without sectarian divisions, the continuation of which they attributed to the British domination over

7452-425: The 1840s committed to an all-Ireland struggle for independence and democratic reform. Grouped around the Dublin weekly The Nation , it took issue with the compromises and clericalism of the larger national movement, Daniel O'Connell 's Repeal Association , from which it seceded in 1847. Despairing, in the face of the Great Famine , of any other course, in 1848 Young Irelanders attempted an insurrection. Following

7590-430: The British Parliament – particularly the repeal of Poynings' Law , which allowed the latter to legislate for Ireland. They were supported by popular sentiment that came from the various publications of William Molyneux about Irish constitutional independence; this was later reinforced by Jonathan Swift 's incorporation of these ideas into Drapier's Letters . Parliamentarians who wanted more self-government formed

7728-444: The British administration felt initially that paying for such a degree of land and housing reform amounted to an unofficial policy of "killing home rule by kindness", yet by 1914 some form of Home Rule for most of Ireland was guaranteed. This was shelved on the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. A new source of radical Irish nationalism developed in the same period in the cities outside Ulster . In 1896, James Connolly , founded

7866-521: The Confederates had no organised support in the countryside. Active membership was confined to the garrisoned towns. As O'Brien proceeded into Tipperary he was greeted by curious crowds, but found himself in command of only a few hundred ill-clad largely unarmed men. They scattered after their first skirmish with the constabulary, derisively referred to by The Times of London as "Battle of Widow McCormack's Cabbage Patch". O'Brien and his colleagues were quickly arrested and convicted of treason. Following

8004-516: The Dáil's Minister for Defence or Éamon de Valera , the President of the Irish Republic – at best giving them a supervisory role. At local level, IRA commanders such as Dan Breen , Sean Moylan , Tom Barry , Sean MacEoin , Liam Lynch and others avoided contact with the IRA command, let alone the Dáil itself. This meant that the violence of the War of Independence rapidly escalated beyond what many in Sinn Féin and Dáil were happy with. Arthur Griffith , for example, favoured passive resistance over

8142-429: The Fenians saw that they could use the groundswell of support for land reform to recruit nationalist support, this is the reason why the New Departure – a decision by the IRB to adopt social issues – occurred in 1879. Republicans from Clan na Gael (who were loath to recognise the British Parliament) saw this as an opportunity to recruit the masses to agitate for Irish self-government. This agitation, which became known as

8280-431: The IRB. In April 1916, just over a thousand dissident Volunteers and 250 members of the Citizen's Army launched the Easter Rising in the Dublin General Post Office and, in the Easter Proclamation , proclaimed the independence of the Irish Republic . The Rising was put down within a week, at a cost of about 500 killed, mainly unengaged civilians. Although the rising failed, Britain's General Maxwell executed fifteen of

8418-442: The Irish Party was in due course eclipsed by Sinn Féin – a hitherto small party which the British had (mistakenly) blamed for the Rising and subsequently taken over as a vehicle for Irish Republicanism. Two further attempts to implement Home Rule in 1916 and 1917 also failed when John Redmond, leader of the Irish Party, refused to concede partition while accepting there could be no coercion of Ulster. An Irish Convention to resolve

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8556-446: The Irish nation" with "no means to attain that end abjured, save such as were inconsistent with honour, morality and reason". As first directed by Duffy, in towns Confederate clubs were to encourage the use of Irish resources and manufactures, work for the extension of popular franchise, and instruct youth in the history of their country which was being kept from them in the government's National Schools. The village clubs were to promote

8694-427: The Irish people. Also similarly to the Confederates they suffered defeat, in the Williamite War in Ireland (1689–1691). Thereafter, the largely English Protestant Ascendancy dominated Irish government and landholding. The Penal Laws discriminated against non- Anglicans . ( See also History of Ireland 1536–1691 .) This coupling of religious and ethnic identity – principally Roman Catholic and Gaelic – as well as

8832-479: The Irish speaking areas or Gaeltachta í, where the language has continued to decline (see article ). However, these organisations attracted large memberships and were the starting point for many radical Irish nationalists of the early twentieth century, especially the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 such as Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett. The main aim was to emphasise an area of difference between Ireland and Germanic England, but most of

8970-465: The Land League had its direct roots in tenant associations formed in the period of agricultural prosperity during the government of Lord Palmerston in the 1850s and 1860s, who were seeking to strengthen the economic gains they had already made. Following the depression of 1879 and the subsequent fall in prices (and hence profits), these farmers were threatened with rising rents and eviction for failure to pay rents. In addition, small farmers, especially in

9108-470: The Melbourne administration, the 1840 municipal reform, had elected O'Connell to the Lord Mayoralty of Dublin. But with the Grand Jury system of county government untouched, it left the great majority of people to continue under the local tyranny of the landlords. In return for allowing a "corrupt gang of politicians who fawned on O'Connell" an extensive system of political patronage, the Irish people being "purchased back into factious vassalage". In June 1846

9246-474: The Presbyterians might have the Queens College proposed for Belfast; but the Queens colleges intended for Galway and Cork had to be Catholic. When Davis (moved to tears in the controversy) pleaded that "reasons for separate education are reasons for [a] separate life", O'Connell accused him of suggesting it a "crime to be a Catholic". "I am", he declared, "for Old Ireland, and I have some slight notion that Old Ireland will stand by me". O'Connell rarely joined

9384-437: The Repeal journal The Vindicator . Duffy proposed a new national weekly to Davis and Dillon, owned by himself but directed by all three. The paper first appeared in October in 1842 bearing the title chosen for it by Davis, The Nation, after the French liberal-opposition daily Le National . The prospectus, written by Davis, dedicated the paper "to direct the popular mind and the sympathies of educated men of all parties to

9522-446: The Rising's leaders, including Pearse, MacDonagh, Clarke and Connolly, and arrested some 3,000 political activists which led to widespread public sympathy for the rebel's cause. Following this example, physical force republicanism became increasingly powerful and, for the following seven years or so, became the dominant force in Ireland, securing substantial independence but at a cost of dividing Ireland . The Irish Parliamentary Party

9660-431: The Union, or Irish self-government under the Crown. Catholic Emancipation was achieved, but self-government was not. O'Connell's movement was more explicitly Catholic than its eighteenth-century predecessors. It enjoyed the support of the Catholic clergy, who had denounced the United Irishmen and reinforced the association between Irish identity and Catholicism. The Repeal Association used traditional Irish imagery, such as

9798-458: The United Kingdom to remain a part of the European Union in the 23 June 2016 referendum in which the country as a whole voted to leave the union. The results in Northern Ireland were influenced by fears of a strong border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as well as by fears of a hard border breaking the Good Friday Agreement . Three significant events occurred in December 2019, February 2020 and May 2022, respectively. First,

9936-652: The United States "of republicanism and slavery". He had also criticised Pope Gregory XVI over the treatment of Jews in the Papal States . Conscious of the risk to American funding and support, Duffy himself had difficulty with O'Connell's vocal abolitionism: the time was not right, he suggested, "for gratuitous interference in American affairs". In articles written for the New York-based Nation , Mitchel espoused proslavery thought and opposed Jewish emancipation in

10074-450: The United States. His views were similar to many other Young Ireland émigrés such as Thomas D'Arcy McGee , who defended American slavery while espousing Irish nationalism. In February 1848 Mitchel established a paper of his own. Under its title The United Irishman he placed Wolfe Tone 's declaration: "Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by

10212-419: The War was going on. Critical in this regard were Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Thomas Clarke. These men were part of an inner circle that were operating in secret within the ranks of the IRB to plan this rising unknown to the rest of the volunteers. James Connolly, the labour leader, first intended to launch his own insurrection for an Irish Socialist Republic decided early in 1916 to combine forces with

10350-577: The Whigs, under Lord John Russell , returned to office. Immediately they set about dismantling Peel's limited, but practical, efforts to relieve the gathering Irish Famine . Barricaded behind laissez-faire doctrines of "political economy", the government left O'Connell to plead for his country from the floor of the House of Commons : "She is in your hands—in your power. If you do not save her, she cannot save herself. One-fourth of her population will perish unless Parliament comes to their relief". A broken man, on

10488-563: The Whiteboys and Ribbonmen, were attacking process servers, intimidating land agents, and resisting evictions. Lalor advised only against a general uprising: the people, he believed, could not hold their own against the country's English garrison. The letters made a profound impression, particularly on John Mitchel and Father John Kenyon . When the conservative Standard observed that the new Irish railways could be used to transport troops to quickly curb agrarian unrest, Mitchel responded that

10626-503: The Young Irelanders acknowledged that the risk of a massacre on many times the scale of "Peterloo" was unacceptable. Pressing what they imagined was their advantage, the government had O'Connell, his son John and Duffy convicted of sedition. When after three months (the charges quashed on appeal to the House of Lords ) they were released, it was Davis and O'Brien who staged O'Connell's triumphal reception in Dublin. The first sign of

10764-468: The Young Irelanders in invoking the memory of 1798 , the union of "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter". His one Repeal foray to the Presbyterian north (to Belfast), organised by Duffy in 1841, was cut short by hostile demonstrations. For the key to an Irish parliament, O'Connell looked to liberal England, not Protestant Ulster. Once a parliament restored to Dublin had retired their distinctive privileges, he

10902-438: The Young Irelanders were not advocating physical force, if Repeal could not be carried by moral persuasion and peaceful means they believed a resort to arms would be a no less honourable course. In his O'Connell's absence, his son John forced the decision: the resolution was carried on the threat of the O'Connells themselves quitting the Association. An offer by United Irish veteran, Valentine Lawless (Lord Cloncurry) to chair

11040-449: The advice of his doctors O'Connell took himself to the continent where, on route to Rome, he died in May 1847. In the months before O'Connell's death, Duffy circulated letters received from James Fintan Lalor . In these Lalor argued independence could be pursued only in a popular struggle for the land. This alone could bring about a union of North and South, without which separation from England

11178-532: The aegis of "Young Europe" ( Giovine Europa ). When O'Connell picked up on the moniker and began referring to those he had considered his junior lieutenants as "Young Irelanders" it was a signal for an impending break. The Nation was loyal to O'Connell when, in October 1843, he stood down the Repeal movement at Clontarf . The government had deployed troops and artillery to enforce a ban on what O'Connell had announced as

11316-575: The aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of no property". The paper boldly advocated Lalor's policy. In May, as its publisher, Mitchel was convicted of a new crime of treason felony and sentenced to transportation for 14 years to the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island in the " Imperial fortress " of Bermuda (imprisoned in the Prison hulk HMS Dromedary ), and Van Diemen's Land . Duffy recalled from his youth

11454-411: The arrest and the exile of most of their leading figures, the movement split between those who carried the commitment to "physical force" forward into the Irish Republican Brotherhood , and those who sought to build a "League of North and South" linking an independent Irish parliamentary party to tenant agitation for land reform. Many of those later identified as Young Ireland first gathered in 1839 at

11592-637: The chambers of Francis Kearney were, in Irish terms, a "mixed" group. They included Catholics (first admitted to Trinity in 1793), among them Thomas MacNevin , elected the Society's president, and (later to follow him in that role) John Blake Dillon . Chief among the other future Young Irelanders present were law graduate Thomas Davis , and the Newry attorney John Mitchel . With others present, these four would go to join Daniel O'Connell 's Repeal Association . In 1840 this

11730-509: The conflict (compared to c. 400 until then). For the first hundred years of its existence, Northern Ireland had a unionist majority, but had a large nationalist minority who would prefer to be part of a united Ireland . In Northern Ireland, the term "nationalist" is used to refer either to the Catholic population in general or to the supporters of the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party . "Nationalism" in this restricted meaning refers to

11868-538: The country the bishops and their priests were the only figures of standing independent of the government around which a national movement could organise. It was a reality on which the Repeal Association, like the Catholic Association before it, was built. In 1845 O'Connell, in advance of the bishops, denounced a "mixed" non-denominational scheme for tertiary education. The Anglicans could retain Trinity in Dublin;

12006-727: The country. They were sponsored by the French Republic , which was then the enemy of the Holy See . The United Irishmen led the Irish Rebellion of 1798 , which was repressed with great bloodshed. As a result, the Irish Parliament voted to abolish itself in the Act of Union of 1800 –01 and thereafter Irish Members of Parliament sat in London. Two forms of Irish nationalism arose from these events. One

12144-526: The deadlock was established in July 1917 by the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George , its members both nationalists and unionists tasked with finding a means of implementing Home Rule. However, Sinn Féin refused to take part in the convention as it refused to discuss the possibility of full Irish independence. The Ulster unionists led by Edward Carson insisted on the partition of six Ulster counties from

12282-687: The first time through local elections to democratically run local affairs previously under the control of landlord dominated " Grand Juries ", and William O'Brien founding the United Irish League that year, did the Irish Parliamentary Party reunite under John Redmond in January 1900, returning to its former strength in the following September general election . The first decade of the twentieth century saw considerable advancement in economic and social development in rural Ireland, where 60% of

12420-736: The government. By 1914, 75 per cent of occupiers were buying out their landlords' freehold interest through the Land Commission , mostly under the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909. O'Brien then pursued and won in alliance with the Irish Land and Labour Association and D.D. Sheehan , who followed in the footsteps of Michael Davitt, the landmark 1906 and 1911 Labourers (Ireland) Acts, where the Liberal government financed 40,000 rural labourers to become proprietors of their own cottage homes, each on an acre of land. "It

12558-405: The great end of [a] nationality" that will "not only raise our people from their poverty, by securing to them the blessings of a domestic legislature, but inflame and purify them with a lofty and heroic love of country". The Nation was an immediate publishing success. Its sales soared above all other Irish papers, weekly or daily. Circulation at its height was reckoned to be close to a quarter of

12696-492: The harvest until the needs of their own families were supplied. As Duffy was later to acknowledge, the poorest had lost the art and means of preparing for themselves anything other than the potato. Even were it not at the cost of eviction, holding back grain and other foodstuffs grown to pay rent might avail them little. As "temporary relief for destitute persons", in the spring of 1847 the government opened soup kitchens. In August they were shut. The starving were directed to abandon

12834-519: The hierarchy of the Catholic Church were opposed to republican separatism on the grounds of its violent methods and secular ideology, while they usually supported non-violent reformist nationalism. Daniel O'Connell was the leader of the moderate tendency. O'Connell, head of the Catholic Association and Repeal Association in the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s, campaigned for Catholic Emancipation – full political rights for Catholics – and then Repeal of

12972-532: The immediate need was for an Irish national government able to take control of national resources. In May 1848 Duffy published "The Creed of the Nation." If Irish independence was to come by force, it would be in the form of a Republic. The avoidance of deadly animosities between Irishmen was of course preferable. An independent Irish parliament, elected by widest possible suffrage, a responsible minister for Ireland [i.e. an Irish executive accountable to an Irish parliament]

13110-698: The inaugural meeting were magistrates and landlords, Catholic priests and Presbyterian ministers, and journalists with the Presbyterian James McKnight of the Banner of Ulster in the chair. In the 1852 election, organised around what Michael Davitt described as "the programme of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen reduced to moral and constitutional standards", the League helped return Duffy (for New Ross ) and 47 other MPs pledged to tenant-rights. What Duffy hailed as

13248-489: The insurrection in Tipperary and Waterford . After an indecisive engagement at Cappoquin , once again in view of their small number the insurgents disbanded. Lalor died three months later of bronchitis. This was just as a new movement was lending new credence to his belief that the independence of cultivator would bring "national independence in its train". Tenant farmers and cottiers may not have been prepared to fight for

13386-771: The jail and rescued Michael Doheny, only for him to give himself up again and apply for bail. In Waterford , people brought the cavalcade carrying Meagher to a standstill with a barricade across a narrow bridge over the River Suir . They begged him to give the word, for they had the town already in their hands, but Meagher persisted in going with the soldiers, and ordered the barricade removed. Convinced that "the Famine had 'dissolved society' and exposed landlordism both morally and economically", in September 1849 Lalor attempted with John Savage , Joseph Brenan and other Young Irelanders to revive

13524-499: The land and apply to the workhouses. Mitchel urged the Confederation to pronounce for Lalor's policy and make control of land the issue. However, Duffy had cut Michel's access to the leader columns of The Nation' over a seemingly extraneous issue. In Duffy's view, Mitchel had abused a temporary editorship to take unsanctioned and, in themselves, scandalous positions on matters that had been sacrosanct to O'Connell. O'Connell had repeatedly assailed what he described as "the vile union" in

13662-487: The land question had a nationalist resonance in Ireland as many Irish Catholics believed that land had been unjustly taken from their ancestors by Protestant English colonists in the 17th-century Plantations of Ireland . Indeed, the Irish landed class was still largely an Anglo-Irish Protestant group in the 19th century. Such perceptions were underlined in the Land league's language and literature. However, others would argue that

13800-638: The land. The ideological underpinning of the code was the idea that the land of Ireland rightfully belonged to the Irish people, but had been stolen by English invaders. The key provisions forbade paying rent without abatements, taking over land from which a tenant had been evicted, and purchasing their holding under the 1885 Ashbourne Act . Other forbidden actions included "participating in evictions, fraternizing with, or entering into, commerce with anyone who did; or working for, hiring, letting land from, or socializing with, boycotted person". The League enforced its code by means of informal tribunals, typically led by

13938-543: The last "monster meeting" in the Year of Repeal. (In August at the Hill of Tara crowds had been estimated in the hostile reporting of The Times at close to a million). O'Connell submitted at once. He cancelled the rally and sent out messengers to turn back the approaching crowds. Although in Duffy's view, the decision deprived the Repeal movement of "half its dignity and all of its terror",

14076-482: The later Fenian , wrote of the Young Irelander rebellion: The terrible Famine of 1847 forced the hand of the Young Irelanders and they rushed into a policy of Insurrection without the slightest military preparation... Their writings and speeches had converted a large number of the young men to the gospel of force and their pride impelled them to an effort to make good their preaching. But... an appeal to arms made to

14214-449: The leaders of local chapters. Although there was a long history of such courts by Irish agrarian radicals stretching back to the 1760s, the National League's courts differed from previous iterations in that it held its proceedings openly and followed a common law procedure. This was intended to uphold the League's image of being in favour of the rule of law, just Irish law instead of English law. Irish nationalist Irish nationalism

14352-584: The other hand, claims that "early modern Irish nationalism" began to be established after the Flight of the Earls (1607), based on the concepts of "the indivisibility of Gaelic cultural integrity, territorial sovereignty, and the interlinking of Gaelic identity with profession of the Roman Catholic faith". The exclusively Protestant Parliament of Ireland of the eighteenth century repeatedly called for more autonomy from

14490-498: The people united behind its single purpose would know how to enforce their will. Opposition was led by Thomas Devin Reilly and by Mitchel. Class coalitions attempted in past had failed, and they continued to insist on Lalor's plan. By the spring of 1848, the scale of the catastrophe facing the country had persuaded all parties on the Council that independence was an existential issue; that

14628-681: The poet John McDonald 's stated aim was "to hasten, as far as in my power lay, Ireland's deliverance". Other organisations promoting the Irish language or the Gaelic Revival were the Gaelic League and later Conradh na Gaeilge . The Gaelic Athletic Association was also formed in this era to promote Gaelic football , hurling , and Gaelic handball ; it forbade its members to play English sports such as association football , rugby union , and cricket . Most cultural nationalists were English speakers, and their organisations had little impact in

14766-494: The population continued to speak English. The cultural Gaelic aspect did not extend into actual politics; while nationalists were interested in the surviving Chiefs of the Name , the descendants of the former Gaelic clan leaders, the chiefs were not involved in politics, nor noticeably interested in the attempt to recreate a Gaelic state. Although Parnell and some other Home Rulers, such as Isaac Butt , were Protestants, Parnell's party

14904-462: The population lived. The introduction of local self-government in 1898 created a class of experienced politicians capable of later taking over national self-government in the 1920s. The Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 (the Wyndham Act), passed largely through the efforts of William O'Brien, abolished landlordism , and made it easier for tenant farmers to purchase lands, financed and guaranteed by

15042-565: The possibility of a devolved parliament with the Northern reformer William Sharman Crawford . The difference with O'Connell was that Davis was seeking a basis for compromise, in the first instance, not at Westminster but in Belfast. When he first followed O'Connell, Duffy concedes that he had "burned with the desire to set up again the Celtic race and the catholic church". In The Nation he subscribed to

15180-607: The post" voting system did not win a proportional share of seats. Unionists (including Unionist Labour) votes were 305,206 (30.2%) The Sinn Féin MPs refused to take their seats in Westminster, 27 of these (the rest were either still imprisoned or impaired) setting up their own Parliament called the Dáil Éireann in January 1919 and declared the Irish Republic to be in existence. Nationalists in

15318-487: The priesthood opposed, the Confederation could not hope to call out a single parish in Ireland. By a vote of fifteen to six, the Council adopted Duffy's alternative proposition: a Parliamentary Party that, accepting no favours, would press Ireland's claims by threatening to put a stop to the entire business of the Commons . Such a party would either have its demands conceded, or be forcibly ejected from Westminster, in which case

15456-532: The rest of Ireland, stating that the 1916 rebellion proved a parliament in Dublin could not be trusted. The convention's work was disrupted in March 1918 by Redmond's death and the fierce German spring offensive on the Western Front, causing Britain to attempt to contemplate extending conscription to Ireland. This was extremely unpopular, opposed both by the Irish Parliamentary Party under its new leader John Dillon ,

15594-458: The rights of tenants and labourers, diffuse knowledge of agriculture and—in token of the continuing commitment to non-violence—discourage secret societies. All were to promote harmony between Irishmen of all creeds, making it a point to invite the participation of Protestants. But in "Black '47", the worst year of the potato-blight famine, the search was for policies that could address the immediate crisis. The Confederation urged cultivators to hold

15732-524: The south and west, the great numbers of tenant farmers, small-town traders and journeymen O'Connell had rallied to the cause of Emancipation in the 1820s did not similarly respond to his lead on the more abstract proposition of Repeal. Patriotic and republican sentiment among the Presbyterians of the north-east had surrendered, since the Rebellion of 1798 , to the conviction that the union with Great Britain

15870-399: The south of Ireland, impatient with the lack of progress on Irish self-government, tended to ignore the unresolved and volatile Ulster situation, generally arguing that unionists had no choice but to ultimately follow. On 11 September 1919, the British proscribed the Dáil, which had met nine times by then, declaring it an illegal assembly, Ireland being still part of the United Kingdom. In 1919,

16008-475: The tracks could be turned into pikes and trains ambushed. O’Connell publicly distanced himself from The Nation, appearing to some to set Duffy, as the editor, up for prosecution. When the courts failed to convict, O'Connell pressed the issue, seemingly intent on effecting a break. In July 1846, the Repeal Association tabled resolutions declaring that under no circumstances was a nation justified in asserting its liberties by force of arms. Meagher argued that while

16146-486: The use of force, but he could do little to affect the cycle of violence between IRA guerrillas and Crown forces that emerged over 1919–1920. The military conflict produced only a handful of killings in 1919, but steadily escalated from the summer of 1920 onwards with the introduction of the paramilitary police forces, the Black and Tans and Auxiliary Division into Ireland. From November 1920 to July 1921, over 1000 people died in

16284-406: The west faced the prospect of another famine in the harsh winter of 1879. At first, the Land League campaigned for the " Three Fs " – fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure. Then, as prices for agricultural products fell further and the weather worsened in the mid-1880s, tenants organised themselves by withholding rent during the 1886–1891 Plan of Campaign movement. Militant nationalists such as

16422-435: Was a keen promoter of the Irish language in print, at a time when, while still the speech of the vast majority of the Irish people, it had been all but abandoned by the educated classes. Such cultural nationalism did not appear to interest to O'Connell. There is no evidence that he saw the preservation or revival of his mother tongue, or any other aspect of "native culture", as essential to his political demands. His own paper,

16560-513: Was a radical movement, known as Irish republicanism . It believed the use of force was necessary to found a secular, egalitarian Irish republic, advocated by groups such as the Young Irelanders , some of whom launched a rebellion in 1848. The other nationalist tradition was more moderate, urging non-violent means to seek concessions from the British government. While both nationalist traditions were predominantly Catholic in their support base,

16698-422: Was a relaunch of a campaign to restore an Irish parliament in Dublin by repealing the 1800 Acts of Union . O'Connell had suspended Repeal agitation in the 1830s to solicit favour and reform from Whig ministry of Lord Melbourne . In April 1841 O’Connell placed both Davis and Dillon on the Association's General Committee with responsibilities for organisation and recruitment. Membership uptake had been slow. In

16836-683: Was allegedly sworn into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood in May 1882. However, the fact that he chose to stay in Westminster following the expulsion of 29 Irish MPs (when those in the Clan expected an exodus of nationalist MPs from Westminster to set up a provisional government in Dublin) and his failure in 1886 to support the Plan of Campaign (an aggressive agrarian programme launched to counter agricultural distress), marked him as an essentially constitutional politician, though not averse to using agitational methods as

16974-426: Was both the occasion for their relative prosperity and a guarantee of their liberty. Protestants were now, as a body, opposed to a restoration of the parliament in Dublin whose prerogatives they had once championed. In these circumstances, the Catholic gentry and much of the middle class were content to explore the avenues for advancement opened by Emancipation and earlier "Catholic relief" . The suspicion, in any case,

17112-482: Was content to suggest that Protestants would, "with little delay, melt into the overwhelming majority of the Irish nation". Thomas Davis's sudden death in 1845 helped close the matter. But his friends suspected that behind the vehemence with which O'Connell opposed Davis on the colleges question there also the intent, again, to frustrate Peel and to advantage the Whigs. This was not a strategy, Meagher argued, that had paid national dividends. The last concession wrung from

17250-464: Was controlled by Parnell, who chaired a small group of MPs who vetted and imposed candidates on constituencies. In December 1890, both the INL and the IPP split on the issues of Parnell's long standing family relationship with Katharine O'Shea , the earlier separated wife of a fellow MP, Capt. O'Shea, and their subsequent divorce proceedings. The majority of the League, which opposed Parnell, broke away to form

17388-648: Was discredited after Home Rule had been suspended at the outbreak of World War I, in the belief that the war would be over by the end of 1915, then by the severe losses suffered by Irish battalions in Gallipoli at Cape Helles and on the Western Front . They were also damaged by the harsh British response to the Easter Rising, who treated the rebellion as treason in time of war when they declared martial law in Ireland. Moderate constitutional nationalism as represented by

17526-467: Was divided over the attitude of their leadership to Ireland's involvement in World War I. The majority followed John Redmond in support of the British and Allied war effort, seeing it as the only option to ensure the enactment of Home Rule after the war, Redmond saying "you will return as an armed army capable of confronting Ulster's opposition to Home Rule". They split off from the main movement and formed

17664-450: Was impossible to contemplate. But recognising that "any and all means" that employed in this struggle could be made "illegal by Act of Parliament", the Young Irelanders would have, at the very least, to ready themselves for a "moral insurrection". He proposed that they should begin with a campaign to withhold rent, but more might be implied. Parts of the country were already in a state of semi-insurrection. Tenants conspirators, in tradition of

17802-567: Was left to O'Brien to confront the reality of the Confederates' domestic isolation. Having with Meagher and Dillon gathered a small group of both landowners and tenants, on 23 July O'Brien raised the standard of revolt in Kilkenny . This was a tricolour he had brought back from France, its colours (green for Catholics, orange for Protestants) intended to symbolise the United Irish republican ideal. With Old Ireland and rural priesthood against them,

17940-797: Was limited by the prospect of partition of Ireland between north and south. This idea had first been mooted under the Second Home Rule Bill in 1893. In 1912, following the entry of the Third Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons, unionists organised mass resistance to its implementation, organising around the " Ulster Covenant ". In 1912 they formed the Ulster Volunteers , an armed wing of Ulster Unionism who stated that they would resist Home Rule by force. British Conservatives supported this stance. In addition, in 1914 British officers based at

18078-451: Was not the case for Ireland, was the source of its present tragedy. The Government made clear that its chosen response to the crisis in Ireland was coercion, not concession. Mitchel had been convicted under new martial law measures approved by Parliament (including by a number of "Old Ireland" MPs). On 9 July 1848 Duffy, with the Creed as evidence, was arrested for sedition. He managed to smuggle

18216-542: Was notable for being both inclusive and nationalist as many of its members were descended from the Anglo/Irish minority. Many other nationalists such as Samuel Neilson , Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet were also descended from plantation families which had arrived in Ireland since 1600. From Grattan in the 1770s to Parnell up to 1890, nearly all the leaders of Irish separatism were Protestant nationalists . Modern Irish nationalism with democratic aspirations began in

18354-576: Was overwhelmingly Catholic. At local branch level, Catholic priests were an important part of its organisation. Home Rule was opposed by Unionists (those who supported the Union with Britain), mostly Protestant and from Ulster under the slogan, "Home Rule is Rome Rule ." At the time, some politicians and members of the British public would have seen this movement as radical and militant. Detractors quoted Charles Stewart Parnell's Cincinnati speech in which he claimed to be collecting money for "bread and lead". He

18492-451: Was part of the United Kingdom , which led to most of the island gaining independence from the UK in 1922. Irish nationalists believe that foreign English and later British rule in Ireland from the 1169 English Norman Invasion of Ireland onwards has been detrimental to Irish interests. At the time of the partition of Ireland most of the island was Roman Catholic and largely indigenous, while

18630-740: Was powerfully endorsed by Archbishop McHale of Tuam . Beyond Davis and Dillon's Historical Society companions, the paper drew on a widening circle of contributors. Among the more politically committed these included: the Repeal MP William Smith O'Brien ; Tithe War veteran James Fintan Lalor ; prose and verse writer Michael Doheny ; author of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry , William Carleton ; militant-nationalist priest, John Kenyon ; poet and early suffragist Jane Wilde ; republican and labour-rights activist Thomas Devin Reilly ; former American journalist (and future "Father of

18768-432: Was that "his angry peasants, chafing like chained tigers, were creatures of the imagination--not the living people through whom we had to act". At the same time Duffy was trying to hold together a broader coalition, and had for that reason advanced O'Brien to the leadership, a Protestant and a landowner. On the Confederation's Council he was supported by Patrick James Smyth who argued that with propertied classes, as well as

18906-533: Was that O'Connell's purpose in returning to the constitutional question was merely to embarrass the incoming Conservatives (under his old enemy Sir Robert Peel ) and to hasten the Whigs return. In working with O'Connell, Thomas and Dillon contended with a patriarch "impatient of opposition or criticism, and apt to prefer followers to colleagues". They found an ally in Charles Gavan Duffy , editor in Belfast of

19044-544: Was the main base of support for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and under Parnell's leadership, it grew quickly to over 1,000 branches throughout the island. In 1884, the League secured the support of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Its secretary was Timothy Harrington who organised the Plan of Campaign in 1886. The Irish League was effectively controlled by the Parliamentary Party, which in turn

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