A B S T R A C T. This article examines Irish nationalist attitudes towards electoral reform between 1885 and 1918. It argues that before 1917 mainstream Irish nationalist opinion attached little importance to the franchise, being instead more concerned about the consequences for home rule if the number of Irish parliamentary seats was reduced through redistribution. However, the introduction of wartime legislation to reform the franchise and registration system repoliticized electoral reform in nationalist Ireland. While the Irish parliamentary party vociferously protested at the coalition government's belated attempt to redistribute Irish constituencies, its critics (a coalition of heterodox nationalists, socialists, and suffragettes) accused it of deliberately conspiring to exclude Ireland from the 'fourth ' reform bill because the young men and women it would enfranchise intended to vote for Sinn Fein. This article argues that the concerns of the Irish party regarding redistribution were genuine and legitimate, while the conspiracy theory was essentially a propaganda device. None the less, the theory gained widespread attention because its underlying assumption about the voting behaviour of the new electorate was shared not only by its exponents, but by sections of the press, the British administration in Ireland, and the Irish party itself. Indeed, so convinced was the party that the cleavage in Ireland was as much generational as ideological that ultimately the franchise was a factor in its defeat at the 1918 general election.

Many historians have noted the symbolic role the veteran Fenian and 1916 proclamation signatory, Thomas J. Clarke, played as a ‘living link’ between the neo-Fenians of Easter 1916 and the previous generation of Irish revolutionaries. However, before 1914 the neo-Fenian claim to the revolutionary nationalist tradition was by no means unchallenged. For constitutional nationalists also claimed the legacy of the ‘men of ’67’. Although this now seems most implausible, at the time it was much more convincing, not least because of the presence of so many former Fenians in the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1887 the R.I.C. estimated that 23 of the 83 Parnellite M.P.s had been Fenians before entering parliament. Paul Bew has argued that their presence influenced the ‘ideological tone’ of Parnellism, bringing an admiration for armed insurrection which, though emphasising its inexpediency, also stressed its nobility and heroic qualities.

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Drawing on the recent scholarly interest in 'generationism' and the revolutionary period, this article examines the life chances of the 247 children born to the last cohort of Irish Parliamentary Party M.P.s elected to Westminster between 1910 and1918. It employs a prosopographical approach to reconstruct their lives at specific points (1910 and 1948) in order to assess the impact that independence had on their fortunes longitudinally. While it problematises the idea that the Edwardian children of nationalist M.P.s formed part of a privileged elite in waiting, it does conclude that they enjoyed a degree of cultural and political capital that positioned them advantageously in advance of home rule The analysis advanced here suggests that despite experiencing some political disorientation, those scions of the old I.P.P. who lived through the revolutionary years re-oriented themselves relatively quickly, regrouped, and experienced considerable political and professional success during the following decades. As for those children who were born or achieved adulthood after 1922, there is little evidence to suggest that they were socially or politically ostracised, or that, in turn, they felt a sense of fundamental alienation from the new state. Ultimately, unlike those who had fought for the republic but ended up feeling as if they were among the losers, what the children of the I.P.P lost after 1918 should not obscure the fact that many of them were among the winners in the new Ireland 1850 -1900 (Oxford, 2014. 6Ireland which seemed at last to be within reach', the outbreak of the war in 1914 suggests that critics of the I.P.P. saw the children of the party as sharing in the political sins of their fathers. 12As such, if they were not viewed as a discrete group, they were clearly seen as auxiliaries of the I.P.P.. considerable success under the new regime. As for those children who were born or achieved adulthood after 1922, there is very little evidence to suggest that they were socially or politically ostracised, or that, in turn, they felt a sense of fundamental alienation from the new state. In short, the available evidence does not suggest that the life chances of these children were adversely affected by independence to a measurable extent. In its findingsWhether born before or after 1922, the success of the I.P.P. children in the professions, in business, in government service, and in civil society demonstrates the importance of the relatively high social, cultural, and political capital they inherited, which in many cases allowed That said, the fact that a degree was not necessary for a number of professional careers in Edwardian Ireland was probably also a consideration for families assessing the costs and benefits of university attendance.The educational profile of the children of late Edwardian M.P.s suggests that if attendance at elite schools and universities were cultural markers of Edwardian Ireland's aspirational Catholic middle class, then many Home Rule M.P.s and their children were se...