Parnell, Charles Stewart

Parnell, Charles Stewart (1846–91), nationalist leader. Born into a Protestant landlord family in Avondale, Co. Wicklow, and educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he was home rule MP for Meath 1875–80, and for Cork city 1880–91. He established his reputation as an advanced nationalist through ‘obstruction’ tactics in parliament in association with J. G. Biggar and progressed to the leadership of the nationalist movement via the New Departure, presidency of the Land League (1879), and chairmanship of the Irish parliamentary party (1880). The passing of the 1881 Land Act, the suppression of the Land League, and the Kilmainham treaty allowed Parnell to pursue a purely constitutional campaign for home rule, a change of direction marked by the inauguration of the National League in 1882. The general election of 1885, which returned 86 Nationalist MPs, was an impressive demonstration of Parnell's power, and an important factor in Gladstone's conversion to home rule, which inaugurated the Liberal‐nationalist alliance.

The year 1886 marked the height of Parnell's power. Thereafter, a combination of poor health, his affair with Mrs O'Shea, and a refusal to support the Plan of Campaing removed him from the centre of nationalist affairs. The charges made in the ‘Parnellism and crime’ letters in The Times 1887, and his subsequent vindication by the special commission 1890, served to unite all shades of nationalist opinion around him. However his career was destroyed soon afterwards in the party split that followed his citation as corespondent in the O'Shea divorce petition of December 1889. Parnell married Katherine O'Shea in June 1891 and died in Brighton the following October after an exhausting by‐election campaign.

The key to Parnell's career lies in his exceptional personal and political qualities: qualities all the more striking given a highly nervous disposition and superstitious nature. His leadership of the Land War established a firm basis for his political power: leadership grounded in a myth of himself which could appeal to both extremists and moderates and which was exploited to maximum effect through an uncanny ability to assess the most that could be obtained in any political context. His political achievements can be charted in terms of his role in obtaining the enactment of land reforms, especially the 1881 Land Act; and the creation of a disciplined and independent Irish parliamentary party which brought the home rule issue to the centre of British politics and established an alliance with Gladstonian Liberalism to obtain it.

Parnell's failures, however, are also significant. The abandonment of agrarian struggle, especially during the Plan of Campaign, together with the absences from Ireland necessitated by his affair with Mrs O'Shea, inevitably diminished his authority. Accordingly, Parnell was already politically weakened before the scandal surrounding the O'Shea divorce developed. Also, despite a highly sensitive political antenna, Parnell failed to appreciate adequately the obstacle to the achievement of his home rule ambitions presented by the Ulster problem. Historically, however, his reputation did not suffer the same fate as that of his successor as party leader, John Redmond, when constitutional nationalism became discredited after 1916. Just as the ‘penumbra of revolution’ which surrounded Parnell during his political career served to retain militant support, so too, after his death, it was possible for Arthur Griffith, Patrick Pearse, and Eamon de Valera to focus on the militant strand in his political persona to claim him, effectively, for the republican tradition. Assessments of Parnell have traditionally focused on a brilliant career brought to a tragic end. More recent work has looked beyond the personalities of the split to the conflict of liberal and conservative forces that it symbolized.

Bibliography

Bew, Paul , C. S. Parnell (1980)
Callanan, Frank , The Parnell Split 1890–91 (1992)
Lyons, F. S. L. , Charles Stewart Parnell (1977)

James Loughlin