In 1845 "the Great Famine" had begun. All the Irish crops had become disease and became uneatable. The situation in Ireland was starvation. The nationalist cause was non-existence in this period because of the current situation. The Famine did highlight the fundamental flaws in British leadership, which helped the Nationalist cause. In 1850 John Mitchell, a Protestant, set up a Republican organisation the Young Ireland who set out to "get the British out of Ireland" his campaign was a failure on the whole. Nationalist leadership was difficult to find in this time. The Irish peasantry was still recovering from famine and the any sort of Nationalist cause had fallen upon death ears until Parnell took Irish affairs in hand. Charles Stewart Parnell had taken over from the relatively unsuccessful Isaac Butt. Butt set up the Home Rule association in 1870 in Dublin in aims for advancing the Nationalist cause of unionism. Parnell was elected as leader of the IPP in 1880. This plan fully capitalised on the importance of land in Ireland, both historically and politically because inevitably ownership featured in all discussions for Irelands future. Here they came to an agreement on tenet Rights and self-government. Although the first two bills had been defeated in the House of Commons and the House of Lords respectively, they were seriously flawed pieces of legislation that would have probably hindered the peace process. However, most people were beginning to realise some form of devolution was necessary in Ireland, just as Gladstone had done in the early 1880s. The fact that these two Bills actually got this far bears testimony to the fact that people were beginning to debate how the union should be composed, not whether there should be one. The Third Home Rule Bill seemed to confirm to Nationalists that Ireland's day had come; unlike the first two bills, it was a well thought out piece of legislation. Parnell had achieved what O' Connell or any Republican movement before him i.e. Fenians and Young Ireland had dreamed of. Parnell had got the home rule through Parliament however it was to be rejected by the House of Lords. Parnell had came to his peak he had achieved so much for the nationalist cause through the British parliamentary procedure however 1889 Parnell was found to having an affair with Kitty O Shea Gladstone and the Catholic church both condemn him, which ended his career he later dies in 1891. Therefore, we can see from this that constitutional nationalism was fairly successful in achieving it aims, by working through the system the opposition had nearly got what it wanted, but due to the nature of politics, the affair with a married woman spelt the end of his opposition.
Concerning the revolutionary nationalism, the most famous attempt was the Easter Uprising. It was a failure. It lacked the support of the general public and was defeated by the British military. At the time of the Uprising, there was greater support for Constitutional Nationalism, which supported Home Rule. Both Connolly and Pearse understood that the Uprising would fail but they hoped that their efforts would open the doors to freedom and unify the nationalist movement. The Easter Uprising had failed on the military account for a few reasons. The Uprising had confounding difficulties because of the lack of confidence amongst the leaders. MacNeill who had learned of the Uprising called the Uprising off the day before and then the other leaders attempted to reorganise it for the following day. From this it is possible to see that this confusion caused there to be fewer participants in the Uprising than had been planned for. The Uprising would have occurred through out Ireland but instead it ended up being contained within Dublin thus this lack of organisation and support made it easier for the British to gain control. We can also suggest it failed because they were unable to defeat Britain, although this was expected to happen. The failure of the military was part of the impact of effects of that week upon the mind of the nation.
Even though the Easter Uprising was considered a failure it can be seen that the leaders were able to achieve success through Britain’s mistakes. In their attempt to gain control of the situation, Britain had chosen the routes into the cities that were guarded even though there were many safe accessible routes in to the city. This could be part of an offensive strategy to weaken their spirits and moral by killing as many of the rebelling Irish as possible. This would provide the peoples of Ireland who had supported Constitutional Nationalism to begin to sway towards the rebels’ side. I believe what truly created the loss of support in Constitutional Nationalism was Britain’s decision to execute the rebel leaders. The execution of fifteen leaders, over the next twelve days would be a change in the support towards Revolutionary Nationalism. The execution of Connolly was considered the most savage because he had to be propped up due to his injuries in order to face the firing squad. This would be Britain’s largest mistake. They had created martyrs out of the leaders of the rebels. Revolutionary Nationalism requires heroes and martyrs because it provides a unifying focus, which Ireland had been lacking until this time.
The Fenians, also against union, were the advanced wing of Irish revolutionary nationalism. The Fenian movement quickly attracted thousands of young supporters both in Ireland itself and America. However, as the Fenian movement grew, so did the difficulties of keeping it organised. This had proved difficult because of the Irish-American geographic split and the problems of communications. But the two founders, O’Mahony and Stephens, disagreed on how the movement should develop. Stephens wanted to make as many people as was possible aware of what the Fenians stood for. Kelly and other Fenians attempted to attack Chester Castle to gain weapons and ammunition. The activities of the Fenians were partly responsible for spurring into his stated mission "to pacify Ireland". From this evidence we can say that this ultimately led to the rise of and the issues surrounding it. The Fenian movement became seemingly dormant for a number of decades, though it still existed as a movement. The Irish Republican Brotherhood was the most famous of the parts that made up the Fenian movement. However, politics now took a role in Ireland’s history. From this we can establish that the murders of Lord Cavendish and Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1882 showed the government in London there were elements in Ireland who worked outside of the political arena even while was being discussed. Another problem faced by the Fenians was that the Roman Catholic Church was generally not supportive of them. The power of the local priests was great and their influence within a local community, and especially among the older members of such communities, meant that they could undermine whatever influence the Fenians or any other form of opposition tried to establish. Thus we can see that if opposition were to be successful then it would need the support of the church due to it’s powerful grip over the people’s lives. Thus the general opposition to union did not have this support and so it ultimately failed
In conclusion we can see that constitutional nationalism was more effective than revolutionary nationalism, however there were some forms of successful revolutionary nationalism, though not successful in the conventional terms perhaps. For example Michael Collins. Like all legends, he was captured in the cruellest yet effective way possible. Collins achievements were many: he helped fight the British to a stalemate by changing the rules of warfare and setting up an intelligence network to rival the Empire's. He helped negotiate a treaty, which gave Ireland the first stepping stone to become a Republic, and oversaw Ireland's turbulent transition to democracy. His achievements were, however, not without a price. He precipitated the bloody War of Independence against the British and the treaty deal brought back from London split the country into two fiercely opposing halves and plunged the country into the throes of a traumatic civil war. Thus ultimately opposition needed to be well organised and have enough support to succeed, constitutional nationalism had this through its methods of working through the system.
