The Home Rule Party
The Fenians kept (quietly) calling for armed revolt. But in the following decades the banner of Irish Nationalism moved away from the rifle and into the realm of politics.
After the famine, both Catholics and Protestants had begun to feel that the English could not rule their island effectively and justly. Although they had their own differences, an uneasy coalition of conservative Protestants and liberal Catholics got together and formed the Home Rule Party. This party got a bunch of its members into Parliament at the same time that a liberal, Prime Minister William Gladstone, was emerging as a giant in British politics.
Gladstone's Involvement
Gladstone realized that Ireland's complaints against England were justified and that England's presence in Ireland was based on a tradition of injustice; at the same time, he felt that the Home Rulers were too radical. He tried to defuse the Home Rule movement by enacting landmark legislation to address Irish grievances — killing home rule with kindness. His first act, in 1868, declared that the Protestant Church of Ireland was no longer the official religion of the entire country. Most Irish loved this. The act was cheered in Dublin but condemned in Belfast, where the population was mostly Protestant.
Gladstone's most important reforms were his Land Acts of 1870 and 1881. Before these acts, the average Irish farmer rented his farmland (usually from an English landowner) and lived in constant fear of eviction. The Land Acts granted these farmers protection against unreasonable rents and unfair evictions, and made it easier for them to buy land. Over time, the Land Acts greatly improved the lives of many farmers, and Gladstone's strategy might well have defused the Home Rule movement, if not for the emergence of one Ireland's most charismatic leaders — Charles Stewart Parnell.
Parnell's Fight for Ireland
Parnell was handsome, impassioned, and articulate, and he took Parliament by storm. People didn't know what to make of him; he was a wealthy, Protestant landowner, but at the same time he supported the radical Nationalist politics of poor Catholic farmers. He entered Parliament in 1875 as the representative for County Meath. His confident oratory and uncompromising dedication to land reform instantly made him a leader of the Home Rule Party. When he felt that Irish issues were being ignored in Parliament, he recruited his fellow Irish MPs to obstruct parliamentary proceedings until his issues were heard.
The Land War
Parnell was president of the Land League, a farmers' organization that called for relief of exorbitant rents, more lenient eviction policies, and easier land ownership for small farmers. Gladstone's Land Acts had made some progress on these fronts, but that progress was too slow for Parnell. His Land League insisted that farmers evicted from their property should hold their ground, and it tacitly condoned the use of boycotts and violence against landlords who took possession of an evicted tenant's land. This period of rural intimidation and economic sanction became known as the Land War.
A famous Land War episode involved a landlord named Captain Boycott, who was notorious for evicting tenants. After the Land League persuaded local farmers not to harvest his crops, fifty Ulster farmers were shipped in for the harvest, as well as 6,000 British troops to protect them. This case gave us the word “boycott” — a protest in which people refuse to do business with the boycotted party.
Gladstone didn't approve of Parnell's obstructionist policies and endorsement of Land League violence; he had Parnell arrested and thrown in Kilmainham Jail in 1881. Parnell continued to run his political machine from jail, and he achieved unprecedented popularity in Ireland for his defiance of the Prime Minister.
Both Parnell and Gladstone, however, realized that they needed to work together to achieve real reform. They carried on secret negotiations through two intermediaries, Captain Willie O'Shea and his wife, Katherine (Kitty). Gladstone and Parnell eventually reached a settlement called the Kilmainham Treaty, in which Parnell restrained Land League violence in exchange for his release and Gladstone's cooperation on a more powerful Land Act.
The Issue of Home Rule
In the 1885 election, Parnell's Home Rulers took 85 of the 103 Irish seats in Parliament. It appeared that some form of constitutional solution to home rule was in sight. In 1886 Parnell and Gladstone brought forth a Home Rule Bill to finally give Ireland a form of independence.
“Home rule” meant different things to different people. While the Fenians called for complete separation, Parnell wanted an Ireland with its own Parliament, responsible for its own economic and social affairs, but still a part of the British Empire. For most Irish people, this limited form of independence was perfectly acceptable.
The Problem of Ulster
There was a big problem, though — the Protestants in the northern part of Ireland (Ulster) didn't want home rule. The rise of the Home Rule Party called attention for the first time to a phenomenon that Irish Nationalists had traditionally ignored and would continue to ignore to their detriment — the loyalty of Ulster Unionists (those who wanted Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom). That's why Protestants had founded the Orange Order during the time of Wolfe Tone (see Chapter 8). That's also why they created the militant Ulster Defence Association after Gladstone disestablished the Protestant Church in Ireland in 1868.
Many Irish in Ulster supported the concept of home rule. But there were also many who thought it would inevitably lead to a complete separation from Britain and a subsequent loss of position by the dominant Protestant population. These folks were totally against home rule and threatened to oppose it wholeheartedly, even with violence if they had to.
Parnell's Fall
The 1886 Home Rule Bill didn't pass; it had too much opposition from Ulster and the British House of Lords, who still liked the idea of Ireland as part of the British Empire. Parnell regathered his forces and prepared to try again, but personal affairs suddenly intruded — Willie O'Shea divorced his wife, Kitty, and named Parnell as her lover. It was a huge scandal. Remember, the O'Sheas had served as Parnell's intermediaries for the Kilmainham Treaty. The trial revealed that Parnell and Kitty had been carrying on a passionate affair since then. Captain O'Shea had known about the affair for years; Kitty had already had three children with Parnell.
The case shocked both liberal Englishmen and Catholic Irishmen. Gladstone ended his alliance with Parnell, fearing that his own party in England wouldn't support him if he stuck with the Irishman. Parnell fell from power.
Parnell didn't give up. He married Kitty O'Shea and began a fierce campaign to retake his position in the party. His charisma and political skill were such that he might have actually succeeded, but a fever killed him suddenly in 1891. Kitty was beside him when he died. With Parnell's death, the Home Rule movement lost its momentum, and it didn't truly regain it for another twenty-five years.
