Alvin Jackson

Unionist Politics and Protestant Society in Edwardian Ireland

Like the ‘Tory in clogs’ of Edwardian Britain, the Unionist working man has generally eluded the historian of modern Ireland. Indeed, to some extent, the image of Irish Unionism, whether popular or scholarly, has been supplied by the apologetic biographers of the ‘great men’ of loyalism, and by the rhetoric of political opponents like Michael Farrell: at any rate the historiography of the movement is peopled with irredentist squires and Anglo-Irish peers, bowler-hatted Orange artisans – Engels ‘Protestant brag-garts’ – and cynical industrial barons. The existence of a more popular Unionism is acknowledged, though only in a context (the militancy of 1912, the bravura of 12 July marches) when it may not be ignored: even so, as with an older scholarly attitude towards popular British toryism, there has been a tendency among historians to treat mass Unionism as a freak of progress, demanding apologetic explanation rather than sustained illumination. With the institutions of popular Conservatism now, after thirty years of historical research, a firm feature of the British historical landscape, the need to reveal something of the electoral base of Ulster Unionism is all the more apparent. This is particularly true of the rural hinterland of the loyalist movement which, even more than Belfast, has been the victim of neglect.

Colonel Edward Saunderson : land and loyalty in Victorian Ireland

Colonel Edward Saunderson, the original leader of Irish Unionism, and the most prominent defender of Irish landlords in the late nineteenth century, has suffered undue neglect. This book, the first detailed account of his life to appear since the Edwardian era, explores the political traditions of the Saunderson family as well as the development and repercussions of the Colonels career. The twin poles of Saundersons life, landownership and the Union, represent the central themes of this study. Saundersons Unionism was intimately bound with this status as a landed proprietor, and the party institutions and strategies which he helped to create owed much to the strengths and preoccupations of his caste. Equally, the retreat of the gentry within Irish society affected the structure and direction of the whole unionist movement. Jackson offers a wide-ranging account of an Irish landed family concentrating on its most notable member, and on the last decades of its influence. This book is both an important political biography and a valuable case-study of the gentrys economic decline and political reorientation. Edward Saundersons career, significant within its own terms, serves to illustrate the death throes of the class to which he belonged.

The Failure of Unionism in Dublin, 1900

The election contests of 1900 in St Stephen’s Green and South County Dublin were covered in detail by newspapers throughout the British Isles and have been treated as a political watershed by more recent and scholarly commentators. This interest has had a partly personal and biographical inspiration since one of the unionist candidates for South Dublin was the agrarian reformer and junior minister, Horace Plunkett; but the significance, symbolic and actual, of these contests has been seen as extending beyond the participation of one prominent Edwardian Irishman. The defeat of two unionist M.P.s, Plunkett and Campbell, in a fairly static Irish electoral arena would in itself have been worthy of comment. But the association of these men with a constructive administrative programme for Ireland, combined with the fact of their defeat by dissident unionists, gave the contests a broader notoriety and a significance for policy formulation which they would not otherwise have had. With the benefit of hindsight it has also been suggested that the repudiation of Plunkett and Campbell was a landmark in the gradual decline of southern unionism in Ireland. For, though South Dublin briefly returned to the unionist party between 1906 and 1910, the defeats of 1900 effectively marked the end of unionism as a significant electoral movement outside Ulster. After 1900, as the historian W.E.H. Lecky observed, ‘Ulster unionism is the only form of Irish unionism which is likely to count as a serious political force’.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History

A. INTRODUCTION B. THEMATIC STUDIES 1. NATION, EMPIRE AND LANDSCAPE 2. PEOPLE, CULTURE AND THE ECONOMY C. PERIOD STUDIES 1. THE THIRD KINGDOM: IRELAND, C.1580-1690 2. ASCENDANCY IRELAND (1691-1801) 3. BRITISH STATE AND CATHOLIC NATION (1800-1920) 4. DOMINION, REPUBLIC AND HOME RULE: THE TWO IRELANDS, 1920-2008

Men for All Seasons? Carson, Parnell, and the Limits of Heroism in Modern Ireland:

Charles Stewart Parnell and Edward Carson both failed in their fundamental political objectives (a socially and geographically united and autonomous Ireland, as against a wholly Unionist Ireland). However, both men were the objects of great reverence during their lifetimes; and each was the focus of careful image building. Their heroic reputations were swiftly defined in regal, mystical and sexual terms: the reputation of each was commodified. Both were redefined according the needs of later generations: Parnells alleged radicalism grew with the passing of the years, and with the establishment of an independent Ireland under bourgeois Catholic domination; the complexities of Carsons career were masked by the demands of later Unionist generations. Both men have to some extent been superseded by rival heroic reputations within their respective cultures. Parnells standing has been challenged by the insurgents of 1916—21, while Carsons legacy has been sometimes overshadowed by that of his former lieutenant, James Craig.

Ireland’s Long Nineteenth Century of Union*

With the rise of Scottish nationalism and the consolidation of the Good Friday and St. Andrews Agreements in Northern Ireland, the unions of the United Kingdom now look rather different than they did in the recent past. Similarly, the range of scholarship under review here cumulatively delivers a portrayal of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, and of the British-Irish union, that is strikingly different from that prevailing hitherto. For a start, the periodization of the union in the nineteenth century has been here effectively tweaked, giving us an ever longer “long nineteenth century” in Ireland. The work of Padhraig Higgins, Douglas Kanter, and Allan Blackstock implicitly invites us to see the beginnings of nineteenth-century Irish politics not ðas is commonly arguedÞ in the 1790s, with the birth of Irish republicanism and of Orangeism—but rather further back in the eighteenth century. Higgins points to the forms and content of political mobilization in the 1770s and argues ðinter aliaÞ that these have a relevance for constitutional nationalism in the nineteenth century, while Blackstock and Kanter see the origins of Irish loyalism and of the British unionist consensus of the nineteenth century as deeply embedded in the politics and ideas of the mid-eighteenth century ðKanter in fact traces the birth of British unionism to the 1740sÞ. If the beginning of union Ireland has been recast, then so, too, has its “middle” and “end”: Blackstock, Higgins, and Daniel Jackson all provide a more elaborate

Insiders and Frontiers: Paul Seawright's Images of "The Troubles"

PAUL SEAWRIGHT AND HIS WORK Rooted in the scarred borderlands of North and West Belfast, Paul Seawright remains fascinated with the barricaded frontiers, both physical and mental, that have characterized his native city.1 Since the mid-1980s, Seawright has created several series of photographs that both document and explore the political environment within which he grew up. In these, as in much of his work, he displays an eye for paradox and absurdity. His approach seems non-judgmental, but rather quizzical, perhaps sardonic; many of the photographs in the Orange Order and Police Force series are taken from a low angle, suggesting the viewpoint of an inquisitive child. But it would be wrong to confuse curiosity with naïveté or ingenuousness: the artful conjunction of images in Seawright’s photographs, his careful angling of shots, his recurrent social and philosophical concerns all indicate work of considerable sophistication and integrity. The first of these series, Sectarian Murder (1988), portrays a number of murder sites but seeks to convey the emotional charge of Northern Irish violence using a very different approach from that favored—indeed exhausted—by earlier documentary photographers. Seawright’s images eschew the blatant portrayals of violence and confrontation provided in