The collapse of Ulster Protestant radicalism in the decades following the Union has been widely commented on yet that radicalism persisted and revived from the 1830s in counterweight to the dominant conservative political dispensation in the province.
A central figure in that revival was William Sharman Crawford who worked in sometimes uneasy alliance at different times with Belfast liberals, Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal movement, and British Chartism. For him the memory of the Volunteer movement of 1778-93 offered an alternative radical ancestry to that of the now more problematic United Irishmen.
He was most successful in his pursuit of agrarian reform between 1845 and 1853 bringing significant northern support to the cause of the Irish Tenant League which for a while posed a serious threat to the landed social order.
He remained committed to promoting radical, democratic, and social reforms through to his death in 1861.
Peter Gray is Professor of Modern Irish History at Queen’s University, Belfast. His William Sharman Crawford and Ulster Radicalism (2004) was awarded the James S. Donnelly prize for books on Irish History and Politics in 2004.
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