Explains how the leadership of the IPP operated, taking the concepts of oligarchy and collegiate governance and applying them to the Home Rule case more comprehensively than ever before

These texts demonstrate the diversity of opinion on the so-called 'Irish Question' in the final years of Anglo-Irish Union.

The first detailed analysis of the legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party in independent Ireland. Providing statistical analysis of the extent of Irish Party heritage in each Dáil and Seanad in the period, it analyses how party followers reacted to independence and examines the place of its leaders in public memory.

The key to understanding the emergence of the independent Irish state lies in the history of Home Rule. This book offers the most comprehensive examination to date of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) at Westminster during the years of John Redmond's chairmanship, 1900-18. The IPP were both the most powerful 'third party' and the most significant parliamentary challengers of the Union in the history of the United Kingdom up until the emergence of the Scottish National Party (SNP). These years saw the apparent triumph of the Home Rule cause when the Government of Ireland Act was signed into law in September 1914 but this false dawn led to the demise and electoral destruction of the IPP in 1918 when the party lost all but six seats to the political heirs of the 1916 Rising: Sinn Féin.

The story of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the greatest Irish leaders of the nineteenth century and also one of the most renowned figures of the 1880s on the international stage, and John Dillon, the most celebrated of Parnell's lieutenants. As Paul Bew shows, the differences between the two men reflect both Ireland's past and its future. The story of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the greatest Irish leaders of the nineteenth century and also one of the most renowned figures of the 1880s on the international stage, and John Dillon, the most celebrated, but also the most neglected, of Parnell's lieutenants. As Paul Bew shows, the differences between the two men reflect both Ireland's past and its future. Every time the principle of consent for a united Ireland is discussed today, we can perceive the legacy of both men. Even more profoundly, that legacy can be seen when Irish nationalism tries to transcend a tribalist outlook based on the historic Catholic nation, even when the country is no longer so very Catholic.

What exactly did the split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 actually mean? We know it both established the independent Irish state and that Ireland would not be a fully sovereign republic and provided for the partition of Northern Ireland. The Treaty was ratified 64 votes to 57 by the Sinn Fein members of the Revolutionary Dail Eireann, splitting Sinn Fein irrevocably and leading to the Irish Civil War, a rupture that still defines the Irish political landscape a century on. Drawing together the work of a diverse range of scholars, who each re-examine this critical period in Irish political history from a variety of perspectives, The Anglo-Irish Treaty Debates addresses this vexed historical and political question for a new generation of readers in the ongoing Decade of Commemorations, to determine what caused the split and its consequences that are still felt today.

This book offers a timely, and fresh historical perspective on the politics of independent Ireland. Interwar Ireland’s politics have been caricatured as an anomaly, with the distinction between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael bewildering political commentators and scholars alike. It is common for Ireland’s politics to be presented as an anomaly that compare unfavourably to the neat left/right cleavages evident in Britain and much of Europe. By offering an historical re-appraisal of the Irish Free State’s politics, anchored in the wider context of inter-war Europe, Mel Farrell argues that the Irish party system is not unique in having two dominant parties capable of adapting to changing circumstances, and suggests that this has been a key strength of Irish democracy. Moreover, the book challenges the tired cliché of ‘Civil War Politics’ by demonstrating that events subsequent to Civil War led the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil cleavage dominant in the twentieth-century.