- published: 04 Dec 2015
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Irish nationalism (Irish: Náisiúnachas Éireannach) is the nationalism of the Irish people and Irish culture. Since the partition of Ireland, the term generally refers to support for a united Ireland.
Ireland has been subject to varying degrees of rule from England since the late 12th century (See Norman Ireland). The Gaelic Irish resisted this conquest through military and other means, but were organized in small independent lordships and did not have a common political goal such as a centralised independent Irish state. Conflict over the English presence was exacerbated by the Protestant Reformation in England, which introduced a religious element to the 16th century Tudor conquest of Ireland, as almost all of the native Irish remained Catholic. In Ireland, many native Catholic landowners were dispossessed during the Plantations of Ireland when land was given to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. In addition, the Plantation of Ulster, begun in 1609, "planted" a sizable colony of English and Scottish Protestant settlers into the north of Ireland.
Jonathan David Anthony Bowden (April 12, 1962 - March 29, 2012) was a British political figure who had been involved with a number of political parties and groups, and a leading speaker on the nationalist circuit. His great influence was the novelist, Bill Hopkins, who had been one of the Angry Young Men of the 1950s.
Bowden was born in Kent and was educated at Presentation College, Reading, Berkshire. In 1983-4 he completed one year of a B.A. history course at London University's Birkbeck College, but then left. He began his political career as a member of the Conservative Party in the Tower Hamlets association, in the Shoreditch and Stepney Green constituency. In October 1990 (until 1992) he joined the Monday Club, where the following year he made an unsuccessful bid to stand for its Executive Council. In May 1991, he was appointed co-chairman, with Stuart Millson, of the Club's Media Committee. During the early 1990s, he stated that he had been the deputy chairman of the Western Goals Institute although this cannot be verified.