Independent Irish Party
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Independent Irish Party (IIP) was the designation chosen by the 48 Members of the United Kingdom Parliament returned from
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
with the endorsement of the Tenant Right League in the 1852 general election. The League had secured their promise to offer an independent opposition (refusing all government favour and office) to the dominant landlord interest, and to advance an agrarian reform programme popularly summarised as the "three F's": fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale. The unity of the grouping was compromised by the priority the majority gave to repealing the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, legislation passed by the Liberal government of Lord John Russell to hamper the restoration in the United Kingdom of a
Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
episcopate, and their independence by the defection of two of their leading members to a new Whig-Peelite government. After further defections, thirteen independents survived the elections in 1857, but then split 1859 on the question of supporting a new Liberal ministry which, in 1860, made the first halting attempt to regulate Irish land tenure.


Formation and early disunity

The Tenant Right League joined tenant rights associations in largely Presbyterian districts in
Ulster Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...
with tenant protection societies (often guided by local Catholic clergy) in the south. It was formed in 1850 at a tenant right convention called in Dublin by Charles Gavan Duffy, editor of the revived Young Irelander weekly ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
''; James MacKnight editor of the ''Londonderry Sentinel'';
Frederick Lucas Frederick Lucas (30 March 1812 – 22 October 1855) was a British religious polemicist and founder of The Tablet. His brother Samuel Lucas was a newspaper editor and Abolitionism in the United Kingdom, abolitionist. Biography He was born in Wes ...
, founder of the international Catholic weekly, ''
The Tablet ''The Tablet'' is a Catholic Church, Catholic international weekly review published in London. Brendan Walsh, previously literary editor and then acting editor, was appointed editor in July 2017. History ''The Tablet'' was launched in 1840 by ...
''; and John Gray, owner of the leading nationalist paper, the '' Freeman's Journal''. Against the background of the distress caused by the Great Famine and by a fall in agricultural prices, Duffy believed that the demand for tenant rights could serve as the basis for a new all-Ireland movement and for a (potentially abstentionist) national party. The Westminster elections of July 1852 returned 48 MPs, including Duffy from New Ross, pledged to the tenant cause. But what Duffy had projected as a "League of North and South" failed to deliver in Ulster. William Kirk from the border town of
Newry Newry (; ) is a City status in Ireland, city in Northern Ireland, standing on the Newry River, Clanrye river in counties County Down, Down and County Armagh, Armagh. It is near Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, the border with the ...
was province's only tenant-right representative. In Monaghan, the Rev. David Bell was to find that of his 100 Presbyterian congregants who had signed the requisition asking John Gray to stand in their constituency only 11 voted for him. In
County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 552,261. It borders County Antrim to the ...
, William Sharman Crawford, who as MP for
Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a town in Greater Manchester, England, and the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale. In the United Kingdom 2021 Census, 2021 Census, the town had a population of 111,261, compared to 223,773 for the wid ...
in England had been the author of a tenant right bill, had his meetings broken up by Orange vigilantes. An early difficulty in appealing to Protestant tenants and voters in the north was the declared intention of many League-endorsed candidates to repeal the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. Together with the presence among them of so many sitting
Repeal Association The Repeal Association was an Irish mass membership political movement set up by Daniel O'Connell in 1830 to campaign for a repeal of the Acts of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland. The Association's aim was to revert Ireland to ...
MPs, their determination to remove the Act's restrictions on a restored
Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
hierarchy heightened the suspicion that the League was being used for political purposes beyond its declared agenda. In this, the prominent
County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 552,261. It borders County Antrim to the ...
tenant-righter, Julius McCullagh, argued the 1851 Act worked its purpose: to "afresh old grudges and differences - to divide a people now happily uniting". It was the case as well that landowners in the north threatened to withdraw their consent for the existing Ulster Custom if their
Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
nominees were not elected. In November 1852, Lord Derby's short-lived Conservative ministry introduced a land bill to compensate Irish tenants on eviction for improvements they had made to the land. The Tenant Compensation Bill passed in the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
in 1853 and 1854, but failed in the
House of Lords The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest ext ...
. The bills had little impressed the League and its MPs as landlords would have been left free to pass on the costs of compensation through their still unrestricted freedom to raise rents. Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, the Independent Irish MPs voted to bring down the government. But in the process two of the leading members, John Sadleir and William Keogh, broke their pledges of independent opposition and accepted positions in a new Whig- Peelite ministry of Lord Aberdeen. Twenty others followed as reliable supporters. While Aberdeen opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, his government gave no undertakings in regard to tenant-right policy Significantly in a League debate in February 1853 MacKnight, wary of any sign of Irish separatism, did not support Duffy in condemning these desertions. Rather, he protested the increasingly strident nationalism of southern League spokesman.


Split and dissolution

The Catholic Primate, Archbishop Paul Cullen, who had been sceptical of the independent opposition policy from the outset, sought to rein in clerical support for the remaining IIP in the constituencies. This was accompanied by the defection from the League of the
Catholic Defence Association The Catholic Defence Association was an organisation founded in 1851 to defend the rights of Ireland, Irish Roman Catholic tenant farmers. The first meeting held at the Mechanics' Institute, Dublin was chaired by Lord Gormanston, with MPs William Ke ...
(to their detractors, "the Pope's Brass Band"). Lucas's decision to take a complaint against Cullen to Rome further alienated clerical support. To Duffy the cause of the Irish tenants, and indeed of Ireland generally, seemed more hopeless than ever. In 1855 he published a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he had resolved to retire from parliament, as it was no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he had solicited their votes. To John Dillon he wrote that an Ireland where McKeogh typified patriotism and Cullen the church was an Ireland in which he could no longer live. In 1856 Duffy and his family emigrated to Australia. In the 1857 general election, with a recovery in agricultural prices blunting the enthusiasm of farmers for agitation, those presenting themselves as Independent Irish managed to hold on to 13 seats. One seat was won in the north on a platform of the three F's.
Samuel MacCurdy Greer Samuel MacCurdy Greer (1810–1880), was an Irish politician who, in Ulster championed Presbyterian representation and tenant rights. He was a founder member of the Ulster Tenant Right Association and of the all-Ireland Tenant Right League. In ...
was returned for Londonderry City. But Greer identified with the pro-Union British Radicals not with the IIP. The Independent Irish MPs had been under the notional leadership of George Henry Moore. Within the Catholic Church, Moore had retained sufficient support from Cullen's rival, Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, for his reelection in 1857 to overturned in the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
on the grounds of "obtrusive" and "unseemly" clerical influence. The IIP never developed the organisation and leadership to get out their full vote in the Commons or to collect, when the opportunity arose, the support of other MPs. In a vote of confidence in the Lord Derby's second Conservative government on 31 March 1859 the rump of the party split seven against six on whether join Whig and Radical factions in bringing in a new Liberal ministry under
Lord Palmerston Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865), known as Lord Palmerston, was a British statesman and politician who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1855 to 1858 and from 1859 to 1865. A m ...
. This marked the end of any pretence to coherence, although as a faction in Irish politics the Independent Oppositionists endured until 1874. In the Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment (Ireland) Act 1860 the new Palmerston government did no more than confirm
contract law A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more Party (law), parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, Service (economics), services, money, or pr ...
as the basis for tenancies. Legislation of the three F's awaited the
Land War The Land War () was a period of agrarian agitation in rural History of Ireland (1801–1923), Ireland (then wholly part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom) that began in 1879. It may refer specifically to the firs ...
of the 1880s, agitation conducted by the new Irish National Land League in alliance with the home-rule
Irish Parliamentary Party The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP; commonly called the Irish Party or the Home Rule Party) was formed in 1874 by Isaac Butt, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nati ...
.


Legacy

Historian F. S. L. Lyons concludes that when, in 1858, the Conservatives returned to office with a stable majority, "the hollowness of the independent party's pledge" was exposed. The "temptation to trade Irish votes for Irish concessions" proved in the end "irresistible". Nothing had been achieved, a failure, he argues, that "killed for nearly a generation any belief in the value of parliamentary pressure". In the
Long Depression The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in Panic of 1873, 1873 and running either through March 1879, or 1899, depending on the metrics used. It was most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been e ...
of the 1870s there was an intensified
Land War The Land War () was a period of agrarian agitation in rural History of Ireland (1801–1923), Ireland (then wholly part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom) that began in 1879. It may refer specifically to the firs ...
. From 1879 it was organised by the direct-action Irish National Land League, led by the southern Protestant Charles Stewart Parnell, but from which tenant-righters in the north stood largely aloof. In 1880, Parnell began to coin electoral gains from the struggle. Sixty-four Home Rulers were elected, twenty-seven of whom were his supporters. In the 1885 election, with the size of the Irish electorate tripled by the Representation of the People Act 1884, Parnell marshalled an
Irish Parliamentary Party The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP; commonly called the Irish Party or the Home Rule Party) was formed in 1874 by Isaac Butt, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nati ...
of 85 Members. But the Independent Irish Party was "in no way an ancestor". Parnell's policy was explicitly, and to mind of many British parliamentarians, cynically, of trading, Irish votes for Irish concessions backed, when these were not forthcoming, of
obstructionism Obstructionism is the practice of deliberately delaying, preventing or Abuse of process, abusing a process. In politics Obstructionism or policy of obstruction denotes the deliberate interference with the progress of a legislation by various me ...
.


Prominent parliamentary members

* Charles Gavan Duffy, August 1850 – November 1855 * William Keogh, July 1852 – December 1852 * George Henry Moore, October 1855 – April 1857 * John Maguire, April 1857 – June 1859 * John Sadleir, July 1852 – December 1852


Election results


References

{{Authority control All-Ireland political parties History of Ireland (1801–1923) Irish nationalist parties Political parties established in 1852 Political parties in pre-partition Ireland Defunct political parties in the United Kingdom Irish Liberal Party MPs Defunct liberal political parties Defunct political parties in Ireland 1852 establishments in Ireland 1858 disestablishments in Ireland Political parties disestablished in 1858