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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The new edition of Alvin Jackson’s highly influential survey of 200 years of Irish history
In Ireland, 1798-1998: War, Peace, and Beyond, award-winning historian Alvin Jackson provides a well-balanced and authoritative account of modern Irish political history. Drawing on original research and extensive readings in current scholarship, the author surveys Irish political parties, leaders, and movements with a special emphasis on the tension between Irish nationalism and unionism.
Opening with a wide-ranging introduction to Irish history, the text describes the varieties and interconnections of the Irish political experience through a sustained and coherent historical narrative, beginning with the creation of militant republicanism and militant loyalism in the 1790s. Reader-friendly chapters interweave social, economic, and cultural material while offering fresh analyses of familiar historical issues and personalities.
This third edition contains expanded coverage of the most recent political developments in Ireland, both North and South. A new epilogue examines the impacts of the Good Friday Agreement, the global banking crisis, Brexit, and COVID-19 on Irish politics and institutions.
The most up-to-date interpretation of modern Irish political history available in a single volume, Ireland, 1798-1998: War, Peace, and Beyond, Third Edition, is a must-read for undergraduate and graduate students working on Irish and British political history, as well as general readers with an interest in the subject.
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Table of Contents
COVER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PRAISE PAGE
DEDICATION PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
LIST OF PLATES
LIST OF MAPS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Ends of the Century
1.2 Modes and Frameworks of Interpretation
2 THE BIRTH OF MODERN IRISH POLITICS, 1790–8
2.1 The Origins of the Crisis
2.2 Constitutional Radicalism to Revolution, 1791–8
3 DISUNITING KINGDOMS, EMANCIPATING CATHOLICS, 1799–1850
3.1 The Union, 1799–1801
3.2 The Catholic Question, 1799–1829
3.3 Justice for Ireland, 1830–41
3.4 Utilitarians and Romantics, 1841–8
3.5 The Orange Party, 1798–1853
4 THE ASCENDANCY OF THE LAND QUESTION, 1845–91
4.1 Guilty Men and the Great Famine
4.2 Pivot or Accelerator?
4.3 Brigadiers and Fenians
4.4 Home Rule: A First Definition
4.5 Idealists and Technicians: The Parnellite Party, 1880–6
4.6 A Union of Hearts and a Broken Marriage: Parnellism, 1886–91
5 GREENING THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE: THE END OF THE UNION, 1891–1921
5.1 The Irish Parliamentary Party, 1891–1914
5.2 Paths to the Post Office: Alternatives to the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1891–1914
5.3 The Parliamentarians and their Enemies, 1914–18
5.4 Making and Unmaking Unionism, 1853–1921
5.5 Other Men’s Wounds: The Troubles, 1919–21
5.6 Trucileers, Staters and Irregulars
6 ‘THREE QUARTERS OF A NATION ONCE AGAIN’: INDEPENDENT IRELAND
6.1 Saorstát Éireann, 1922–32
6.2 Manifest Destiny: De Valera’s Ireland, 1932–48
6.3 Towards a Redefinition of the National Ideal, 1948–58
6.4 The Age of Lemass, 1957–73
7 NORTHERN IRELAND, 1920–72: SPECIALS, PEELERS AND PROVOS
8 THE TWO IRELANDS, 1973–98
8.1 The Republic, 1973–98
8.2 Northern Ireland, 1973–98
9 EPILOGUE: IRELAND IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM, 1998–2024
9.1 The Republic, 1998–2024
9.2 Northern Ireland, 1998–2024
9.3 An End of Irish History?
CHRONOLOGY
MAPS
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING
1 General Works
2 Contemporary Works and Printed Primary Sources
3 Articles and Monographs
INDEX
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Plate 1 Leaders of the 1798 rising.
Chapter 3
Plate 2 Daniel O’Connell acquitted, Dublin 1844.
Chapter 4
Plate 3 A funeral at Skibbereen of a famine victim, January 1847.
Plate 4 Cahera 1847.
Plate 5 Charles Stewart Parnell re‐elected as leader of the Irish Parliament...
Chapter 5
Plate 6 John Redmond.
Plate 7 Irish Volunteers, Kesh, County Sligo, 1914.
Plate 8 Arthur Griffith,
c
.1922.
Plate 9 Patrick Pearse,
c
.1916.
Plate 10 The General Post Office, Dublin, after the Rising.
Plate 11 Colonel Edward Saunderson, September 1906.
Plate 12 The Ulster Unionist Convention Building, June 1892.
Plate 13 Sir Edward Carson,
c
.1910.
Plate 14 Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, August 1922.
Chapter 6
Plate 15 Eamon de Valera.
Plate 16 Terence O’Neill, Frank Aiken (Irish Minister for External Affairs),...
Plate 17 Charles Haughey,
c
.1970.
Chapter 8
Plate 18 Edward Heath (centre), flanked by (left) Liam Cosgrave and (right) ...
Plate 19 The aftermath of the Omagh bombing, August 1998.
Plate 20 John Hume and David Trimble together with Bono from U2 and Tim Whee...
Chapter 9
Plate 21 Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach of Ireland (1997–2008).
Plate 22 Ian Paisley, First Minister of Northern Ireland, and Martin McGuinn...
Plate 23 United in support for the PSNI: Robinson, Orde, McGuinness at Storm...
Plate 24 The New North? Arlene Foster, DUP former First Minister of Northern...
Plate 25 New Ireland? Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Féin First Minister), Leo Varad...
Maps
Map 1 Ireland: provinces, counties and county towns.
Map 2 The 1798 Rising.
Map 3 The Orange Order, May 1798.
Map 4 O’Connell and Young Ireland: Repeal meetings, 1843; 1848 Rising.
Map 5 The 1916 Rising.
Map 6 The Anglo‐Irish War: reprisals by British forces, September 1919–July ...
Map 7 Parliamentary constituencies, 1604–1800.
Map 8 Parliamentary constituencies, 1801–85.
Map 9 Parliamentary constituencies, 1885.
Map 10 Dáil constituencies, 1923.
Map 11 Dáil constituencies, 1935.
Map 12 Population density, 1841–91, by baronies.
Map 13 Population change, 1841–1926, by counties.
Map 14 Emigration, 1851–1911, by counties.
Map 15 Religious denominations, 1871, by counties.
Map 16 Distribution of Catholics and Protestants in Ulster, 1911, by distric...
Map 17 Religious affiliations, 1971: Percentage figures indicate number of C...
Map 18 Irish speakers, 1851–1961.
Guide
COVER PAGE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PRAISE PAGE
DEDICATION PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
LIST OF PLATES
LIST OF MAPS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BEGIN READING
CHRONOLOGY
MAPS
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING
INDEX
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Praise for the First Edition of Ireland 1798–1998
‘Jackson’s measured and ironic approach is a breath of fresh air. This book confirms his position in the leading rank of Irish historians’.
History
‘Jackson’s book cannot be bettered as the most up‐to‐date, comprehensive and readable account of the last 200 years’.
History Review
‘Jackson presents a survey of modern Irish political history that is up‐to‐date and even‐handed in its perspective. An important contribution that belongs in all college libraries’.
Choice
‘A brief review cannot do justice to the richness and complexity of Ireland 1798–1998. Jackson’s gracefully written interpretations of events, forces and personalities are based upon an extensive reading of secondary sources and thoughtful, perceptive and impartial judgements’.
Irish Studies Review
‘A flowing narrative and sharp historical analysis … Jackson is to be congratulated for producing a finely researched, well‐written survey, which scholars, advanced undergraduates and the general reader will find immensely informative and thought‐provoking’.
Albion
‘The book is a formidable achievement. Logically organised, lucidly presented and stylishly written, this is a first‐class study that will enthrall all those interested in the history of Ireland in the modern period’.
Thomas Bartlett, University College Dublin
‘Alvin Jackson offers an authoritative, reflective and refreshing analysis’.
Irish News
For J.C.
THIRD EDITION
IRELAND
1798–1998: War, Peace and Beyond
ALVIN JACKSON
This edition first published 2025© Alvin Jackson 2025
All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Alvin Jackson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication DataNames: Jackson, Alvin, author.Title: Ireland 1798–1998 and beyond / Alvin Jackson.Description: 3rd edition. | [Hoboken, New Jersey] : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2025. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2024038876 (print) | LCCN 2024038877 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119988113 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119988144 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119988137 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Ireland–History–19th century. | Ireland–History–20th century.Classification: LCC DA950 .J34 2025 (print) | LCC DA950 (ebook) | DDC 941.508–dc23/eng/20241031LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024038876LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024038877
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: Waterworks, Antrim Road (Belfast), 1912, by John McBurney © National Museums NI
LIST OF PLATES
1
Leaders of the 1798 Rising
2
Daniel O’Connell acquitted, Dublin 1844
3
A funeral at Skibbereen of a famine victim, January 1847
4
Cahera, 1847
5
Charles Stewart Parnell re‐elected as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, House of Commons, 25 November 1890
6
John Redmond
7
Irish Volunteers, Kesh, County Sligo, 1914
8
Arthur Griffith,
c
.1922
9
Patrick Pearse,
c
.1916
10
The General Post Office, Dublin, after the Rising
11
Colonel Edward Saunderson, September 1906
12
The Ulster Unionist Convention Building, June 1892
13
Sir Edward Carson,
c
.1910
14
Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, August 1922
15
Eamon de Valera
16
Terence O’Neill, Frank Aiken (Irish Minister for External Affairs), Sean Lemass, February 1965
17
Charles Haughey,
c
.1970
18
Edward Heath (centre), flanked by (left) Liam Cosgrave and (right) Brian Faulkner, together with the Alliance Party leader, Oliver Napier, and SDLP leader, Gerry Fitt: Sunningdale, Berkshire, December 1973
19
The aftermath of the Omagh bombing, August 1998
20
John Hume and David Trimble together with Bono from U2 and Tim Wheeler from the band Ash: Belfast, May 1998
21
Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach of Ireland (1997–2008)
22
Ian Paisley, First Minister of Northern Ireland, and Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister, as the ‘Chuckle Brothers’
23
United in support for the PSNI: Robinson, Orde, McGuinness at Stormont, 2009
24
The New North? Arlene Foster, DUP former First Minister of Northern Ireland, with (right‐facing) Simon Hamilton, DUP former Minister for the Economy, at the funeral of Martin McGuinness: Derry, 23 March 2017
25
New Ireland? Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Féin First Minister), Leo Varadkar (Taoiseach) and Emma Little‐Pengelly (DUP Deputy First Minister) at Stormont, 5 February 2024
LIST OF MAPS
1
Ireland: provinces, counties and county towns
2
The 1798 Rising
3
The Orange Order, May 1798
4
O’Connell and Young Ireland: Repeal meetings, 1843; 1848 Rising
5
The 1916 Rising
6
The Anglo‐Irish War: reprisals by British forces, September 1919–July 1921
7
Parliamentary constituencies, 1604–1800
8
Parliamentary constituencies, 1801–85
9
Parliamentary constituencies, 1885
10
Dáil constituencies, 1923
11
Dáil constituencies, 1935
12
Population density, 1841–91, by baronies
13
Population change, 1841–1926, by counties
14
Emigration, 1851–1911, by counties
15
Religious denominations, 1871, by counties
16
Distribution of Catholics and Protestants in Ulster, 1911, by district electoral divisions
17
Religious affiliations, 1971: Percentage figures indicate number of Catholics in each province
18
Irish speakers, 1851–1961
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have taxed the patience, kindness and friendship of many in researching and writing this book. Sir Geoffrey Elton asked me to take on the original project and offered generous support in the early months: I remember him with respect and affection. Numerous friends and colleagues have read part, or all, of the text, but of course bear no responsibility for any shortcomings that there may be in the current, or earlier, editions. Tom Bartlett, Seán Connolly, Roy Foster, the late Peter Jupp and Patrick Maume offered sharp insights and stimulus across the first edition; Gordon Gillespie provided help with the later sections of the chronology and of the narrative. Owen Dudley Edwards read most of the typescript of the third edition and gave wise advice and vital encouragement. I have benefited, too, from the support of many other friends: Paul Bew, Richard English, David Hayton and David Livingstone at Queen’s, Maurice Bric at University College Dublin, Enda Delaney at Edinburgh, and Kevin O’Neill, Peg Preston, Oliver Rafferty and Rob Savage at Boston College. Blackwell and Wiley readers were – following the convention – anonymous; but their careful reports supplied both encouragement and important suggestions for improvement.
I am grateful to numerous individuals and institutions for help with research or copyright materials. Lesley Bruce and Alexandra Cann Representation kindly gave me permission to quote from the work of Stewart Parker. Michael Longley graciously and wittily recorded his willingness to see some of his verse used within these covers: the covers themselves of the third edition carry an illustration made available through the courtesy of the Picture Library of the National Museums of Northern Ireland. I am indebted, as ever, to the staff of the National Library of Ireland, the National Library of Scotland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and the libraries of Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, and the University of Edinburgh. I must in particular acknowledge the help of Yvonne Murphy and her former colleagues in the Northern Ireland Political Collection of the Linenhall Library. To those owners of copyright whom I have been unable to contact or whom I have omitted through oversight, I offer my apologies.
I owe other debts of gratitude over many years and across the three editions of the work. The powers‐that‐be at Queen’s University and the University of Edinburgh provided sabbatical leave, without which the different iterations of the book might never have seen the light of day. The British Academy has funded my original and ongoing researches into modern Irish history, and the Leverhulme Trust has also provided essential support, most recently through a Major Research Fellowship (2015–2017). The Burns Library and Irish Studies Program at Boston College appointed me to their Burns Visiting Professorship in 1996–1997: this brought vital liberation from teaching and administration as well as access to some splendid library resources, all of which were essential to the research and writing of the first edition. I have mentioned four Bostonian friends: let me also acknowledge the friendship and support of the late Adele Dalsimer, Kristin Morrison and Bob O’Neill, all of Boston College. My greatest debt, whether in 1999 (with the first edition) or in 2024 (with the third), is recorded in the dedication.
Alvin JacksonJuly 2024
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ACA
Army Comrades’ Association
AIA
Anglo‐Irish Agreement
AOH
Ancient Order of Hibernians
APL
Anti‐Partition League
BEPS
Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (Accounting)
CBS
Christian Brothers’ School
CSJ
Campaign for Social Justice
DFM
Deputy First Minister
DHAC
Derry Housing Action Committee
DMP
Dublin Metropolitan Police
DUP
Democratic Unionist Party
EEC
European Economic Community
EU
European Union
FF
Fianna Fáil
FG
Fine Gael
FM
First Minister
GAA
Gaelic Athletic Association
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
GNP
Gross National Product
GOC
General Officer Commanding
ICTU
Irish Congress of Trade Unions
IDA
Industrial Development Authority
IFS
Irish Free State
ILPU
Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union
IMF
International Monetary Fund
INLA
Irish National Liberation Army
INTS
Irish National Theatre Society
IRA
Irish Republican Army
IRAO
Irish Republican Army Organization
IRB
Irish Republican Brotherhood
ITGWU
Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union
IUA
Irish Unionist Alliance
IWFL
Irish Women’s Franchise League
MLA
Member of the Legislative Assembly (N. Ireland)
NI
Northern Ireland
NICRA
Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
NIHE
National Institute for Higher Education
NILP
Northern Ireland Labour Party
NIO
Northern Ireland Office
PD
People’s Democracy/ Progressive Democrats
PM
Prime Minister
PIRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
PSNI
Police Service of Northern Ireland
PUP
Progressive Unionist Party
RHI
Renewable Heat Initiative
RIC
Royal Irish Constabulary
ROI
Republic of Ireland
RUC
Royal Ulster Constabulary
SAS
Special Air Service
SDLP
Social Democratic and Labour Party
SF
Sinn Féin
TD
Teachta Dála (Deputy to the Dáil)
TUV
Traditional Unionist Voice
UCD
University College Dublin
UDA
Ulster Defence Association
UDP
Ulster Democratic Party
UDR
Ulster Defence Regiment
UFF
Ulster Freedom Fighters
UIL
United Irish League
UPNI
Unionist Party of Northern Ireland
USC
Ulster Special Constabulary
UUC
Ulster Unionist Council
UVF
Ulster Volunteer Force
UWUC
Ulster Women’s Unionist Council
YIB
Young Ireland Branch of the UIL
1INTRODUCTION
We are trying to make ourselves heard
Like the lover who mouths obscenities
In his passion, like the condemned man
Who makes a last‐minute confession
Like the child who cries out in the dark.
Michael Longley1
1.1 Ends of the Century
Irish history, it has been observed, is often written as a morality tale, with a preformulated structure and established patterns of triumph and travail.2 Written in the aftermath of the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994 and 1997, revised in the wake of the St Andrews Agreement of 2006, and revised once again in the (relative) calm after the storms of Brexit and COVID, this story of Ireland might easily assume some of the characteristics of its predecessors in the field: a narrative of heroism and villainy with a happy resolution. The quality of the fairy‐tale ending may not be fully perceived for some years yet, and the interaction of the book’s themes may not coincide with the typology of other stories of Ireland. Yet the period under consideration here does appear to represent a discrete phase within Irish political history: while the book lacks the robust predestinarianism of earlier stories, it may at least boast a shadowy symmetry.
The book begins and ends with the turn of a century. The book begins with the creation of militant republicanism and militant loyalism in the 1790s – in the essential context both of European revolution and of a great international conflict: ‘the events of 1793–4, in their total effect, marked a turning point in the history of the protestant ascendancy’, J.C. Beckett has noted; Thomas Bartlett has called the 1790s ‘the crucible of modern Ireland when separatism, republicanism, unionism and Orangeism captured the Irish political agenda for generations to come’.3 The book closes with, if not the demise, then at least the modification of militant republicanism and militant loyalism in the 1990s and after. Again, the dual context for this development has been the European Revolution and the apparent resolution of a great international rivalry. America and France fired Irish republican zeal in the early 1790s: the French wars indirectly brought about the militarization of this republican enthusiasm after 1793. The fall of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and the radical recalibration of the ideological and material conflicts between communism and capitalism have affected Ireland no less than the seismic political shifts of the 1790s. Militant republicanism can no longer appeal, even indirectly, to the resources of the Eastern Bloc; the British government no longer finds a wholly compliant partner in the United States (if ever it did).
Moreover, in both the 1790s and the 1990s, social and economic developments broke through their constitutional constraints. The end of the eighteenth century was characterized by the consolidation of the Catholic propertied interest and by its increasingly vocal opposition to a constitution that recognized property, but not Catholicism. The Irish Protestant constitution (even – especially – when revamped in 1782–3) proved unable to accommodate this newly arisen interest and was abolished by the British government through the Act of Union (1800). The end of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty‐first in Northern Ireland have been characterized by the proportionate growth of the Catholic population and their increasing political and cultural confidence: the Protestant‐dominated constitutional arrangements of the period 1920–72 proved unable to accommodate Catholic aspirations, and, after the Second World War, increasing Catholic political and economic strength. The constitutional development of Northern Ireland after 1972 has involved a spasmodic retreat from effectively Protestant institutions, as Unionism has splintered and the political and cultural confidence of northern Protestants has waned. There is, however, some scattered evidence to suggest that this process was temporarily halted – at least in the years up to 2016. It would seem that 25 years of violence (1969–94) have brought not only some belated Catholic political victories, but (at least for a time) a more critical self‐awareness and reorientation on the part of Ulster Protestants.
All this broaches the characteristic fin‐de‐siècle theme of decadence. The late eighteenth century witnessed the first symptoms of the decay of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, albeit a decay well screened by a luxuriant social and political culture: the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries have witnessed the formal decay of Protestant predominance in Northern Ireland (screened again by an exotic political culture). Whether the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries have also witnessed the final departure of what has been euphemistically labelled the ‘physical force’ traditions of loyalism and republicanism is similarly uncertain. If there is, arguably, a symmetry in this story of Ireland, then its lines necessarily remain blurred.
1.2 Modes and Frameworks of Interpretation
Until recently the most common framework applied to modern Irish history has been that associated with the varieties of Irish nationalism. Work written in this broad tradition has become less common, given the steady professionalization of Irish history writing since the 1930s, but some of its features live on. The Irish history profession evolved alongside the development, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of the Irish Revolution, and there was an inevitable overlap or exchange. In 1886, at the time of the first Home Rule Bill, historians from several traditions debated the achievement of Grattan’s parliament, the assembly abolished in 1800 through the Act of Union: nationalist commentators saw an economic and cultural flowering in Ireland as a result of legislative independence, while unionist commentators stressed the merits of Union. Heroes of the campaign to repeal the Union, such as Thomas Davis, were lauded in celebratory biographies (Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Davis (1890)). General histories of Ireland (such as that by Mary Hayden) deployed a straightforward morality, emphasizing the benefits of self‐rule and the brutality of British imperial government. This work has supplied several starting points even for some contemporary Irish historiography: an emphasis on the nobility of nationalist endeavour, on the suffering of the Irish people under British rule, and on the inevitable success of the national struggle. Such work, in its most direct expression, fell victim to the popularization of a more ‘scientific’ historical methodology with the creation, in 1938, of the influential journal Irish Historical Studies; intellectual proponents of an uncritical militant nationalism were also embarrassed by the bloodier aspects of the IRA campaigns after 1969. The paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 and 1997 have, however, permitted the renewal of a nationalist historical perspective on modern Irish history.
An alternative and, since the mid‐1960s, a highly influential interpretative approach has been labelled as ‘liberal’. Such work has its origins as a reaction against the most elaborate and unconvincing nationalist rhetoric, and – certainly in the view of critics such as Bradshaw – has substituted a rationalist aridity for nationalist floridity.4 The characteristics of this work tend to be an intolerance of intolerance – a disdainful attitude towards popular political institutions and culture – combined with a much more sensitive approach to the diversity of modern Ireland than that adopted by the traditionalists. Nationalists tend to see Ireland as an ethnic nation subjugated by a neighbouring imperial power (Britain); ‘liberals’ place greater emphasis on the ‘varieties of Irishness’ and are warier about the crude application of national labels.5 ‘Liberals’ tend not to accept that Ireland was bound by a simple colonial relationship with Britain.
The counter‐revisionist critics of this dominant tendency within Irish historical scholarship fall into a variety of camps (not all of which are discrete). Counter‐revisionism may at once be a reassertion of patriotic certainties: in this sense, counter‐revisionism may be seen as an Irish expression of the historiography of the radical right prevalent in the 1980s and after. By extension, counter‐revisionism may be seen as part of the broader ‘greening’ of Irish society at this time, as evidenced by the election of Mary McAleese as President of Ireland (in 1997), and – in terms of popular culture – by the phenomenal success of Neil Jordan’s film Michael Collins (1996) and Michael Flatley’s Riverdance (Flatley appeared on posters clad in the national colours, and the pounding rhythms of his dancers suggested a militant Celticism to some – friendly – critics). However, the counter‐revisionist tendency is as sophisticated as the revisionism that it seeks to subvert, and it is also arguable that counter‐revisionism represents a post‐modernist assault on the enlightenment verities of mainstream Irish history. In this interpretation, revisionism is a liberal construction, and therefore as flawed and as dangerous as other constructionist readings. Indeed, just as some crusading post‐modernists have seen the Holocaust as a bloody and perverted expression of the Enlightenment, so some ‘green’ post‐modernists have seen ‘enlightened’ revisionists apologizing for what is occasionally described as the Irish holocaust – the Great Famine of 1845–51.6
Marxian interpretations of modern Irish history stem from the Irish commentaries of Marx himself, or – more frequently – the work of the socialist James Connolly, especially Labour in Irish History (1910) or The Reconquest of Ireland (1915). This work, predictably enough, is to be differentiated from mainstream nationalist commentary by its emphasis on class, and hostility towards organized Catholicism. It lays emphasis on the revolutionary potential of the Irish working class, seeing capitalism as an imperialist importation, and the middle classes as hopelessly corrupted: ‘the middle class … have now also bowed the knee to Baal, and have a thousand economic strings binding them to English capitalism as against every sentimental or historic attachment drawing them towards Irish patriotism’.7 The ineluctable problem that this work continually encounters is that of the Unionist working class in Belfast, a theoretical irritant (like the Tory working man or woman in Victorian England) as well as an apparently practical obstacle to the socialist millennium. Connolly saw the Catholics and Presbyterians of eighteenth‐century Ireland as united through their legal disabilities; he saw Presbyterians won to the cause of the Anglican ‘master class’ in the nineteenth century and bound into an Orange working class whose servility was rooted in marginal superiority over Catholic unskilled labour. The influence of this model of sectarian and political relations in the north of Ireland since the late eighteenth century has been immense. Connolly’s arguments have stimulated a continuous reappraisal, and even though his view of the servile Orange worker and rebel Catholic counterpart has been found to be oversimplistic, his rhetoric and assumptions continue to inform even highly respected contemporary portrayals of the north of Ireland in the nineteenth century.
This volume is not exclusively a part of any of these traditions. It is not neo‐nationalist because while the value of free‐ranging historical sympathy and empathy is warmly embraced here, historical determinism forms no part of the critical approach. For much the same reasons, the volume, though occasionally influenced by some Marxist scholarship on Ulster labour, is neither a socialist text nor a call to arms such as Michael Farrell’s Northern Ireland: The Orange State (1976).8 Similarly, while it shares the inclusivist vision of Irish identity explored in Foster’s Modern Ireland (1988), the book is not a liberal document. It has been the recurrent fate of Ireland’s liberal historians – Lecky, Beckett, Lyons – to see their rationalist faith in the power of scholarship smashed by popular political emotion: Beckett’s optimistic projections of the political outlook in his The Making of Modern Ireland (1966) were soon shown to be ill‐founded, while the mild, generous, confident nationalism of F.S.L. Lyons’s Ireland since the Famine (1971) was swiftly replaced by the bleaker tone of his last work, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland (1979). Written with this evidence of wrecked aspirations, and after 25 years of a low‐grade but vicious civil war in Northern Ireland (not to mention the political passions enflamed through the fallout from Brexit), this volume could not consciously be imbued with any Whiggish agenda, however subtle or artless.
Nevertheless, if post‐modernist writing is a by‐product of an age of crisis, then we in Ireland, and especially in Northern Ireland, are all post‐modernists now. This book was written against a backdrop of political and social fluidity, with the ostensibly marmoreal political attitudes and institutions of Northern Ireland in flux: the book was begun in a post‐ceasefire Ulster, pursued in a post‐nationalist Ireland, completed in a post‐industrial United States and revised twice (for different editions) in a post‐unionist and post‐Brexit Scotland. In common with much recent historiography, the volume addresses some of the contemporary predicaments of Northern Ireland and the island as a whole; there is no grand narrative, however, no ‘Official Story’, but rather an interest in what Richard Kearney has called an ‘open plurality of stories’.9 The work embodies no blind faith in the canonical ‘facts’ of Irish history. As Peter Novick has argued, the historian – and emphatically the Irish historian – can hope at best for plausibility.10
Readers, then, will not find here a universal narrative history, still less a history designed to serve as a basic introduction, or primer, for the subject. An analysis of Irish political parties, leaders, institutions and movements is sustained, and social, economic and cultural material relevant to the main political thrust is introduced and interwoven. Individual chapters highlight major political issues, and these are generally explored through the mapping of subsidiary themes or hypotheses: the material relevant to a given issue is often arranged thematically or within the context of a wider argument. This makes for a design that is intended to stimulate thought (or, indeed, to invite argument) about sometimes familiar historical issues or personalities: it is a design which (it is intended) will highlight some fresh conjunctions and configurations in the interpretation of modern Irish history. In addition, the design is meant to corral, not just the familiar hobby horses of students, but also some rarer creatures. An attempt has been made to give a place to some sections of Irish society that are not normally (or, at any rate, not adequately) represented within works such as this. Thus – once again – the volume is not conditioned exclusively by the contours of contemporary Irish life: the ‘losers’ of social, economic and political struggle are characterized as well as the ‘winners’. There are Salieris here as well as Mozarts.
Notes
1
Michael Longley, dedicatory lines from
An Exploded View: Poems, 1968–72
(London, 1973).
2
See R.F. Foster,
The Story of Ireland: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on 1 December 1994
(Oxford, 1995).
3
J.C. Beckett,
The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603–1923
(London, 1966), p. 252; Thomas Bartlett,
Theobald Wolfe Tone
(Dublin, 1997), p. 5.
4
Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in Modern Ireland’,
Irish Historical Studies
, xxvi
, 104 (November 1989), pp. 329–51.
5
R.F. Foster,
Modern Ireland, 1600–1972
(London, 1988), p. 596.
6
An idea often mooted, but see Georg G. Iggers,
Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge
(Hanover and London, 1997), pp. 145–7. For the Famine see (for example) Cormac Ó Gráda,
A New Economic History of Ireland, 1780–1939
(Oxford, 1994), pp. 173–8.
7
James Connolly,
Labour in Irish History
(1910), reprinted in
Labour in Ireland
(Dublin, n.d.), p. 9.
8
Michael Farrell,
Northern Ireland: The Orange State
(London, 1976), p. 12.
9
Richard Kearney,
Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy
(London, 1997), p. 64.
10
Quoted by Iggers,
Historiography in the Twentieth Century
, p. 145.
2THE BIRTH OF MODERN IRISH POLITICS, 1790–8
We had the true faith, you see. Reason. The logical men. History was a dungeon. The people were locked into their separate compounds, full of stench and nightmare. But the dungeons couldn’t stand against the force of rationalism. Let the people once unite, and we could burst open the doors, and they would flood out into the clean sunlight … all we’ve done, you see, is to reinforce the locks, cram the cells fuller than ever of mangled bodies crawling round in their own shite and lunacy, and the cycle just goes on, playing out the same demented comedy of terrors from generation to generation, trapped in the same malignant legend ….
Henry Joy McCracken, in Stewart Parker’s Northern Star (1983)1
2.1 The Origins of the Crisis
Ireland in the 1790s was a separate but dependent kingdom, united to Great Britain only through sharing a monarch, George III: the theoretical constitutional position of Ireland was similar to that of Hungary after the Ausgleich of 1867. Ireland boasted a separate bicameral legislature, which sat in Edward Lovett Pearce’s splendid Italianate parliament house in College Green, Dublin: after 1782–3, this assembly enjoyed, at least in name, full legislative independence. There was a distinct Irish executive, headed by a lord lieutenant, and based in a sprawling administrative complex at Dublin Castle. There was a theoretically separate Irish judiciary, housed in Dublin’s Four Courts, on the northern bank of the river Liffey.
But behind these elaborate institutions, and behind the florid rhetoric of the Irish parliament’s patriot interest, lay the reality of British influence. The Irish parliament had, indeed, won what it was pleased to call ‘legislative independence’ in 1782–3; but while the strategies that secured victory had an immense significance, the limits of this triumph were soon apparent – and particularly after 1789 when, with the French revolution, an increasingly ambitious definition of parliamentary autonomy and authority gained currency.2 In 1782, one of the keystones of the Irish constitution, Poynings’ Law (1494), had been modified in order to award the Irish parliament sole rights over the introduction of legislation (the modifying legislation was known as Yelverton’s Act): in addition an antique legislative irritant, the Declaratory Act (1720), which asserted the superior status of Westminster, was repealed and, in 1783, replaced by the Renunciation Act, a measure disavowing any British legislative ambition over Ireland. These tinkerings were hailed by Irish patriots as independence, but the chasm between this rhetoric and constitutional reality was wide, and ultimately dangerous.
The Irish political system in the 1790s was affected by British influence at almost every level. Though Yelverton’s Act had emasculated the Irish privy council, its British counterpart still possessed a right to veto Irish legislation, and this meant that the British government could spike any offensive measures (though in reality it rarely did so). The constitutional settlement of 1782–3 did not directly alter the condition of the Irish executive, which remained firmly under the control of the British government. The chief executive, the lord lieutenant, was a British appointee, and was throughout the period 1782–1800 an Englishman; in the same period, the Chief Secretaries – in effect, the government managers in the Commons – were, bar one, Englishmen, and the unique Irish appointment, Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, was deemed by his lord lieutenant in 1797 to be ‘so very unlike an Irishman I think he has a clear claim to an exception in his favour’.3 A triumvirate of powerful officeholders – John Foster, Speaker of the Commons, John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, the Lord Chancellor, and John Beresford, Chief Commissioner of the Revenue – generally (though not uniformly) exercised their formidable political influence in the government interest.
The ‘insistent treatment of Ireland as a British dependency’ (as Nancy Curtin has described it) was made possible both by the British‐controlled executive and by the peculiarly unrepresentative nature of the Irish parliament: strict British control over patronage combined with a narrowly based and therefore susceptible parliament to tarnish further the lustre of ‘legislative independence’.4 The Irish House of Commons at the end of the eighteenth century represented chiefly the Church of Ireland landed interest. Catholics were disfranchised between 1728 and 1793, and were excluded from parliament until the ‘emancipation’ of 1829; Presbyterians, while possessing the franchise, were in practice scarcely represented. Of 150 constituencies represented in the Irish House of Commons, 107 were ‘close’ – that is, under the control of an individual or a small group of patrons. By contemporary European standards, even limited parliamentary representation was a democratic luxury, and by contemporary British standards, a small and irregular electorate was unexceptional. In addition, A.P.W. Malcomson has warned against the uncritical assumption that close boroughs implied inefficient or unchallenged control.5 What was unusual about Ireland was not that landed property should be overrepresented (however unevenly) or that there should be a religious dimension to political rights, but rather that the two principles should be combined in order to exclude two powerful and wealthy confessional communities from representative politics. This constitutional quirk was made all the more glaring, given the inflated libertarian rhetoric that had preceded the achievement of legislative independence in 1782. Legislative independence therefore raised dangerous expectations in two separate, but related, spheres: the campaign encouraged the assumption that, while the British connection would remain, British influence would be constrained, and further, it underlined Catholic and Presbyterian exclusion. The Renunciation Act (1783) has been described as ‘a mere decorative flourish for which the indirect price was out of all proportion to the benefit obtained’: the same aphorism might be applied to the whole settlement (1782–3).6 Legislative independence was a Pyrrhic victory for the ascendancy of parliament, bought at the price of long‐term constitutional uncertainty.
Thomas Malthus, in a famous discussion of Irish demography, suggested that the political uncertainty of the 1790s was a product, not of this long‐term constitutional instability, but rather of exceptional population growth.7 In 1790, the Irish population stood at around 4 million, having doubled since the famine of 1740–1; by 1800, the population would be 5 million, an astonishing rate of growth by late eighteenth‐century European standards. Explanations for this growth are never likely to be conclusive, but the widespread adoption of the potato through the eighteenth century, combined with the general economic buoyancy of the later part of the century, are clearly relevant factors. Early marriage, and (possibly) a falling mortality rate, were the immediate spurs to this population boom, but a political dimension has also been observed: the political exclusion of Catholics, an issue increasingly to the fore after legislative independence, and limited Catholic prospects for betterment, may have removed any social or economic restraint on marital fertility. It may well be that the political turmoil of the 1790s was simultaneously a cause and a result of this growth.
Economic growth, while related to the issue of population, clearly operated as an independent destabilizing influence. After the fluctuating, but generally depressed, conditions of the period 1691–1730, the Irish economy grew swiftly: agricultural output rose, trade with Britain and with North America prospered, new industries (such as cotton) and well‐established industries (such as linen manufacture, brewing and distilling) all generally flourished (despite occasional, temporary downturns, such as at the end of the 1770s). It is difficult to be precise about the political implications of this growth. It may, however, be surmised that the political crisis of 1779–82, which resulted in the achievement of ‘free trade’ and legislative independence for Ireland, was related to contemporary economic conditions – a period of depression after sustained growth and the creation of an early ‘crisis of expectations’ (such as has been identified for the 1870s). The complex inter‐relationship between economic growth and political protest may be further illustrated through the example of eighteenth‐century Armagh. David Miller has argued that the rise of the linen industry in late eighteenth‐century County Armagh encouraged some limited Catholic economic mobility and tended to destabilize well‐established family structures within every confessional tradition: the profitability of handloom weaving permitted young men to establish their independence much earlier than was usual within small farmer society, and freed them from the restraints of the rigid, patriarchal family.8 This social liberation combined with Catholic advance and with the rapid rise in population to stimulate the sectarian violence endemic in Armagh from the mid‐1780s through to the mid‐1790s.
However, economic growth was linked to other evolving forms of social and political interaction. Tom Bartlett has argued persuasively that in Ireland after c.1770 a new moral economy was developing in the Irish countryside, underpinned by the growing ‘sociability’ of community activity.9 The mounting prosperity of the countryside was reflected in the rising number of fairs and markets, and in the gradual commercialization of rural economic life. Relative prosperity therefore not only equipped many Irish people with new political and material aspirations, but also gave rise to increasing opportunities for communal mobilization and protest. Aside from the emergence of new political fora, older forms of public activity – sporting events, wakes, funerals and patterns – also now began to take on an additional significance: the politicization of funerals, for example, seems to have gathered pace in this era.
These processes of socialization were augmented and diverted by the increasing importance of military activity within everyday life: it has been calculated that between 1760 and 1820, perhaps as many as one in six Irishmen spent part of their lives in the ranks of one or other of the armed forces, and indeed it is possible that, given the stupendous demands of the Napoleonic wars, this proportion may have been higher.10 For many, this involved a liberation from the shackles of the local community, and brought – perhaps for the first time – tighter definitions of nationality and religious identity. Indeed, it has been observed that this era also witnessed a spiralling sectarianism, or rather sectarianization, in part the by‐product of these more communal forms of political expression and the mounting conflicts between Catholics and the Protestant state: the army, for example, may have been the first arena where many Irish Catholics experienced the reality of their religious subordination.
A related range of destabilizing influences may be located in the realm of ideology. Irish interest in the American and French revolutions was immense, and the ideological fall‐out from these events was no less dramatic. The rationalist, libertarian and republican ideals of, especially, the French revolutionaries found an audience in Ireland already sensitive (for the reasons noted) to the issue of individual political rights and national sentiment. However, the direct influence of the great writers of the French Enlightenment is difficult to gauge: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau can have had only a very few, privileged readers in Ireland. Popular appreciation of the ideals and events of the French Revolution came, not from its intellectual architects, but rather from the press and from pamphlets. ‘Illiteracy’, as Nancy Curtin has observed, ‘was no barrier to familiarising oneself with the polemics of a Paine or of a Tone’: public readings from the newspapers and radical literature were quite common.11 Nor was it necessary to follow difficult abstract argument: handbills hammered home a clear‐cut political message, while ballads celebrated the French revolutionary achievement in a universally accessible fashion. Popular prophetic literature foretold the liberation of Ireland by the French. In Ireland, just as in France itself, popular political resentments were cultivated and directed by this literature. The tyranny of the Irish government was underlined by the experience of the French; moreover, the Irish oppressed had now an ally in the shape of a liberated French nation.
2.2 Constitutional Radicalism to Revolution, 1791–8
The two dominant Irish political issues of the early 1790s were certainly not spawned by the French revolution, but they were nurtured through revolutionary sympathy. Parliamentary reform had been a longstanding question, dating back to the late 1740s and the campaigns of the radical Dublin apothecary, Charles Lucas: although initially more concerned with Dublin corporation politics than with parliament, Lucas had condemned the misgovernment of the Castle and its parliamentary allies, and – after his political comeback in 1761 – had supported a septennial bill in order to limit the duration of parliament. Lucas’s views, as David Dickson has noted, ‘were later to influence Catholic apologists arguing for a relaxation of the penal laws, and political radicals seeking parliamentary reform’.12 The constitutional settlement of 1782–3 raised the issue of parliamentary reform in a more direct manner than had been done in the previous generation, with the Volunteers of Ulster attacking the power of the great borough owners, and a National Convention of the Volunteers, held in Dublin in November 1783, declaring in favour of a reform bill. This was presented to the House of Commons, and summarily rejected. A revival of the reform question in 1784–5 was spear‐headed by a new coalition, largely urban, and embracing both Catholics (hitherto largely silent on the question) and dissenters. This fed off other resentments – the Dublin guilds wanted tariff protection, Catholics wanted the removal of disabilities – but soon fell victim to internal division (especially on the question of Catholic relief) and a ferocious and abusive press campaign orchestrated by the Castle. The rejection of William Pitt’s proposals for reform of the British parliament, presented in 1785, confirmed the comprehensive failure of the Irish reformers.
In the later 1780s, the most conspicuous proponents of limited reform were the Whigs, who were bruised by their misjudgements during the Regency Crisis (they offered over‐hasty support for the Prince of Wales during George III’s temporary incapacity in 1788–9) and who established a formal party in the Irish parliament in 1789: this supported place and pensions bills, a responsibility bill, and the disfranchisement of revenue officers. Even though Whig clubs were founded in Dublin, Belfast and other large towns to bolster the new grouping (the Northern Whig Club denounced corrupt boroughs), the new political challenge came to nothing: the elections of 1790 brought no sweeping Whig successes, and in fact served only to consolidate the parliamentary strength of the Castle. While the Whigs appear to have found some inspiration from France in the summer of 1789 (their manifesto was published a month after the fall of the Bastille), the revolution both directly and indirectly would prove to be disastrous for them. As the revolutionaries grew more radical and violent, so the Whigs grew ever more divided in their attitudes. Moreover, with the outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793, the Castle sought to bolster support for the war effort by annexing and enacting some of the Whigs’ policies (a Civil List Act, a Place Act, a Barren Land Act and a Hearth Tax Act). However, this conciliation was complemented – as so often in the history of Castle administration – with coercion, and three security measures were passed in the same parliamentary session of 1793: a Convention Act, a Gunpowder Act and a Militia Act. And neither the Castle nor – despite some equivocation – the Irish House of Commons was seriously interested in the prospect of parliamentary reform: a Whig reform bill, creating three‐member county constituencies and a uniform, if elaborate, borough franchise, was easily rejected in March 1794, with the opponents of reform arguing that such moderation had spawned eventual anarchy in France. Denuded in certain areas of policy, and blocked in others, the Whigs lost credibility, and constitutional reform initiatives fell into alternative, ultimately less genteel, hands.
The only substantial reform of the franchise to be won in these years came in January 1793, with the admission of Catholic 40‐shilling freeholders to the county vote through Hobart’s relief bill (and even the importance of this can easily be overstated, given that the Irish parliament was a borough‐dominated assembly). The political leadership of the Catholic community before 1789 pursued a distinctively gradualist and (on the whole) loyalist agenda, couching limited demands for ministerial ‘indulgence’ in highly deferential language. The Catholic Committee, created in 1760, was the chief representative body for the Catholic community, and emerged as a mild and aristocratic institution: this went into abeyance in 1784, after the failure of the parliamentary reform initiative, but was revived in 1790–1 with the accession of new, bourgeois and radical, leaders. Eamon O’Flaherty has warned against treating the Catholic community in the late eighteenth century in crudely homogeneous terms, and indeed even the political attitudes of the Catholic clergy varied significantly: the French Revolution created divisions between the episcopate and the younger clergy, which foreshadowed similar tensions during the Irish land wars and revolutionary era.13 Indeed, the lessons provided by France for Irish Catholics were ambiguous: the revolution simultaneously promoted the religious tolerance and equality which had for long been sought by Catholic representatives in Ireland, while involving an assault on the institutions and property of the Church. Revolutionary ideals therefore fired a demand for Catholic relief in Ireland, while disturbing many Catholic gentry and much of the episcopate.
By December 1791, the old aristocratic masters of the Catholic Committee had withdrawn, leaving the field to the middle‐class radicals (notably John Keogh and Thomas Braughall). The deferential and loyal petitioning of Lord Kenmare, the aristocratic Catholic leader, was now replaced by the French‐inspired language of right. In addition, Keogh and the new Committee complemented this radical assertiveness with strategic innovation. The Irish government and parliament were clearly unsympathetic to Catholic claims and were soon written out of the Committee’s strategy (two relief petitions, submitted by the Committee to the Irish House of Commons in January and February 1792, were rejected amidst much anti‐papist philosophizing). A highly tentative reform measure – sponsored by Sir Hercules Langrishe and dubbed therefore ‘Langrishe’s Act’ (even though it had originated with the Castle) – did nothing to defuse Catholic protest: indeed, on the contrary, for as Tom Bartlett has argued, the significance of the measure ‘lay in the debate it provoked (but did not resolve) on the nature of the Anglo‐Irish connection, in the jealousies and suspicions it aroused concerning the British government’s Catholic game, and in the fact that it was clearly incomplete’.14 Moreover, the bill passed into law accompanied by the elaboration and enunciation of the new idea of ‘Protestant ascendancy’. Even before these humiliations, the Catholic Committee had been prepared to sidestep the Irish parliament by exploiting close links with its supporters at Westminster (pre‐eminently Edmund Burke) and establishing communication with the British government: Burke’s son, Richard, was appointed English agent of the Committee in September 1791. The appointment of Theobald Wolfe Tone to the secretaryship of the Committee in July 1792 signalled a more defiant and radical approach, and this was confirmed by the national Catholic Convention, held in Dublin in December, which voted to petition the king for total legal equality. ‘The real achievement of the Convention’, O’Flaherty has argued, ‘was that it succeeded in inducing Pitt to bring irresistible pressure on the Irish executive to grant the principal Catholic demand’.15 Hobart’s relief bill, admitting Catholic 40‐shilling freeholders to the franchise, was the fruit of this simultaneously more assertive and subtle approach to the advocacy of Catholic rights: it was the highpoint of Catholic constitutional endeavour in the 1790s, indeed before the ‘emancipation’ (the term gained currency in 1792–3) of 1829. Thereafter Catholic constitutional pressure encountered an ascendancy interest increasingly concerned and defensive about the European war, and thus more in tune than hitherto with the British government. The Catholic Committee was forced to dissolve under the terms of the Convention Act (1793): Henry Grattan’s Catholic Emancipation Bill (1795) was defeated in the Irish House of Commons, and Grattan’s viceregal patron, Earl Fitzwilliam, was removed from office after a tenure of scarcely two months. Yet, though this half‐cocked emancipation did not in fact herald a greater liberation, its significance should not be missed: Hobart called the enfranchisement ‘a most important revolution in the political state of this country’, and Tom Bartlett has convincingly stressed the long‐term importance of the arguments and strategies which were pursued in the search for reform.16 Ominously, the comparatively genteel power struggle that was underway in Dublin was underscored by a more naked sectarian conflict in south Ulster.
The crucial points of contact between the radical tradition of parliamentary reform and the campaign for Catholic relief came with the United Irish Society, founded in Belfast and Dublin in 1791, and with Wolfe Tone, ‘mid‐wife’ of the Society and an influential sympathizer with the Catholic cause. The Society was at first a constitutional radical grouping, hostile to English interference in the government of Ireland, but urging the comprehensive reform of government rather than its overthrow. The ‘Declaration and Resolutions of the Society of United Irishmen of Belfast’, published in October 1791 and drafted by Tone, called for ‘a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament’, and the unity of all ‘Irishmen’ in order to pursue this end. The Society reflected Tone’s dual enthusiasm for parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation (a combination most famously articulated in his Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland
