“The priests do their best to inflame the people.” Religious actors in Ireland, 1800–1845: Instigators of violence or peacemakers?

After the 1801 Act of Union uniting Ireland and Great Britain, and the broken promises made to Catholics, Daniel O’Connell founded the Catholic Association which combined religious and political demands. Despite the pacifying dimension of the movement, the decades preceding the Great Hunger (1845–1851) saw several episodes of violence, before reaching a climax during the revolutionary movement of 1848. Relying on Philippe Braud’s definition of political violence and the study of British and Catholic authorities’ correspondence among other sources, this article intends to shed light on the different dynamics at work in the rise in violence. It also examines the various attempts to readjust to and withdraw from acts of violence, to move beyond ambiguities and better assess the role played by religious agents.

The O’Connellite Persuasion

This essay explores how the political language of the nineteenth-century Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell did not present a consistent doctrine, or a finely articulated programme, but a persuasion. O’Connell’s political strategy was to present a broad judgement of political affairs informed by common sentiments and beliefs about what was happening in Ireland. In doing so, he developed his own political rhetoric and articulated a language that inspired the downtrodden Catholics to follow him and agitate for their civil rights. The language remained consistent even as the political strategies switched and changed, and rolled and adapted to suit changing political realities. By casting himself as the people’s tribune, O’Connell made himself the champion of the oppressed, but it also ensured that his legacy was hotly contested.

Undermined Authority: John Reynolds and Dublin Corporation

This chapter sketches the municipal career of John Reynolds (1794-1868), a member of Dublin corporation, the city’s city council, between the 1840s and 1860s. Reynolds sat together with Daniel O’Connell on the corporation following the reform of that body in the early 1840s, yet he clashed with O’Connell over taxation. Later he campaigned for the abolition of minister’s money (a city tax to benefit the established church) and the freeman parliamentary franchise which favoured the Ascendancy and which may have cost him his own parliamentary seat. He had a disastrous year as Lord Mayor in 1850, easily allowing himself to be provoked into outbursts of rage, a habit that undermined his authority. Reynolds saw himself as combating the anti-Catholic sectarian animus of the former Dublin Tory ruling class but also sometimes played it up for his own advantage. The Tories on the corporation were riled by his pugilistic, populist approach to issues. With his early political and analytical skills much reduced, Reynolds never became the figure of authority he might have been.

Performing the Northern Athens: Dr. Corry's Diorama of Ireland and the Belfast Riot of 1864

Although sectarian violence characterized life in Belfast for hundreds of years, 1864 marked a shift in how violence played out in the city. Unlike previous conflicts that occurred in open spaces and reflected long-held rural rituals, the riots of August 1864 took place in the city's rapidly developing urban streets. The violence broke out in response to celebrations around the foundation laying for a new statue of Daniel O'Connell, the late Catholic politician, in Dublin. Thousands of Belfast Catholics traveled to Dublin for the celebration. Upon their return to Belfast, ten thousand Protestant loyalists greeted them by burning an effigy of O'Connell on Boyne Bridge and staging a mock funeral and procession that attempted to enter a Catholic burial ground. The resulting violence and rioting continued for ten days on the city streets, where homes and businesses faced destruction on a scale previously unseen. Expelling residents of opposing views, rioters reinforced older ideas of “communal conflict” expressed through “disagreements over each group's place—literally and imaginatively—in the city” and strengthened notions of neighborhood geography based on religious beliefs. As historian Mark Doyle argues, the shifting patterns of violence resulted from “[t]he steady advance of working-class alienation from the state, the growing hegemony of violent extremists in working-class neighbourhoods, the sectarian alliance between Protestant workers and elites, the insecurity of the Catholics and, above all, the polarising effects of earlier outbreaks of violence.” Lasting reminders of conflict lingered as the city recovered, reminding anyone walking the streets of the city's violent past and the likely potential of future clashes.