Ireland

How perceived ‘Irish problems’ shaped British political thinking

The effects of Brexit are a present-day lesson demonstrating ingrained characteristics of the Anglo-Irish relationship

A portrait of Daniel O'Connell by Sir Martin Archer Shee

Jay R Roszman
Sat Sep 24 2022 - 05:00

We have lived with the ‘Groundhog Day’ nature of Brexit, and its subsequent consequences, for so long that it is easy to forget the flippant attitude of the British establishment leading up to the referendum to the Irish dimensions, and specifically Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.

As some British politicians and aligned media outlets pontificated about reclaiming “sovereignty2 over trade, agricultural standards and industrial regulations, the likelihood of regulatory unalignment creating the need for border checks, the creation of physical infrastructure and the damaging economic consequences of north-south trade was summarily dismissed as overblown or wildly exaggerated.

A 21st-century Irish question reinserted itself back into British politics and subsequent dialogue about non-existent technological solutions to the re-emerging border seemed to confirm Karl Marx’s famous dictum that history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. In short, the effects of Brexit are a present-day object lesson demonstrating characteristics of the Anglo-Irish relationship where perceived ‘Irish problems’ have shaped British political thinking and significantly constrained prospective actions.

When looking at Ireland’s history it is often easiest to see the ways Britain — more specifically England — have acted in Ireland, and the damaging effects this has had on the social, economic and cultural fabric of the island. What often is temporarily forgotten in this telling of Irish history are the reciprocal ways Ireland fashioned British history. Maybe counterintuitively, this influence became most pronounced during the period of the political union between Great Britain and Ireland. Prior to the establishment of a nationalist party after 1870, Irish MPs from the majority-Catholic provinces often added to the Liberal Party’s strength and indirectly influenced their policy, in the words of the historian Oliver MacDonagh, “akin to that of Victorian women over husbands and fathers ... in terms of [the] domestic miseries that might ensure were they wholly thwarted, maltreated or abandoned”.

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Other times, they held the balance of power, such as Parnell’s influence of Gladstone after the 1885 election, or the sway Irish Unionists had on the Conservative Party in the latter third of the 19th century and early 20th century. Irish MPs in parliament could exert their influence over any topic they chose, leading to sustained contributions by Daniel O’Connell in the 1830s to debates on the abolition of slavery in the colonies, or Irish nationalist MPs in the 1870s condemning British warmongering as a way to advance Irish aims at home.

The 1830s are particularly illustrative of the oft-overlooked role Ireland played in shaping British politics. This period in British history, known as the “age of reform”, was marked by the passage of Catholic emancipation in 1829, the Great Reform Act of 1832, and a number of Acts that would define the role of the state in the 19th century, such as poor laws, factory reform, and, in Ireland, the creation of a professional police force. Rather than an afterthought, Irish personalities (such as O’Connell) and Irish problems, especially agrarian violence (so-called “outrages”), affected political outcomes. O’Connell and the loose band of Irish MPs under his influence acted as the linchpin holding together the Whig ministry of Lord Melbourne.

The perception of his influence often took on comical proportions, as the right wing of the Conservative Party, the “ultra-Tories”, many of whom were Anglo-Irish, believed he controlled the patronage of the lord lieutenant, Lord Mulgrave, who they sarcastically labelled “O’Mulgrave”. Satirical articles claimed O’Connell secretly acted as prime minister, as in one “Operetta” published in the leading ultra-Tory periodical Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, where cabinet ministers sang “All hail to Dan O’Connell, the master we obey: Who, quite content with his Irish rent, To us leaves place and play.”

O’Connell’s implicit power became a recurring image for the Irish-born London cartoonist John Doyle (”HB”) who throughout the 1830s offered cartoons suggesting O’Connell’s oversized political influence playing with Britain’s imperial future, his ability to direct Irish violence, or his role metaphorically driving the government forward after Queen Victoria’s marriage.

O’Connell and other Catholic MPs’ very presence in parliament offended the prejudices of many Tory politicians and segments of the wider British public, who suspected the potential of Catholic treachery and subterfuge. These prejudices were amplified in the aftermath of Catholic emancipation as the power of Protestant Ascendancy ended, and ultra-Tories were forced to recognise their diminishing influence in politics. Violence in the Irish countryside seemed to confirm preconceptions — a fundamental difference between lawful British subjects and unruly Irish ‘outrages’ — and ultra-Tories used this as a rhetorical cudgel to batter the Whig government.

This worked in two ways. First, ultra-Tories shared salacious details of agrarian violence as a way to stir anti-Catholic/anti-Irish sentiments among the British public, often tying violence to O’Connell’s influence and his relationship to the Catholic Church’s hierarchy. Newspaper reports breathlessly noted every “savage” outrage perpetuated by the “lawless peasantry”.

Daniel Maclise’s painting The Installation of Captain Rock (1836) illustrates the outlandish view ultra-Tories perpetuated. The painting is set in the ruins of a church, with an idyllic countryside faintly visible through empty latticed windows. The viewer is confronted with a rowdy scene of drunken debauchery in the foreground, while the focus of the composition is a quasi-religious succession ceremony from the dead Captain Rock to the new man, eyes heavenwards, receiving his authority. Pikes, symbolic of the 1798 rebellion, are assembled in the background, as one man in the shadows dips his hand in the font for holy water and another clutches his crucifix.

While the whiskey flows, some women seem to transgress sexual mores while the revelry includes men and women flirting. Finally, and possibly most arrestingly, the viewer’s eye is drawn to the gun held by a young boy pointed at the audience as he takes direction from an amputee, likely a British military veteran considering his red coat.

The painting — intricate and expansive — has a bit of everything to arouse anti-Irish sentiments: the presence of the Catholic religion, a seeming religious devotion to violence, sexual impropriety, subversive political symbols and, crucially, the sanction of the entire community.

Irish violence also could serve as an inspiration to people across Britain’s empire, or an opportunity to forge revolutionary networks, and thus required immediate suppression. The newly created armed Irish constabulary found cryptic passwords linking Irish secret societies, such as the Ribbonmen, with the Canadian rebellion under way in 1839: “Q: I hope your Irish sons will gain their freedom? A: Yes, when the Canadas conquer.” Other commentators linked the seditious disorder of Irish Ribbonmen to so-called thuggee violence in India, where highway robbers purportedly murdered innocent travellers and performed quasi-religious ceremonies with their victims’ blood. Newspapers mentioned “O’Connell thugs”, or the “Papistico-Thug Society” and the ways “the system of Irish thuggism” left jurists intimidated from passing guilty sentences.

This concerted campaign to spread anti-Irish sentiment, linking violence, O’Connell and the Catholic Church proved powerful. Robert Peel, who once complained “My chief difficulty is Ireland”, used the political fervour in 1841 to win the largest Conservative majority until 1886 (tellingly, over the Irish question of Home Rule). A campaign song in Peel’s correspondence sums up how Ireland fitted into the politics of the moment: “Now fill up your cups and I’ll fill up my can/ A fig for the Whigs and their master King Dan/ We shall soon see them both to the right-about wheel/ if we only are true to brave Arthur and Peel.”

The point of history is not a lesson book made to apply to the present to help shape the future. Instead, it is a way to see the world, the deep structures that shape it and how they change, or remain, over time. The 1830s and wider 19th century are a good reminder of the ways Ireland was not simply John Bull’s other island, adrift across the Irish Sea; instead, it played an important, at times decisive role in shaping, constraining and frustrating the politics, culture and function of the United Kingdom as a whole. What will happen as Brexit unfolds haphazardly before us is still unknown.

Dr Jay R Roszman is lecturer in 19th-century Irish history at the School of History, University College Cork. Outrage in the Age of Reform: Irish Agrarian Violence, Imperial Insecurity and British Governing Policy, 1830-1845 is published by Cambridge University Press

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