Catholic Emancipation in the context of "Irish unionist"

Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to the crown of the United Kingdom and to the union it represents with England, Scotland and Wales. The overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority, unionism mobilised in the decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Irish parliament. Since Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an all-Ireland republic. Within the framework of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in a reformed Northern Ireland Assembly. As of February 2024, they no longer do so as the larger faction: they serve in an executive with an Irish republican (Sinn Féin) First Minister.

Unionism became an overarching partisan affiliation in Ireland late in the nineteenth century. Typically Presbyterian agrarian-reform Liberals coalesced with traditionally Anglican, Orange Order allied, Conservatives against the Irish Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. Joined by loyalist labour, on the eve of World War I this broad opposition to Irish self-government concentrated in Belfast and its hinterlands as Ulster unionism and prepared an armed resistance—the Ulster Volunteers.

The O’Connell School is a secondary and primary school for boys located on North Richmond Street in Dublin, Ireland. The school, named in honour of the leader of Catholic Emancipation, Daniel O’Connell, has the distinction of being the oldest surviving Christian Brothers school in Dublin, having been first established in 1829. It is now under the trusteeship of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust.

The school offers the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate programmes.

John Geddes (9 September 1735 – 11 February 1799) was a Scottish Catholic prelate who served as Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District from 1779 to 1797. He was also rector of the Royal Scots College, Valladolid, from 1771 to 1780. In addition to his published writings about the history of the Catholic Church in Scotland and efforts to achieve Catholic Emancipation, Geddes is particularly important for his partially extant diary of Edinburgh intellectual life during the Scottish Enlightenment and for his friendship with Scottish national poet Robert Burns, from whom he received the now priceless volume known as The Geddes Burns.

Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (18 June 1769 – 12 August 1822), usually known as Lord Castlereagh, derived from the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh (UK: /ˈkɑːsəlreɪ/ KAH-səl-ray) by which he was styled from 1796 to 1821, was an Irish-born British statesman and politician. As secretary to the Viceroy in Ireland, he worked to suppress the Rebellion of 1798 and to secure passage in 1800 of the Irish Act of Union. As the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1812, he was central to the management of the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and was British plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna. In the post-war government of Lord Liverpool, Castlereagh was seen to support harsh measures against agitation for reform, and he ended his life an isolated and unpopular figure.

Early in his career in Ireland, and following a visit to revolutionary France, Castlereagh recoiled from the democratic politics of his Presbyterian constituents in Ulster. Crossing the floor of the Irish House of Commons in support of the government, he took a leading role in detaining members of the republican conspiracy, the United Irishmen, his former political associates among them. After the 1798 Rebellion, as Chief Secretary for Ireland he pushed the Act of Union through the Irish Parliament. However, unable to overcome the resistance of King George III to the Catholic Emancipation that they believed should have accompanied the creation of a United Kingdom, both he and Prime Minister William Pitt resigned.

John Wilkes FRS (17 October 1725 – 26 December 1797) was an English radical, journalist, politician, magistrate, essayist, and soldier. He was first elected a Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of his voters – rather than the House of Commons – to determine their representatives. In 1768, angry protests of his supporters were suppressed in the Massacre of St George's Fields. In 1771, he was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. In 1776, he introduced the first bill for parliamentary reform in the British Parliament.

During the American War of Independence, he was a supporter of the rebels, adding further to his popularity with American Whigs. However, in 1780 he commanded militia forces which helped put down the Gordon Riots, damaging his popularity with many radicals. This marked a turning point, leading him to embrace increasingly conservative policies which caused dissatisfaction among the radical low-to-middle income landowners. This was instrumental in the loss of his Middlesex parliamentary seat in the 1790 general election. At the age of 65, Wilkes retired from politics and took no part in the social reforms following the French Revolution, such as Catholic Emancipation in the 1790s. During his life, he earned a reputation as a libertine.

The Loyal National Repeal Association (commonly referred to as the Repeal Association) was an Irish political party formed by Daniel O'Connell in 1840 to campaign for the repeal of the Acts of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland.

The Association sought to restore the Irish Parliament and achieve the level of legislative independence briefly attained in the 1780s under Henry Grattan and his patriots, with the addition of Catholic emancipation, made possible by the Act of Emancipation in 1829, and the expanded francise of the Irish Reform Act 1832, in addition to responsible government, making Ireland a separate kingdom in a personal union with Great Britain on equal footing. It advocated a peaceful and constitutional path to repeal while maintaining loyalty to the British Crown.