Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [16]
Ulster American Folk Park, County Tyrone
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O’Connell’s failure to defy the British was seen as a terrible capitulation as the country was in the midst of the Potato Famine (see the boxed text, Click here), and the lack of urgency on the part of the authorities in dealing with the crisis served to bolster the ambitions of the more radical wing of the Nationalist movement, led in the 1840s by the Young Irelanders, who attempted a failed rebellion in 1848, and later by the Fenians, architects of yet another uprising in 1867.
The Irish may have been bitterly angry at the treatment meted out by the British, but they weren’t quite ready to take up arms en masse against them. Instead, the Nationalist cause found itself driven by arguably the most important feature of the Irish struggle against foreign rule: land ownership. Championed by the extraordinary Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–91), the Land League initiated widespread agitation for reduced rents and improved working conditions. The conflict heated up and there was violence on both sides. Parnell instigated the strategy of ‘boycotting’ (named after one particularly unpleasant agent called Charles Boycott) tenants, agents and landlords who didn’t adhere to the Land League’s aims: these people were treated like lepers by the local population. The Land War, as it became known, lasted from 1879 to 1882 and was momentous. For the first time, tenants were defying their landlords en masse. The Land Act of 1881 improved life immeasurably for tenants, creating fair rents and the possibility of tenants owning their land.
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In 1870, after the Great Famine and ongoing emigration, more than a third of all native-born Irish lived outside Ireland.
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The other element of his two-pronged assault on the British was at Westminster where, as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) he led the fight for Home Rule, a limited form of autonomy for Ireland. Parliamentary mathematics meant that the Liberal Party, led by William Gladstone, was reliant on the members of the IPP to maintain a majority over the Conservatives and Parnell pressed home his advantage by forcing Gladstone to introduce a series of Home Rule bills – in 1886 and 1892 – which passed the Commons but were defeated in the House of Lords. Parnell’s ascendency, however, came to a sudden end in 1890 when he was embroiled in a divorce scandal – not acceptable to puritanical Irish society. The ‘uncrowned king of Ireland’ was no longer welcome. Parnell’s health deteriorated rapidly and he died less than a year later.
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The Irish in America by Michael Coffey takes up the history of the Famine where many histories leave off: the turbulent experiences of Irish immigrants in the USA.
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IRELAND GETS ITS OWN SET OF KEYS
As the 20th century dawned, Ireland was overwhelmingly committed to achieving Home Rule. A new Liberal government under Prime Minister Asquith had removed the House of Lords’ power to veto bills and began to put another Home Rule for Ireland bill through Parliament. The bill was passed (but not enacted) in 1912 against strident Unionist opposition, epitomised by the mass rallies organised by the recently founded Protestant vigilante group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
The outbreak of WWI in July 1914 merely delayed Irish ambitions as a majority of the Irish Volunteers – founded by academic Eoin MacNeill as a Nationalist answer to the UVF – heeded the call to arms and enlisted in the British army. It was felt that just as England had promised Home Rule to Ireland, so the Irish owed it to England to help her in her hour of need: the Home Rule Act was suspended and for a time the question of Ulster was left unresolved.
A few, however, did not heed the call. Two small groups – a section of the Irish Volunteers under Pádraig Pearse and the Irish Citizens’ Army led by James Connolly – conspired in a rebellion that took the country by surprise. A depleted Volunteer group marched into Dublin on Easter Monday 1916, and took over