Irish Unionist Party
The Irish Unionist Party was a Unionist party founded in Ireland in the second half of the 19th century to oppose plans for "Gladstonian home rule for Ireland. The party was led for much of its life by Colonel Edward James Saunderson and later by the William St John Fremantle Brodrick, Viscount (later the Earl of) Midleton.
The party aligned itself closely with Liberal Unionists and the Conservative Party to campaign to prevent the passage of a Home Rule Bill. Among its most prominent members were Dublin barrister Edward Carson and founder of the Co-operative movement Horace Plunkett. Its electoral strength was largely through not exclusively Dublin-based, with it electing MPs from constituencies in the south Dublin area and for the Dublin University constituency. As late as 1929 there was a Unionist majority in Rathmines council.
The party was replaced in Ulster by the Ulster Unionist Party from the start of the twentieth century. Significantly, Southern Unionist members sided with Irish Nationalists against the Ulster Unionists during the 1917-18 Irish Convention in an attempt to bring about an understanding on the implementation on the suspended 1914 Home Rule Act.
It lost its reason to exist following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Some of its leading figures, such as the Earl of Midleton, Lord Dunraven and Horace Plunkett, were appointed to the Free State Seanad (Senate).
Many of its leading figures were associated with the Kildare Street Club, a gentleman's club in Dublin.
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