ABSTRACT
Unionism as a self-conscious political identity and as a set of commitments may be said to have its origins in the transformation of political life which took place in Ireland in the 1870s and 1880s. As Irish Nationalists effectively mobilized the Catholic electorate in the name of self-government or Home Rule so defence of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland became the rallying cry for the majority of Irish Protestants. In the process, constitutional politics became party politics and party politics became almost exclusively confessional politics. The partisan passions of this constitutional struggle were most acute in Ulster where Protestantism and Unionism had an effective popular basis. The distinctiveness of Ulster (the nine counties) from the rest of Ireland - its Protestant majority and its industrialized economy around Belfast - was, as far as Irish Unionists were concerned, the political exception which disproved the case for Home Rule. While Irish Unionists could argue a good general case for the economic and political benefits of Irdand's remaining within the Union and the value of remaining at the heart of the British Empire (much as, though in very different circumstances, it is argued today that a member state should not leave the European Union), Ulster Unionists could point to the practical evidence of their province's undoubted prosperity. Protestant Ulster's popular resistance to constitutional change was to be the Unionist tactic for preventing Home Rule for Ireland as a whole.
