United Irishmen 1798
Inspired by the French Revolution, and following the publication,
by Theobald Wolfe Tone, of ‘An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics
of Ireland’, the Belfast Society of United Irishmen was founded
on October 14th, 1791. Soon afterwards, on November 9th, the inaugural
meeting of the Dublin society was held. The United Irishmen was
a grouping of radical thinkers, which evolved into an oath-bound
secret society based on middle-class reformers and urban and rural
workers pledged to obtain national and social emancipation. In his
‘A History of The Irish Working Class’ Peter Berresford
Ellis describes the organisation as ‘the first major Irish
radical and anti-imperialist movement, a movement which was both
nationalist and internationalist, working with like movements in
Scotland, England and other European countries’.
The radical philosophy of the United Irishmen was contained in the
‘Secret Manifesto to the Friends of Freedom in Ireland’,
published earlier in 1791, in which Tone wrote ‘When the
aristocracy come forward, the people fall backward, when the people
come forward, the aristocracy, fearful of being left behind, insinuate
themselves into our ranks and rise into timid leaders or treacherous
auxiliaries. They mean to make us their instrument; let us rather
make them our instruments’.
It is clear from this manifesto that Tone looked to the people
of Ireland, rather than the landowning classes, to carry forth the
revolution. Tone explicitly articulated this belief when he famously
declared ‘Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the
men of property will not help us, they must fall; we will free ourselves
by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community
- the men of no property’.
Whilst the military successes and failures of the United Irishmen
insurrection of 1798 have been documented extensively, the real
success of the organisation lies in the fact that they succeeded
in igniting in Ireland a radical revolutionary philosophy which
had not previously manifested itself in such an inspiring manner
and which, despite the eventual military failure of the insurrection,
continued to exist thereafter.
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