Liberals

Liberals, successors to the Whigs as one of the two main British political parties, until relegated to third place, from the early 1920s, by the rise of Labour. Despite the survival of Liberal loyalties among a diminishing minority of mainly affluent Presbyterians, the Irish Liberal Party relied mainly on Catholic votes, even though all its candidates in Ulster, and a disproportionately large minority elsewhere, were Protestants. Following the collapse of the Independent Irish Party, the Liberal share of Irish seats rose from 48 in 1857 to a record 66, on the basis of Gladstone's promise of ‘justice for Ireland’, in 1868. Thereafter, however, Liberalism was eclipsed by the rise of the home rule party. The one exception was Ulster, where its commitment to agrarian reform gave Liberalism unprecedented electoral success, among Catholics and Protestants alike, until the home rule crisis of 1886 split the electorate between Nationalist and Unionist.

See also ulster liberal party.