Protestant Home Rulers and Constitutional Nationalism in Ireland, c.1900–1914

Abstract

Abstract This article assesses the role played by Protestants in the constitutional nationalist (or home rule) movement between the reunification of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in 1900, and the end of the third home rule crisis in 1914. The IPP leadership took a favourable view of Protestant members, viewing them as a means of demonstrating that the movement represented the whole of Ireland, and intending that upper-class and professional Protestants would play a leading role in a future Irish parliament. However, the advance of exclusively Catholic organisations, most evidently the Ancient Order of Hibernians, challenged this policy. Protestants forged their own associational culture, in which their conception of Irish self-government was promoted. This article explores the tensions within the constitutional nationalist movement between those activists who viewed home rule as an irrepressible national demand, and the Protestants and ‘Redmondites’, who sought a close connection between Ireland and the Crown and Empire.