politicization. The growth of popular political consciousness is a complex process. It requires an awareness of political structures and issues, a perception of these as relevant to one's daily life, and (what will generally follow) a demand for participation in public affairs. These developments are often closely linked to the spread of
literacy, the decline of traditional attitudes of deference towards social superiors, and other aspects of
modernization.
Levels of political awareness in early modern Ireland are difficult to assess. The 17th century saw mass mobilizations of Catholics and Protestants during the
Confederate War and the
Williamite War. But the basis of their participation, presumably involving some combination of ethnic and religious allegiance, obedience to traditional leaders, and possibly coercion, is scantily documented and as yet unexplored. The first clear‐cut instances of purposeful popular involvement in organized political activity belong to 18th‐century urban Protestantism, to a limited extent in popular backing for the campaign against
Wood's Halfpence, and more positively in support for
Lucas's assault on Dublin's unrepresentative corporation.
The pace of politicization quickened in the late 18th century, as economic development raised growing numbers above the daily struggle for subsistence, created an expanding middle class whose awareness of its own economic importance was not matched by political influence, and contributed to the rise in literacy and the breakdown of traditional attitudes of localism, fatalism, and deference. The mobilization of small property owners and independent petty producers in the
Volunteer movement initially depended on the backing of landlords, MPs, and other persons of consequence. In its last phase the movement had lost this elite patronage, and with it much of its political effectiveness, but mobilization had expanded to draw in a wider social circle, and to include Catholics as well as Protestants. The creation of a broadly based and assertive public opinion was confirmed by the presence throughout the 1780s and 1790s of an urban crowd ready to take to the streets in support of popular causes.
The
United Irish movement was a landmark in the development of popular politics. The creation of a network of local clubs, later replaced by conspiratorial cells, and the use of the
Northern Star and other publications to disseminate ideas and propaganda, revealed the new potential for mobilization. The willingness of middle‐class radical leaders to use ballads and even
millenarian Prophecies, and to broaden their political programme to include some promise of social as well as political change, testified to the compromises that had nevertheless to be made if that potential was to be realized. The
Catholic Committee, meanwhile, embarked on a similar, if smaller‐scale, exercise in the mobilization of popular support, notably in the elections to the
Catholic Convention. These proceedings probably contributed indirectly to the third major manifestation of a new style of popular politics, the
Defender movement, whose revolutionary ideology, however crude, represented a significant advance on the pragmatic, defensive protest of the
Whiteboys and similar
agrarian societies.
Politicization was neither uniform nor unidirectional. Support for the advanced doctrines of the United Irishmen was far stronger in eastern counties, and in particular in the hinterlands of Dublin and Belfast, than in other regions. The two decades after the Act of
Union saw radicalism in abeyance and
landlord influence once more dominant at elections. The survival of a tradition of popular radicalism, but also its definite limitations, are evident in the activities of the
Ribbon societies. From the 1820s
O'Connell's agitations for
Catholic emancipation and
repeal represented a new and more controlled mobilization of the masses. But O'Connellism too was stronger in the towns than in the countryside, in the commercialized and Anglicized east than in the impoverished and Gaelic west. Nor was the level of popular political involvement sustained after O'Connell's death. The quater‐century after the
Famine, a period of general prosperity, saw a revival of the politics of localism, personality, and deference, as repeal and reform slipped into the background, and a reinvigorated landlord class once again assumed largely unchallenged control of county politics.
The rise of the
home rule movement from 1874, and its transformation during the 1880s, can thus be seen as the last stage in a long and uneven process. The launching of the
Land War in Co. Mayo dramatically announced the political awakening of the previously supine west. The general elections of 1885 and 1886 revealed a mass electorate organized through new
political party machines in support of two clearly defined ideological blocs. Parliamentary representation, first among nationalists, a little later among unionists, was no longer dominated by landlords and wealthy professional men, but had passed into the hands of a more broadly based middle‐class and even lower middle‐class elite, attentive, as their predecessors had never quite had to be, to the demands of voters and constituency activists.
Bibliography
Hoppen, K. T. , Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885 (1984)
Smyth, J. , The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century (1992)
