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11. THE UNION – RETROSPECT The 120 years of the Union was the longest continuous period of government in post-medieval Irish history. Therefore the long-lived period of the Union is a feature of some importance. The concept of the union was not necessarily inimical to Irishmen; there was a guarded approval of the measure by the catholic church of the day. Though British raisons d’êtat were all-important in bringing about the Union, British intentions for the better (and fairer) government of Ireland cannot be denied. That is not to say that its birth and implementation were not accompanied by cynicism, corruption and chicanery. The cross-fertilisation of two revolutions The Union was however flawed at a very early stage: catholic emancipation was not granted quickly or willingly and the various religious divisions were not reconciled. Moreover the 1782 system came to be viewed with a rosy nostalgia quite at variance with its actuality. JC Beckett argued in 1967 (‘Ireland under the Union’ published in Confrontations) that if the pre-1800 Irish Parliament had continued it would have been unlikely that it would have initiated or sustained the various reforms that transformed Ireland in the nineteenth century. Beckett argued that two revolutions came about in the years of the Union. The first was in parliamentary ways and means that included the gradual reform of the ecclesiastical and land structures (and also included the various departures from the laissez faire norm); this made Ireland into a constitutional and evolutionary entity, the heritage of O’Connell, Butt, Parnell and Redmond was adhered to by the post-independence politicians. In essence that evolutionary revolution dismantled much of the Union, even without the second revolution of 1916 to 1921. That second revolution could trace its pedigree back to the United Irishmen and the Fenians and was a violent one. Nevertheless it was not just violent, it was also subtle, intertwining itself with the evolutionary revolution, goading and irritating the parliamentarians and the establishment. The greatest Irish proponents of the parliamentary revolution sustained an ambiguity within the framework of the Union system. This was not exclusive to the nationalists: the unionists were prepared to consort with violence or the threat of violence, blurring the boundaries between parliamentarianism and more extreme means to their ends. They drew strength from the rebel tradition. Additionally O’Connell, Parnell and their successors could not have worked without the (generally unwilling) cooperation of the upholders of the Union. The Union framework enabled an interplay of often confrontational British and Irish elements to dismantle much of the Union by 1914. The inability of the Liberals to deliver home rule only then led to the resurgence of the violent revolutionary tradition. The loss of Irish pride Whatever the motives for Union it struck at Irish pride; at first this was the pride of orangemen, protestant patriots and those like O’Connell. In time the Union became a mark of shame and subordination for nearly all catholics and those protestants of a republican persuasion such as John Mitchel and Fintan Lalor. There was no Irish Walter Scott who could romanticise the nation and its past and yet strengthen the Union. Scotland’s subornment and the harsh suppression of the highlands was romanticised and rationalised by Scott, but the Scottish union was based on Scottish economic self-interest and the fact that the kirk – the church of state and people – kept its identity and status after the 1707 union. Scotland’s pride was not only maintained, it was enhanced. Instead the Young Ireland style of nationalism had the opportunity to ruminate on and embellish past wrongs, there was nothing romantic about the Union. It was only amongst the protestants of the north that the Union came to be viewed with warmth and pride. This was not only a positive identification with material success but it was also a negative identification of the Union with protection against traditional and perceived enemies. Many imaginative and innotive departures were made from the British norm in Ireland’s social laboratory. As emphasised previously these were piecemeal and ad hoc, they were not part of a sustained and coordinated long term policy for Ireland. The principles of laissez faire were breached, but they were micro breaches of a still dominant philosophy. It may be that the magnitude of the Famine was beyond the wit of any contemporary government to solve, but the woeful Whig adherence to laissez faire was seen to be negligent if not callous (and by those such as Mitchel and the later Fenians) as deliberate. Whatever the sacrosanct nature of laissez faire, would the Whig administration have tolerated death, disease and destitution on a parallel scale in England? If there was some degree of flexibility within government with regard to the implementation of the Union, there was inflexibility (before Gladstone’s home rule initiative) in relation to the nature of the Union. This was O’Connell’s great failing, he believed that British governments would concede repeal much in the same way as they had eventually conceded catholic emancipation. Emancipation had originally however been part of the Union package and a substantial body of British parliamentary opinion favoured (or accepted the need for) emancipation. In the case of the alteration or dismantling of the Union no pre-1886 government could contemplate such an assault on British pride and empire. Even Gladstone in 1885/6 can be seen as a British aberration, few amongst his fellow Liberals – whether or not they subscribed to the imperial ideal – had any stomach for home rule. The eventual end of the Union was brought about by the post-1886 changes in Irish attitudes (north and south) and the loss of a British will to sustain the Union. Nationalist pressure and British evolution Nationalist militancy in itself was insufficient to dislodge Britain: United Irishmen, repealers and Fenians had all been seen off by a determined British response. The key to the amendment or dissolution of the union was the constant and inexorable pressure for change by Irish nationalists (largely of the constitutional/quasi-constitutional element) combined with evolving attitudes within Westminster. Those evolving attitudes had facilitated reforms (admittedly belatedly) that diluted the original Union and removed a number of the original criticisms of the system. The Ulsterman and Liberal James Bryce, an advocate of home rule, had pointed out the inevitability of home rule and that it would not simply be the work of Liberals but also of Conservatives. By-and-large he was correct: Conservatives controlled the Lords; they (as Tories) had conceded catholic emancipation and (as Unionists) had dismantled the land system. The Lloyd George coalition, largely a Unionist body, did eventually negotiate the 1921 treaty and therefore ended the Union (however reluctantly). The Great War had made British politicians and public opinion weary of Ireland and the cost of maintaining the Union. If imperial integrity and strategic interests could be maintained the Union could end – and it did. Doc 11i James Bryce wrote to AV Dicey in February 1905: “You are right in thinking that a policy tending towards wider self-government must be pursued by a Liberal government. But then it will be pursued, to judge from the past, by a Tory government also. The last ten years have under the Tories done more than a Liberal government with a bare majority could have done in that direction. No Liberal government could, perhaps would, have given the land to the tenants; probably could not have given the local government scheme. Both measures bring home rule nearer in two ways – they give more power to the masses and they lessen the dangers feared in 1886 and 1893. The forces of nature seem to me to be working for Home Rule; and it will come about under one English party just as much as another if, an important if, the Irish continue to press as strongly for it. That is perhaps not so certain. When they have the land, much of the steam will be out of the boiler. [Joseph] Chamberlain would of course give them anything they asked in return for support for him. He has tacitly made offers, but they don’t trust him … a succession of Chamberlains would be far more dangerous to England than the Irish are. That Home Rule will come in our time seems unlikely. But under our democratic government a resolute section is pretty sure to get sooner or later whatever does not conflict with the direct interests or direct passions of the English masses. So I expect it to come, if the Irish go on pressing as they have done since O’Connell.” The unremitting pressure of Irish nationalism eventually wore away Britain’s desire to maintain the Union. As Bryce noted there was an inevitability that the Union would be amended/ended, the Unionist land concessions were a barometer of Britain’s will, the Unionist establishment deluded themselves they were “killing home rule by kindness”, in fact they were relinquishing their propertied stake in Ireland. Without doubt they fought the “Plan of Campaign” fiercely, but the inexorable pressure of nationalist agitation over the land issue had its effect, especially when this was combined with the mellowing and reforming pressures that willy-nilly affected parliament and the establishment during Britain’s nineteenth century progress towards democracy and reform. Since the 1860s an increasingly democratic age linked to an expanding and influential press had come about. The democratisation of local government in Britain had come about with the County Councils Act of 1888; the Irish equivilant of 1898 updated Irish local government. The 1898 Act removed landlord influence from the counties and - just as significantly – provided the framework through which many nationalists and Ulster Unionists cut their political teeth. In certain quarters, there was a sense of guilt to some extent attributable to the Famine and in some ways due to the currency of the theory that the English landowner had dispossessed a Gaelic system of peasant land ownership. In the long term British public opinion was becoming less likely to support the Union at any cost. Of course this is at odds with substantial and widespread resistance to home rule in Great Britain between 1911 and 1914. Many British Unionists would have supported Ulster resistance to home rule. Many others would not, if it had come to civil war and outright illegality. Those, who would have resisted, were motivated by the issue of empire and a visceral fear of catholicism. By 1918 there was a war weariness and a marked degree of secularism in British society. The United Kingdom had stood on the brink of civil war in 1914; it had then descended into prolonged and total world war. The impact of the Great War Imperial certainties had taken a battering (as they had in the Boer War); the Union could end provided imperial safeguards were maintained. It was on the issue of empire that the Treaty negotiations were thrashed out in London and debated in the Dail. Mere membership of the empire (significantly also referred to as “the commonwealth” in the Treaty document) was the prerequisite for settlement. Before 1917 only the Liberals and the embryo Labour party had been prepared to grant home rule. Unionists had not: they had then believed any concession on home rule would be a dangerous precedent to the empire at large. If the war mellowed British attitudes towards Ireland it polarised Irish attitudes. The Sinn Fein front had been sustained by the prolonged nature of the war and the conscription issue. The intensity of their certainties therefore increased just as British conviction wavered. What had sustained Britain in the nineteenth century had been its protestant whiggish confidence that was dying by the turn of the century and was completely dead by 1918. Frequent reference has been made to the nationalist inability to take into account the Ulster dimension and the frustration of British and Irish politicians to reach a simple settlement without having to account for the Ulster joker. This was perhaps best summarised by Winston Churchill in the aftermath of the First World War. “The whole map of Europe has been changed, the mode and thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world, but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been left unaltered in the cataclysm that has swept the world.” (The World Crisis) The religious divide The Union therefore survived in Northern Ireland, a state for the protestant Ulsterman. Craig had struggled to maintain for the Union the most viable and secure protestant area, he had sacrificed three counties to preserve the other six. The religious divide was not however just a protestant device to maintain hegemony. It was an ideological and cultural institution with sixteenth and seventeenth century roots. The failure of Pitt to bring about emancipation meant that the Union could never prosper, it could only survive. O’Connell’s championing of the catholic cause though espoused as a matter of natural justice was articulated in a manner likely to encourage sectarian tensions. It might be argued that there were protestant interests which needed no encouragement, if O’Connell had not existed some protestant would have needed to invent him. O’Connell’s manner and methods undermined the Union but failed to bring about its demise. Half a century later Parnell, the protestant, had grasped the essential need to bring the catholic church behind the home rule party. Parnell’s bitter critic from within the movement, Tim Healy was to advocate “a narrow chauvinistic nationalism” (Frank Callanan) that was largely built on Catholicism. This was to be the main feature of nationalism throughout most of the twentieth century both before and after independence, Ironically the development of the northern protestant economy weakened the Union as well as underpinning it. The growing gulf between the worlds of catholic and protestant were not only built on belief, culture and identity, they were developing as economic differences. In the circumstances any chance of creating a homogenous society was doomed. Religious polarisation therefore undermined the Union and ensured that any governmental ameliorative measures would antagonise one interest or the other. The parliamentary tradition The Union did however foster an Irish tradition of parliamentarianism. This of course predated the Union but both O’Connell and Parnell worked within the Westminster system in order to create Irish parliaments. They, by an adroit mixture of both constitutionalism and quasi-extremism, educated the Irish masses in parliamentary ways. Moreover at the end of the Union the generation that had been repelled by the “betrayal” of Parnell by the parliamentarians for the most part put away their guns and adopted parliamentary democracy. In part Ireland had benefited from the parliamentary and institutional experience of the Union even if its structures only occasionally catered specifically for Irish needs. For the Union to have succeeded it would have needed to evolve towards a devolved parliament responsible to an undivided people. As it was, when home rule was eventually offered it was not offered to a united people by a united people. Moreover the workings of the Gladstonian home rule settlements were unwieldy and impractical; they raised both expectations and fears. The Union was broken by war, international war rather than a war of independence. The war of independence merely determined the manner of the Union’s passing. The survival of the Union for 120 years was not due to its inherent strength it was due to the respective strength and weakness of Britain and Ireland. Its failure either to evolve sufficiently or whole-heartedly adapt meant it could only fossilise and then break. It was born at a time of European war; it died following the next great war, collapsing due to its tensions and contradictions. BIBLIOGRAPHY The various documents and quotations have in the main been taken been taken from secondary works including textbook collections of documents. Direct use has been made of Volumes II and IV of the Ancillary Publications of the New History of Ireland dealing with population and electoral statistics respectively. I have also consulted the most useful newspapers of the time: Belfast Newsletter; Freeman’s Journal; The Irish Times; The Nation, The Times and Pall Mall Gazette. I have also found the following historical journals of value: History Ireland; Irish Historical Studies; History; History Today and Past and Present. 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Charles Stewart Parnell (Dublin 1998) O’Farrell, Fergus, Daniel O’Connell (Dublin 1981) O’Farrell, Patrick, England and Ireland Since 1800 (Oxford 1975) O’Hegarty, PS, A History of Ireland Under The Union: 1800-1921 (London 1952) O’Tuathaigh, Gearoid, Ireland Before the Famine; 1798-1848 (Dublin 1972) Packenham (Longford), Frank, Peace by Ordeal (London 1972) Packenham, Thomas, The Year of Liberty: The Story of the Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 (London 1972) PRONI Education Facsimilies 41-46, The Act of Union, (Belfast 1973) Randell, KH, Politics and the People 1835-1850 (London 1972) Shannon, Richard, Gladstone: Heroic Minister, 1865-1898 (London 1999) Solow, Barbara, The Land Question and the Irish Economy, 1870-1903 (Cambridge, Mass 1971) Steele, ED, Irish Land and British Politics: Tenant Right and Nationality, 1865-70 (Cambridge 1974) Stewart, ATQ, Edward Carson (Dublin 1981) Stewart, ATQ, The Narrow Ground: Aspects of Ulster, 1609-1969 (London 1977) Stewart, ATQ, The Ulster Crisis: Resistance to Home Rule, 1912-14 (London 1967) Thompson, DI, The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916 (New York 1967) Thornley, David, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (London 1964) Townshend, Charles, The British Campaign in Ireland, 1919-1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies (Oxford 1975) Trench, WS, Realities of Irish Life (London 1868) Vaughan, WE, Landlords and Tenants in Ireland 1848-1904 (Dundalk 1984) Vaughan, WE (Ed), A New History of Ireland v: Ireland Under the Union I: 1801-1870 (Oxford 1989) Vaughan, WE (Ed), A New History of Ireland vi: Ireland Under the Union II: 1870-1921 (Oxford 1996) Vaughan, WE & Fitzpatrick, AJ, (Ed), Irish Historical Statistics: Population 1821-1971 (Dublin 1978) Vincent, John, Gladstone and Ireland (London 1978) Walker, BM (Ed), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922 (Dublin 1978) Whyte, JH, The Tenant League and Irish Politics in the eighteen-fifties (Dundalk 1963) Winstanley, MJ, Ireland and the Land Question: 1800-1922 (London 1984) Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1845-49 (London 1962) Yeats, WB, The Poems (Ed Daniel Albright) (London 1990) APPENDIX I CHRONOLOGY Dates or events printed in bold type can be considered as crucial in terms of the evolution of the Union and its demise. 1798 United Irish Rebellion 1800 Act of Union 1801 Act of Union becomes operative 1823 Catholic Association founded 1828 O’Connell elected as MP for County Clare 1829 Catholic Relief Act (Catholic Emancipation) 1832 Great Reform Bill becomes law 1833 Irish Church Temporalities Act 1835 Lichfield House Compact 1840 Repeal Association founded 1842 Nation first published 1843 Clontarf meeting banned 1845 Maynooth endowment increased Arrival of potato blight – start of Great Famine 1848 Young Ireland rebellion 1850 Reform Act increases county electorate 1858 IRB founded 1867 Fenian rising 1869 Irish Disestablishment & Disendowment 1870 Home Government Association founded (becomes Home Rule League 1874) Gladstone’s first Land Act 1879 Land League formed 1881 Gladstone’s second Land Act Arrest of Parnell 1882 Kilmainham Treaty & Phoenix Park murders 1884 GAA founded 1885 Rejection of Central Board scheme ‘Harwarden kite’ – Gladstone’s conversion to home rule revealed 1886 First Home Rule bill rejected by the House of Commons; realignment of British politics 1887 The Times publishes letter implicating Parnell with Phoenix Park murders; Special commission appointed 1890 Parnell-O’Shea divorce case, INL splits 1891 Death of Parnell 1893 Second Home Rule bill defeated in the House of Lords 1900 Redmond becomes leader of a re-united Irish nationalist party 1902 Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan performed 1903 Wyndham’s Land Act 1904 ‘Devolution crisis’; Ulster Unionist Council follows in 1905 1907 Sinn Fein League founded 1908 Irish Universities Act sets up the National University of Ireland and Queen’s University Belfast 1909 ‘People’s budget’ & Asquith’s Albert Hall speech 1910 Carson becomes leader of the Ulster Unionists Liberals loose their overall majority 1912 Bonar Law pledges total support of Unionists to Ulster Third Home Rule bill introduced Ulster Covenant signed 1913 UVF formed ITGWU strike in Dublin Irish Volunteers formed 1914 Curragh incident UVF gun-running Abortive Buckingham Palace conference Implementation of home rule delayed by outbreak of Great War Redmond’s Woodenbridge speech pledges Irish Volunteers to the war 1916 Easter Rising followed by executions and the Lloyd George proposals Battle of the Somme 1917 Abortive Irish Convention deValera becomes president of Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein pledges itself to a republic 1918 Military Service Act is passed but never implemented Sinn Fein virtually eliminate the old nationalist party in the general election 1919 First Dail meets Anglo-Irish war starts 1920 Bloody Sunday in Dublin Government of Ireland Act implements partition 1921 George V’s speech at the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament The Truce followed by Anglo-Irish negotiations The Treaty Start of Treaty debate 1922 The Treaty ratified: Irish Free State comes into being Start of Civil War Death of Griffith; Collins killed 1923 Free State government wins Civil WarAPPENDIX II PRIME MINISTERS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED KINGDOM 1783-1922 Dec 1783 William Pitt Tory March 1801 Henry Addington Tory May 1804 William Pitt Tory Feb 1806 Lord Grenville Whig March 1807 Duke of Portland Largely Whig Oct 1809 Spencer Percival Largely Whig June 1812 Lord Liverpool Tory April 1827 George Canning Tory Aug 1827 Lord Goderich Tory Jan 1828 Duke of Wellington Tory Nov 1830 Lord Grey Whig July 1834 Lord Melbourne Whig Nov 1834 Duke of Wellington Tory Dec 1834 Sir Robert Peel Tory April 1835 Lord Melbourne Whig Aug 1841 Sir Robert Peel Tory (Conservative) June 1846 Lord John Russell Whig Feb 1852 Lord Stanley Conservative Dec 1852 Lord Aberdeen Whig/Peelite/Radical Feb 1855 Lord Palmerston Whig Feb 1858 Lord Derby Conservative June 1859 Lord Palmerston Whig/Liberal Oct 1865 Lord Russell Whig/Liberal June 1866 Lord Derby Conservative Feb 1868 Benjamin Disraeli Conservative Dec 1868 William Ewart Gladstone Liberal Feb 1874 Benjamin Disraeli Conservative (Lord Beaconsfield 1876) April 1880 William Ewart Gladstone Liberal June 1885 Lord Salisbury Conservative Feb 1886 William Ewart Gladstone Liberal July 1886 Lord Salisbury Unionist Aug 1892 William Ewart Gladstone Liberal March 1894 Lord Rosebery Liberal June 1895 Lord Salisbury Unionist July 1902 Arthur Balfour Unionist Dec 1905 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman Liberal April 1908 Herbert Henry Asquith Liberal; Coalition from May 1915 Dec1916 David Lloyd George All party coalition Oct 1922 Andrew Bonar Law Conservative APPENDIX III CHART OF LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY NATIONALIST GROUPS 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s HOME RULE Home Govt Assn (1870) Home Rule League (1873) Irish National League (1882) INL (Parnellite (MacCarthy/ Dillon)) Irish National Fed (1891) (Anti Parnellite) United Irish League (1900) Reunited. [Irish Nat Vols] (1913) [Nat Vols] (1914) LAND ISSUE AND LAND ORIENTED HOME RULE Land League (1879) Ladies’ Land League (1881-2) United Irish League (O’Brien) (1898) All for Ireland League (O’Brien) (1910) CHURCH ORIENTED HOME RULE Peoples Rights Assn (Healy 1897) ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (Origins in USA 1835) AOH (support for UIL) CULTURAL (ENGLISH) Anglo-Irish Lit Revival ¯ Irish Lit Theatre (1899) ® Irish Theatre Soc (1903) Abbey Theatre (1904) CULTURAL (IRISH) Soc for Pres of Irish language (1876) Gaelic League (1893) D P Moran and The Leader (1900) Cumann na Gaedhal (Gaelic Soc) (1900) SEPARATIST Sinn Fein (1906) Sinn Fein Front 1917 [Irish Vols/IRA] SOCIALIST Irish Soc Rep Party (1896) ITGWU (1908) [Citizen Army] (1913) BOY’S MOVEMENT Fianna Eireann (1902) Gaelic Athletic Ass (1884) PHYSICAL FORCE ® IRB Relatively moribund Revival started 1907 Irish Nat Vols (1913) Irish Vols (1914) Nat Vols (1914) IRA (1919) APPENDIX IV THEMES DURING THE UNION, CHANGES & TURNING-POINTS Date Opposition to the Union Ascendancy & support for the Union Attitudes of British political parties Economic developments 1798-1803 United Irish & Emmet’s Rebellions Act of Union & failure to implement Catholic Emancipation. Both parties divided on Catholic Emancipation but both support the Union. Agriculture prospers in wartime; growth of Belfast economy (including shipbuilding). 1804-1829 O’Connell campaigns for CE & mobilises the peasantry Peel opposes CE but introduces a measure of enlightened reform to the Irish administration. Virtually all protestants come to identify with the Union. Commons majority obtained for CE, Tories in Lords reluctantly allow CE bill through. Wartime agricultural markets, but increased rural population pressure. Decline of Belfast cotton, but domestic linen became urbanised & industrialised. Bank of Ireland’s monopoly ended; Belfast, Northern & Ulster banks provide capital for industrial development. Outside NE manufacturing industry in decline from 1820, Dublin in relative social & economic decline. 1830-1841 Little progress in Repeal movement until ’forties; much of O’C’s energies devoted to reform with Whigs. O’C’s rhetoric helps develop a national consciousness. Protestant hostility to attempts of Whigs to curb protestant excesses & to admit RCs to the administration. Orange Order banned. Church Temporalities Act & Tithe Reform change Anglican ascendancy. Lichfield House Compact, but both parties totally hostile to Repeal. Growth in Belfast industry (& sectarianism); continued land pressure but possible signs of slowing of population increase. Start of railways. Date Opposition to the Union Ascendancy & support for the Union Attitudes of British political parties Economic developments 1842-1851 Repeal movement mobilises the masses; Davis & The Nation develop national consciousness. Post O’C militants turn to rebellion (1848 - first since 1803); diaspora takes Irish militants to USA. Anglicans feel threatened by Peel’s attempts to woo RC hierarchy; many of landed classes weakened & sell out with the Famine. Peel smashes Repeal, but repeals the Corn Laws; doctrinaire & unimaginative Whig policy towards the Famine. Great Famine reverses population trend & accelerates Irish diaspora. Continued growth of Belfast, its docks & the railways. 1852-1861 Fenians founded; growth in RC militancy & confidence, this & activities of Tenant Right movement disguise a lack of real political activity. Evangelical revival helps deminish gap between Anglicans & Presbyterians. Reduction in land pressure & post Corn Law prosperity lead to improved agricultural conditions (except in 1859-64). Arterial railway network completed. Iron ships built in Belfast. 1862-1873 Fenian Rising, widespread public support for Fenian martyrs & Amnesty Assn; Home Rule movement founded in response to WEG’s actions. Disestablisment causes Presbyterians & Anglicans to come closer, also some Anglicans join HGA: Disestablishment & 1870 Land Act cause asendancy disquiet. Land Act alienates some Whigs from WEG; many Irish Liberals join HR bandwagon. All sectors affronted by WEG’s university bill. Foundation of Harland & Wolff (1861). Transition to powerlooms completed in linen industry. Date Opposition to the Union Ascendancy & support for the Union Attitudes of British political parties Economic developments 1873-1885 Rise of obstructionism & formation of Land League lead to New Departure & rise of Parnell. Peasantry mobilised, 1881 Land Act conceded during Land War, Kilmainham Treaty indicated possibility of WEG/CSP cooperation. INL founded; also GAA. Landed ascendency undermined by 1881 Land & Ashbourne Acts. Landed asendancy form ILPU in view of HR threat. WEG prepared to work with CSP (1882), Salisbury gave same impression (1885); Ashbourne Act indicated Conservative conciliation. “Hawarden Kite.” European agricultural depression compounded in Ireland by potato failure: Land War. Railway network virtually complete. 1886-1892 Failure of 1st HR bill, but INL inspired by Gladstonian alliance. CSP benefits from Special Commission on Crime but falls following O’Shea scandal. Split in INL leads to subsequent alienation of many from parliamentry politics. 2nd HR bill fails in Lords. Beginnings of effective Ulster Unionism, especially at the time of 2nd HR bill. Landed classes undermined by Unionist reforms. R Churchill “plays orange card”. Liberal split, formation of Liberal Unionists. Salisbury & Balfour provide “resolute government” but attempt to kill home rule by kindness. Growth in peasant proprietorship & rural industries (CDB). Continued growth of shipbuilding, textiles and engineering in Ulster. Date Opposition to the Union Ascendancy & support for the Union Attitudes of British political parties Economic developments 1893-1903 Continued splits in IPP until 1900 & growth in activities of non-parliamentary nationalism, Gaelic League founded & Cathleen ni Houlihan produced. Boer War stimulates nationalist sentiments. Wyndham’s Land Purchase Act effectively ends Irish landlordism. Democratisation of local govt. (1898 County Councils Act) leads to INL & Ulster Unionist control of local councils; CC & Wyndham’s Acts lead to terminal decline in landlord influence. Unionist governments continue reforms. Slump in linen industry followed by successful revitalisation. 1904-1913 Formation of Sinn Fein & revival of IRB. Redmond ties Liberals to a further HR bill. Formation of Ulster Unionist Council; UVF & Provisional Government formed to oppose 3rd HR bill. Anti-HR fight virtually lost outside Ulster. Post-1909 Liberal readoption of HR, Bonar Law pledges resistance to HR by any means. Completion of Titanic, Belfast industry at its zenith. Dublin & Belfast experience labour unrest. 1914-1922 Prolonged nature of WW1 & failure to implement HR lead to decline of United Irish League & demise of Remond. Sinn Fein benefits from Easter Rising & reorganises as a republican front. Independence & Dominion status follow Anglo-Irish War. Southern Irish Unionists concede defeat & seek to secure their interests; northern Unionists preserve the Union with Partition through Government of Ireland Act. Liberal demise, LG the only Liberal to engage himself energetically with Irish affairs; WW1 & A-I War cool Conservative enthusiasm for Unionism. Wartime demand creates prosperity for Irish industry, agriculture & employment. Postwar slump hits Ulster industry. APPENDIX V ABREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT AOH: Ancient Order of Hibernians GAA: Gaelic Athletic Association GOC: General Officer Commanding HGA: Home Government Association ILPU: Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union INL: Irish National League IPP: Irish Parliamentary Party IRA: Irish Republican Army IRB: Irish Republican (or Revolutionary) Brotherhood ITGWU: Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union IUA: Irish Unionist Alliance KC: King’s Counsel RIC: Royal Irish Constabulary SDF: Social Democratic Federation UIL: United Irish League ULARU: Ulster Loyal Anti-Repeal Union UUC: Ulster Unionist Council UVF: Ulster Volunteer Force |