Society of United Irishmen
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United Irish Symbol — Harp without Crown and Cap of Liberty
The Society of United Irishmen was founded as a Liberal political organisation in eighteenth century Ireland that sought Parliamentary reform.[1] However it evolved into a revolutionary republican organisation, allied with Revolutionary France. In 1798 it launched the Irish Rebellion of 1798 with the objective of ending British rule over Ireland and founding an independent Irish republic.
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[edit] Foundation
The French Revolution in 1789 had put an end to the prevalent belief among Irish Protestants that Catholics were inherently conservative and incapable of progressive political change. Liberal members of the Protestant Ascendancy had unsuccessfully pleaded the cause for political reform - especially Catholic emancipation - which convinced many observers that Parliament would never grant this demand while still under the control of a Protestant Ascendancy. In September, 1791 Theobald Wolfe Tone published "Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland" which maintained that religious division was a tool of the elite to "…(balance) the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both" and put forward the case for unity between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. Tone's pamphlet was hugely influential. A group of nine Belfast Presbyterians invited Tone and Thomas Russell to Belfast where they held the first meeting of the proposed new brotherhood on October 14, 1791. The group, which became known as the United Irishmen, passed the following three resolutions:
- That the weight of English influence in the Government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties and the extension of our commerce
- That the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform of the people in Parliament
- That no reform is just which does not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.
Except for Theobald Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell, attendees at the first meeting were Presbyterian; most were involved in the linen trade in Belfast. The men involved were: William Sinclair, Henry Joy McCracken, Samuel Neilson, Henry Haslett, Gilbert McIlveen, William Simms, Robert Simms, Thomas McCabe and Thomas Pearce.[2]
The movement became supporters of the Catholic Committee, who had been working to get Catholic Emancipation bills through Parliament and repeal the Penal Laws.
[edit] Movement spreads
Dublin soon followed Belfast's example by founding its own branch of the United Irishmen on 9 November. The organisation also linked up with the Catholic agrarian secret society the Defenders, and many of its cells operated as de facto United Irish branches. The movement quickly developed a strategy of spreading its ideals by means of pamphlets, leaflets, newspapers, ballads, "catechisms," and travelling emissaries. The Northern Star of Belfast was especially successful, both commercially and politically and had a wide readership until its suppression in 1797. The spread of the society was watched with growing alarm by the authorities and it was banned in 1793 following the declaration of war on France.
[edit] 1793–97
Following the French declaration of war on Britain in February 1793, the movement went underground from the mid-1790s as they became more determined to force a revolt against British rule. The leadership was divided into those who wished to wait for French aid before rising and the more radical elements who wished to press ahead regardless. However, the suppression of a bloody preemptive rebellion which broke out in Leitrim in 1793 led to the former faction prevailing, and links were forged with the revolutionary French government with instructions to wait sent to all the United Irish membership.
In 1794, William Drennan became the first leader to be arrested and tried for sedition as the authorities began to react to the growth of the United Irishmen. In 1795, the Orange Order was founded as an auxiliary military force to counteract the spread of the United Irishmen on the ground and the loyalty of the hierarchy of the Catholic church was bought with the founding of Maynooth College the same year. A French fleet carrying 15,000 troops set sail for Ireland in 1796, under General Hoche and spent days in sight of the Cork coast at Bantry Bay, but weather conditions meant it could not land. The British government responded to this near escape by sweeping up much of the United Irish leadership and engaging in a brutal anti-insurrection campaign, particularly in Ulster, which tried to break the movement by the widespread use of terror.
[edit] 1798 Rebellion
By early 1798, the United Irish membership on the ground was under severe pressure, suffering from the terror of a roving campaign of disarmament while under instructions to do nothing until the arrival of French aid. In March 1798, the bulk of the leadership was arrested and pre-emptive risings had already broken out in Tipperary but indecision still divided the rump leadership. Finally, the unrelenting pressure forced the militant faction to the fore set the date for a general uprising on 23rd May. However, information from informers led to the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald on 18th May and foiled the plan to take Dublin that was the central core of the planned rebellion.
Although most of the United Irish leadership could not directly participate in the fighting, tens of thousands of followers took to the field and the resulting rebellion was severely hampered by the lack of leadership. The campaign met with little success except in Wexford and the weeks of extreme violence saw the rebellion degenerating at times into tit-for-tat sectarian massacres. The eventual arrival 1,000 French troops in county Mayo in August was too little and too late to turn the tide for the United Irishmen. In October, Wolfe Tone himself was captured when a supporting French fleet of 3,000 troops was intercepted and defeated by the British Navy near Lough Swilly.
Upon his capture Wolfe Tone famously said, "From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced, that while it lasted, this country would never be free or happy. In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers which my individual efforts could move, in order to separate the two countries." After being denied a soldier's death by firing squad, Wolfe Tone cheated the hangman by cutting his throat.
The suppression of the rising was followed by a period of renewed repression but the United Irishmen still managed to survive as a functioning clandestine organisation. The decision to abolish the Irish Parliament resulting in the Act of Union 1800 that created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland played on sectarian hopes and fears and was to gradually erode the United Irishmen by playing Catholic against Protestant. This was despite the original recognition that the "bigotry" (to quote Prime Minister William Pitt) of the Protestant Parliament in Dublin had only contributed to sedition in Ireland.
The failure of Robert Emmett's rebellion in 1803 triggered the effective collapse of the Society of United Irishmen and the first half of 19th century saw sectarianism replace separatism as the touchstone for political unrest in Ireland. Not until the Young Ireland movement in the 1840s was an attempt made to resurrect the non-sectarian ideals of United Irishmen but the juncture between Catholic and Protestant was not regained as Protestant were drawn closer to a "British" identity through fear of having a perceived position of privilege eroded by the slowly growing political power of the Catholic majority. As a consequence, organised republican subsequent resistance to British rule in Ireland was largely confined to the Catholic population and seen as a threat by the majority of the Protestant population.
[edit] The United Irishmen and sectarianism
Although the United Irishmen was a staunchly non-sectarian body which sought to unite all Irishmen, regardless of religion or descent many among their ranks were former Defenders, a term applied to many loosely connected, exclusively Catholic, agrarian resistance groups. Many of these men, as well as their Presbyterian counterparts in Ulster, had been shaped by the sectarianism that was prevalent in eighteenth century Ireland, and it was no mean feat to persuade Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter to put aside their differences and view each other simply as fellow Irishmen. Although the project met with remarkable success it was quickly recognised by the establishment that sectarianism was a useful ally in the fight against the United Irishmen. The formation of the Orange Order in 1795 was to prove particularly useful as it provided the Government with allies who had detailed local knowledge of the activities of their enemies. The brutal disarming of Ulster in 1797, where the United Irish had successfully radicalised both Protestant and Catholic saw thousands of Catholics driven from counties Antrim, Down and Armagh with the murder, torture and imprisonment of hundreds of Protestants suspected of United Irish sympathies.
Religious division and hatred was therefore never completely buried and a minority of the Defenders did not reject completely their previous anti-Protestant outlook. During the course of the 1798 rebellion United Irish rebels pepretrated several sectarian massacres, most notoriously in County Wexford at Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge. While sectarianism undoubtedly played a part in many murders during the rising, religion was often taken as a signifier of loyalty or disloyalty by both sides, and the fact that often Protestants were amongst the perpetrators and Catholics among the victims of rebel massacres indicate that victims lost their lives for being perceived as loyalist as opposed to purely religious reasons. Such subtleties were ignored in the aftermath as the memory of such massacres was simplified and exploited in following years by loyalist politicians to cement the sectarian divide and to ensure the loyalty of Protestants to the English Crown. The fact that the vast majority of the estimated 15,000–30,000 people of both religions who lost their lives during the rebellion were victims of British and Loyalist troops was blithely ignored.
[edit] See also
- Selected Members
- Leonard Macnally (informer)
- Irish Rebellion of 1798
- United Scotsmen
- United Irish Uprising in Newfoundland
- Société des Fils de la Liberté (Quebec)
[edit] External links
- Original Declaration of the United Irishmen
- Declarations and Tests of United Irishmen, from Memoirs of William Sampson (attorney), 1817
