Protestant Nationalist
Encyclopedia
Irish nationalism
has been chiefly associated with Roman Catholics. However, historically this is not an entirely accurate picture. Protestant
nationalists (or patriots, particularly before the mid-19th century) were also influential supporters of the political independence the island of Ireland
from the island of Great Britain
and leaders of national movements. Historically, this independence ranged from supporting the legislative independence of the Parliament of Ireland
, prior to the union of the Kingdoms of Great Britain
and Ireland
(forming the United Kingdom
), to a form of home rule
within the United Kingdom, to complete independence, and (since the partition of Ireland
) the re-unification of Ireland
.
Despite their relatively small numbers, key events such as the 1798 rebellion, the influence of the constitutional Parliamentary Party from 1886 and the 1916 Easter Rising would not have developed as they did without Protestant involvement.
Across the island of Ireland, the largest Protestant denomination is the Church of Ireland
(having roughly 365,000 members, making up around 3% of the Republic of Ireland and 15% of Northern Ireland), followed by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland (having a membership of around 300,000, accounting for 0.6% of people in the Republic and 20% of Northern Ireland). , 4% of Protestants in Northern Ireland thought the long-term policy for Northern Ireland should be reunification with the Republic of Ireland, whereas 89% said it should be to remain in the United Kingdom.
in the 1770s and 1780s, inspired by Henry Grattan
.
The Age of Revolution
inspired Protestants such as Wolfe Tone
, Thomas Russell
, Henry Joy McCracken
, William Orr
, Lord Edward Fitzgerald
, the brothers Sheares
, Archibald Hamilton Rowan
, Valentine Lawless, and others who led the United Irishmen movement. At its first meeting on October 14, 1791, all attendees, minus Tone and Russell (both, Anglicans
) were Presbyterians
. Presbyterians, led by McCracken, James Napper Tandy
, and Neilson would later go on to lead Protestant and Catholic
Irish rebels in the Irish Rebellion of 1798
. Tone did manage to unite if only for a short time, at least, some Protestants, Catholics and Dissenters into the "common name of Irishmen", and would later go on to try to get French
support for the rising, recalling the failed French Bantry Bay landing
of 1796.
At that time, the French republicans were opposed to all churches
. Such men were inspired by Thomas Paine
of the American Revolution
, who disapproved of organized religions in The Age of Reason
(1794–1795) and preferred a deist belief. Though the United Irish movement was supported by individual priests, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was opposed to it, in part because its new seminary in Maynooth
had been funded by the government in 1795.
During the 1798 rebellion the military leaders were also largely Anglicans. After the initial battles in County Kildare
the rebels holding out in the Bog of Allen
were led by William Aylmer
. In Antrim and Down the rebels were almost all Presbyterians, and at the Battle of Ballynahinch
the local Defenders
decided not to take part. In County Wexford
, which remained out of British control for a month, the main planner and leader was Bagenal Harvey
. Joseph Holt
led the rebels in County Wicklow
. Only in Mayo, where there were few Protestants, was the rebellion led entirely by Catholics, and it only developed because of the landing by a French force under General Humbert. The disarming of Ulster
saw several hundred Protestants, tortured, executed and imprisoned for their United Irish sympathies. The rebellion became the main reason for the Act of Union passed in 1800.
, brother of Thomas Addis Emmet
. He was joined by other Protestants such as James Hope and was later executed for his part in the rising. In the 1840s Thomas Davis
, the revolutionary writer and poet, and John Mitchel
were involved in the radical politics of their day, and William Smith O'Brien
led the rebellion in 1848
.
The democratic and non-violent Repeal Association
led by Daniel O'Connell
in the 1830s and 1840s was supported by a number of Protestants; the most eminent being Sir John Gray, who later supported Butt and Parnell (see below), and others such as James Haughton
.
was founded by Isaac Butt
in 1870, who died in 1873. William Shaw
presided over the convention held to found its successor, the Home Rule League
of which he was chairman. He was followed by Charles Stewart Parnell
founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party
(IPP). Herbert Henry Asquith called Parnell one of the most important men of the nineteenth century and Lord Haldane
called him the most powerful man that the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
had seen in 150 years. Parnell led the Gladstonian
constitutionalist Home Rule movement and for a time dominated Irish and British affairs. However, at the height of his power he was to be dethroned by the O'Shea divorce affair and died soon afterwards.
Other Protestant Nationalist Members of Parliament were: Sir John Gray
, Stephen Gwynn, Henry Harrison
, Jeremiah Jordan
, William McDonald
, J. G. Swift MacNeill
, James Maguire
, Pierce Charles de Lacy O'Mahony
, Isaac Nelson
, John Pinkerton
, Horace Plunkett and Samuel Young.
Several Protestant figures in the early Northern Ireland Labour Party
were nationalists. These included MPs Jack Beattie
, Sam Kyle
and William McMullen
and labour leaders James Baird
and John Hanna. Meanwhile, trade unionist Victor Halley
was a member of the Socialist Republican Party
.
, Whitley Stokes, Standish James O'Grady
and Samuel Ferguson
helped to develop nationalist sentiment.
From 1897 the artist and mystic George Russell
(also known as "Æ") helped Horace Plunkett to run the Irish Agricultural Organisational Society. The IAOS rapidly grew into the main Irish rural co-operative body through which Irish farmers could buy and sell goods at the best price. Plunkett was also a cousin of George Noble Plunkett, father of Joseph Mary Plunkett
. Horace Plunkett's home in County Dublin
was later burned down in 1922 by anti-treaty
Irish republicans
during the Irish Civil War
, as he had been appointed a Senator in the first Irish Free State
Senate.
Russell was also involved in the "Irish Literary Revival
" (or Celtic Twilight) artistic movement, that provided an intellectual and artistic aspect supportive of Irish nationalism. This was also largely started and run by Protestants such as WB Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey
and JM Synge
, who also founded the influential but controversial Abbey Theatre
that opened in 1904. "An Túr Gloine
" (The Glass Tower) had a similar membership.
Sam Maguire
recruited Michael Collins
into the Irish Republican Brotherhood
(IRB) in 1909. From 1928 the main prize for Irish football awarded by the Gaelic Athletic Association
has been the Sam Maguire Cup
.
In 1908 Bulmer Hobson
and Constance Markievicz founded the Fianna Éireann
, intended as a nationalist boy scout movement. The Irish Volunteers
were a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by Irish Nationalists and separatists including Roger Casement
, Bulmer Hobson and Robert Erskine Childers
, all Protestant Irish nationalists (although Casement, who had been secretly baptized a Catholic by his mother, officially converted to Catholicism just before he was hanged in 1916). The Irish Volunteers were formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers by Edward Carson and James Craig
. The Ulster Volunteers were a Unionist
paramilitary movement who feared a Dublin-centric, anti-protestant Home Rule parliament in Dublin.
The Irish Citizen Army
existed from 1913–1947 and one of its creators was Jack White
from Ulster, son of General George White. On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, 220 of the group (including 28 women) took part in the Easter Rising
. Most of the rifles and ammunition used in the Rising had been imported from Germany in July 1914 by Robert Erskine Childers
on his yacht "Asgard"
along with Conor O'Brien and assisted by Alice Stopford Green
and the former Quaker Bulmer Hobson. The rest of the rifles were shipped by Sir Thomas Myles
, at the suggestion of the barrister James Meredith
, and were landed at Kilcoole
. In 1913 Hobson had sworn Patrick Pearse
into the IRB; Pearse was one of leaders of the Rising. A prominent signatory to the Anglo-Irish Treaty
in late 1921 that followed the Anglo-Irish war was Robert Barton
, a cousin of Childers.
The archetypal work of art that commemorated the 1916 Rising, though sculpted five years before the rising, is the statue of the dying mythical warrior Cuchullain, sculpted by Oliver Sheppard
, a Protestant art lecturer in Dublin who had been a moderate nationalist for decades. Cast in bronze, it was unveiled at the GPO
in 1935.
In the subsequent Irish Free State
governments Ernest Blythe
, a former member of the Irish Volunteers, held various ministerial posts. Seán Lester
was a League of Nations
diplomat. The founder of the Gaelic League and first President of Ireland
was Douglas Hyde
. Dorothy Macardle
opposed the 1921 Treaty and was a life-long supporter of Éamon de Valera
, writing his view of history in The Irish Republic
(1937), but also refusing his suggestion to convert to Catholicism on her deathbed in 1958. Some like the Revd. Robert Hilliard
fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39.
Following independence, southern Protestant unionists accepted the new reality and worked with the new Free State from its difficult start in 1922-23. These included judges such as Lord Glenavy
, whose suggestions for a new law courts system was enacted as the Courts Act 1924, and twenty accepted nominations to the new Senate
, such as Lord Mayo
.
and George Plant, where amongst a handful of Belfast Protestant's who joined the minority Republican Congress
and the Irish Republican Army
in the 1930s and 1940s. Plant was hanged in the Irish Free State for his activities. Neither group developed mainstream popular support.
The IRA continued to have a squad which consisted of Protestants based in the Shankill Road area which dropped in membership in the early 1960s and was eventually disbanded. Later figures included Ronnie Bunting
of the Irish National Liberation Army
and John Turnley
who were assassinated by the Ulster Defence Association
. Bunting was the son of Ronald Bunting
, a close associate of Ian Paisley
. John Turnley
, also killed in 1980, was the Protestant Chairman of the Irish Independence Party
and an Anti H-Block
campaigner. David Russell was a Protestant Provisional IRA volunteer
who was killed due to a premature explosion in 1974 in Derry
.
Since partition, the majority of Ulster Protestants oppose the unification of Ireland, traditionally supporting continued union with Great Britain
. In the past, the Social Democratic and Labour Party
(SDLP) has had Protestant representatives, the most famous being Ivan Cooper. Billy Leonard
, a former lay-preacher and Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) reservist, was an MLA for Sinn Féin
in Stormont.
, a member of the Church of Ireland
, has been influential in formulating Fianna Fáil
's policy on Northern Ireland
since the peace process
began in the 1990s.
Irish nationalism
Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...
has been chiefly associated with Roman Catholics. However, historically this is not an entirely accurate picture. Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
nationalists (or patriots, particularly before the mid-19th century) were also influential supporters of the political independence the island of Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
from the island of Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and leaders of national movements. Historically, this independence ranged from supporting the legislative independence of the Parliament of Ireland
Parliament of Ireland
The Parliament of Ireland was a legislature that existed in Dublin from 1297 until 1800. In its early mediaeval period during the Lordship of Ireland it consisted of either two or three chambers: the House of Commons, elected by a very restricted suffrage, the House of Lords in which the lords...
, prior to the union of the Kingdoms of Great Britain
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
and Ireland
Kingdom of Ireland
The Kingdom of Ireland refers to the country of Ireland in the period between the proclamation of Henry VIII as King of Ireland by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 and the Act of Union in 1800. It replaced the Lordship of Ireland, which had been created in 1171...
(forming the United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
), to a form of home rule
Home rule
Home rule is the power of a constituent part of a state to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been devolved to it by the central government....
within the United Kingdom, to complete independence, and (since the partition of Ireland
Partition of Ireland
The partition of Ireland was the division of the island of Ireland into two distinct territories, now Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland . Partition occurred when the British Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act 1920...
) the re-unification of Ireland
United Ireland
A united Ireland is the term used to refer to the idea of a sovereign state which covers all of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. The island of Ireland includes the territory of two independent sovereign states: the Republic of Ireland, which covers 26 counties of the island, and the...
.
Despite their relatively small numbers, key events such as the 1798 rebellion, the influence of the constitutional Parliamentary Party from 1886 and the 1916 Easter Rising would not have developed as they did without Protestant involvement.
Across the island of Ireland, the largest Protestant denomination is the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
(having roughly 365,000 members, making up around 3% of the Republic of Ireland and 15% of Northern Ireland), followed by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland (having a membership of around 300,000, accounting for 0.6% of people in the Republic and 20% of Northern Ireland). , 4% of Protestants in Northern Ireland thought the long-term policy for Northern Ireland should be reunification with the Republic of Ireland, whereas 89% said it should be to remain in the United Kingdom.
Pre-Union background
In the eighteenth century the first attempt towards a form of greater Irish home rule under the British Crown was led by the Irish Patriot PartyIrish Patriot Party
The Irish Patriot Party was the name of a number of different political groupings in Ireland throughout the 18th century. They were primarily supportive of Whig concepts of personal liberty combined with an Irish identity that rejected full independence, but advocated strong self-government within...
in the 1770s and 1780s, inspired by Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan was an Irish politician and member of the Irish House of Commons and a campaigner for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century. He opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain.-Early life:Grattan was born at...
.
The Age of Revolution
Age of Revolution
The Age of Revolution is a term used to denote the period from approximately 1775 to 1848 in which a number of significant revolutionary movements occurred on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in Europe and the Americas. The period is noted for the change in government from absolutist monarchies to...
inspired Protestants such as Wolfe Tone
Theobald Wolfe Tone
Theobald Wolfe Tone or Wolfe Tone , was a leading Irish revolutionary figure and one of the founding members of the United Irishmen and is regarded as the father of Irish Republicanism. He was captured by British forces at Lough Swilly in Donegal and taken prisoner...
, Thomas Russell
Thomas Russell (rebel)
Thomas Paliser Russell was a co-founder and leader of the United Irishmen was executed for his part in Robert Emmet's rebellion in 1803.-Background:...
, Henry Joy McCracken
Henry Joy McCracken
Henry Joy McCracken was an Irish industrialist and a founding member of the Society of the United Irishmen.-History:...
, William Orr
William Orr
William Orr was a member of the United Irishmen who was executed in 1797 in what was widely believed at the time to be "judicial murder" and whose memory led to the rallying cry “Remember Orr” during the 1798 rebellion.-Background:...
, Lord Edward Fitzgerald
Lord Edward FitzGerald
Lord Edward FitzGerald was an Irish aristocrat and revolutionary. He was the fifth son of the 1st Duke of Leinster and the Duchess of Leinster , he was born at Carton House, near Dublin, and died of wounds received in resisting arrest on charge of treason.-Early years:FitzGerald spent most of his...
, the brothers Sheares
The Sheares Brothers
The Sheares Brothers, Henry , and John were Irish lawyers and members of the Society of United Irishmen, who died in the 1798 rebellion.-Early lives:...
, Archibald Hamilton Rowan
Archibald Hamilton Rowan
Archibald Hamilton Rowan , christened Archibald Hamilton , was an Irish celebrity and a founding member of The Dublin Society of United Irishmen. He was the son of Gawen Hamilton of Killyleagh Castle, Co...
, Valentine Lawless, and others who led the United Irishmen movement. At its first meeting on October 14, 1791, all attendees, minus Tone and Russell (both, Anglicans
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
) were Presbyterians
Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...
. Presbyterians, led by McCracken, James Napper Tandy
James Napper Tandy
James Napper Tandy , was an Irish rebel leader.-Political activism:A Dublin Protestant and the son of an ironmonger, Tandy went to the famous Quaker boarding school in Ballitore, south Kildare, also attended by Edmund Burke who was eight years older.He started life as a small tradesman...
, and Neilson would later go on to lead Protestant and Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
Irish rebels in the Irish Rebellion of 1798
Irish Rebellion of 1798
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 , also known as the United Irishmen Rebellion , was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against British rule in Ireland...
. Tone did manage to unite if only for a short time, at least, some Protestants, Catholics and Dissenters into the "common name of Irishmen", and would later go on to try to get French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
support for the rising, recalling the failed French Bantry Bay landing
Battle of Bantry Bay
The Battle of Bantry Bay was a naval engagement fought on 11 May 1689 during the Nine Years' War. The Allied fleet was commanded by Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington; the French fleet by François Louis de Rousselet, Marquis de Châteaurenault...
of 1796.
At that time, the French republicans were opposed to all churches
Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution
The dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution is a conventional description of the results of a number of separate policies, conducted by various governments of France between the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Concordat of 1801, forming the basis of the later and...
. Such men were inspired by Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
, who disapproved of organized religions in The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a deistic pamphlet, written by eighteenth-century British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of...
(1794–1795) and preferred a deist belief. Though the United Irish movement was supported by individual priests, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was opposed to it, in part because its new seminary in Maynooth
St Patrick's College, Maynooth
St Patrick's College, Maynooth is the "National Seminary for Ireland" , and a Pontifical University, located in the village of Maynooth, 15 miles from Dublin, Ireland. The college and seminary are often referred to as Maynooth College. The college was officially established as the Royal College...
had been funded by the government in 1795.
During the 1798 rebellion the military leaders were also largely Anglicans. After the initial battles in County Kildare
County Kildare
County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...
the rebels holding out in the Bog of Allen
Bog of Allen
The Bog of Allen is a large raised bog in the centre of Ireland between the rivers Liffey and Shannon.The bog's 958 square kilometers stretch into County Offaly, County Meath, County Kildare, County Laois, and County Westmeath. Peat is mechanically harvested on a large scale by Bórd na Móna,...
were led by William Aylmer
William Aylmer
William Aylmer from Painstown, County Kildare, Ireland was a leader of the United Irishmen in the 1798 Rebellion against the British government. At the Battle of Ovidstown on 19 June 1798 he led a fierce battle against superior forces in which 200 insurgents died. Aylmer retreated into the...
. In Antrim and Down the rebels were almost all Presbyterians, and at the Battle of Ballynahinch
Battle of Ballynahinch
The Battle of Ballynahinch was fought outside Ballynahinch, County Down, on 12 June, during the Irish rebellion of 1798 between British forces led by Major-General George Nugent and the local United Irishmen led by Henry Munro .-Background:...
the local Defenders
Defenders (Ireland)
The Defenders were a militant, vigilante agrarian secret society in 18th century Ireland, mainly Roman Catholic and from Ulster, who allied with the United Irishmen but did little during the rebellion of 1798.-Origin:...
decided not to take part. In County Wexford
County Wexford
County Wexford is a county in Ireland. It is part of the South-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wexford. In pre-Norman times it was part of the Kingdom of Uí Cheinnselaig, whose capital was at Ferns. Wexford County Council is the local...
, which remained out of British control for a month, the main planner and leader was Bagenal Harvey
Bagenal Harvey
Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey was a barrister and a commander of the United Irishmen in the Battle of New Ross during the 1798 Rebellion....
. Joseph Holt
Joseph Holt (rebel)
Joseph Holt was a United Irish general and leader of a large guerrilla force which fought against British troops in County Wicklow from June–October 1798. He was exiled to Australia in 1799 where he worked as a farm manager and eventually returned to Ireland in 1814.-Background:Holt was one of six...
led the rebels in County Wicklow
County Wicklow
County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...
. Only in Mayo, where there were few Protestants, was the rebellion led entirely by Catholics, and it only developed because of the landing by a French force under General Humbert. The disarming of Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
saw several hundred Protestants, tortured, executed and imprisoned for their United Irish sympathies. The rebellion became the main reason for the Act of Union passed in 1800.
1803 and 1848
In 1803 there was another Irish rebellion led by Robert EmmetRobert Emmet
Robert Emmet was an Irish nationalist and Republican, orator and rebel leader born in Dublin, Ireland...
, brother of Thomas Addis Emmet
Thomas Addis Emmet
Thomas Addis Emmet was an Irish and American lawyer and politician. He was a senior member of the revolutionary republican group United Irishmen in the 1790s and New York State Attorney General 1812–1813.-Background:...
. He was joined by other Protestants such as James Hope and was later executed for his part in the rising. In the 1840s Thomas Davis
Thomas Osborne Davis (Irish politician)
Thomas Osborne Davis was a revolutionary Irish writer who was the chief organizer and poet of the Young Ireland movement.-Early life:...
, the revolutionary writer and poet, and John Mitchel
John Mitchel
John Mitchel was an Irish nationalist activist, solicitor and political journalist. Born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Londonderry, Ireland he became a leading member of both Young Ireland and the Irish Confederation...
were involved in the radical politics of their day, and William Smith O'Brien
William Smith O'Brien
William Smith O'Brien was an Irish Nationalist and Member of Parliament and leader of the Young Ireland movement. He was convicted of sedition for his part in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, but his sentence of death was commuted to deportation to Van Diemen's Land. In 1854, he was...
led the rebellion in 1848
Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848
The Young Irelander Rebellion was a failed Irish nationalist uprising led by the Young Ireland movement. It took place on 29 July 1848 in the village of Ballingarry, County Tipperary. After being chased by a force of Young Irelanders and their supporters, an Irish Constabulary unit raided a house...
.
The democratic and non-violent Repeal Association
Repeal Association
The Repeal Association was an Irish mass membership political movement set up by Daniel O'Connell to campaign for a repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland....
led by Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell (6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847; often referred to as The Liberator, or The Emancipator, was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century...
in the 1830s and 1840s was supported by a number of Protestants; the most eminent being Sir John Gray, who later supported Butt and Parnell (see below), and others such as James Haughton
James Haughton
James Haughton was an Irish social reformer and temperance activist.-Life:Haughton, son of Samuel Pearson Haughton , by Mary, daughter of James Pim of Rushin, Queen's County , Ireland, was born in Carlow and educated at Ballitor, County Kildare, from 1807 to 1810, under James White, a quaker...
.
Politicians
The new Home Government AssociationHome Government Association
The Home Government Association was a pressure group founded by Isaac Butt in 1870 in support of home rule for Ireland.Its inaugural public meeting was held on 1 September 1870.It became the Home Rule League in 1873....
was founded by Isaac Butt
Isaac Butt
Isaac Butt Q.C. M.P. was an Irish barrister, politician, Member of Parliament , and the founder and first leader of a number of Irish nationalist parties and organisations, including the Irish Metropolitan Conservative Society in 1836, the Home Government Association in 1870 and in 1873 the Home...
in 1870, who died in 1873. William Shaw
William Shaw (Irish politician)
William Shaw was an Irish Protestant nationalist politician. He was a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and one of the founders of the Irish home rule movement....
presided over the convention held to found its successor, the Home Rule League
Home Rule League
The Home Rule League, sometimes called the Home Rule Party, was a political party which campaigned for home rule for the country of Ireland from 1873 to 1882, when it was replaced by the Irish Parliamentary Party.-Origins:...
of which he was chairman. He was followed by Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party
Irish Parliamentary Party
The Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...
(IPP). Herbert Henry Asquith called Parnell one of the most important men of the nineteenth century and Lord Haldane
Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane
Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane KT, OM, PC, KC, FRS, FBA, FSA , was an influential British Liberal Imperialist and later Labour politician, lawyer and philosopher. He was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912 during which time the "Haldane Reforms" were implemented...
called him the most powerful man that the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
had seen in 150 years. Parnell led the Gladstonian
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
constitutionalist Home Rule movement and for a time dominated Irish and British affairs. However, at the height of his power he was to be dethroned by the O'Shea divorce affair and died soon afterwards.
Other Protestant Nationalist Members of Parliament were: Sir John Gray
John Gray (Irish politician)
Sir John Gray Knt MD JP, sometimes spelled John Grey was an Irish physician, surgeon, newspaper proprietor, journalist and politician...
, Stephen Gwynn, Henry Harrison
Henry Harrison (MP)
Captain Henry Harrison was an Irish politician and MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party represented Mid Tipperary from 1890 to 1892...
, Jeremiah Jordan
Jeremiah Jordan
Jeremiah Jordan J.P. was an Irish nationalist politician from County Fermanagh. He was a Member of Parliament from 1885 to 1892, and from 1893 to 1910, taking his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.- Early life :Jordan was born in Tattinbar, eldest son...
, William McDonald
William Archibald Macdonald (MP)
William Archibald Macdonald was an Irish nationalist politician and MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party represented Queen's County Ossory, 1886–92, and a supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell...
, J. G. Swift MacNeill
J. G. Swift MacNeill
John Gordon Swift MacNeill was an Irish Protestant nationalist politician and MP, in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for South Donegal from 1887 until 1918, Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law at the King's Inns, Dublin, 1882–88, and Professor of...
, James Maguire
James Rochfort Maguire
James Rochfort Maguire , British imperialist and Irish Nationalist politician and MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party represented North Donegal and as a Parnellite Member for West Clare...
, Pierce Charles de Lacy O'Mahony
Pierce Charles de Lacy O'Mahony
Pierce Charles de Lacy O'Mahony , known up to 1901 as Pierce Mahony, and from 1912 also as The O'Mahony of Kerry, was an Irish Protestant nationalist politician and philanthropist, who practised as a barrister from 1898 to 1900...
, Isaac Nelson
Isaac Nelson
Isaac Nelson was a Presbyterian minister and an Irish Nationalist politician.Nelson stood for Parliament while minister of the Donegall Street Congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland...
, John Pinkerton
John Pinkerton (politician)
John Pinkerton was an Irish Protestant nationalist politician and Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party he represented Galway Borough from 1886 to 1900.Born in Ballymoney, Co Antrim, the son...
, Horace Plunkett and Samuel Young.
Several Protestant figures in the early Northern Ireland Labour Party
Northern Ireland Labour Party
The Northern Ireland Labour Party was an Irish political party which operated from 1924 until 1987.In 1913 the British Labour Party resolved to give the recently formed Irish Labour Party exclusive organising rights in Ireland...
were nationalists. These included MPs Jack Beattie
Jack Beattie
Jack Beattie was a politician from Northern Ireland.He was a teacher by profession. He joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party . In 1925, he became a Member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons for Belfast East. He represented Belfast Pottinger from 1929...
, Sam Kyle
Sam Kyle
Sam Kyle was an Irish trade unionist and politician.Born into a Protestant family in Belfast, Kyle joined the Independent Labour Party. He became an active trade unionist, and at the 1918 UK general election, he stood in Belfast Shankill for the Belfast Labour Representation Committee...
and William McMullen
William McMullen
William McMullen , sometimes known as Billy McMullen, was an Irish trade unionist and politician.Born into a Protestant family in Belfast, McMullen began working in the shipyards and became an active trade unionist...
and labour leaders James Baird
James Baird (trade unionist)
James Baird was a trade unionist and politician in Northern Ireland.An opponent of the partition of Ireland, Baird joined the Independent Labour Party. He was also active in the Boilermakers' Society, and was prominent in the Belfast strike, 1919...
and John Hanna. Meanwhile, trade unionist Victor Halley
Victor Halley
Victor Halley was a nationalist trade unionist in Northern Ireland, from West Belfast.A Presbyterian, Halley joined the Independent Labour Party, and when this disaffiliated from the British Labour Party, he became a founder member of the small Socialist Party of Northern Ireland, an integral part...
was a member of the Socialist Republican Party
Socialist Republican Party (Ireland)
The Socialist Republican Party was an Irish republican political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1944 by a coalition of former Nationalist Party members, former Irish Republican Army members and Protestant trade unionists around Victor Halley, all based in West Belfast.The party...
.
Artists
While not active nationalist supporters, authors who wrote about Irish life and history, such as William WildeWilliam Wilde
Sir William Robert Wills Wilde MD, FRCSI, was an Irish eye and ear surgeon, as well as an author of significant works on medicine, archaeology and folklore, particularly concerning his native Ireland...
, Whitley Stokes, Standish James O'Grady
Standish James O'Grady
Standish James O'Grady was an Irish author, journalist, and historian. His father was the Reverend Thomas O'Grady, the scholarly Church of Ireland minister of Castletown Berehaven, County Cork, and his mother Susanna Doe...
and Samuel Ferguson
Samuel Ferguson
Sir Samuel Ferguson was an Irish poet, barrister, antiquarian, artist and public servant. Perhaps the most important Ulster-Scot poet of the 19th century, because of his interest in Irish mythology and early Irish history he can be seen as a forerunner of William Butler Yeats and the other poets...
helped to develop nationalist sentiment.
From 1897 the artist and mystic George Russell
George William Russell
George William Russell who wrote under the pseudonym Æ , was an Irish nationalist, writer, editor, critic, poet, and painter. He was also a mystical writer, and centre of a group of followers of theosophy in Dublin, for many years.-Organisor:Russell was born in Lurgan, County Armagh...
(also known as "Æ") helped Horace Plunkett to run the Irish Agricultural Organisational Society. The IAOS rapidly grew into the main Irish rural co-operative body through which Irish farmers could buy and sell goods at the best price. Plunkett was also a cousin of George Noble Plunkett, father of Joseph Mary Plunkett
Joseph Mary Plunkett
Joseph Mary Plunkett was an Irish nationalist, poet, journalist, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising.-Background:...
. Horace Plunkett's home in County Dublin
County Dublin
County Dublin is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Dublin Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the city of Dublin which is the capital of Ireland. County Dublin was one of the first of the parts of Ireland to be shired by King John of England following the...
was later burned down in 1922 by anti-treaty
Anglo-Irish Treaty
The Anglo-Irish Treaty , officially called the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was a treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the secessionist Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of...
Irish republicans
Irish Republicanism
Irish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.In 1801, under the Act of Union, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
during the Irish Civil War
Irish Civil War
The Irish Civil War was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire....
, as he had been appointed a Senator in the first Irish Free State
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...
Senate.
Russell was also involved in the "Irish Literary Revival
Irish Literary Revival
The Irish Literary Revival was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century.-Forerunners:...
" (or Celtic Twilight) artistic movement, that provided an intellectual and artistic aspect supportive of Irish nationalism. This was also largely started and run by Protestants such as WB Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
and JM Synge
John Millington Synge
Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...
, who also founded the influential but controversial Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
that opened in 1904. "An Túr Gloine
An Túr Gloine
An Túr Gloine was a cooperative studio for stained glass conceived in late 1901 and established January 1903 at 24 Pembroke Street, Dublin, Ireland, on the site of two former tennis courts. It was active throughout the first half of the 20th century...
" (The Glass Tower) had a similar membership.
Independence era (1916-22)
Sam Maguire
Samuel Maguire , an Irish republican and Gaelic footballer, is chiefly remembered as the eponym of the Sam Maguire Cup, given to the All-Ireland Senior Champions of Gaelic football.-Early life:...
recruited Michael Collins
Michael Collins (Irish leader)
Michael "Mick" Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the...
into the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Republican Brotherhood
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century...
(IRB) in 1909. From 1928 the main prize for Irish football awarded by the Gaelic Athletic Association
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
has been the Sam Maguire Cup
Sam Maguire Cup
The Sam Maguire Cup, often called The Sam , is the name of the cup that is awarded to winners of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, the premier "knockout" competition in the game of Gaelic football played in Ireland...
.
In 1908 Bulmer Hobson
Bulmer Hobson
John Bulmer Hobson was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood before the Easter Rising in 1916...
and Constance Markievicz founded the Fianna Éireann
Fianna Éireann
The name Fianna Éireann , also written Fianna na hÉireann and Na Fianna Éireann , has been used by various Irish republican youth movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries...
, intended as a nationalist boy scout movement. The Irish Volunteers
Irish Volunteers
The Irish Volunteers was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland"...
were a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by Irish Nationalists and separatists including Roger Casement
Roger Casement
Roger David Casement —Sir Roger Casement CMG between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his British honours—was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary, and nationalist....
, Bulmer Hobson and Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers DSC , universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish...
, all Protestant Irish nationalists (although Casement, who had been secretly baptized a Catholic by his mother, officially converted to Catholicism just before he was hanged in 1916). The Irish Volunteers were formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers by Edward Carson and James Craig
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, PC, PC , was a prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland...
. The Ulster Volunteers were a Unionist
Unionism in Ireland
Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain...
paramilitary movement who feared a Dublin-centric, anti-protestant Home Rule parliament in Dublin.
The Irish Citizen Army
Irish Citizen Army
The Irish Citizen Army , or ICA, was a small group of trained trade union volunteers established in Dublin for the defence of worker’s demonstrations from the police. It was formed by James Larkin and Jack White. Other prominent members included James Connolly, Seán O'Casey, Constance Markievicz,...
existed from 1913–1947 and one of its creators was Jack White
Jack White (labour unionist)
Captain James Robert "Jack" White DSO was one of the co-founders of the Irish Citizen Army.-Early life:Jack White was born in 1879, at Whitehall, in Broughshane, County Antrim, Ireland...
from Ulster, son of General George White. On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, 220 of the group (including 28 women) took part in the Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
. Most of the rifles and ammunition used in the Rising had been imported from Germany in July 1914 by Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers DSC , universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish...
on his yacht "Asgard"
Asgard (yacht)
The Asgard is a yacht, formerly owned by the English-born Irish nationalist, and writer Robert Erskine Childers and his wife Molly Childers. It was bought for £1,000 in 1904 from one of Norway's most famous boat designers, Colin Archer...
along with Conor O'Brien and assisted by Alice Stopford Green
Alice Stopford Green
Alice Stopford Green was an Irish historian and nationalist.She was born Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford in Kells, County Meath. Her father Edward Adderley Stopford was Rector of Kells and Archdeacon of Meath. Her paternal grandfather was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Meath...
and the former Quaker Bulmer Hobson. The rest of the rifles were shipped by Sir Thomas Myles
Thomas Myles
Sir Thomas Myles, CB was a prominent Irish Home Ruler and surgeon, involved in the importation of arms for the Irish Volunteers in 1914....
, at the suggestion of the barrister James Meredith
James Creed Meredith
James Creed Meredith K.C., LL.D. was an Irish nationalist of the early 20th century, who upheld Brehon Law. He was President of the Supreme Court of the Irish Republic, Chief Judicial Commissioner of Ireland and a Judge of the High Court and the Supreme Court of Ireland...
, and were landed at Kilcoole
Kilcoole
Kilcoole is a village in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is three kilometres south of Greystones, 14 kilometres north of Wicklow, and about 25 kilometres south of Dublin. It was used as the set for the Irish television series Glenroe, which ran through the 1980s and 1990s...
. In 1913 Hobson had sworn Patrick Pearse
Patrick Pearse
Patrick Henry Pearse was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916...
into the IRB; Pearse was one of leaders of the Rising. A prominent signatory to the Anglo-Irish Treaty
Anglo-Irish Treaty
The Anglo-Irish Treaty , officially called the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was a treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the secessionist Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of...
in late 1921 that followed the Anglo-Irish war was Robert Barton
Robert Barton
Robert Childers Barton was an Irish lawyer, soldier, statesman and farmer who participated in the negotiations leading up to the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. His father was Charles William Barton and his mother was Agnes Childers. His wife was Rachel Warren of Boston, daughter of Fiske...
, a cousin of Childers.
The archetypal work of art that commemorated the 1916 Rising, though sculpted five years before the rising, is the statue of the dying mythical warrior Cuchullain, sculpted by Oliver Sheppard
Oliver Sheppard
Oliver Sheppard RHA was an Irish sculptor, most famous for his 1911 bronze statue of the mythical Cuchullain dying in battle.-Family:...
, a Protestant art lecturer in Dublin who had been a moderate nationalist for decades. Cast in bronze, it was unveiled at the GPO
General Post Office (Dublin)
The General Post Office ' in Dublin is the headquarters of the Irish postal service, An Post, and Dublin's principal post office...
in 1935.
In the subsequent Irish Free State
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...
governments Ernest Blythe
Ernest Blythe
Ernest Blythe was an Irish politician.Ernest Blythe was born to a Presbyterian and Unionist family near Lisburn, County Antrim in 1889, the son of a farmer, and was educated locally. At the age of fifteen he started working as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture in Dublin.Blythe joined the...
, a former member of the Irish Volunteers, held various ministerial posts. Seán Lester
Seán Lester
Seán Lester was an Irish diplomat and the last Secretary General of the League of Nations, from 31 August 1940 to 18 April 1946.-Early life:...
was a League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
diplomat. The founder of the Gaelic League and first President of Ireland
President of Ireland
The President of Ireland is the head of state of Ireland. The President is usually directly elected by the people for seven years, and can be elected for a maximum of two terms. The presidency is largely a ceremonial office, but the President does exercise certain limited powers with absolute...
was Douglas Hyde
Douglas Hyde
Douglas Hyde , known as An Craoibhín Aoibhinn , was an Irish scholar of the Irish language who served as the first President of Ireland from 1938 to 1945...
. Dorothy Macardle
Dorothy Macardle
Dorothy Macardle was an Irish author and historian. Her book, The Irish Republic, is one of the more frequently cited narrative accounts of the Irish War of Independence and its aftermath...
opposed the 1921 Treaty and was a life-long supporter of Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera was one of the dominant political figures in twentieth century Ireland, serving as head of government of the Irish Free State and head of government and head of state of Ireland...
, writing his view of history in The Irish Republic
The Irish Republic (book)
The Irish Republic is a history book written by Dorothy Macardle, first published in 1937, which covers the formation and existence of the Irish Republic, the Irish War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Civil War, a period which covered from 1919–1923.The book, which was first...
(1937), but also refusing his suggestion to convert to Catholicism on her deathbed in 1958. Some like the Revd. Robert Hilliard
Robert Hilliard
Robert Martin Hilliard was an Olympic boxer, Irish republican, Church of Ireland minister and communist. He was killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting in the International Brigades....
fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39.
Following independence, southern Protestant unionists accepted the new reality and worked with the new Free State from its difficult start in 1922-23. These included judges such as Lord Glenavy
James Campbell, 1st Baron Glenavy
James Henry Mussen Campbell, 1st Baron Glenavy PC was an Irish lawyer, politician in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and later in the Oireachtas of the Irish Free State...
, whose suggestions for a new law courts system was enacted as the Courts Act 1924, and twenty accepted nominations to the new Senate
Seanad Éireann (Irish Free State)
Seanad Éireann was the upper house of the Oireachtas of the Irish Free State from 1922–1936. It has also been known simply as the Senate, or as the First Seanad. The Senate was established under the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State but a number of constitutional amendments were...
, such as Lord Mayo
Dermot Bourke, 7th Earl of Mayo
Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke, 7th Earl of Mayo KP PC was an Irish peer, styled Lord Naas from 1867 to 1872. He succeeded as Earl of Mayo on on the death of his father Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo in 1872...
.
Protestant nationalist converts to Roman Catholicism
A number of Protestant nationalists also converted to Catholicism, for a variety of reasons:- William Gibson, 2nd Baron AshbourneWilliam Gibson, 2nd Baron AshbourneWilliam Gibson, 2nd Baron Ashbourne was born at 20 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin, the son of Edward Gibson, 1st Baron Ashbourne and Frances Maria Adelaide Colles, grand-daughter of Abraham Colles and niece of John Dawson Mayne.He was educated at Harrow School, Trinity College, Dublin and Merton...
- Ada Beesley, the second wife of John RedmondJohn RedmondJohn Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
- Thomas BennettThomas Westropp BennettThomas Westropp Bennett was an Anglo-Irish Catholic politician in the Irish Free State.Born on his father's estate in Ballymurphy, County Limerick he was the eldest son of Captain Thomas Westropp Bennett, a gentleman-farmer, Crimean War veteran and retired Captain in the 39th regiment of the...
- Charles BewleyCharles BewleyCharles Henry Bewley was raised in a famous Dublin Quaker business family, embraced Irish Republicanism...
- Joseph BiggarJoseph BiggarJoseph Gillis Biggar , commonly known as Joe Biggar or J. G. Biggar, was an Irish nationalist politician from Belfast...
MP - Aodh de Blácam (né Hugh Blackham)
- Hon. Albinia Broderick (Gobnait Ni Bhruadair, sister of the Southern Unionist leader Lord MidletonSt John Brodrick, 1st Earl of MidletonWilliam St John Fremantle Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton, KP, PC , known as St John Brodrick until 1907 and as The Viscount Midleton between 1907 and 1920, was a British Conservative Party politician....
) - Roger CasementRoger CasementRoger David Casement —Sir Roger Casement CMG between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his British honours—was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary, and nationalist....
- Oscar WildeOscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
- Lillie Connolly, widow of James ConnollyJames ConnollyJames Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of...
- Charlotte DespardCharlotte DespardCharlotte Despard was a British-born, later Irish-based suffragist, novelist and Sinn Féin activist....
, sister of Viscount French (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1918-21) - Hugh Law MP and TD
- Sir Shane LeslieShane LeslieSir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet, generally known as Shane Leslie , was an Irish-born diplomat and writer. He was a first cousin of the British war time Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill...
- Grace GiffordGrace GiffordGrace Evelyn Gifford Plunkett was an Irish artist and cartoonist who was active in the Republican movement...
, sister of Muriel, wife of Joseph Mary PlunkettJoseph Mary PlunkettJoseph Mary Plunkett was an Irish nationalist, poet, journalist, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising.-Background:... - Muriel Gifford, sister of Grace, wife of Thomas MacDonaghThomas MacDonaghThomas MacDonagh was an Irish nationalist, poet, playwright, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising.-Early life:MacDonagh was born in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary...
- Maud GonneMaud GonneMaud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars...
- Mabel McConnell, wife of Desmond FitzGeraldDesmond FitzGerald (politician)Desmond FitzGerald was an Irish revolutionary, poet, publicist and Cumann na nGaedheal politician.-Early life:...
and mother of Garret FitzGeraldGarret FitzGeraldGarret FitzGerald was an Irish politician who was twice Taoiseach of Ireland, serving in office from July 1981 to February 1982 and again from December 1982 to March 1987. FitzGerald was elected to Seanad Éireann in 1965 and was subsequently elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael TD in 1969. He... - Countess Markievicz MP and TD
- Pierce Charles de Lacy O'MahonyPierce Charles de Lacy O'MahonyPierce Charles de Lacy O'Mahony , known up to 1901 as Pierce Mahony, and from 1912 also as The O'Mahony of Kerry, was an Irish Protestant nationalist politician and philanthropist, who practised as a barrister from 1898 to 1900...
MP - Gertrude Parry (cousin of Roger Casement)
- Herbert Moore Pim (who returned to unionism in 1918)
- William StockleyWilliam StockleyWilliam F. P. Stockley, M.A. D.Litt., was an Irish academic and Sinn Féin politician and Teachta Dála.-Early life:...
- Francis StuartFrancis StuartHenry Francis Montgomery Stuart was an Irish writer. His novels have been described as having a thrusting modernist iconoclasm. Awarded the highest artistic accolade in Ireland before his death in 2000, his unwillingness to take a clear moral stance with regard to his years spent in Nazi...
- Edmund Dwyer GrayEdmund Dwyer Gray (Irish politician)Edmund Dwyer Gray was an Irish newspaper proprietor, politician and MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
, son of Protestant nationalist, Sir John Gray
1940-present
John Graham, George GilmoreGeorge Gilmore
George Gilmore was a Protestant Irish Republican Army leader during the 1920s and 1930s. During his period of influence the Republican movement moved significantly to the left...
and George Plant, where amongst a handful of Belfast Protestant's who joined the minority Republican Congress
Republican Congress
The Republican Congress was an Irish republican political organisation founded in 1934, when left-wing republicans left the Irish Republican Army. The Congress was led by such IRA veterans as Peadar O'Donnell, Frank Ryan and George Gilmore. It was a socialist organisation and was dedicated to a...
and the Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...
in the 1930s and 1940s. Plant was hanged in the Irish Free State for his activities. Neither group developed mainstream popular support.
The IRA continued to have a squad which consisted of Protestants based in the Shankill Road area which dropped in membership in the early 1960s and was eventually disbanded. Later figures included Ronnie Bunting
Ronnie Bunting
Ronnie Bunting was an Irish republican and socialist activist in Ireland. He became a member of the Official IRA in the early 1970s and was a founder member of the Irish National Liberation Army in 1974. He became leader of the INLA in 1978 and was assassinated in 1980.-Background:Bunting came...
of the Irish National Liberation Army
Irish National Liberation Army
The Irish National Liberation Army or INLA is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group that was formed on 8 December 1974. Its goal is to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist united Ireland....
and John Turnley
John Turnley
John Turnley was a Northern Irish Protestant politician and activist. Originally from a Unionist background he gradually was drawn to Irish nationalism and became a republican activist. He was assassinated in 1980.-Background:...
who were assassinated by the Ulster Defence Association
Ulster Defence Association
The Ulster Defence Association is the largest although not the deadliest loyalist paramilitary and vigilante group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 and undertook a campaign of almost twenty-four years during "The Troubles"...
. Bunting was the son of Ronald Bunting
Ronald Bunting
Major Ronald Terence Bunting was a British Army officer and unionist political figure in Northern Ireland.Bunting was commissioned into the Armagh and Down Army Cadet Force in May 1946 and resigned in March 1950 when he transferred to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers as a Lieutenant...
, a close associate of Ian Paisley
Ian Paisley
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC is a politician and church minister in Northern Ireland. As the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party , he and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively on 8 May 2007.In addition to co-founding...
. John Turnley
John Turnley
John Turnley was a Northern Irish Protestant politician and activist. Originally from a Unionist background he gradually was drawn to Irish nationalism and became a republican activist. He was assassinated in 1980.-Background:...
, also killed in 1980, was the Protestant Chairman of the Irish Independence Party
Irish Independence Party
The Irish Independence Party was an nationalist political party in Northern Ireland, founded in October 1977 by Frank McManus and Fergus McAteer...
and an Anti H-Block
Anti H-Block
Anti H-Block was the political label used in 1981 by supporters of the Irish republican hunger strike who were standing for election in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland...
campaigner. David Russell was a Protestant Provisional IRA volunteer
Volunteer (Irish republican)
Volunteer, often abbreviated Vol., is a term used by a number of Irish republican paramilitary organisations to describe their members. Among these have been the various forms of the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army...
who was killed due to a premature explosion in 1974 in Derry
Derry
Derry or Londonderry is the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland and the fourth-biggest city on the island of Ireland. The name Derry is an anglicisation of the Irish name Doire or Doire Cholmcille meaning "oak-wood of Colmcille"...
.
Since partition, the majority of Ulster Protestants oppose the unification of Ireland, traditionally supporting continued union with Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. In the past, the Social Democratic and Labour Party
Social Democratic and Labour Party
The Social Democratic and Labour Party is a social-democratic, Irish nationalist political party in Northern Ireland. Its basic party platform advocates Irish reunification, and the further devolution of powers while Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom...
(SDLP) has had Protestant representatives, the most famous being Ivan Cooper. Billy Leonard
Billy Leonard
Billy Leonard is an Irish republican politician.Born in Lurgan to a Protestant family, Leonard is a former lay preacher and former member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary reserve and the Orange Order.-Career:...
, a former lay-preacher and Royal Ulster Constabulary
Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary was the name of the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2000. Following the awarding of the George Cross in 2000, it was subsequently known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC. It was founded on 1 June 1922 out of the Royal Irish Constabulary...
(RUC) reservist, was an MLA for Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
in Stormont.
Republic of Ireland
Martin ManserghMartin Mansergh
Martin Mansergh is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician and historian. He was a Teachta Dála for the Tipperary South constituency from May 2007 until his defeat at the general election in February 2011. He was previously a senator from 2002 to 2007.He has played a leading role in formulating...
, a member of the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
, has been influential in formulating Fianna Fáil
Fianna Fáil
Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party , more commonly known as Fianna Fáil is a centrist political party in the Republic of Ireland, founded on 23 March 1926. Fianna Fáil's name is traditionally translated into English as Soldiers of Destiny, although a more accurate rendition would be Warriors of Fál...
's policy on Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
since the peace process
Northern Ireland peace process
The peace process, when discussing the history of Northern Ireland, is often considered to cover the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Belfast Agreement, and subsequent political developments.-Towards a...
began in the 1990s.
See also
- Alliance Party of Northern IrelandAlliance Party of Northern IrelandThe Alliance Party of Northern Ireland is a liberal and nonsectarian political party in Northern Ireland. It is Northern Ireland's fifth-largest party overall, with eight seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly and one in the House of Commons....
- Catholic UnionistCatholic UnionistA Catholic Irish Unionist is either a Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland who supports continuing ties between Northern Ireland and Great Britain...
- Unionism in IrelandUnionism in IrelandUnionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain...
- Irish Unionist PartyIrish Unionist PartyThe Irish Unionist Alliance was a Unionist party founded in Ireland in 1891 to oppose plans for Gladstonian and Parnellite Home Rule for Ireland. The party was led for much of its life by Colonel Edward James Saunderson and later by the William St John Brodrick, Earl of Midleton...
Sources
- O'Broin, Leon; Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland, Barnes & Noble 1985, ISBN 978-0389205692