The Home Rule League, sometimes called the Home Rule Party, was a nineteenth and early twentieth century Irish political party which campaigned for home rule for the island of Ireland. It was the dominant force in electoral politics from the 1880s to 1918, when it was largely wiped out in the 1918 general election. From the 1880s it was re-organised and known as the Irish Parliamentary Party. As the IPP it was regarded as the first ever professionally organised, whipped political party in British political history.

Origins

The Home Rule League grew out of the Home Government Association , a pressure group formed in 1870 and led by Isaac Butt, a Dublin Barrister who had once been a leading Irish Tory before becoming a convert to Irish nationalism. In 1873, the loose association re-constituted itself as a full political party, the Home Rule League, and in the 1874 general election, it won 59 seats. In that period however it was not a political party in a cohesive sense but a loose alliance of home rule-leaning Irish politicians. Because of this the party rapidly became divided, between the less committed members of Parliament, many of whom were from an Irish aristocratic or gentry Church of Ireland background and other more radical members who gathered around Belfast MP Joseph Biggar and Meath MP Charles Parnell. This radical wing of the party famously decided to launch parliamentary filibusters to obstruct the passage of Parliamentary business, to the embarrassment of Butt and frustration of successive British governments.

New leader, new name, new members

Following Butt's death in 1879 William Shaw served as chairman (leader) for one parliamentary session. In 1880, the radical Parnell was elected chairman of the party, and in the 1880 general election, the party increased its number of seats. In 1882, as part of a wholescale move from being an informal rather amateurish alliance to a cohesive unified, whiped political movement Parnell renamed it the Irish Parliamentary Party. The party under Parnell, himself a protestant, became more radical, middle class and Roman Catholic. It largely though not completely squeezed out other political rivals, notably the Irish Liberal Party and the Irish Conservative Party.

Chairmen (leaders) of the Party, 1873-1882

• Isaac Butt 1873-1879
• William Shaw 1879-1880
• Charles Stewart Parnell 1880-1882

External link

Isaac Butt and the Home Rule Party