Why Some Forms of Opposition Were More Successful than Others in the Pe

Why Some Forms of Opposition Were More Successful than Others in the Period 1798-1921 The Act of Union, 1801. Ireland was to be joined to Great Britain into a single kingdom, the Dublin parliament was to be abolished. Ireland was to be represented at Westminster (all were Anglicans), the Anglican Church was to be recognised as the official Church of Ireland, no Catholics were to be allowed to hold public office and there was to be no Catholic Emancipation. Immediately we can see from this that any form of opposition would be to destroy this act. Fundamentally it destroyed all catholic rights and forced them to renounce their Catholic faith and take on a Protestant one. In Ireland Daniel O'Connell developed a reputation for his radical political views. By the early 1920's the Irish people started to listen to O'Connell's views and he gathered a large group of supporters. O'Connell had many aims in his political career. O'Connell's goal was to repeal against the act of union. When the Act of Union was passed in 1801 it did not help the Irish. It simply brought problems and distrust to the Irish people. O'Connell organised a meeting to discuss the repeal of the Act of Union, three quarters of a million Irish turned up. They were known as 'Monster Meetings'. We can see that O'Connell successfully created an Irish nation movement and completely changed the British view of the Irish. The British now had a certain amount of respect for the Irish and even feared and threatened their movement. This support from the people could show us the later success that O'Connell has in his opposition, as a movement without opposition would ultimately ... ...d in the cruellest yet effective way possible. Collins achievements were many: he helped fight the British to a stalemate by changing the rules of warfare and setting up an intelligence network to rival the Empire's. He helped negotiate a treaty, which gave Ireland the first stepping stone to become a Republic, and oversaw Ireland's turbulent transition to democracy. His achievements were, however, not without a price. He precipitated the bloody War of Independence against the British and the treaty deal brought back from London split the country into two fiercely opposing halves and plunged the country into the throes of a traumatic civil war. Thus ultimately opposition needed to be well organised and have enough support to succeed, constitutional nationalism had this through its methods of working through the system.