Political career of Charles Stewart Parnell

Parnell was first recognised in the radical wing of the Home Government Association at the time lead by Isaac Butt. With his alley Joseph Biggar they instituted the policy of obstructionism. Basically this was using the rules of the House of Commons to slow up the business of government. At the time there were no rules on the amount of time allowed for an issue to be discussed and anyone could raise a debate and everyone in the House had to sit and listen until it was over. The policy was quite clever too; British MPs were holding up the business of Ireland so they were going to hold up the business of Britain. This indeed was a success for Parnell, firstly this is how he became recognised by his party as someone who was willing to fight for his cause. Secondly, it showed he was not anything like Isaac Butt. Butt was a gentleman, he believed the House of Commons to

Parnell's failures lie mainly in the fact that he let his personal life get in the way of his work. This is clearly shown in the trust of William O'Shea. William O'Shea was the husband of Kitty O'Shea. They were broken up at the time but still married. Parnell was seeing Kitty O'Shea secretly and kept William O'Shea as a worker for the party because he felt guilty and also wanted him to keep the scandal quiet. Joseph Chamberlain, the leader of the radical wing of the Liberal party proposed The Central Board Scheme which was basically a lesser extreme version of Home Rule. William O'Shea told Chamberlain that it was completely satisfactory to the party when in fact Parnell had just said it was only satisfactory as a step TOWARDS Home Rule. Chamberlain was extremely annoyed and held a grudge against Parnell. Because of this Chamberlain and his followers voted against the first Home Rule bill.

When Parnell was arrested in 1881, from prison he told people to resist rent and eviction and the Irish National Land League became outlawed. After Parnell got out, he founded the Irish National League in August 1882. This time the primary aim was Home Rule and afterwards land reform would follow. Davitt didn't like this idea and left politics for a period of time. By 1886 there were 1,200 branches of the National League set-up around Ireland. Before an election, representatives met in convention to select the local Home Rule candidate in each constituency. The league organised all the public relations work as well. This was a huge success. For the first time ever in Ireland the country had an organised nationalist association. The reason for the success was because the National League took every day people, farmers and labourers and taught them how to "play politics" and beat Britain at their own game. No other country had ever attempted something like this.

Another failure of Parnell was the way he handled his divorce scandal. The reason that William O'Shea had not divorced Katharine was merely b

Some topics in this essay:
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