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John Redmond's Irish party went from dominating nationalist politics to electoral oblivion within four years, from 1914–18. Given the speed and extent of the party's collapse, it has generally been seen as so decayed as to make its death inevitable, while also fundamentally out of touch with the ‘new’ nationalism which succeeded it. This book is a detailed study of the party and provincial nationalist opinion in the last years of the Union with Britain, before the world war and the Easter Rising transformed Irish politics. It focuses on five counties in Ireland — Leitrim, Longford, Roscommon, Sligo, and Westmeath, and in particular on the local newspaper press in those counties. Far from being ‘rotten’, the Irish party was representative of nationalist opinion and capable of self-renewal, but Irish nationalism was also suffused with an intensity of grievance and a fierce Anglophobia which came to the fore, first in the paramilitary mobilisation of the Home Rule crisis and then under the stresses of the First World War. Though the party was sufficiently disciplined to remain loyal to its leader, Redmond, who epitomised nationalist moderation, it did so at the cost of slumping cohesion, enthusiasm and activity, leaving it unable to withstand the shocks with which it would soon be assailed. Redmond's project, the peaceful attainment of Home Rule, simply could not be realised.

The Irish revolution of 1916-23 is generally regarded as a success. It was a disastrous failure, however, for the Catholic and nationalist minority in what became Northern Ireland. It resulted in partition, a discriminatory majoritarian regime and, more recently, a generation of renewed violence and a decade of political impasse. It is often suggested that the blame for this outcome rests not only on ‘perfidious Albion’ and the ‘bigotry’ of Ulster Unionism but also on the constitutional nationalist leaders, John Redmond, John Dillon, and Joe Devlin. This book argues that, on the contrary, the era of violence provoked by Sinn Féin's 1918 general election victory was the primary cause of partition so far as actions on the nationalist side were concerned. The book also suggests that the exclusively Catholic Ancient Order of Hibernians was in fact less sectarian than Sinn Féin, and that Devlin's practical contribution to the improvement of working-class conditions was more substantial than that of his republican socialist contemporaries. Too much Irish history has been written from the standpoint of the winners. This book, as well as detailing the life of an important but neglected individual in the context of a social history of Catholic Belfast, offers a general re-interpretation of Irish political history between the 1890s and the 1930s from the perspective of the losers.

This book provides the first detailed analysis of the influence of former Irish Parliamentary Party members and methods in independent Ireland and the place of the party’s leaders in public memory. Previous studies of the party have concluded with its dramatic fall in 1918 and shown little interest in the fate of its members thereafter. This study uses biographical data to provide the first statistical analysis of the Irish Party heritage of each political party in the independent Irish state established in 1922. Utilising a wealth of archival material, contemporary and critical writings, it asks how former Irish Party followers reacted to the changed circumstances of independent Ireland. One chapter undertakes a case study of the Irish National League, arguing that this organisation founded and led by former MPs effectively constituted a ‘legacy party’. Analysis of party politics is complemented by scrutiny of the practice of commemoration to ask how the Irish Party was remembered in a state founded on the sacrifice of the Easter Rising. This study therefore highlights significant features in the evolution of the party’s public memory and sheds new light on how figures such as Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond and Michael Davitt were remembered.