ABSTRACT
The Parnellites responded with accusations that their opponents were traitors, ‘prepared to sell their chieftain’ for what they regarded as a home rule victory. In 1896 the council of the Young Ireland League – a body formed in 1891 to foster Irish culture and political ideas, and including John O’Leary, W.B. Yeats, Arthur Griffith and Michael Cusack – proposed a national celebration to mark the centenary of the 1798 rebellion. The home rule movement was also under threat from the forces of British and Irish – and more particularly Ulster-unionism, in its ‘moral’ and ‘physical force’ character. After the first Home Rule Bill of 1886, the Conservatives came to office convinced that they could undermine, Irish nationalism by removing the social discontent that they perceived underlay it. The revival of politics came, not from the home rulers, and certainly not from the IRB, but from the fringe literary/nationalist groups which had become disillusioned by the unedifying behaviour of the politicians.
