EVERY CREED AND PARTY - TOWN TENANT PROTEST IN LATE 19TH-CENTURY AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY IRELAND

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Irish society w as intensely radicalized by the drive for Home Rule and the creation o f a distinct national identity and politics. The symbolic centre of th is movement was provided by the struggle for control of land. Although ultimately successful in gaining fixity of tenure, fair rents and fre e sale of improvement for rural tenants, the legislation failed to gra nt similar rights to town tenants who began to mount an increasingly v ociferous campaign of their own. However, in common with other express ions of class and sectional interest, this campaign was eventually sub sumed within the nationalist-unionist schism that deepened and widened after 1885. The paper examines the gestation of town tenant protest a nd the campaign for urban tenurial rights. It shows how the nationalis t issue swallowed and ultimately negated this axis of political protes t despite the idealistic hopes of its leaders that it might offer a co mmon cause to unite small town tenants throughout the island. As with the land legislation, unionists backed the landlords rather than admit any mutuality of interest. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.