Editing Independent Irish Party

{{Not to be confused|Irish Independence Party|Irish independence (disambiguation){{!}}Irish independence|Independent Ireland|Independent politician (Ireland)}}
{{Use Hiberno-English|date=April 2022}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2017}}
{{Infobox political party
| country          = Ireland
| name             = Independent Irish Party
| colorcode        = #DDFFDD
| logo             = 
| leader           = 
| chairman         = 
| foundation       = {{start date and age|1852}}
| dissolution      = {{end date and age|1858}}
| predecessor      = 
| successor        = 
| ideology         = 
| position         = Independent opposition in the interest of [[tenant right]] and [[land reform]]
| international    = 
| european         = 
| europarl         = 
| colours          = Green
| headquarters     = 
| website          = 
| elections_dab1   = List of United Kingdom general elections
| Programme        = 
}}

The '''Independent Irish Party''' (IIP) was the designation chosen by the 48 Members of the [[United Kingdom Parliament]] returned from [[Ireland]] with the endorsement of the [[Tenant Right League]] in the [[1852 United Kingdom general election in Ireland|1852 general election]]. The League had secured their promise to offer an independent opposition (refusing all government favour and office) to the dominant landlord interest, and to advance an agrarian reform programme popularly summarised as the "three F's": [[Free sale, fixity of tenure, and fair rent|fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale]].

The unity of the grouping was compromised by the priority the majority gave to repealing the [[Ecclesiastical Titles Act]], legislation passed by the Liberal government of [[Lord John Russell]] to hamper the restoration in the United Kingdom of a [[Catholic]] [[episcopate]], and their independence by the defection of two of their leading members to a new [[Aberdeen ministry|Whig-Peelite government]]. 

After further defections, thirteen independents survived the elections in 1857, but then split 1859 on the question of supporting a new [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] ministry which, in 1860, made the first halting attempt to regulate Irish land tenure.

==Formation and early disunity==
The Tenant Right League joined tenant rights associations in largely Presbyterian districts in [[Ulster]] with tenant protection societies (often guided by local Catholic clergy) in the south. It was formed in 1850 at a tenant right convention called in Dublin by [[Charles Gavan Duffy]], editor of the revived [[Young Ireland]]er weekly ''[[The Nation (Irish newspaper)|The Nation]]''; [[James MacKnight (Irish agrarian reformer)|James MacKnight]] editor of the ''Londonderry Sentinel''; [[Frederick Lucas]], founder of the international Catholic weekly, ''[[The Tablet]]''; and [[John Gray (Irish politician)|John Gray]], owner of the leading nationalist paper, the ''[[Freeman's Journal]]''.<ref name=":03">{{Cite web|last=Lyons|first=Dr Jane|date=2013-03-01|title=Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, My Life in Two Hemispheres, Vol. II|url=https://www.from-ireland.net/charles-gavan-duffy-two-hemispheres/|access-date=2021-03-27|website=From-Ireland.net|language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite web|last=Irwin|first=Clark H.|date=1890|title=A history of Presbyterianism in Dublin and the south and west of Ireland (page 10 of 24)|url=https://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/ch-clarke-huston-1858-1934-irwin/a-history-of-presbyterianism-in-dublin-and-the-south-and-west-of-ireland-hci/page-10-a-history-of-presbyterianism-in-dublin-and-the-south-and-west-of-ireland-hci.shtml|access-date=2021-04-06|website=www.ebooksread.com}}</ref> Against the background of the distress caused by the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine]] and by a fall in agricultural prices, Duffy believed that the demand for tenant rights could serve as the basis for a new all-Ireland movement and for a (potentially [[abstentionist]]) national party.<ref>{{cite thesis|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/48609680.pdf |first=Terence |last=LaRocca |year=1974 |title=The Irish Career of Charles Gavan Duffy 1840–1855 |degree=PhD |publisher=Loyola University Chicago |page=3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Duffy|first1=Charles Gavan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XTnv4ryJTNIC&pg=PA15|title=The Creed of "The Nation": A Profession of Confederate Principles|date=1848|publisher=Mason Bookseller|location=Dublin|page=6|access-date=3 September 2020}}</ref>

The Westminster elections of July 1852 returned 48 MPs, including Duffy from [[New Ross]], pledged to the tenant cause. But what Duffy had projected as a "League of North and South" failed to deliver in Ulster. [[William Kirk (MP)|William Kirk]] from the border town of [[Newry]] was province's only tenant-right representative.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Hoppen|first1=K. Theodore|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JLdnAAAAMAAJ|title=Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832–1885|last2=Hoppen|first2=Karl T.|date=1984|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-822630-7|pages=267|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Courtney|first=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|year=2013|isbn=9781909556065|location=Ulster Historical Foundation|pages=156–160, 192}}</ref> In Monaghan, the Rev. [[David Bell (Irish Republican)|David Bell]] was to find that of his 100 Presbyterian congregants who had signed the requisition asking [[John Gray (Irish politician)|John Gray]] to stand in their constituency only 11 voted for him.<ref name="Bell22">{{cite journal|last1=Bell|first1=Thomas|date=1967|title=The Reverend David Bell|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27695597|journal=Clogher Historical Society|volume=6|issue=2|pages=253–276|doi=10.2307/27695597|jstor=27695597|s2cid=165479361 |accessdate=3 October 2020}}</ref> In [[County Down]], [[William Sharman Crawford]], who as MP for [[Rochdale (UK Parliament constituency)|Rochdale]] in England had been the author of a tenant right bill, had his meetings broken up by Orange vigilantes.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bew|first=Paul|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MSQSDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA238|title=Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2007|isbn=9780198205555|location=Oxford|pages=238–239}}</ref>

An early difficulty in appealing to Protestant tenants and voters in the north was the declared intention of many League-endorsed candidates to repeal the [[Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851]]. Together with the presence among them of so many sitting [[Repeal Association]] MPs, their determination to remove the Act's restrictions on a restored [[Catholic Church in the United Kingdom|Catholic Church]] hierarchy heightened the suspicion that the League was being used for political purposes beyond its declared agenda.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Beckett|first=J.C.|title=The Making of Modern Ireland|publisher=Faber and Faber|year=1969|isbn=0571092675|location=London|pages=354–355}}</ref> In this, the prominent [[County Down]] tenant-righter, Julius McCullagh, argued the 1851 Act worked its purpose: to "afresh old grudges and differences - to divide a people now happily uniting".<ref name=":12">{{Cite book|last=Courtney|first=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|year=2013|isbn=9781909556065|location=Ulster Historical Foundation|pages=181}}</ref> It was the case as well that landowners in the north threatened to withdraw their consent for the existing Ulster Custom if their [[Irish Conservative Party|Conservative]] nominees were not elected.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bardon|first=Jonathan|title=A History of Ulster|publisher=Blackstaff Press|year=1992|isbn=9780856404764|location=Belfast|pages=316}}</ref>

In November 1852, [[Who? Who? ministry|Lord Derby's short-lived Conservative ministry]] introduced a land bill to compensate Irish tenants on eviction for improvements they had made to the land. The Tenant Compensation Bill passed in the [[House of Commons]] in 1853 and 1854, but failed in the [[House of Lords]]. The bills had little impressed the League and its MPs as landlords would have been left free to pass on the costs of compensation through their still unrestricted freedom to raise rents.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Shields|first=Andrew|date=2009|title=John Napier and the Irish Land Bills of 1852|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340885255|journal=The Australasian Journal of Irish Studies|volume=9|pages=31–51}}</ref>

Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, the Independent Irish MPs voted to bring down the government. But in the process two of the leading members, [[John Sadleir]] and [[William Keogh]], broke their pledges of independent opposition and accepted positions in a new Whig-[[Peelite]] ministry of [[Lord Aberdeen]]. Twenty others followed as reliable supporters. While Aberdeen opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, his government gave no undertakings in regard to tenant-right policy<ref>{{Cite book|last=McCaffrey|first=Lawrence|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_dPNCR4-4LIC&pg=PA145|title=The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America|publisher=The Catholic University of America Press|year=1976|isbn=9780813208961|location=Washington DC|pages=145}}</ref><ref name=":0"/> Significantly in a League debate in February 1853 MacKnight, wary of any sign of Irish separatism, did not support Duffy in condemning these desertions. Rather, he protested the increasingly strident nationalism of southern League spokesman.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title=MacKnight (McKnight), James |website=Dictionary of Irish Biography|url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/macknight-mcknight-james-a5242|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>

==Split and dissolution==
The [[Catholic primate of all-Ireland|Catholic Primate]], Archbishop [[Paul Cullen (cardinal)|Paul Cullen]], who had been sceptical of the independent opposition policy from the outset, sought to rein in clerical support for the remaining IIP in the constituencies.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=E. D.|first=Steele|date=March 1975|title=Cardinal Cullen and Irish Nationalism|journal=Irish Historical Studies|volume=XIX (75)|issue=75|pages=239–260|doi=10.1017/S0021121400023440|s2cid=156595729 }}</ref> This was accompanied by the defection from the League of the [[Catholic Defence Association]] (to their detractors, "the Pope's Brass Band"). Lucas's decision to take a complaint against Cullen to Rome further alienated clerical support.<ref name=":0">
{{cite book|last=Whyte|first=John Henry|url=https://archive.org/details/independentirish0000whyt|title=The Independent Irish Party 1850-9|date=1958|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|page=[https://archive.org/details/independentirish0000whyt/page/139 139]|url-access=registration}}</ref>

To Duffy the cause of the Irish tenants, and indeed of Ireland generally, seemed more hopeless than ever. In 1855 he published a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he had resolved to retire from parliament, as it was no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he had solicited their votes.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{DNB12|wstitle=Duffy, Charles Gavan|first=Richard Barry|last=O'Brien}}</ref> To John Dillon he wrote that an Ireland where McKeogh typified patriotism and Cullen the church was an Ireland in which he could no longer live.<ref>Duffy to John Dillon, April 1855, ''Gavan Duffy Papers'', National Library of Ireland</ref> In 1856 Duffy and his family emigrated to Australia.

In the 1857 general election, with a recovery in agricultural prices blunting the enthusiasm of farmers for agitation, those presenting themselves as Independent Irish managed to hold on to 13 seats. One seat was won in the north on a platform of the three F's. [[Samuel MacCurdy Greer]] was returned for [[Londonderry City (UK Parliament constituency)|Londonderry City]]. But Greer identified with the pro-Union British [[Radicals (UK)|Radicals]] not with the IIP.<ref name="walker">{{cite book|title=Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1801–1922|publisher=Royal Irish Academy|year=1978|isbn=0901714127|editor1-last=Walker|editor1-first=Brian M.|series=A New History of Ireland|location=Dublin|pages=296–7|issn=0332-0286}}</ref><ref name=":02">{{cite book|last1=Murphy|first1=Desmond|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YcJnAAAAMAAJ|title=Derry, Donegal, and Modern Ulster, 1790–1921|date=1981|publisher=Aileach Press|location=Londonderry|pages=113–114|language=en}}</ref> The Independent Irish MPs had been under the notional leadership of [[George Henry Moore (politician)|George Henry Moore]]. Within the Catholic Church, Moore had retained sufficient support from Cullen's rival, [[John MacHale|Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam]], for his reelection in 1857 to overturned in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] on the grounds of "obtrusive" and "unseemly" clerical influence.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hansard|date=28 July 1857|title=Writ Suspended, Prosecution Ordered|url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1857/jul/28/writ-suspended-prosecution-ordered|access-date=2021-04-17|website=api.parliament.uk}}</ref> 

The IIP never developed the organisation and leadership to get out their full vote in the Commons or to collect, when the opportunity arose, the support of other MPs. In a vote of confidence in the Lord Derby's second Conservative government on 31 March 1859 the rump of the party split seven against six on whether join Whig and Radical factions in bringing in a new [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] ministry under [[Lord Palmerston]]. This marked the end of any pretence to coherence, although as a faction in Irish politics the Independent Oppositionists endured until 1874.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Independent Irish Party |website=Encyclopedia.com|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/independent-irish-party|access-date=2021-04-05}}</ref>  

In the [[Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment (Ireland) Act 1860]] the new Palmerston government did no more than confirm [[contract law]] as the basis for tenancies. Legislation of the three F's awaited the [[Land War]] of the 1880s, agitation conducted by the new [[Irish National Land League]] in alliance with the [[Irish Home Rule movement|home-rule]] [[Irish Parliamentary Party]].

== 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}}

==Prominent parliamentary members==
* [[Charles Gavan Duffy]], August 1850 – November 1855
* [[William Keogh]], July 1852 – December 1852
* [[George Henry Moore (politician)|George Henry Moore]], October 1855 – April 1857
* [[John Maguire (MP)|John Maguire]], April 1857 – June 1859
*[[John Sadleir]], July 1852 – December 1852

==Election results==
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:95%"
|-
!Election
![[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]]
!Seats
!align=center |Government
!align=center |Votes
|-
| align=center|[[1852 United Kingdom general election in Ireland|1852]]
| align=center|{{sort|16|16th Parliament}}
| align=left|{{Composition bar|48|105|hex=#DDFFDD}}
| align=left|'''Conservative victory'''
| align=left|
|-
| align=center|[[1857 United Kingdom general election in Ireland|1857]]
| align=center|{{sort|17|17th Parliament}}
| align=left|{{Composition bar|13|105|hex=#DDFFDD}}
| align=left|'''Whig victory'''
| align=left|
|}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Historic Irish parties}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:All-Ireland political parties]]
[[Category:History of Ireland (1801–1923)]]
[[Category:Irish nationalist parties]]
[[Category:Political parties established in 1852]]
[[Category:Political parties in pre-partition Ireland]]
[[Category:Defunct political parties in the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Irish Liberal Party MPs]]
[[Category:Defunct liberal political parties]]
[[Category:Defunct political parties in Ireland]]
[[Category:1852 establishments in Ireland]]
[[Category:1858 disestablishments in Ireland]]
[[Category:Political parties disestablished in 1858]]