The United Irishmen and social reform

Abstract

When questioned by a parliamentary committee after the rebellion of 1798, the United Irish leader Thomas Addis Emmet predicted that ‘if a revolution ever takes place, a very different system of political economy will be established from what has hitherto prevailed here’. Was there any real substance to this claim? Did Emmet’s words indicate that the republican leadership genuinely sought a radical reshaping of society, or was he simply indulging in empty rhetoric that a broken United Irish movement could never make good? It has always been difficult to pin down the United Irishmen’s socio-economic views: their pronouncements in this area were few and were generally couched in vague terms. This is hardly surprising. Given that the society’s membership was far from socially homogeneous, the leadership no doubt recognised the difficulties involved in trying to produce an agreed programme of social reform. In an organisation one of whose earliest rules had been ‘to attend to those things in which we agree, to exclude from our thoughts those in which we differ’, it was generally judged prudent to steer clear of such a potentially divisive subject. Moreover, the readiness with which the government instigated prosecutions of outspoken radicals, particularly after the outbreak of war in 1793, made advisable a degree of caution in any statements which could be construed as threatening the established social order. Nevertheless, the society did address the issue of social reform from time to time, and individual United Irishmen also espoused a variety of proposals. This article will attempt to examine some of the strands of United Irish social thinking and to determine if the movement had such a thing as a coherent programme of social reform.

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