Review: From Parnell to Paisley

Contributed by Brian Hanley

When John Bruton was Taoiseach he famously placed a portrait of John Redmond in his office reinforcing the notion that Fine Gael were the modern heirs of the Irish Parliamentary Party tradition. Bruton’s gushing tribute to the visiting Prince Charles in 1995 further seemed to confirm the view that ‘Redmondism’ was essentially pro-British. Whatever about Bruton’s personal royalist tendencies, there are many for whom the ‘constitutional’ Home Rule tradition represents a moderate, peaceful road to self-government-particularly when contrasted with Irish nationalism after 1916. The reality, as several of the best essays in this collection illiustrate, was rather different. The book contains eleven studies, of subjects as diverse as the funding of Charles Stewart Parnell’s movement (and more research on the funding of Irish political movements would be very welcome) to Fianna Fáil’s handling of the IRA in the 1940s and the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland during the 1960s. While some of the authors have already produced distingushed work, most, encouragingly, are new scholars.