This study of Irish Unionists in the Edwardian House of Commons fills an important gap in Anglo-Irish history, and is the first to examine the role of parliamentary action within the political strategies of organized loyalism. In reconstructing a neglected parliamentary party, Dr Jackson sheds new light on the mobilization of Unionism in Ireland, and on the bond between loyalism and British Conservatism. Rejecting the conventional and dismissive view of these MPs, he argues that the Irish Unionist parliamentary party possessed both influence and durability throughout the early development of popular opposition to Home Rule. By 1905, however, a combination of local dissent, and an increasingly unsympathetic Conservative leadership threatened the party's effectiveness. The book shows how Irish Unionists were forced to abandon their dependence on the House of Commons in favour of agitation and organization in Ulster. This, in turn, helps to explain why loyalists turned to a militant strategy in the years 1912-14. Dr Jackson draws on a wide range of manuscript collections and contemporary political comment to produce a study which restores the Edwardian Irish Unionist movement to a British political context, and provides a new understanding of the nature of its local development.

Prizes

Winner of Winner of the 1990 Donald Murphy Prize for a distinguished first book awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies.

'masterly study ... The work is based on an impressively wide range of sources, the scholarship is exact, the weighing of evidence meticulous, the analysis sharp and full of nuance, and the writing clear and elegant throughout. In sum, this is a work of sustained excellence and an important contribution to both Irish and British political history.' Times Literary Supplement
'This is a stimulating and important thesis. One of the most absorbing aspects of this book is the way in which Dr Jackson shows how Ulster under home rule was taking shape long before the Government of Ireland Act of 1920.'Jean Gottmann, Hertford College, Oxford, EHR Apr '90
'Jackson has succeeded very well in filling the historiographical void and provides us with what will be the definitive account of the role of the Irish unionist MPs at Westminster, Henry Patterson, University of Ulster, Irish Political Studies 1990
'stylish, elegant and witty published version of his 1986 Oxford P.D. thesis ... an important piece of historical revisionism' Richard McMinn, The Linen Hall Review
'The book mobilizes a considerable range of source material to illuminate a topic neglected even by historians of Ireland, and does so with both scholarly detachment and scepticism. This is an important book ... the sort of painstaking work that will contribute to such reinterpretations as Coleman has produced when the next generation attempts the task.' John Ramsden, Parliamentary History, Vol 9 part 2 1990
'he is not really subverting old truths but significantly adding to them, by setting the Ulstermen's contribution to the debate over the Union in a rich provincial (and interprovincial) context ... For giving us this insider's view he deserves our thanks.' P.R. Ghosh, St Anne's College, Oxford, History, No. 246, February 1991