The Birth of Irish Republicanism
The Irish forced from the land provided a labor source for the expanding industrial enterprises in
the north of Ireland. Despite England's mercantilist legislation restricting Irish industry from
developing into a competitive force-contributing to members of Ulster's nascent bourgeoisie
emigrating to the American colonies and helping to fuel anti-colonial revolution there-industrial
production did grow and with it grew the two classes of industrial society, the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The development of capitalism in Ireland transformed the character ofIrish national
resistance, bringing to birth Irish Republicanism. The revolutionary organization ofIrish
republicanism was the United Irishmen, led primarily by Ulster Protestants from the capitalist
class, most notably Theobald Wolfe Tone, allied with the young Ulster proletariat as well as the
Irish peasantry. Inspired by the American and French revolutions, the United Irishmen rose in
revolt against English colonialism in 1798. Having forged relations with the Jacobin regime, the
United Irishmen later sought military support from France's Directory government which
followed. United Irishmen delegates, in Paris to meet with French government officials,
denounced the proto-socialist insurrectionist followers of Babeuf, then opposing the increasingly
reactionary Directory government, but back in Ireland, the rank and file United Irishmen, drawn
chiefly from the proletariat, began to develop their own perspective, just as their French cousins
who joined Babeufhad. Though the 1798 insurrection mobilized revolutionary forces throughout
Ireland, it was quickly crushed by England. French assistance came too little and too late; the sale
French landing of military assistance was stopped virtually on the shore as they put into the
isolated Mayo coast. Two lasting effects resulted from the rising: in 1801 the Act of Union was
forced upon Ireland, stripping the last vestiges ofIrish independence, and religious sectarianism
was institutionalized. As the revolutionary message of the United Irishmen brought together Irish
native and Ulster settler in national insurrection, English colonialism sought to divide them again
by fomenting religious bigotry. The "Orange Order" was founded in 1795 in direct response to
the United Irishmen, and has ever since spewed forth virulent propaganda against "Popery and
Papism," declaring Catholics to be virtual agents of the Anti-Christ and calling Protestants to a
holy war to save civilization-that is, English domination ofIreland. Tone, leader of the United
Irishmen and himself a Protestant, commented in 1796, "I see the Orange boys are playing the
devil in Ireland, I have no doubt it is the work of the Government." Since the late 18th century,
every movement to unite Protestant and Catholic in Ireland in common struggle for common
interests has been shattered by playing the "Orange Card" of religious sectarianism. In reaction to
the oppression of the Penal Laws and the rise of Protestant sectarianism, Catholicism took on the
aura ofIrish nationalism. With the repeal of most of the Penal Law's persecution of Catholic
religious practice after the Act of Union, Catholicism swelled into a potent social force in Irish
society. Before the 19th century, the masses ofIreland, its peasant class, were at best nominal in
their Catholicism, but as the century progressed, clerical domination grew. The Catholic Church,
while bestowed with the mantle of Irish nationalism, became yet another source of social and
political conservatism among the Irish people. Before the end of the century, the Catholic
hierarchy would use the pulpit to denounce armed nationalist movements and budding socialist
organizations alike, as well trade unions. Despite this new fifth column of English colonialism
and capitalist exploitation, the revolutionary movement continued to burst into flaming rebellion.
Two years after the Act of Union, in 1803, an attempted insurrection was led by Robert Emmett,
though this was immediately put down. Resistance began to take other forms than direct struggle
in arms, however, and Daniel O'Connell undertook the leadership of a legal reform movement
aimed at repeal of the Penal Laws. The movement met with some success in gaining its limited
aims and resulted in the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, giving Catholics the right to
run for election and sit in Parliament for the first time since 1691. Though O'Connell next turned
his attentions to a movement to repeal the Act of Union, he was unable to win compromise in this
area, central as it was to British objectives in Ireland.
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