167-556: The Cork Free Press (11 June 1910 – 9 December 1916) was a nationalist newspaper in Ireland, which circulated primarily in the Munster region surrounding its base in Cork , and was the newspaper of the dissident All-for-Ireland League party (1909–1918). Published daily from June 1910 until 1915, and weekly in 1915–16, it was the third of three newspapers founded and published within
334-646: 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
501-501: 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
668-591: A Liberal (1904–1924) authored Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909). The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs , who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II and the early 19th century Radicals . The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of Parliament . Although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves,
835-489: A Liberal base were deeply split. Ensor notes that, "London society, following the known views of the Queen, practically ostracized home rulers." The new Liberal leader was the ineffectual Lord Rosebery . He led the party to a heavy defeat in the 1895 general election . The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906. It contained numerous contradictory and hostile factions, such as imperialists and supporters of
1002-490: 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
1169-523: 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
1336-584: A dangerous rival, and rejoiced at the chance to destroy her. They meant to fight a hard-headed war by ruthless methods; they condemned Liberal 'softness' before the war and now. The Liberals insisted on remaining high-minded. Many of them had come to support the war only when the Germans invaded Belgium. [...] Entering the war for idealistic motives, the Liberals wished to fight it by noble means and found it harder to abandon their principles than to endure defeat in
1503-729: A day later. As a future editor of the Belfast Irish News he later became one of O'Brien's bitterest critics. The machinery of the Irish People was bought by John O'Donnell MP and moved to Galway, where he set up the Connaught Champion (1904–1911). The Irish People (30 September 1905 – 27 March 1909) was re-published in Cork after O'Brien's return to public life in 1904, its editor John Herlihy. The paper aimed at furthering O'Brien's concept of national conciliation and promoting full-scale implementation of
1670-599: A decade by William O'Brien MP. It developed a unique approach to the national question and to the social issues of the day, with a pronounced conciliatory view to achieving Home Rule for the whole of Ireland. It displayed a favourable attitude towards the Sinn Féin movement. Its main rival newspapers were the Cork Examiner and the Freeman's Journal . The Irish People (16 September 1899 – 7 November 1903),
1837-695: 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
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#17327797130672004-596: A dominion beyond. Gladstone finally retired in 1894. Gladstone's support for Home Rule deeply divided the party, and it lost its upper and upper-middle-class base, while keeping support among Protestant nonconformists and the Celtic fringe. Historian R. C. K. Ensor reports that after 1886, the main Liberal Party was deserted by practically the entire whig peerage and the great majority of the upper-class and upper-middle-class members. High prestige London clubs that had
2171-592: A government. Historian Robert Blake explains the dilemma: [T]he Liberals were traditionally the party of freedom of speech, conscience and trade. They were against jingoism, heavy armaments and compulsion. [...] Liberals were neither wholehearted nor unanimous about conscription, censorship, the Defence of the Realm Act , severity toward aliens and pacifists, direction of labour and industry. The Conservatives [...] had no such misgivings. Blake further notes that it
2338-801: 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 ,
2505-629: A journalist in London and in the mid-1930s, one year editor of the Irish Press . Herlihy's successor was Hugh Art O’Grady, eldest son of Standish James O'Grady , a young Trinity graduate who was sincerely in accord with All-for-Ireland aspirations. The December 1910 general election saw the League victorious in Cork, returning eight MPs, but elsewhere succumbed to clerical opposition. With Home Rule in
2672-681: A lesser role in party affairs after 1900. The party, furthermore, also included Irish Catholics, and secularists from the labour movement. Many Conservatives (including Winston Churchill ) had recently protested against high tariff moves by the Conservatives by switching to the anti-tariff Liberal camp, but it was unclear how many old Conservative traits they brought along, especially on military and naval issues. The middle-class business, professional and intellectual communities were generally strongholds, although some old aristocratic families played important roles as well. The working-class element
2839-713: A massive victory: Labour increased their position slightly, but the Asquithian Liberals were decimated. Those remaining Liberal MPs who were opposed to the Coalition Government went into opposition under the parliamentary leadership of Sir Donald MacLean who also became Leader of the Opposition . Asquith, who had appointed MacLean, remained as overall Leader of the Liberal Party even though he lost his seat in 1918. Asquith returned to Parliament in 1920 and resumed leadership. Between 1919 and 1923,
3006-480: 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
3173-448: A new system of protectionist tariffs. Campbell-Bannerman was able to rally the party around the traditional liberal platform of free trade and land reform and led them to the greatest election victory in their history. This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right. Although he presided over a large majority, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably H. H. Asquith at
3340-418: 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
3507-470: 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
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#17327797130673674-523: A provisional government and armed resistance in Ulster . The Ulster Protestants had the full support of the Conservatives, whose leader, Bonar Law , was of Ulster-Scots descent. Government plans to deploy troops into Ulster had to be cancelled after the threat of mass resignation of their commissions by army officers in March 1914 ( see Curragh Incident ). Ireland seemed to be on the brink of civil war when
3841-685: 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
4008-465: A rather desperate manner to hold on to power. The result was a catastrophic split in the Liberal Party, and heavy defeat in the 1886 election at the hands of Lord Salisbury , who was supported by the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party . There was a final weak Gladstone ministry in 1892, but it also was dependent on Irish support and failed to get Irish Home Rule through the House of Lords. Historically,
4175-450: 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
4342-475: A strong appeal to the nonconformist middle-class Liberal element, which felt liberated by the departure of the aristocracy. A major long-term consequence of the Third Reform Act was the rise of Lib-Lab candidates. The Act split all county constituencies (which were represented by multiple MPs) into single-member constituencies , roughly corresponding to population patterns. With the foundation of
4509-564: A strong, welfare-oriented, and interventionist state. After the historic 1906 victory, the Liberal Party introduced multiple reforms on a range of issues, including health insurance , unemployment insurance , and pensions for elderly workers, thereby laying the groundwork for the future British welfare state . Some proposals failed, such as licensing fewer pubs, or rolling back Conservative educational policies. The People's Budget of 1909, championed by David Lloyd George and fellow Liberal Winston Churchill , introduced unprecedented taxes on
4676-412: 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
4843-515: 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
5010-789: 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
5177-568: Is that the British people were so deeply divided over numerous issues, but on all sides, there was growing distrust of the Asquith government. There was no agreement whatsoever on wartime issues. The leaders of the two parties realized that embittered debates in Parliament would further undermine popular morale and so the House of Commons did not once discuss the war before May 1915. Taylor argues: The Unionists, by and large, regarded Germany as
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5344-562: The 1918 general election , Lloyd George, hailed as "the Man Who Won the War", led his coalition into a khaki election . Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates—this " coupon ", as it became known, was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself. The coalition won
5511-538: 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. Liberal Party (UK) The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with
5678-677: 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
5845-594: 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
6012-515: 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,
6179-590: The Conservative Party , in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs , free trade –supporting Peelites , and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone . Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule , the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election . Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916),
6346-732: 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
6513-683: The First World War broke out in August 1914. Asquith had offered the Six Counties (later to become Northern Ireland ) an opt out from Home Rule for six years (i.e., until after two more general elections were likely to have taken place) but the Nationalists refused to agree to permanent Partition of Ireland . Historian George Dangerfield has argued that the multiplicity of crises in 1910 to 1914, political and industrial, so weakened
6680-561: 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
6847-621: 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
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7014-652: 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,
7181-661: The Irish Nationalists . Although the Lords now passed the budget, the government wished to curtail their power to block legislation. Asquith was required by King George V to fight a second general election in December 1910 (whose result was little changed from that in January) before he agreed, if necessary, to create hundreds of Liberals peers. Faced with that threat, the Lords voted to give up their veto power and allowed
7348-684: 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
7515-435: 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
7682-411: 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
7849-408: The Labour Party not to come till 1906, many trade unions allied themselves with the Liberals. In areas with working class majorities, in particular coal-mining areas, Lib-Lab candidates were popular, and they received sponsorship and endorsement from trade unions . In the first election after the Act was passed (1885), thirteen were elected, up from two in 1874. The Third Reform Act also facilitated
8016-484: The Liberal Unionists in 1886 (they eventually joined the Conservative Party); the faction of labour union members that joined the new Labour Party ; the split between factions led by Asquith and that led by Lloyd George in 1918–1922 ; and a three-way split in 1931. Many prominent intellectuals were active in the party, including philosopher John Stuart Mill , economist John Maynard Keynes , and social planner William Beveridge . Winston Churchill during his years as
8183-475: 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
8350-604: 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,
8517-446: 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
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#17327797130678684-570: The Second Reform Act was passed by agreement between the parties), Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government. The establishment of the party as a national membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. The philosopher John Stuart Mill was also a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868. For the next 30 years, Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Gladstone served as prime minister four times (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94). His financial policies, based on
8851-405: 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
9018-429: 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
9185-437: 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
9352-416: 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
9519-441: 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
9686-406: 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
9853-447: The 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 when the remaining Peelites, Radicals and Whigs agreed to vote down the incumbent Conservative government. This meeting was held at the Willis' rooms in London on 6 June 1859. This led to Palmerston's second government. However,
10020-459: The 1890s "became Conservative in all but name." The government could force the unwilling king to create new Liberal peers, and that threat did prove decisive in the battle for dominance of Commons over Lords in 1911. The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of New Liberalism within the Liberal Party, which advocated state intervention as a means of guaranteeing freedom and removing obstacles to it such as poverty and unemployment. The policies of
10187-478: The 650 seats it contested. At the 1987 general election , its share of the vote fell below 23% and the Liberals and the SDP merged in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), who the following year were renamed the Liberal Democrats . A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989. The Liberals were a coalition with diverse positions on major issues and no unified national policy. This made them repeatedly liable to deep splits, such as that of
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#173277971306710354-412: The All-for-Ireland League saw them as having achieved partition. When World War I broke in August 1914, Home Rule was set aside. The Cork Free Press published O'Brien's reasoning for giving support to Irish participation in the war, by telling readers that the war had welded the Irish together and to secure All-Ireland Home Rule it was necessary to join Britain and the Allies in their hour of need. This
10521-431: The All-for-Ireland League), as well as the political stalemate in the House of Commons . In February a fund was launched at Cork City Hall for the publication of a new full-scale daily paper, the Cork Free Press . The Cork Free Press made its appearance on 11 June 1910, with John Herlihy as the first of three editors. The opening issue carried a splendid leading article by the founding member and staunch supporter of
10688-400: The All-for–Ireland League, Canon Sheehan of Donerail , cautioning against the Protestant class being replaced by a newly rising "Catholic Ascendancy". The League held its public inaugural meeting in March, and from July all issues had one central theme, to promote the conciliatory principles of the League in achieving Home Rule, with extensive coverage of election meetings in preparation for
10855-449: The Boers; near-socialists and laissez-faire classical liberals ; suffragettes and opponents of women's suffrage ; antiwar elements and supporters of the military alliance with France . Nonconformists – Protestants outside the Anglican fold – were a powerful element, dedicated to opposing the established church in terms of education and taxation. However, the non-conformists were losing support amid society at large and played
11022-430: 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
11189-444: 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
11356-405: The Conservatives' main rival. By the 1950s, the party had won as few as six seats at general elections. Apart from a few notable by-election victories, its fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. At the 1983 general election , the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but won only 23 of
11523-408: The Conservatives. The 1906 general election also represented a shift to the left by the Liberal Party. According to Rosemary Rees, almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the 'New Liberalism' (which advocated government action to improve people's lives), ) while claims were made that "five-sixths of the Liberal party are left wing." Other historians, however, have questioned
11690-402: The December elections. It regularly attacked the Irish Party for allying with 'socialists, secularists and land nationalisers'. The Redmondite controlled Freeman's Journal countered by rebuking the O'Brienite Independents as dissident factionists. The Cork Free Press continually accused the Redmonite Cork Examiner of supporting the disreputable Ancient Order of Hibernians . Soon after
11857-516: 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
12024-646: The Exchequer, Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and died soon after. He was succeeded by Asquith, who stepped up the government's radicalism. Lloyd George succeeded Asquith at the Exchequer and was in turn succeeded at the Board of Trade by Winston Churchill , a recent defector from
12191-615: 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
12358-522: The Government has not dared to challenge the nation to rise above itself, is one among many signs. [...] The war is, in fact, not being taken seriously. [...] How can any slacker be blamed when the Government itself is slack. Asquith's Liberal government was brought down in May 1915 , due in particular to a crisis in inadequate artillery shell production and the protest resignation of Admiral Fisher over
12525-761: 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
12692-595: The Irish Farmers, and have converted the Irish Party into the despised tail of British Liberalism . In its first editorial, it condemned the Cork Examiner as representing a Delvinite form of Catholic Orangism . Further issues covered the resounding success of the eight O'Brienite Independent Nationalists returned in the January 1910 general election , (soon to become O'Brien's new national movement,
12859-495: 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
13026-599: The Irish party's Freeman's Journal , the party's relentless campaign against land purchase. The Irish People ceased publication finally in March 1909 when O'Brien travelled abroad to recover from the December 1908 Baton Convention sickened by Devlinite thuggery and corruption, but not before it praised Sinn Féin as honest youngsters, who could yet be won over by a great new national movement. The Cork Accent (1 January 1910 – 10 June 1910) appeared on O'Brien's return at
13193-490: 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
13360-479: 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
13527-583: The Land Act, by encouraging tenant land purchase and extolling its benefits. This through an alliance with the Land and Labour Association which had become the Munster base for O'Brien's renewed political activities. The Irish People , O'Brien's prime political media, propagated from 1906 the cottage building programmes won under the 1906 Labourer (Ireland) Act . Its editorials, usually penned by D. D. Sheehan MP, condemned in regular rhetorical exchanges with
13694-465: 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
13861-453: The Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state . Although Asquith was the party leader , its dominant figure was David Lloyd George . Asquith was overwhelmed by his wartime role as prime minister and Lloyd George led a coalition that replaced him in late 1916. However, Asquith remained as Liberal Party leader. The split between Lloyd George's breakaway faction and Asquith's official Liberal faction badly weakened
14028-406: The Liberal Party. In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he ordered the occupation of Egypt by British forces in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War . His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law
14195-637: The Liberal coalition before the war broke out that it marked the Strange Death of Liberal England . However, most historians date the collapse to the crisis of the First World War. The Liberal Party might have survived a short war, but the totality of the Great War called for measures that the Party had long rejected. The result was the permanent destruction of the ability of the Liberal Party to lead
14362-697: The Liberals lost office to the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel , but their period in opposition was short because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws , a free trade issue; and a faction known as the Peelites (but not Peel himself, who died soon after) aligned to the Liberal side on the issue of free trade. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of
14529-569: The New Liberalism are now known as social liberalism . The New Liberals included intellectuals like L. T. Hobhouse , and John A. Hobson . They saw individual liberty as something achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed that these conditions could be ameliorated only through collective action coordinated by
14696-556: The Party and into a third party called Liberal Unionism on the Irish issue. It collaborated with and eventually merged into the Conservative party. The Gladstonian liberals in 1891 adopted The Newcastle Programme that included home rule for Ireland, disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales , tighter controls on the sale of liquor , major extension of factory regulation and various democratic political reforms. The Programme had
14863-446: 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
15030-729: The Russian Jewish banker, Hermann Raffalowich, domiciled in Paris. The Irish People ceased publication abruptly with O'Brien's resignation from public life on 4 November 1903, after he had been alienated from the Irish Parliamentary Party . He had successfully negotiated and won the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 which settled the age-old Irish Land Question , but denounced in an Irish party attack launched by John Dillon MP rejecting his policy of conciliation with landlords. The paper's editor Tim McCarthy only learnt of his demise
15197-603: 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
15364-649: 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,
15531-419: 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
15698-473: The Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party while it was dominated by aristocrats and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party. This was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government (during which
15865-479: The Whigs' demise. The admission of the middle classes to the franchise and to the House of Commons led eventually to the development of a systematic middle-class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's retirement, the party was led first by Lord Melbourne , a fairly traditional Whig, and then by Lord John Russell ,
16032-402: The anti-Lloyd George Liberals were called Asquithian Liberals, Wee Free Liberals or Independent Liberals . Lloyd George was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party who numerically dominated the coalition. In 1922, the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing, in particular, Lloyd George's plan for war with Turkey in
16199-476: The appearance of the Cork Free Press , however, Herlihy fell out with O'Brien. He had decided to replace the linotype printing machines with newly developed monotype technology, certainly more suitable for book publishing, but not for high-volume newspaper publishing. The Cork Free Press became notorious for misprints, and Herlihy was fired. He unsuccessfully sued for unfair dismissal, was then active as
16366-445: The aristocracy was divided between Conservatives and Liberals. However, when Gladstone committed to home rule for Ireland, Britain's upper classes largely abandoned the Liberal party, giving the Conservatives a large permanent majority in the House of Lords. Following the Queen, High Society in London largely ostracized home rulers and Liberal clubs were badly split. Joseph Chamberlain took a major element of upper-class supporters out of
16533-416: The bill also. Among the Liberal rank and file, several Gladstonian candidates disowned the bill, reflecting fears at the constituency level that the interests of the working people were being sacrificed to finance a costly rescue operation for the landed élite. Further, Home Rule had not been promised in the Liberals' election manifesto, and so the impression was given that Gladstone was buying Irish support in
16700-470: The capitalist market, this legislation nevertheless, marked a significant shift in Liberal approaches to the state and social reform, approaches that later governments would slowly expand and that would grow into the welfare state after the Second World War. What was new in these reforms was the underlying assumption that the state could be a positive force, that the measure of individual freedom...
16867-479: The citizenship of their native land. The new Liberalism, while pursuing this great political ideal with unflinching energy, devotes a part of its endeavour also to the removing of the immediate causes of discontent. It is true that man cannot live by bread alone. It is equally true that a man cannot live without bread. The Liberals languished in opposition for a decade while the coalition of Salisbury and Chamberlain held power. The 1890s were marred by infighting between
17034-514: 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
17201-495: The consequences of the Third Reform Act (1884) was the giving of the vote to many Irish Catholics . In the 1885 general election the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power in the House of Commons and demanded Irish Home Rule as the price of support for a continued Gladstone ministry. Gladstone personally supported Home Rule, but a strong Liberal Unionist faction led by Joseph Chamberlain , along with
17368-708: 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
17535-540: 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
17702-468: The demise of the Whig old guard; in two-member constituencies, it was common to pair a Whig and a radical under the Liberal banner. After the Third Reform Act, fewer former Whigs were selected as candidates. A broad range of interventionist reforms were introduced by the 1892–1895 Liberal government. Amongst other measures, standards of accommodation and of teaching in schools were improved, factory inspection
17869-498: The disastrous Gallipoli Campaign against Turkey. Reluctant to face doom in an election, Asquith formed a new coalition government on 25 May, with the majority of the new cabinet coming from his own Liberal party and the Unionist (Conservative) party , along with a token Labour representation. The new government lasted a year and a half and was the last time Liberals controlled the government. The analysis of historian A. J. P. Taylor
18036-582: The end of the year. The short-lived Cork Accent carried the following explanation of the title in every issue: The Order of the Bosses was that no person with a Cork Accent should be allowed near the platform of a Molly Maguire Convention. The Cork Accent will now help in saving Ireland from the Degrading Thraldom of an Incompetent Clique, who have ruined the Irish Cause, Betrayed
18203-431: The extent to which the Liberal Party experienced a leftward shift; according to Robert C. Self however, only between 50 and 60 Liberal MPs out of the 400 in the parliamentary party after 1906 were Social Radicals, with a core of 20 to 30. Nevertheless, important junior offices were held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and Fabian collectivists," and much legislation
18370-493: The field. The 1915 coalition fell apart at the end of 1916, when the Conservatives withdrew their support from Asquith and gave it instead to Lloyd George, who became prime minister at the head of a new coalition largely made up of Conservatives. Asquith and his followers moved to the opposition benches in Parliament and the Liberal Party was deeply split once again. Lloyd George remained a Liberal all his life, but he abandoned many standard Liberal principles in his crusade to win
18537-657: 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
18704-511: The first year. Since the Liberals ran the war without consulting the Conservatives, there were heavy partisan attacks. However, even Liberal commentators were dismayed by the lack of energy at the top. At the time, public opinion was intensely hostile, both in the media and in the street, against any young man in civilian garb and labeled as a slacker. The leading Liberal newspaper, the Manchester Guardian complained: The fact that
18871-399: The future of her people" . This mirrored Gallagher's separatist aspirations and that of most of the paper's staff. The quasi-separatist attitude of the Cork Free Press increased sales, though paper shortage and lack of capital left its financial position hopeless. The paper suffered closure because soon after the appointment of Lord Decies as Chief Press Censor for Ireland. Decies warned
19038-573: The future of the party, says historian Trevor Wilson, was its repudiation by ideological Liberals, who decided sadly that it no longer represented their principles. Finally, the presence of the vigorous new Labour Party on the left gave a new home to voters disenchanted with the Liberal performance. The last majority Liberal Government in Britain was elected in 1906. The years preceding the First World War were marked by worker strikes and civil unrest and saw many violent confrontations between civilians and
19205-704: 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
19372-525: The head of a moderate Liberal rump, but in 1901 he delivered a speech on the government's "methods of barbarism" in South Africa that pulled him further to the left and nearly tore the party in two. The party was saved after Salisbury's retirement in 1902 when his successor, Arthur Balfour , pushed a series of unpopular initiatives such as the Education Act 1902 and Joseph Chamberlain called for
19539-597: 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
19706-491: 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
19873-482: The last effective link with his constituents. To keep the paper alive since 1910 had cost £30,000 of his wife's savings. In the 1918 general elections , the All-for-Ireland League MPs stood down in favour of Sinn Féin. Frank Gallagher was subsequently founding editor of The Irish Press and director of publicity for Éamon de Valera (1931–35). Irish nationalism Irish nationalism
20040-403: The last of the Whigs, Hartington, opposed it. The Irish Home Rule bill proposed to offer all owners of Irish land a chance to sell to the state at a price equal to 20 years' purchase of the rents and allowing tenants to purchase the land. Irish nationalist reaction was mixed, Unionist opinion was hostile, and the election addresses during the 1886 election revealed English radicals to be against
20207-472: The manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many Liberals were Nonconformists ), avoidance of war and foreign alliances (which were bad for business) and above all free trade . For a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals. In 1841,
20374-477: The more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor Earl Grey . After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about
20541-613: The notion of balanced budgets , low taxes and laissez-faire , were suited to a developing capitalist society, but they could not respond effectively as economic and social conditions changed. Called the "Grand Old Man" later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class. Deeply religious, Gladstone brought a new moral tone to politics, with his evangelical sensibility and his opposition to aristocracy. His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including Queen Victoria ), and his heavy-handed control split
20708-407: The offing, the paper reflected the outrage of O'Brien and his party colleagues when Redmond gave way to partition under pressure from Sir Edward Carson , after specific concessions were published in the January 1914 edition of the paper which O'Brien claimed were acceptable to Ulster, to enable it to come in on an All-Ireland Home Rule agreement. The Redmondites saw themselves as achieving Home Rule,
20875-599: 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
21042-545: The party formed a Pro-Boer faction that denounced the conflict and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Quickly rising to prominence among the Pro-Boers was David Lloyd George, a relatively new MP and a master of rhetoric, who took advantage of having a national stage to speak out on a controversial issue to make his name in the party. Harcourt and Morley also sided with this group, though with slightly different aims. Campbell-Bannerman tried to keep these forces together at
21209-489: The party. The coalition government of Lloyd George was increasingly dominated by the Conservative Party, which finally ousted him as prime minister in 1922. The subsequent Liberal collapse was quick and catastrophic. With 400 MPs elected in the 1906 election; they had only 40 in 1924. Their share of the popular vote plunged from 49% to 18%. The Labour Party absorbed most of the ex-Liberal voters and then became
21376-469: The passage of the Parliament Act 1911 . As the price of Irish support, Asquith was now forced to introduce a third Home Rule bill in 1912. Since the House of Lords no longer had the power to block the bill, but only to delay it for two years, it was due to become law in 1914. The Unionist Ulster Volunteers , led by Sir Edward Carson , launched a campaign of opposition that included the threat of
21543-746: 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
21710-636: The police and armed forces. Other issues of the period included women's suffrage and the Irish Home Rule movement. After the carnage of 1914–1918, the democratic reforms of the Representation of the People Act 1918 instantly tripled the number of people entitled to vote in Britain from seven to twenty-one million. The Labour Party benefited most from this huge change in the electorate, forming its first minority government in 1924 . In
21877-498: 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
22044-468: 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
22211-564: 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
22378-459: The press to be careful about what they published. Such warnings had little effect when dealing with such papers as the Cork Free Press . It was suppressed after Gallagher accused the British authorities of lying about the conditions and situation of republican prisoners in the Frongoch internment camp . Finally, when in December 1916, O’Brien ceased publication of the Cork Free Press , he lost
22545-653: The reorganization of the judiciary in the Judicature Act . Regarding Ireland, the major Liberal achievements were land reform, where he ended centuries of landlord oppression , and the disestablishment of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland through the Irish Church Act 1869 . In the 1874 general election , Gladstone was defeated by the Conservatives under Benjamin Disraeli during a sharp economic recession. He formally resigned as Liberal leader and
22712-544: 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 ,
22879-471: The son of a Duke but a crusading radical, and by Lord Palmerston , a renegade Irish Tory and essentially a conservative , although capable of radical gestures. As early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality, his party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden , who represented
23046-399: 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,
23213-458: The staff would walk out unless the paper took a more favourable attitude. O'Brien capitulated and soon developed an admiration for the insurgents' idealism and their desperation at possible consequences. O'Brien's Cork Free Press soon began to present an altogether favourable attitude towards Sinn Féin, practically becoming a Sinn Féin organ. Though the paper continued to point out the lesson that physical force had been proved useless and that what
23380-404: The third quarter of the century drew to a close, the essential bastions of Victorianism still held firm: respectability; a government of aristocrats and gentlemen now influenced not only by middle-class merchants and manufacturers but also by industrious working people; a prosperity that seemed to rest largely on the tenets of laissez-faire economics ; and a Britannia that ruled the waves and many
23547-465: The three principal successors to Gladstone, party leader William Harcourt , former prime minister Lord Rosebery , and Gladstone's personal secretary, John Morley . This intrigue finally led Harcourt and Morley to resign their positions in 1898 as they continued to be at loggerheads with Rosebery over Irish home rule and issues relating to imperialism. Replacing Harcourt as party leader was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman . Harcourt's resignation briefly muted
23714-400: The turmoil in the party, but the beginning of the Second Boer War soon nearly broke the party apart, with Rosebery and a circle of supporters including important future Liberal figures H. H. Asquith , Edward Grey and Richard Burdon Haldane forming a clique dubbed the Liberal Imperialists that supported the government in the prosecution of the war. On the other side, more radical members of
23881-439: 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
24048-552: The war at all costs. He insisted on strong government controls over business as opposed to the laissez-faire attitudes of traditional Liberals. in 1915–16 he had insisted on conscription of young men into the Army, a position that deeply troubled his old colleagues. That brought him and a few like-minded Liberals into the new coalition on the ground long occupied by Conservatives. There was no more planning for world peace or liberal treatment of Germany, nor discomfit with aggressive and authoritarian measures of state power. More deadly to
24215-403: The war, as he was rightly worried about the negative effects it would have on circulation and on the League, particularly since rising losses and paper shortages forced the paper to become a weekly in mid-1915. After the Rising in 1916, Gallagher contacted O'Brien in London to discuss the attitude of the Cork Free Press to it. He found that O'Brien attributed it to Larkinites . Gallagher said
24382-421: The wealthy in Britain and radical social welfare programmes to the country's policies. In the Liberal camp, as noted by one study, "the Budget was on the whole enthusiastically received." It was the first budget with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public. It imposed increased taxes on luxuries, liquor, tobacco, high incomes, and land – taxation that fell heavily on the rich . The new money
24549-406: 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
24716-455: 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,
24883-541: 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
25050-486: 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
25217-415: 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
25384-564: 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
25551-543: Was made more stringent, and ministers used their powers to increase the wages and reduce the working hours of large numbers of male workers employed by the state. Historian Walter L. Arnstein concludes: Notable as the Gladstonian reforms had been, they had almost all remained within the nineteenth-century Liberal tradition of gradually removing the religious, economic, and political barriers that prevented men of varied creeds and classes from exercising their individual talents in order to improve themselves and their society. As
25718-403: Was moving rapidly toward the newly emerging Labour Party. One uniting element was widespread agreement on the use of politics and Parliament as a device to upgrade and improve society and to reform politics. All Liberals were outraged when Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to block reform legislation. In the House of Lords, the Liberals had lost most of their members, who in
25885-407: Was needed was a united constitutionalism. The editorials took on a distinctly heroic view of the rebels and damned Redmond and the Irish MPs for their anti- Sinn Féin utterances. The editorial in the issue of 30 September 1916 betrayed all the hesitance about embracing Sinn Féin that had distinguished O'Brien's attitude over the years: "It is to the Sinn Féin party that Ireland must now look to mould
26052-443: Was not how much the state left people alone, but whether it gave them the capacity to fill themselves as individuals. Contrasting Old Liberalism with New Liberalism, David Lloyd George noted in a 1908 speech the following: [Old Liberals] used the natural discontent of the people with the poverty and precariousness of the means of subsistence as a motive power to win for them a better, more influential, and more honourable status in
26219-488: 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
26386-528: 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
26553-406: 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
26720-405: Was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and welfare. A political battle erupted over the People's Budget , which was rejected by the House of Lords and for which the government obtained an electoral mandate at the January 1910 election . The election resulted in a hung parliament , with the government left dependent on
26887-403: Was so very much in accord with O'Grady's own martial enthusiasm that he eventually decided to resign his post in 1915 and enlist in the war. The London correspondent of the Cork Free Press at the time was Frank Gallagher , a Cork native and from 1915 its third editor, who though himself a separatist, personally admired O'Brien. He had attempted to dissuade O'Brien from his decision to support
27054-412: Was succeeded by the Marquess of Hartington , but he soon changed his mind and returned to active politics. He strongly disagreed with Disraeli's pro- Ottoman foreign policy and in 1880 he conducted the first outdoor mass-election campaign in Britain, known as the Midlothian campaign . The Liberals won a large majority in the 1880 election . Hartington ceded his place and Gladstone resumed office. Among
27221-400: Was the Elementary Education Act 1870 ( 33 & 34 Vict. c. 75), which provided England with an adequate system of elementary schools for the first time. He also secured the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the British Army and of religious tests for admission to Oxford and Cambridge ; the introduction of the secret ballot in elections; the legalization of trade unions ; and
27388-429: Was the Liberals, not the Conservatives who needed the moral outrage of Belgium to justify going to war, while the Conservatives called for intervention from the start of the crisis on the grounds of realpolitik and the balance of power. However, Lloyd George and Churchill were zealous supporters of the war, and gradually forced the old peace-orientated Liberals out. Asquith was blamed for the poor British performance in
27555-443: Was the first of three newspapers published by William O'Brien. Its object to support his new agrarian reform organisation, the United Irish League . It was a Dublin based politically oriented weekly newspaper, its managing editor Tim McCarthy, previous editor of the Freeman's Journal . The paper was financed principally by William O'Brien's wife Sophie , sister of poet and socialite Marc André Sebastian Raffalovich and daughter of
27722-405: Was to be made available for new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. In 1911 Lloyd George succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act , making provision for sickness and invalidism, and this was followed by his Unemployment Insurance Act . Historian Peter Weiler argues: Although still partially informed by older Liberal concerns for character, self-reliance, and
27889-440: Was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms. As prime minister from 1868 to 1874, Gladstone headed a Liberal Party which was a coalition of Peelites like himself, Whigs and Radicals. He was now a spokesman for "peace, economy and reform". One major achievement
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