31 January–17 February 1874 1880 → 27 February 1868 3 December 1868 37 66 Start date 1874 | 1873 27 February 1868 New 37 60 31 | |
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The 1874 British general election in Ireland produced the first major electoral appearance of the Home Rule League under chairman Isaac Butt. The party's electoral success, in which it won 60 MPs, taking control of Irish electoral politics from the previously dominant Conservative and the Liberal parties was the beginning of a dominance that was to see the party as the Irish Parliamentary Party control the political landscape in Ireland until its wipeout in the 1918 general election in Ireland.
However its success in 1874 was marred by the lack of unity within the party in the British House of Commons, where many of its members in effect sat as Liberal MPs and voted against their own Irish colleagues. It was not until then chairman Charles Stewart Parnell in the early 1880s introduced a strict whip that the party began to exercise serious influence, and act as a unit, in Westminster.