Daniel O’Connell

Daniel O'Connell was an Irish political leader known as the Liberator. Daniel O'Connell held the title of member of the 14th Parliament of the United Kingdom and member of the 13th Parliament of the United Kingdom.

He built a mass constitutional movement that achieved Catholic emancipation in 1829 and later campaigned, unsuccessfully, for repeal of the union with Britain. Daniel O'Connell was born in Cahersiveen and died in Genoa.

Antonia Fraser’s The King and the Catholics makes Daniel O’Connell the most powerful public force behind Catholic emancipation, following the mass mobilisation he built in Ireland and the pressure it placed on Westminster. His campaigns are set against George IV’s resistance and the calculations of Wellington and Peel, showing how O’Connell’s ability to organise opinion outside Parliament helped make exclusion of Catholics from political office increasingly untenable.