On 17 April 1875, Parnell was first elected to the
House of Commons in
a by-election for
Meath, as a Home Rule League
MP, backed by
Fenian Patrick Egan. He replaced the deceased League MP, veteran Young Irelander
John Martin. Parnell later sat for the constituency of
Cork City, from 1880 until 1891. During his first year as an MP, Parnell remained a reserved observer of parliamentary proceedings. He first came to attention in the public eye in 1876, when he claimed in the House of Commons that he did not believe that any murder had been committed by
Fenians in Manchester. That drew the interest of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a
physical force Irish organisation that had staged a rebellion in 1867. Parnell made it his business to cultivate Fenian sentiments both in Britain and Ireland and became associated with the more radical wing of the Home Rule League, which included
Joseph Biggar (MP for
Cavan from 1874),
John O'Connor Power (MP for
County Mayo from 1874) (both, although constitutionalists, had links with the IRB),
Edmund Dwyer-Gray (MP for
Tipperary from 1877), and
Frank Hugh O'Donnell (MP for
Dungarvan from 1877). He engaged with them and played a leading role in a policy of
obstructionism (i.e., the use of technical procedures to disrupt the House of Commons ability to function) to force the House to pay more attention to Irish issues, which had previously been ignored. Obstruction involved giving lengthy speeches which were largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. This behaviour was opposed by the less aggressive chairman (leader) of the Home Rule League,
Isaac Butt. Parnell visited the United States that year, accompanied by O'Connor Power. The question of Parnell's closeness to the IRB, and whether indeed he ever joined the organisation, has been a matter of academic debate for a century. The evidence suggests that later, following the signing of the
Kilmainham Treaty, Parnell did take the IRB oath, possibly for tactical reasons. What is known is that IRB involvement in the League's sister organisation, the
Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, led to the moderate Butt's ousting from its presidency (even though he had founded the organisation) and the election of Parnell in his place, on 28 August 1877. Parnell was a restrained speaker in the House of Commons, but his organisational, analytical and tactical skills earned wide praise, enabling him to take on the presidency of the British organisation. Butt died in 1879, and was replaced as chairman of the Home Rule League by the
Whig-oriented
William Shaw. Shaw's victory was only temporary.
New departure From August 1877, Parnell held a number of private meetings with prominent
Fenian leaders. He visited Paris where he met
John O'Leary and
J. J. O'Kelly both of whom were impressed by him and reported positively to the most capable and militant Leader of the American republican
Clan na Gael organisation,
John Devoy. In December 1877, at a reception for
Michael Davitt on his release from prison, he met William Carrol who assured him of Clan na Gael's support in the struggle for Irish self-government. This led to a meeting in March 1878 between influential constitutionalists, Parnell and Frank Hugh O'Donnell, and leading Fenians O'Kelly, O'Leary and Carroll. This was followed by a
telegram from John Devoy in October 1878 which offered Parnell a "
New Departure" deal of separating militancy from the constitutional movement as a path to all-Ireland self-government, under certain conditions: abandonment of a federal solution in favour of separatist self-government, vigorous agitation in the land question on the basis of peasant proprietorship, exclusion of all sectarian issues, collective voting by party members and energetic resistance to coercive legislation. Parnell preferred to keep all options open without clearly committing himself when he spoke in 1879 before Irish Tenant Defence Associations at
Ballinasloe and
Tralee. It was not until Davitt persuaded him to address a second meeting at
Westport, County Mayo in June that he began to grasp the potential of the
land reform movement. At a national level, several approaches were made which eventually produced the "New Departure" of June 1879, endorsing the foregone informal agreement which asserted an understanding binding them to mutual support and a shared political agenda. In addition, the New Departure endorsed the Fenian movement and its armed strategies. Working together with Davitt (who was impressed by Parnell) he now took on the role of leader of the New Departure, holding platform meeting after platform meeting around the country. Throughout the autumn of 1879, he repeated the message to tenants, after the long depression had left them without income for rent:
Land League leader Parnell was elected president of Davitt's newly founded
Irish National Land League in Dublin on 21 October 1879, signing a militant Land League address campaigning for
land reform. In so doing, he linked the mass movement to the parliamentary agitation, with profound consequences for both of them.
Andrew Kettle, his 'right-hand man', became honorary secretary. In a bout of activity, he left for America in December 1879 with
John Dillon to raise funds for
famine relief and secure support for Home Rule.
Timothy Healy followed to cope with the press and they collected £70,000 for distress in Ireland. During Parnell's highly successful tour, he had an audience with American President
Rutherford B. Hayes. On 2 February 1880, he addressed the
United States House of Representatives on the state of Ireland and spoke in 62 cities in the United States and in Canada. He was so well received in
Toronto that Healy dubbed him "the uncrowned king of Ireland". (The same term was applied 30 years earlier to
Daniel O'Connell.) He strove to retain Fenian support but insisted when asked by a reporter that he personally could not join a secret society. Central to his whole approach to politics was ambiguity in that he allowed his hearers to remain uncertain. During his tour, he seemed to be saying that there were virtually no limits. To abolish
landlordism, he asserted, would be to undermine English misgovernment, and he is alleged to have added: His activities came to an abrupt end when the
1880 United Kingdom general election was announced for April and he returned to fight it. The
Conservatives were defeated by the
Liberal Party;
William Gladstone was again Prime Minister. Sixty-three Home Rulers were elected, including twenty-seven Parnell supporters, Parnell being returned for three seats:
Cork City,
Mayo and
Meath. He chose to sit for the Cork seat. His triumph facilitated his nomination in May in place of Shaw as leader of a new Home Rule League Party, faced with a country on the brink of a land war. Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian outrages grew from 863 incidents in 1879 to 2,590 in 1880 after evictions increased from 1,238 to 2,110 in the same period. Parnell saw the need to replace violent agitation with country-wide mass meetings and the application of Davitt's
boycott, also as a means of achieving his objective of self-government. Gladstone was alarmed at the power of the Land League at the end of 1880. He attempted to defuse the land question with
dual ownership in the
Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881, establishing a
Land Commission that reduced rents and enabled some tenants to buy their farms. These halted arbitrary evictions, but not where rent was unpaid. Historian
R. F. Foster argues that in the countryside the Land League "reinforced the politicization of rural Catholic nationalist Ireland, partly by defining that identity against urbanization, landlordism, Englishness and—implicitly—Protestantism."
Kilmainham Treaty Parnell's own newspaper, the
United Ireland, attacked the Land Act and he was arrested on 13 October 1881, together with his party lieutenants,
William O'Brien, John Dillon, Michael Davitt and
Willie Redmond, who had also conducted a bitter verbal offensive. They were imprisoned under a proclaimed
Coercion Act in
Kilmainham Gaol for "sabotaging the Land Act", from where the
No Rent Manifesto, which Parnell and the others signed, was issued calling for a national tenant farmer
rent strike. The Land League was suppressed immediately. magazine depicts the Fenian movement as
Frankenstein's monster to Charles Parnell's
Frankenstein, in the wake of the
Phoenix Park killings Whilst in jail, Parnell moved in April 1882 to make a deal with the government, negotiated through Captain
William O'Shea MP, that, provided the government settled the "rent arrears" question allowing 100,000 tenants to appeal for fair rent before the land courts, then withdrawing the manifesto and undertaking to move against agrarian crime, after he realised militancy would never win Home Rule. Parnell also promised to use his good offices to quell the violence and to cooperate cordially for the future with the Liberal Party in forwarding Liberal principles and measures of general reform. His release on 2 May, following the so-called
Kilmainham Treaty, marked a critical turning point in the development of Parnell's leadership when he returned to the parameters of parliamentary and constitutional politics, and resulted in the loss of support of Devoy's American-Irish. His political diplomacy preserved the national Home Rule movement after the
Phoenix Park killings of the
Chief Secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his Under-Secretary,
T. H. Burke on 6 May. Parnell was shocked to the extent that he offered Gladstone to resign his seat as MP. The militant
Invincibles responsible fled to the United States, which allowed him to break links with radical Land Leaguers. In the end, it resulted in a Parnell – Gladstone alliance working closely together. Davitt and other prominent members left the IRB, and many rank-and-file Fenians drifted into the Home Rule movement. For the next 20 years, the IRB ceased to be an important force in Irish politics, leaving Parnell and his party the leaders of the nationalist movement in Ireland.
Party restructured Parnell now sought to use his experience and huge support to advance his pursuit of Home Rule and resurrected the suppressed Land League, on 17 October 1882, as the
Irish National League (INL). It combined moderate agrarianism, a Home Rule programme with electoral functions, was hierarchical and autocratic in structure with Parnell wielding immense authority and direct parliamentary control. Parliamentary constitutionalism was the future path. The informal alliance between the new, tightly disciplined INL and the Catholic Church was one of the main factors for the revitalisation of the national Home Rule cause after 1882. Parnell saw that the explicit endorsement of Catholicism was of vital importance to the success of this venture and worked in close cooperation with the Catholic hierarchy in consolidating its hold over the Irish electorate. The leaders of the Catholic Church largely recognised the Parnellite party as guardians of church interests, despite uneasiness with a powerful lay leadership. At the end of 1885, the highly centralised organisation had 1,200 branches spread around the country, though there were fewer in Ulster than in the other provinces. Parnell left the day-to-day running of the INL in the hands of his lieutenants
Timothy Harrington as Secretary,
William O'Brien, editor of its newspaper
United Ireland, and
Tim Healy. Its continued agrarian agitation led to the passing of several
Irish Land Acts that over three decades changed the face of Irish land ownership, replacing large
Anglo-Irish estates with tenant ownership. Parnell next turned to the Home Rule League Party, of which he was to remain the re-elected leader for over a decade, spending most of his time at
Westminster, with
Henry Campbell as his personal secretary. He fundamentally changed the party, replicated the INL structure within it and created a well-organised grassroots structure, introduced membership to replace "ad hoc" informal groupings in which MPs with little commitment to the party voted differently on issues, often against their own party. Some did not attend the House of Commons at all, citing expense, given that MPs were unpaid until 1911 and the journey to
Westminster was both costly and arduous. In 1882, he changed his party's name to the
Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). A central aspect of Parnell's reforms was a new selection procedure to ensure the professional selection of party candidates committed to taking their seats. In 1884, he imposed a firm 'party pledge' which obliged party MPs to vote as a bloc in parliament on all occasions. The creation of a strict party
whip and formal party structure was unique in party politics at the time. The Irish Parliamentary Party is generally seen as the first modern British political party, its efficient structure and control contrasting with the loose rules and flexible informality found in the main British parties, which came to model themselves on the Parnellite model. The
Representation of the People Act 1884 enlarged the franchise, and the IPP increased its number of MPs from 63 to 85 in the
1885 election. The changes affected the nature of candidates chosen. Under Butt, the party's MPs were a mixture of
Catholic and
Protestant,
landlord and others,
Whig,
Liberal and
Conservative, often leading to disagreements in policy that meant that MPs split in votes. Under Parnell, the number of Protestant and landlord MPs dwindled, as did the number of Conservatives seeking election. The parliamentary party became much more Catholic and middle class, with a large number of journalists and lawyers elected and the disappearance of
Protestant Ascendancy landowners and Conservatives from it.
Push for home rule Parnell's party emerged swiftly as a tightly disciplined and, on the whole, energetic body of parliamentarians. By 1885, he was leading a party well-poised for the next general election, his statements on Home Rule designed to secure the widest possible support. Speaking in
Cork on 21 January 1885, he stated: Both British parties toyed with various suggestions for greater self-government for Ireland. In March 1885, the British cabinet rejected the proposal of radical minister
Joseph Chamberlain of democratic county councils which in turn would elect a
Central Board for Ireland. Gladstone on the other hand said he was prepared to go 'rather further' than the idea of a Central Board. After the collapse of Gladstone's government in June 1885, Parnell urged the Irish voters in Britain to vote against the Liberal Party. The
November general elections (delayed because boundaries were being redrawn and new registers prepared after the Third Reform Act) brought about a hung Parliament in which the Liberals with 335 seats won 86 more than the Conservatives, with a Parnellite bloc of 86 Irish Home Rule MPs holding the balance of power in the Commons. Parnell's task was now to win acceptance of the principle of a Dublin parliament. Parnell at first supported a
Conservative government – they were still the smaller party after the elections – but after renewed agrarian distress arose when agricultural prices fell and unrest developed during 1885,
Lord Salisbury's Conservative government announced coercion measures in January 1886. Parnell switched his support to the Liberals. The prospects shocked
Unionists. The
Orange Order, revived in the 1880s to oppose the Land League, now openly opposed Home Rule. On 20 January, the
Irish Unionist Party was established in Dublin. By 28 January, Salisbury's government had resigned. The Liberal Party regained power on 1 February, their leader Gladstone – influenced by the status of
Norway, which at the time was
self-governing but under the Swedish Crown – moving towards Home Rule, which Gladstone's son Herbert revealed publicly under what became known as the "flying of the
Hawarden Kite". The third Gladstone administration paved the way towards the generous response to Irish demands that the new Prime Minister had promised, but was unable to obtain the support of several key players in his own party.
Lord Hartington (who had been Liberal leader in the late 1870s and was still the most likely alternative leader) refused to serve at all, while Joseph Chamberlain briefly held office then resigned when he saw the terms of the proposed bill. On 8 April 1886, Gladstone introduced the
First Irish Home Rule Bill, his object to establish an Irish legislature, although large imperial issues were to be reserved to the Westminster parliament. The Conservatives now emerged as enthusiastic unionists,
Lord Randolph Churchill declared,
"The Orange card is the one to play". In the course of a long and fierce debate Gladstone made a remarkable
Home Rule Speech, beseeching parliament to pass the bill. However, the split between pro- and anti-home rulers within the Liberal Party caused the defeat of the bill on its second reading in June by 341 to 311 votes. Parliament was dissolved and elections called, with Irish Home Rule the central issue. Gladstone hoped to repeat his triumph of
1868, when he fought and won a general election to obtain a mandate for
Irish Disestablishment (which had been a major cause of dispute between Conservatives and Liberals since the 1830s), but the result of the July
1886 general election was a Liberal defeat. The Conservatives and the
Liberal Unionist Party returned with a majority of 118 over the combined Gladstonian Liberals and Parnell's 85 Irish Party seats. Salisbury formed his second government – a minority Conservative government with Liberal Unionist support. The Liberal split made the Unionists (the Liberal Unionists sat in coalition with the Conservatives after 1895 and would eventually merge with them) the dominant force in British politics until
1906, with strong support in
Lancashire, Liverpool,
Manchester and
Birmingham (the fiefdom of its former mayor
Joseph Chamberlain who as recently as
1885 had been a furious enemy of the Conservatives) and the House of Lords where many Whigs sat (a second Home Rule Bill would pass the Commons in 1893 only to be overwhelmingly defeated in the Lords).
Pigott forgeries Parnell next became the centre of public attention when in March and April 1887 he found himself accused by the British newspaper
The Times of supporting the
brutal murders in May 1882 of the newly appointed
Chief Secretary for Ireland,
Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the Permanent Under-Secretary,
Thomas Henry Burke, in Dublin's
Phoenix Park, and of the general involvement of his movement with crime (i.e., with illegal organisations such as the
IRB). Letters were published which suggested Parnell was complicit in the murders. The most important one, dated 15 May 1882, ran as follows: A
Commission of Enquiry, which Parnell had requested, revealed in February 1889, after 128 sessions that the letters were a fabrication created by
Richard Pigott, a disreputable anti-Parnellite rogue journalist. Pigott broke down under cross-examination after the letter was shown to be a forgery by him with his characteristic spelling mistakes. He fled to
Madrid where he committed suicide. Parnell was vindicated, to the disappointment of the Tories and the Prime Minister,
Lord Salisbury. The 35-volume commission report published in February 1890, did not clear Parnell's movement of criminal involvement. Parnell then took
The Times to court and the newspaper paid him £5,000 () damages in an out-of-court settlement. When Parnell entered the House of Commons on 1 March 1890, after he was cleared, he received a hero's reception from his fellow MPs led by Gladstone. It had been a dangerous crisis in his career, yet Parnell had at all times remained calm, relaxed and unperturbed which greatly impressed his political friends. But while he was vindicated in triumph, links between the Home Rule movement and militancy had been established. This he could have survived politically were it not for the crisis to follow.
Pinnacle of power '' cover, 16 March 1889, depicting
Irish Australians offering enthusiastic support to Parnell's struggle for
Home Rule During the period 1886–1890, Parnell continued to pursue Home Rule, striving to reassure British voters that it would be no threat to them. In Ireland, unionist resistance (especially after the Irish Unionist Party was formed) became increasingly organised. Parnell pursued moderate and conciliatory tenant land purchase and still hoped to retain a sizeable landlord support for home rule. During the agrarian crisis, which intensified in 1886 and launched the
Plan of Campaign organised by Parnell's lieutenants, he chose in the interest of Home Rule not to associate himself with it. All that remained, it seemed, was to work out details of a new home rule bill with Gladstone. They held two meetings, one in March 1888 and a second more significant meeting at Gladstone's home in
Hawarden on 18–19 December 1889. On each occasion, Parnell's demands were entirely within the accepted parameters of Liberal thinking, Gladstone noting that he was one of the best people he had known to deal with, a remarkable transition from an inmate at
Kilmainham to an intimate at Hawarden in just over seven years. This was the high point of Parnell's career. In the early part of 1890, he still hoped to advance the situation on the land question, with which a substantial section of his party was displeased. == Political downfall ==