Irish Unionist Alliance
Irish Unionist Alliance | |
---|---|
Political parties |
The Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA), also known as the Irish Unionist Party, Irish Unionists or simply the Unionists, was a
The party aligned itself closely with the
The IUA became wracked by internal disagreement during the early twentieth century, with the issue of the partition of Ireland proving to be particularly divisive. Many unionists outside Ulster became resigned to the political necessity of Home Rule, while unionists in Ulster established a separate organisation, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). In 1919 the IUA finally split apart with the founding of the break-away Unionist Anti-Partition League, effectively signalling the death of institutional unionism in most of Ireland. The UUP continued to operate in Northern Ireland, and would go on to dominate domestic politics there for much of the twentieth century.
History
Foundation
The Irish Unionist Alliance was founded in 1891 by the members of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union (ILPU), which it replaced.[2] The ILPU had been established to prevent electoral competition between Liberals and Conservatives in the three southern provinces on a common platform of maintenance of the union.[3] The IUA united this movement with unionists in the northern province of Ulster, where unionist sentiment and support was strongest.[4] As such, the new party sought to represent unionism on an all-Ireland basis. The party's founders hoped that this would coordinate the electoral and lobbying activities of unionists across Ireland. Prior to 1891, unionists had seen considerable electoral losses across southern Ireland at the hands of the pro-Home Rule Irish Parliamentary Party, founded a decade earlier.[5] It was deemed necessary for southern and northern supporters of the Union to more formally unite their efforts. At this stage, the majority of unionists in all parts of Ireland were opposed to the Irish Home Rule movement, especially following the collapse of the Irish wing of the Liberal Party.[5] The IUA's first leader was the Orangeman and former Conservative MP, Edward James Saunderson.[3]
1891–1914
In the
Throughout the period, members of the IUA campaigned not only in Ireland, but also in Great Britain alongside the Conservative Party. This was especially the case in the two general elections of 1910. In December 1910, the IUA sent 278 workers to British constituencies to assist the Conservative candidates, distributing almost three million leaflets across England.[6] It was during that this time that a large number of Conservative MPs married into Irish Southern Unionist families.
Despite early hopes among some unionists that the IUA would expand the unionist presence across Ireland, the party failed to make any major electoral gains in the six subsequent general elections. In the south of Ireland, the IUA consistently won only the double seat representing the graduates of Dublin University, and a couple of the Dublin seats would occasionally fall to them. The party also won a surprise victory in Galway City in 1900. In local elections, the party maintained a geographically broader representation, although failed to win many new voters. Unlike in Ulster, the anti-Home Rulers were a scattered minority.
In Ulster, the IUA built upon solid unionist electoral foundations and became the dominant political force in much of the province. In the north and east of Ulster, unionists consistently won seats, often unopposed.
The prominence of the Ulster Unionist Council quickly grew thanks to the strong unionist sentiment in Ulster. From 1910, it became the dominant force and focus of resistance in the Irish unionist community.[10] The JCUAI was effectively controlled by Ulstermen, while the IUA's leadership remained largely in the hands of Southern Unionists. This led to the unionist movement gradually becoming 'Ulsterised' from 1910, which marginalised many more moderate unionists in the south.[10] Even so, in 1913, as the Third Home Rule Bill passed through Parliament, the Alliance appears to have become increasingly popular in the south and records show an increase in membership.[11]
Division (1914–1922)
By 1914, the conflict of interest between the unionists in southern Ireland and those in Ulster was wracking the IUA.
The internal divisions simmered during the
Although the IUA hoped to play a part in the Parliament of Southern Ireland envisaged under the 1920 Home Rule Act, the parliament never functioned. The Irish Times, said to be the "voice of Southern Unionists", realised that the 1920 Act would not work and argued from late 1920 for "Dominion Home Rule", the compromise that was eventually agreed upon in the 1921–22 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Under the Treaty, Northern Ireland became a part of the Irish Free State from its creation on 6 December 1922; the Parliament of Northern Ireland voted to leave the Free State two days later.
Irish Free State
The split effectively ended the realistic electoral chances of the Irish Unionist Alliance in what became the
In the 1923 election three formerly loyalist businessmen were elected as the Business and Professional Group. From 1921 to 1991 the proportion of Southern Irish Protestants declined from 10% to 3% of the population; these had provided the bulk of the IUA's support base.[27] Unionists continued to have a majority on Rathmines Council until 1929, when the IUA's successors lost their last elected representatives in the Irish Free State.
Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland, unionists of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP; previously known as the Ulster Unionist Council) continued to dominate domestic politics. The party would hold its powerful position in the unionist community for much of the rest of the twentieth century, until the rise of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the late 1980s.
General election results
Election | House of Commons | Seats | Government | Votes |
---|---|---|---|---|
1892 | 25th Parliament | 19 / 103
|
Liberal victory | 12.5% |
1895 | 26th Parliament | 17 / 103
|
Conservative and Liberal Unionist victory | |
1900 | 27th Parliament | 17 / 103
|
Conservative and Liberal Unionist victory | 32.2% |
1906 | 28th Parliament | 16 / 103
|
Liberal victory | 42.7% |
1910 (Jan) | 29th Parliament | 18 / 103
|
Liberal government in hung Parliament | 32.7% |
1910 (Dec) | 30th Parliament | 16 / 103
|
Liberal government in hung Parliament | 28.6% |
1918 | 31st Parliament | 25 / 105
|
Coalition victory | 25.3% |
Note: Results from Ireland for the UK general elections contested by the Irish Unionist Alliance.[28] These figures do not include MPs elected for the Liberal Unionists, who were officially a separate party. IUA MPs sat with the Liberal Unionists and Conservatives at Westminster, and were often simply called 'Conservatives' or 'Unionists'.
Support base
Southern Unionists
The leadership of southern unionism was dominated by wealthy, well-educated men who wanted to live in Ireland, felt British and Irish, and who had Irish roots. Many were members of the privileged
Although their numbers were small, a considerable amount of industry in Southern Ireland had been developed indigenously by Southern Unionist supporters. These included
Many Southern Unionist landowners had inherited large estates. From 1903, many of these were persuaded to sell land to their tenant farmers under the
Southern Unionists are regarded as having been considerably less confrontational than their Ulster neighbours.[38] They were always in the minority in southern Ireland, and many had close personal connections with figures in nationalist politics. As a group, they never threatened or organised violence in order to resist Home Rule or partition, and were generally placid in their politics.[39] Lord Midleton described Southern Unionists as "lacking political insight and cohesion" and "restricting themselves to the easy task of attending meetings in Dublin".[38] In discussing problems of civic morality in 2011 in the Republic of Ireland, former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald remarked that before 1922: "In Ireland a strong civic sense did exist – but mainly amongst Protestants and especially Anglicans".[40]
Ulster Unionists
Ulster Unionists were largely Protestant
Leadership
The Irish Unionist Alliance had no formal method of electing and deposing of its leadership, and leaders of the IUA were more informally 'acknowledged' by other prominent figures. The party's first leader was Colonel Edward James Saunderson, a former Conservative Member of Parliament, who was most active in attempting to create an all-Ireland unionist movement. Towards the end of the party's existence, leadership became fractured between the northern and southern unionist movements within the alliance.
Leaders
Name | Tenure |
---|---|
The Right Honourable Edward James Saunderson MP for North Armagh |
1891–1906 |
The Right Honourable Walter Long MP for South Dublin |
1906–1910 |
The Right Honourable Sir Edward Carson MP for Dublin University |
1910–1921 |
- The 9th Viscount Midleton (1910–1919; created 1st Earl of Midleton in 1920), as leader of the Southern Unionists
- The 11th Baron Farnham (1919–1922), as leader of the Southern Unionists
Notes
- ^ B. M. Walker, 'Political affiliations' in Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922 (Royal Irish Academy, 1978), xiv.
- ^ Alvin Jackson, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford University Press, 19 March 2014), 52.
- ^ a b c Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmastism and Pessimism (Manchester University Press, 4 September 2004)
- ^ Grenfell Morton, Home Rule and the Irish Question (Routledge, 15 July 2014), 32.
- ^ a b Travis L. Crosby, Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist (I.B.Tauris, 30 March 2011), 102.
- ^ Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914), 385.
- ^ Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmastism and Pessimism (Manchester University Press, 4 September 2004), 22.
- ^ Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914), 374.
- ^ John Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 11 October 2012), 180.
- ^ a b Jeremy Smith, Britain and Ireland: From Home Rule to Independence (Routledge, 12 May 2014), 61.
- ^ IUA, Annual Reports, 1906–13, reported in the party AGM, 25 April 1913.
- ^ a b c Pádraig Yeates, Dublin: A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919 – 1921 (Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 28 September 2012)
- ^ Thomas Hennessey, Dividing Ireland: World War One and Partition (Routledge, 20 June 2005), 186.
- ^ a b Desmond Keenan, Ireland Within The Union 1800–1921 (Xlibris Corporation), p. 228.
- ^ G. K. Peatling, ‘The last defence of the Union? The Round Table and Ireland, 1910–1925’, in Andrea Bosco and Alex May, eds., The Round Table: the empire/commonwealth and British foreign policy (London, 1997), p. 291
- ^ a b Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 378.
- ^ Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 386.
- ISBN 0-7538-1767-5
- ^ Alvin Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707–2007 (Oxford University Press, 2012), 309.
- ^ John Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution: The Debate over the United Kingdom Constitution, 1870–1920 (McGill-Queen's Press – MQUP, 1 January 1989), 231.
- ^ Colin Reid, 'Stephen Gwynn and the Failure of Constitutional Nationalism in Ireland, 1919 – 1921', The Historical Journal, 53, 3 (2010), pp. 723–745
- ^ Senate nominations, 6 December 1922 Archived 9 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ D.George Boyce, Alan O'Day, Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism Since 1801 (Routledge, 4 January 2002 ), 123.
- ^ "Welcome reform.org - BlueHost.com". www.reform.org.
- ^ "Gill & Macmillan - History - the Year of Disappearances". Archived from the original on 24 November 2010. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
- ^ "Historical detective trail reveals 'ethnic cleansing' by IRA in Cork – Independent.ie". Retrieved 26 August 2016.
- ^ 1998 Review of "Crisis and Decline; the fate of the Southern Unionists" Archived 22 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine by Geoffrey Wheatcroft.
- ^ B. M. Walker, Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922 (Royal Irish Academy, 1978)
- ^ Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 384.
- ISBN 978-0-09-472350-4
- ^ a b Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 370–371.
- ^ "L Perry Curtis essay 2005, The Last Gasp of Southern Unionism: Lord Ashtown of Woodlawn Éire-Ireland journal, Volume 40:3&4, Fómhar/Geimhreadh / Fall/Winter 2005, pp. 140–188".
- ^ UCC article with numbers in 1921 and 1926 Archived 21 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Debate on the Local Government (Ireland) Bill, 24 March 1919
- ^ "'A mansion built on rashers' - Former home and lands of rasher baron Abraham Denny on the market for €2.2m". independent. 26 April 2019.
- ^ "Findlaters - Chapter 6 - A Southern Unionist Businessman: Adam Findlater (1855‒1911)".
- ^ "Land Purchase (Ireland). (Hansard, 11 February 1915)". api.parliament.uk.
- ^ a b c Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 369.
- ^ Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 376.
- Irish Times9 April 2011, p.14
References
- Barberis, Peter, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley, 2005. Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organisations. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8
External links
- The Home rule bill in committee, session, 1893 from Internet Archive
- "60 Years on: the “Southern Unionists”, the Crown and the Irish Republic" essay by Mary Kenny in Studies, Dublin 2009