Wherever Tyranny Exists: The Life of Daniel "The Liberator" O'Connell

Daniel O'Connell, the man who almost brought down the Anglo-Irish Union, was born on this day in 1775...

“I am the advocate of civil and religious liberty, all over the globe, and wherever tyranny exists…”

There’s a radical reason why the main street in central Dublin is named O’Connell.

Daniel O’Connell – nicknamed “The Liberator” – was the most effective radical politician in nineteenth-century Europe.

O’Connell organised and led a mass movement from the 1820s to the 1840s which ended a century of anti-Catholic discrimination in Ireland, and almost brought down the Union with England.

This is his story.

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O’Connell was born on this day in 1775, to a wealthy Catholic family in County Kerry.

He trained as a lawyer during the 1790s, first in France – where he witnessed the early days of the French Revolution – then in London.

O’Connell began work as a barrister in Ireland in 1798, an ominous year for the nation…

Supported by revolutionary France, the republican United Irishmen led by Wolfe Tone launched a war of independence against Britain.

The rebels fought bravely but were crushed.

Daniel O’Connell was absent from the struggle. He was still playing the role of an establishment lawyer, basically aligned with the British government.

But that wouldn’t last…

After the Napoleonic Wars ended and the space for political opposition grew in Britain, O’Connell took the lead in the fight for ‘Catholic Emancipation’.

Daniel O'Connell was in France during the early days of the French Revolution, but fled across the English Channel in 1793

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The cause of Irish freedom was never only about the question of political independence; it also included the problem of the Penal Laws.

The Penal Laws were an anti-Catholic code introduced at the end of the seventeenth century banning Roman Catholics – i.e., the majority of Irish subjects – from a wide range of professions and civil rights.

Even after these restrictions had been diluted in 1793, Catholics were still barred from being MPs, judges, or ministers of state.

This stung elite Catholics like O’Connell, but it had the potential to mobilise the Irish masses, too, as an act of religious discrimination against an oppressed population.

O’Connell launched the Catholic Association in 1823 to campaign for an end to the Penal Laws – for Catholic Emancipation.

He helped pioneer the methods of modern popular politics, holding huge ‘monster rallies’ of more than 100,000 people across Ireland.

O’Connell mobilised so much support that even the “Iron Duke” (the Duke of Wellington), who was then Tory Prime Minister, had to admit defeat.

Wellington recognised that the mass base for Catholic Emancipation in Ireland was the main revolutionary force in British politics, and it would have to be appeased.

He forced through the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, ending the Penal Laws. O’Connell had won.

Now able to be elected to Parliament as a Catholic, O’Connell moved onto the next problem: repeal of the Anglo-Irish Union.

The Irish demand was for a restoration of the devolved Irish Parliament in Dublin, which had been abolished by Westminster in 1800.

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Over the 1830s, O’Connell mobilised support for the new campaign, reaching fever-pitch in 1843.

He rallied a million people at the Hill of Tara in County Meath, the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland, for a peaceful protest march to Clontarf, outside Dublin.

But when the government responded by deploying the army, O’Connell backed down.

He’d no appetite for violence, and was willing to demobilise the mass movement of Repealers to avoid it.

The decision alienated his more radical supporters, the ‘Young Irelanders’, who increasingly saw O’Connell as too risk-averse.

Indeed, O’Connell clashed with a number of radical and progressive movements over the years.

Irish republicans and nationalists in the tradition of Wolfe Tone were suspicious of O’Connell’s close cooperation with English Liberals in Parliament.

They also criticised his detours into Catholic sectarianism, whereas the republican tradition was proudly multi-confessional – Tone himself was a protestant.

O’Connell, as an upper-class landlord, was also lukewarm towards the demands of worker and peasant movements in Britain and Ireland, including Chartism and land reform.

But beyond Ireland, O’Connell’s status was immense and widely unquestioned by progressives.

He inspired movements as diverse as the struggle for Catholic liberties in Prussia, labour radicals in 1840s France, the Anti-Corn Law League in England, and the abolitionist movement in the U.S.

O’Connell’s most courageous position might have been his support for slavery abolition in America, in spite of the fact it alienated many of the Irish-American Repealers.

“…of all men living, an American citizen, who is the owner of slaves, is the most despicable.”

A mixed reputation at home (despite the murals and monuments) with a large cache of prestige abroad, much of it well-earned, Daniel O’Connell was the archetype of a modern Irish radical.