Review
Russell Rees commends this fine study of high politics either side of Anglo-Irish Union.
- The Making of British Unionism 1740-1848: Politics, Government and the Anglo-Irish Relationship
- Four Courts Press
An Act of Union
In 1990 Peter Brooke, the then Secretary of State, declared that Britain had no strategic or economic interest in this part of Ireland.
His ground breaking admission is often cited as a key factor in creating the space for political movement in the north. Such a statement could never have been made during the period under consideration in this book.
The central theme of Douglas Kanter’s work is the emergence and consolidation of a unionist consensus in Britain in the years 1740-1848. This was, as Kanter makes clear, a slow and laborious process. Only with the upheaval of the 1798 rebellion did the Prime Minister, William Pitt, have the opportunity to press the case for a union between Britain and Ireland.
Previously, there had been little appetite for a union beyond a small section of the political elite in Britain. In Ireland, moreover, Protestants had developed a distinct Irish identity, and this was reinforced towards the end of the 18th century by the increasing focus on the Irish Parliament. Consequently, the Ascendancy class in Ireland had an obvious vested interest in rebuffing any contemplation of a union by their Protestant cousins in Britain. However, the events of 1798 shook the confidence of this Irish Protestant elite. It also caused many of them to question their ability to govern Ireland in a manner that would preserve their privileged social, economic and political status. In these changed circumstances British unionists led by Pitt were able to present a union as the most effective guarantee of security for this ‘vulnerable’ community.
Nevertheless, as Kanter confirms, the primary reason for a legislative union was the protection of British interests. Union with Ireland was viewed in an imperial context, and potential benefits for Ireland in both the political and economic spheres were never more than a supplementary consideration. That said, Pitt believed that Catholic emancipation would be necessary to make the union work, but he was to misjudge the political climate in Britain in 1800-01. This meant that the union was incomplete as it failed to resolve the question of the relationship of the large Catholic population with the Protestant minority in Ireland. Yet Kanter argues persuasively that Pitt’s failure to deliver emancipation unexpectedly encouraged the formation of a new unionist consensus in Britain. Of course, it also encouraged the development of Catholic nationalism under O’Connell. At the same time, successive British governments made insufficient effort to reconcile Catholics to the British state, and the author suggests that this was partly due to the British sense of cultural superiority which consistently coloured their thinking on the Irish question.
Kanter’s book is a fine study of high politics either side of the Act of Union. In particular, he demonstrates both how and why a unionist consensus emerged in Britain. Ultimately, of course, these unionists failed to meet the needs and aspirations of Irish Catholics within the new constitutional framework and, though it took more than 100 years, this would result in the collapse of the union.
Dr Rees’s latest book, Labour and the Northern Ireland Problem, l945-51: The Missed Opportunity, has recently been published by Irish Academic Press.
Russell Rees