Irish Home Rule - 1867-1921 (Broché)

This is the first account of Irish Home Rule to explain all of the self-government plans, placing them in context and examining the motives behind the schemes. The book makes a clear distinction between material and moral Home Rulers. The former appealed especially to outsiders, some Protestants and the intelligentsia, who saw in self-government a means to reconcile Ireland's antagonistic traditions.
In contrast, material Home Rulers viewed a Dublin parliament as a forum for Catholic interests. This account reappraises the Home Rule movement from a fresh angle. By getting away from the usual division drawn between physical force and constitutional nationalists, O'Day maintains that an ideological continuity runs from Young Ireland, the Fenians, the early Home Rulers including Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell, to the Gaelic Revivalists and the men of 1916.
These nationalists are distinguishable from material Home Rulers not on the basis of methods or strategy but through a fundamental ideological cleavage.