repeal

repeal, shorthand for the demand for the repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of a separate Irish parliament. Before 1830 there were occasional demands, notably from elements within the guilds and corporation of Dublin, for the Union to be rescinded. O'Connell announced his commitment to repeal as soon as the Catholic emancipation agitation concluded, and required candidates seeking his support in the general election of 1832 to take a repeal pledge. Yet he also made clear his willingness to seek an accommodation with the forces of reform in British politics. A formal parliamentary motion on repeal (30 Apr. 1834), crushingly defeated by 523 votes to 38, was a tactical dead end entered at the insistence of his followers, and from 1835 O'Connell instead accepted an alliance (the Lichfield House compact) with the new Whig ministry. As Whig parliamentary fortunes declined, he turned back to repeal, founding the Precursor Society (1838) and then the Loyal National Repeal Association (1840). But the initial response was muted, and O'Connell himself remained preoccupied with his duties as lord mayor of Dublin (1841–2). It was not until the end of 1842 that the repeal movement, aided by economic downturn and the propaganda of the Nation newspaper, gained real momentum.

The repeal movement of 1842–3 revived the techniques of mass agitation pioneered during the Catholic emancipation campaign: a network of local committees and branches, a nationwide fund‐raising scheme (‘the repeal rent’), effective use of newspaper reporting, and close co‐operation with the Catholic bishops and clergy. A series of huge open air demonstrations (‘monster meetings’) commenced in spring 1843. The agitation was to climax with the election of a Council of 300, a de facto parliament that would meet in Dublin to plan a repeal bill. But when Peel's government banned the meeting planned for 8 October at Clontarf near Dublin O'Connell complied. This surrender, followed a week later by the arrest of O'Connell and other leaders on charges of conspiracy, brought about the collapse of the agitation.

‘Repeal’ in theory meant the unqualified restoration of the pre‐1800 Irish parliament. In practice, O'Connell must have recognized that no British government would return to a definition of the Anglo‐Irish connection as loose and undefined as the ‘constitution of 1782’. Instead ‘repeal’ was at the same time an effective slogan, the focus at popular level of extravagant and even millenarian expectations, and an opening bid in a process of negotiation that might lead to some form of limited self‐government. Attacks by Young Ireland and others on O'Connell's willingness to abandon ‘simple repeal’ for negotiations with federalists and others thus missed the point. Where O'Connell's pragmatism arguably failed him, however, was in believing that tactics of brinkmanship that had worked so well in 1828–9 would be equally successful in 1842–3. Both the government and British public opinion, deeply divided over emancipation, were largely united in their belief that repeal would fatally weaken the United Kingdom, and must be resisted at all costs.

Bibliography

Nowlan, K. B. , The Politics of Repeal (1965)