Liam's Irish Traditional Music - Irelands culture and tradition

Daniel O'Connell became the leader of a new political organization called the Catholic Association. In 1823. He was the first Catholic to stand for election in Ireland for 150 years. The Association demanded full Catholic emancipation, since discrimination still existed within the Irish political system. Ordinary people felt that they could give support to the Association because it represented their viewpoint, and this made it the first major mass movement in the political history of Britain.

In 1828 they elected Daniel O'Connell to Parliament, but this was against the law. Fearing another Irish rebellion, the British government passed the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, and Daniel O'Connell took up his seat at the Westminster Parliament as an elected Member of Parliament for Clare. From 1841 he began to lead a movement for the repeal of the Act of Union, organized a series of monster meetings" which drew enormous crowds. From this description of Daniel O'Connell, which was written by an Irish radical, see if you can understand why O'Connell was so popular with the Irish people.

[He was]… a man of gigantic proportions in body and in mind; with no profound learning ... but with a vast and varied knowledge of human nature... with a voice like thunder and earthquake, yet musical and soft at will ... he had the power to make other men hate or love, laugh or weep at his good pleasure.

Source: Introduction to The Jail Journal written by John Mitchell, 1848, quoted in Ireland 1783-1850, James Carty, (ed.), C.J. Fallon Ltd, 1949

The open air meetings gathered thousands of people together. As they considered such, large crowds dangerous, the British government sent in reinforcements of soldiers to control them. However, there was little need for the troops, as the meetings were conducted without the use of violence. O'Connell hated the use of force, and believed strongly in employing, constitutional means to gain political change. At the Tara meeting the crowd exceeded 500,000 people.

Daniel O'Connell could not gather enough support in the Westminster Parliament for repealing the Act of Union. He spent time in prison for his Political activities, witnessed the outbreak of famine in 1846, and died in 1847, having lost support to younger radicals who had formed the Young Ireland party. They founded a newspaper, The Nation, and used it to express their ideas. The most famous contributors included Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, James Fintan Lalor and John Mitchell. The ideas for which they argued ranged from the reform of the land system by introducing fair rents and security of tenure, to nationalism and home rule for Ireland.