Ireland and Irishness in the political thought of Bronterre O'Brien

Abstract

Chartism, though weak in Ireland, was the most significant popular political mobilisation in nineteenth-century Britain. Among its main architects was the Irish-born radical journalist and orator, Bronterre O'Brien. This article will describe and explain a key element in O’Brien’s politics. Dubbed ‘the schoolmaster of Chartism’ because of his contribution to the movement's intellectual foundations, O'Brien was one of the few Chartist leaders who had celebrity status, though he broke with other leaders and with the mainstream movement in the early 1840s. His influence waned thereafter and his reputation among historians of Chartism is mixed, but his thoughts about Irish issues circulated widely for a time and they offer suggestive revelations about Ireland's importance to radicals of the Chartist era, about wider debates concerning Irish society and its problems, and about contemporary concepts of Irishness.