Thou Shalt Not Vote : The Politics of Exclusion in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

by Maurice Goldring; William Taylor

• ISBN13: 9781897959343
• ISBN10: 1897959346
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-05-01
• Publisher: Serif Publishing

Summary

A startling original study of reactionary political rhetoric. Catholics, as well as women, the peasantry, and the working class were excluded from the vote in Ireland prior to Daniel O'Connell's campaign for Catholic Emancipation. To date, historians have concentrated their attention on supporters of Emancipation rather than its opponents; Maurice Goldring offers the first study of the conservative opponents of extending the ballot to Catholics and, later, to the 'lower orders' and women. The idea of a small cabal of conspirators duping the innocent masses is not, of course, unique to Ireland, and Goldring places the anti-Emancipationists' fears and phobias in the broader context of reactionary European thought, bringing out their links with anti-semitic mythology. Like Maurice Goldring's earlier work, Thou Shalt Not Vote is about much more than Irish politics: it is a study of conservative and reactionary political ideas with resonances both in our own time and across the world.