The Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA), also known as the Irish Unionist Party, Irish Unionists or simply the Unionists, was a unionist political party founded in Ireland in 1891 from a merger of the Irish Conservative Party and the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union (ILPU) to oppose plans for home rule for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The party was led for much of its existence by Colonel Edward James Saunderson and later by St John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton. In total, eighty-six members of the House of Lords affiliated themselves with the Irish Unionist Alliance, although its broader membership among Irish voters outside Ulster was relatively small.
The party aligned itself closely with the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists to campaign to prevent the passage of a new Home Rule Bill. Its MPs took the Conservative whip at Westminster, and its members were often described as 'Conservatives' or 'Conservative Unionists',B. M. Walker, 'Political affiliations' in Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922 (Royal Irish Academy, 1978), xiv. even though much of its support came from former Liberal voters. Among its most prominent members were the Dublin barrister, Sir Edward Carson, and the founder of Ireland's cooperative movement, Sir Horace Plunkett. Its electoral strength was largely (although not exclusively) concentrated in east Ulster and south Dublin.
The IUA became wracked by internal disagreement during the early twentieth century, with the issue of the partition of Ireland proving to be particularly divisive. Many unionists outside Ulster became resigned to the political necessity of Home Rule, while unionists in Ulster established a separate organisation, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). In 1919 the IUA finally split apart with the founding of the break-away Unionist Anti-Partition League, effectively signalling the death of institutional unionism in most of Ireland. The UUP continued to operate in Northern Ireland, and would go on to dominate domestic politics there for much of the twentieth century.
History
Foundation The Irish Unionist Alliance was founded in 1891 by the members of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union (ILPU), which it replaced.Alvin Jackson, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford University Press, 19 March 2014), 52. The ILPU had been established to prevent electoral competition between Liberals and Conservatives in the three southern provinces on a common platform of maintenance of the union.Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmastism and Pessimism (Manchester University Press, 4 September 2004) The IUA united this movement with unionists in the northern province of Ulster, where unionist sentiment and support was strongest.Grenfell Morton, Home Rule and the Irish Question (Routledge, 15 July 2014), 32. As such, the new party sought to represent unionism on an all-Ireland basis. The party's founders hoped that this would coordinate the electoral and lobbying activities of unionists across Ireland. Prior to 1891, unionists had seen considerable electoral losses across southern Ireland at the hands of the pro-Home Rule Irish Parliamentary Party, founded a decade earlier.Travis L. Crosby, Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist (I.B.Tauris, 30 March 2011), 102. It was deemed necessary for southern and northern supporters of the Union to more formally unite their efforts. At this stage, the majority of unionists in all parts of Ireland were opposed to the Irish Home Rule movement, especially following the collapse of the Irish wing of the Liberal Party. The IUA's first leader was the Orangeman and former Conservative MP, Edward James Saunderson.
1891–1914
In the House of Commons, the party closely aligned itself with the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. In the 1892 general election the party won 20.6% of the Irish vote and 21 seats. In 1893, the party achieved a major success when it joined the Conservatives to defeat the Home Rule Bill. In the House of Lords, eighty-six peers affiliated themselves with the Irish Unionist Alliance. This high level of support reflected the strong unionist sentiment within Ireland's landed class. Unionists in the Lords proved to be instrumental in defeating attempts by the Liberals to introduce Home Rule legislation. In the 1900 general election the party won 32.2% of the vote in Ireland, most of its votes coming from Ulster.
Throughout the period, members of the IUA campaigned not only in Ireland, but also in Great Britain alongside the Conservative Party. This was especially the case in the two general elections of 1910. In December 1910, the IUA sent 278 workers to British constituencies to assist the Conservative candidates, distributing almost three million leaflets across England.Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914), 385. It was during that this time that a large number of Conservative MPs married into Irish Southern Unionist families.
Despite early hopes among some unionists that the IUA would expand the unionist presence across Ireland, the party failed to make any major electoral gains in the six subsequent general elections. In the south of Ireland, the IUA consistently won only the double seat representing the graduates of Dublin University, and a couple of the Dublin seats would occasionally fall to them. The party also won a surprise victory in Galway Borough in 1900. In local elections, the party maintained a geographically broader representation, although failed to win many new voters. Unlike in Ulster, the anti-Home Rulers were a scattered minority.
In Ulster, the IUA built upon solid unionist electoral foundations and became the dominant political force in much of the province. In the north and east of Ulster, unionists consistently won seats, often unopposed. In the three counties of Ulster which would later become part of the Irish Free State, the unionists failed to come close to winning in Monaghan North, their strongest constituency of the eight in question, and never even contested West Donegal. Despite the prominence of many influential Southern Unionists in the party, Ulster remained the core of the IUA's support base. Ulster unionism was linked strongly to the former Conservatives, with their strong Orange Order links, rather than to the former Liberals, who had made some effort to encourage cross-denominational support for their unionist stance. The strength of the northern unionist wing played a vital role in the shift of power in the pro-union movement to Conservative and Orange elements. While the link between the Orange lodges and the new Unionist associations did introduce a populist, democratic element into unionist politics, it also served to reinforce the sectarian nature of unionism in the north. In 1905, this particular brand of unionism within the IUA led to the establishment of the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC).Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmastism and Pessimism (Manchester University Press, 4 September 2004), 22. Although Ulster Unionists were still within the broader framework of the Irish Unionist Alliance, the Ulster party began to develop its own distinct organisational structures and political goals. From 1907, the IUA's political activity was organised by the Joint Committee of the Unionist Associations of Ireland (JCUAI).Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914), 374.John Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 11 October 2012), 180. This body sought to coordinate the IUA's election and lobbying activity, whilst recognising the distinct differences between the northern and southern parties.
The prominence of the Ulster Unionist Council quickly grew thanks to the strong unionist sentiment in Ulster. From 1910, it became the dominant force and focus of resistance in the Irish unionist community.Jeremy Smith, Britain and Ireland: From Home Rule to Independence (Routledge, 12 May 2014), 61. The JCUAI was effectively controlled by Ulstermen, while the IUA's leadership remained largely in the hands of Southern Unionists. This led to the unionist movement gradually becoming 'Ulsterised' from 1910, which marginalised many more moderate unionists in the south. Even so, in 1913, as the Third Home Rule Bill passed through Parliament, the Alliance appears to have become increasingly popular in the south and records show an increase in membership.IUA, Annual Reports, 1906–13, reported in the party AGM, 25 April 1913.
Division (1914–1922)
By 1914, the conflict of interest between the unionists in southern Ireland and those in Ulster was wracking the IUA.Pádraig Yeates, Dublin: A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919 – 1921 (Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 28 September 2012) It was known that the passage of a Home Rule Bill for Ireland was becoming increasingly likely, and as a result many Southern Unionists began to seek a political compromise which would see their interests protected. Many unionists in the south became strongly opposed to any plan to partition the island, as they knew that it would leave them isolated from the unionist-majority areas. Several prominent Southern Unionists, such as Sir Horace Plunkett and Lord Monteagle, became convinced that a degree of home rule was going to be necessary if Ireland was to avoid partition and remain in the Union.Thomas Hennessey, Dividing Ireland: World War One and Partition (Routledge, 20 June 2005), 186. Others, such as the anti-partition party leader the 9th Viscount Midleton (later created the 1st Earl of Midleton in 1920), resented the growing dominance of Ulstermen in the party.Desmond Keenan, Ireland Within The Union 1800–1921 (Xlibris Corporation), p. 228. Lord Midleton and his supporters feared that the Ulster wing of the party (now more formally organised as the Ulster Unionist Party) would abandon the south in order to gain a favourable settlement for the north from the British government.G. K. Peatling, ‘The last defence of the Union? The Round Table and Ireland, 1910–1925’, in Andrea Bosco and Alex May, eds., The Round Table: the empire/commonwealth and British foreign policy (London, 1997), p. 291 In October 1913, the vice-chairman of the IUA, G. F. Stewart, had written to its leader, Sir Edward Carson, to complain that southern concerns were being ignored.Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 378. Several large unionist demonstrations took place in Dublin in early 1914, in which protesters complained as much about the Ulster Unionists as the Irish nationalists. Despite these internal difficulties, between September 1911 and July 1914 the Joint Committee of the Unionist Associations of Ireland continued its campaign across the British Isles. In this period, the IUA distributed an estimated six million pamphlets and booklets throughout Britain, canvassed 1.5 million voters and arranged 8,800 meetings.Alan O'Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, 1865–1914 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1 July 1987), 386.