The Successes and Failures of Charles Stuart Parnell!

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The Successes and Failures of Charles Stuart Parnell!

Charles Stuart Parnell was born in Avondale, County Wicklow on the twenty seventh of June 1846 to a well off Protestant family.  Parnell attended Cambridge University and was a very wealthy and highly regarded landowner. During Parnell’s lifetime, Parnell had a number of successes and failures. In this essay I will examine all of these before asking myself was Parnells life a success of a failure?

 

Parnells dream was to obtain Home Rule for Ireland. When the Home Rule party was firstly established it was a small party in comparison to the other parties in west Minster. This meant that it was frequently ignored. In order to attract some attention to then selves the Home Rule party came up with the tactic of parliamentary obstruction. This was when Home Rule M.Ps made long irrelevant speeches on a variety of topics to disrupt the parliament and stop new laws from being made. This tactic was very successful.

Many Irish peasants knew only vaguely about the issue of Home Rule and to put it bluntly they didn’t really care about “who controlled them”. Irish peasants had a more Important issue on their minds. This issue was Land!

Parnell knew this all too well and realised that if he wanted Home Rule for Ireland he would need to find away to gain the support of the Irish peasants. In 1879, Parnell was invited by Michael Davitt, an Irish peasant farmer to become the president of the Irish “Land League”. Davitt knew that Parnell had the authority and connections to make the land issue important amongst M.Ps at West Minster. Parnell agreed without hesitation, as this was his chance to gain the support of Irish peasants. Although the “land league” was a peaceful organisation, it wasn’t long before there was an outbreak of violence and the “Land War” was triggered off.

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In 1881, a “Land Act” was issued. Parnell ordered the tenants not to accept this, as it did not include all aspects of the agreement. After this, the “Land War” Became even more violent.

In 1882, the “Land War” was still continuing and finally Gladstone decided to negotiate with Parnell to see if the violence could be stopped, in return for another proposition. This was known as “The Kilmainham treaty”. Parnell was then released in late April 1882. Parnell was looked upon by most Irish peasants as a true hero. Parnell had succeeded in gaining the support ...

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