Editing Independent Irish Party (section)

== Legacy ==
Historian [[F. S. L. Lyons]] concludes that when, in 1858, the Conservatives returned to office with a stable majority, "the hollowness of the independent party's pledge" was exposed. The "temptation to trade Irish votes for Irish concessions" proved in the end "irresistible". Nothing had been achieved, a failure, he argues, that "killed for nearly a generation any belief in the value of parliamentary pressure".<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Lyons |first=F. S. L. |author-link=F. S. L. Lyons |title=Ireland Since the Famine |publisher=Fontana Press |year=1985 |isbn=9780006860051 |location=London |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|121}}

In the [[Long Depression]] of the 1870s there was an intensified [[Land War]]. From 1879 it was organised by the direct-action [[Irish National Land League]], led by the southern Protestant [[Charles Stewart Parnell]], but from which tenant-righters in the north stood largely aloof.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Foster |first=R. F. |author-link=R. F. Foster (historian) |title=Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 |publisher=Allen Lane, Penguin Press |year=1968 |isbn=9780713990102 |location=London |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|419-420}} In 1880, Parnell began to coin electoral gains from the struggle. Sixty-four [[Home Rule League|Home Rulers]] were elected, twenty-seven of whom were his supporters. In the [[1885 United Kingdom general election in Ireland|1885 election]], with the size of the Irish electorate tripled by the [[Representation of the People Act 1884]], Parnell marshalled an [[Irish Parliamentary Party]] of 85 Members. But the Independent Irish Party was "in no way an ancestor".<ref name=":4" />{{rp|384}} Parnell's policy was explicitly, and to mind of many British parliamentarians, cynically, of trading, Irish votes for Irish concessions backed, when these were not forthcoming, of [[obstructionism]].<ref name=":2" />{{rp|178–201}}