Irish Confederation

The Irish Confederation was an Irish nationalist independence movement, established on 13 January 1847 by members of the Young Ireland movement who had seceded from Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association. Historian T. W. Moody described it as "the official organisation of Young Ireland".

Historical background

In June 1846, Sir Robert Peel's Tory Ministry fell, and the Liberals under Lord John Russell came to power. Daniel O'Connell, founder of the Repeal Association which campaigned for a repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland, simultaneously attempted to move the Association into supporting the Russell administration and English Liberalism.

The intention was that Repeal agitation would be damped down in return for a profuse distribution of patronage through Conciliation Hall, home of the Repeal Association. On 15 June 1846 Thomas Francis Meagher denounced English Liberalism in Ireland saying that there was a suspicion that the national cause of Repeal would be sacrificed to the Whig government and that the people who were striving for freedom would be "purchased back into factious vassalage." Meagher and the other “Young Irelanders" (an epithet of opprobrium used by O'Connell to describe the young men of The Nation newspaper), as active Repealers, vehemently denounced in Conciliation Hall any movement towards English political parties, be they Whig or Tory, so long as Repeal was denied.