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The Irish Unionist Alliance (also known as the Irish Unionist Party) was a Unionist party founded in Ireland in 1891 to oppose plans for Gladstonian and Parnellite Home Rule for Ireland. The party was led for much of its life by Colonel Edward James Saunderson and later by the William St John Brodrick, Earl of Midleton. In total, eighty-six members of the House of Lords affiliated themselves with the Irish Unionist Alliance, although its membership was small.

The party aligned itself closely with Liberal Unionists and the Conservative Party to campaign to prevent the passage of a Home Rule Bill. Among its most prominent members were Dublin barrister, Edward Carson, and founder of the Ireland's Co-operative movement, Horace Plunkett. Its electoral strength was largely through not exclusively Dublin-based, with it electing MPs from constituencies in the south Dublin area and for the Dublin University constituency. As late as 1929 there was a Unionist majority in Rathmines council.

The party was replaced in Ulster by the Ulster Unionist Party from the start of the twentieth century. In Ulster, other reasons for unionism existed, including the industrial growth of Belfast after 1850 that depended on the British Empire, and a fear of Rome Rule, the worry about an overly Catholic-dominated new Irish parliament. In the tense period between the Parliament Act 1911 and the Home Rule Act 1914, the fear arose that an Irish civil war would develop between nationalists in the south and west and the Ulster unionists, who went so far as to create their own paramilitary group, the "Ulster Volunteers".

Significantly, Southern Unionist members sided with Irish Nationalists against the Ulster Unionists during the 1917–18 Irish Convention in an attempt to bring about an understanding on the implementation on the suspended Home Rule Act 1914. Home Rule did however come to pass for Northern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act 1920.

The Alliance's opposition to Irish partition led to its being marginalised at the 1918 general election, which showed the rising influence of the republican Sinn Féin party on the one hand and the partitionist Ulster Unionist Council on the other. Although the election in Ireland saw many Alliance members such as Edward Carson returned for Ulster constituencies, they did not agree with the need to keep Ireland united, even under Home Rule. The party lost its reason to exist following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Some of its leading figures, such as the Earl of Midleton, Lord Dunraven, James Campbell and Horace Plunkett, a cousin of Count Plunkett, were appointed to the Free State Seanad (Senate). Horace Plunkett's home in County Dublin was burned down during the Irish Civil War (1922-23) because of his involvement in the Irish Senate.

Many of its leading figures were associated before 1921 with the Kildare Street Club, a gentleman's club in Dublin.

Notes

1. Jackson, Alvin, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000, Phoenix Press (2003), ISBN 0-75381-767-5

References

• Barberis, Peter, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley, 2005. Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organisations. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0826458149, 9780826458148

Publications

The Home rule bill in committee, session, 1893 from Internet Archive.

• History of Ireland
• Political parties in pre-partition Ireland
• Irish Unionist Party politicians
• Defunct political parties in Ireland