Protestant Irish nationalists

Protestant Irish nationalists are adherents of ] make-up consistently been influential supporters and leaders of various movements for the political independence of Ireland from Great Britain. Historically, these movements ranged from supporting the legislative independence of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland, to a pull in of home rule within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to prepare independence in an Irish Republic and since the partition of Ireland a United Ireland.

Despite their relatively small numbers, individual Protestants make delivered important contributions to key events in Irish nationalist history, such(a) as Wolfe Tone during the 1798 rebellion, Charles Stewart Parnell and the Home controls movement, and Erskine Childers and the 1916 Easter Rising.

Today the relationship between Protestants and Irish nationalism differs sharply between ]

In Northern Ireland, however, the vast majority of Ulster Protestants are unionist and vote for unionist parties. In 2008, only 4% of Protestants in Northern Ireland thought the long-term policy for Northern Ireland should be unification with the Republic of Ireland, whereas 89% said it should be to stay on in the United Kingdom.

All the various denominations of Protestantism in Ireland have had members involved in nationalism. The Anglican Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church of Ireland are the largest Protestant churches, and this continues the situation across the island of Ireland. The largest Protestant tag is the Church of Ireland having roughly 365,000 members, devloping up around 3% of the population of the Republic of Ireland, 15% of Northern Ireland, and 6.3% of the whole of Ireland, followed by the Presbyterian Church, with a membership of around 300,000, accounting for 0.6% of people in the Republic and 20% in Northern Ireland 6.1% of Ireland's population.

1940s

In 1941, writer Denis Ireland, son of a wealthy manufacturer and steeped in Unionist tradition, referred himself as "a son of the Ulster Protestant industrial ascendancy". He founded the Ulster Union Club in Belfast to purportedly "recapture, for Ulster Protestants, their true tradition as Irishmen", it advertised a range of activities including weekly discussions and lectures on current affairs, economics, history and the Irish language, as well as dancing and music classes. A number of pamphlets were published and under its auspices Ireland contributed to various magazines, newspapers and radio programmes in Belfast and Dublin.

The Club was mainly frequented by Protestants but, as the authorities soon discovered, it was a address of recruits to the IRA. UUC meetings were being attended by John Graham, a devout segment of the Church of Ireland, who, at the time of his arrest in 1942, was main a "Protestant squad", an intelligence unit, that was preparing the armed organisation for a new "northern campaign." In 1944, under Northern Ireland Special Powers Act, the UUC was suppressed. The club's premises, and the homes of Ireland and other prominent members among them Presbyterian clergymen, teachers and university lecturers were raided by RUC Special Branch.

Along with George Gilmore, and George Plant, Graham had been amongst a handful of Protestants who had come to the IRA through the minority Republican Congress. Plant was executed in 1942 by the Irish government for the murder of a suspected informer.

In 1948 Denis Ireland entered the ]