A Race Divided

Author: Prof. Christine Kinealy

In July 1848 a nationalist uprising took place in Ireland.  Unlike the revolutions that were sweeping through Europe in that year, the Irish rebellion was located not in a capital city or major town, but in a private house near to the small village of Ballingarry in County Tipperary. It was over within a few hours, the insurgents being defeated by a small local police force. Moreover, there were few casualties; initially, two deaths were reported but one of the men later turned out to be very much alive and, only a few years later, founded the Fenian movement. The leaders of the 1848 rising, though unsuccessful in achieving their aims, provided an important link between the insurgents of 1798 and those of 1916. Through their idealism and non-sectarianism they presented a vision of a united, non-sectarian, Ireland that has remained elusive up this day. The 1848 rising may have lasted only a few hours, but its legacy has resonated into the early twenty-first century.

Author: Dr. Carol Glover

In 1860 George and Ellen Glover left Ireland forever with their three young children, and transplanted their lives in Gippsland, Australia. Having lived as tenant farmers and weavers for several generations at Maze in the district of Lisburn, this Church of Ireland planter family was again involved in a British colonization project. The milieu they entered was not totally unfamiliar as family members awaited them; also, like at home, the Scots were well represented among the new settlers in Gippsland, who had wrested control from the indigenous people, the Gunai Kurnai, just twenty years before. Nevertheless, the migration experience, in both contexts, did of course involve sense of place adjustments. Identification with Australia was complete by the second generation and most of the descendents of George and Ellen Glover, including myself, continue to live in the same area, which shares many commonalities with the place of origin. This chapter explores the sociological relevance of place by considering the impact of the colonized places – Ulster and Gippsland – on the lives of the Glovers, the family’s involvement in place-making and its impact on the indigenous peoples.

Author: Dr. William Roulston

In 1800 the Act of Union was passed by both the Irish and British parliaments despite much opposition. It was signed by George III but Pitt intended to follow the Act of Union with other, more far reaching reforms, including Catholic Emancipation. He was thwarted by George III who refused to break his Coronation Oath to uphold the Anglican Church. The 1800 Act of Union said that

• Ireland was to be joined to Great Britain into a single kingdom, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• the Dublin parliament was abolished. Ireland was to be represented at Westminster by 100 MPs, 4 Lords Spiritual and 28 Lords Temporal (all were Anglicans).
• the Anglican Church was to be recognised as the official Church of Ireland.
• there was to be free trade between Ireland and Britain.
• Ireland was to keep a separate Exchequer and was to be responsible for two-seventeenths of the general expense of the United Kingdom.
• Ireland kept its own Courts of Justice and civil service.
• no Catholics were to be allowed to hold public office.
• there was to be no Catholic Emancipation.

Ruling Ireland direct from Westminster solved nothing as the union was a political expedient in wartime, solving none of the grievances in Ireland over land, religion or politics. It had no social dimension at all and Ireland’s economic problems were also ignored. Pitt knew that social and economic reforms were essential as was Catholic Emancipation.  As George III refused to allow full emancipation, Pitt resigned in protest. The Act became a liability rather than an asset. Peers holding Irish estates opposed concessions to Roman Catholics as did the King because of vested interests and religious bigotry.

This chapter looks at the effects upon the Irish psyche of such treatment from the monarch so soon after earlier Catholic Emancipation had for a decade enabled Irish subjects to fight in the American War of Independence. The chapter also takes a fresh look at the assertions at the time of the roguish but charismatic Sir Jonah Barrington, the anti-Union Irish M.P. who described his ’The Rise and fall of the Irish Nation’ as “a full account of the bribery and corruption by which the Union was carried;the family histories of the members who voted away the Irish Parliament with an extraordinary black list of the titles, places and pensions which they received for their corrupt votes.”

This was an extraordinary charge from someone who had to bribe his way out of the country after his own colossal misappropriation of Admiralty funds.

Author:  Dr. Don MacFarlane

This chapter aims to demonstrate that most if not all human rights as we now know them were systematically infringed in Ireland and the Western Isles during the period in question.

International Declaration of Human Rights

A man should not be compelled as a last resort to take recourse to rebellion.
Every person has a right to life.
The dignity and worth of each person should be reaffirmed.
No distinction should be made on the basis of politics or jurisdiction.
No person should be held in slavery or servitude.
No person should be subjected to cruel or degrading treatment.
No person should be subjected to arbitrary exile.
No person should be arbitrarily deprived of his home or family.
Every person should have a right to nationality.
Every person should have a right to marriage.
Every person has a right to freedom of expression of opinion.
Every person has the right to take part in the government of his country.
The will of the people should determine the government of the country.
Every person has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Every person has the right to a good-enough standard of subsistence.
Every person has the right to education.
A person’s rights should be subject only to the requirements of morality, public order and general welfare of the community.

The conditions of passengers emigrating from Derry to the New World during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were often tragic as seen in a transcript from an account given by the Ship’s Surgeon of the ‘Adam Lodge’. By the time of its arrival four months later, there had been many deaths including 23 infants or babes-in-arms. One view is that these deaths were unnecessary and caused by the with-holding of rations by the Ship’s Surgeon as punishment for what he perceived as poor standards of hygiene in the passengers!  An alternative view point and that favoured by Australian descendants of passengers on the voyage is that the death rate although high was similar to that on many other passages to the New World. Even in these times, the voyage caused sufficient concern that Dr Alick Osborne was obliged to give an account to English Parliament of his part in this tragedy but some years later he was appointed a member of the New South Wales Parliament.

Author:  Merle O’Donnell

Peter Mayberry records over 200 convicts of Derry origin who were transported to Australia during the first half of the 1800s, mostly for trivial offences, and the justice system showed minimal consideration for human rights as we understand them today.

This is the story with a twist of the infamous 1798 voyage to Australia on board the convict ship, Britannia I. Of the 226 convicts who boarded the ship in Ireland, 32 of them received 300 or more lashes for conspiracy to mutiny and 3 died of their wounds. There were nine other deaths, three from suicide , two from murder, one from childbirth and one from being bitten by an 8-foot long black snake.

Author:   Peter Gallagher

This chapter tells the story of Ambrose McGuigan, born about 1767 and a member of the notorious “Defenders” movement. His occupation according to the reward notice printed in the Belfast Newsletter was Dance Master. What an opportunity for a rebel to enter English homes to teach dancing and spy out the land! The Committee of the Barony of Dungannon offered a reward of 50 guineas to any person who could apprehend and bring his body before Robert Lowry of County Tyrone.

Ambrose was wanted for administering unlawful oaths and, almost as an afterthought, for stopping the Honourable Major Cole-Hamilton on a road leading from Gorteen to Pomeroy.  Ambrose fired a shot at Cole-Hamilton, perhaps in self defence and slightly wounded  the major in the thigh. He was banished for life to Australia where, upon receiving his Ticket of Leave after only 7 years, he made a small fortune hunting seals in Tasmania. He went on to settle near Sidney and once again became a publican in the city where one of his inns still stands today.

It appears that Ambrose shot one of the scions of the Protestant ruling class of Ulster. Major Cole-Hamilton was related to the Brookeboroughs who later produced one of the first Premiers of post-partition Ulster, a strong opponent of Catholic emancipation. The Cole-Hamiltons were also related through marriage to the Dukes of Westminster who were cousins of the monarch. Under the circumstances, Ambrose may have been exceedingly fortunate to escape with his life!