page_title: Justin McCarthy (politician, born 1830)
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Justin McCarthy (politician, born 1830) / Political career
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of Mr Justin McCarthy MP. Caption read "Irish history".
context_page_description: Justin McCarthy was an Irish nationalist and Liberal historian, novelist and politician. He was a Member of Parliament from 1879 to 1900, taking his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
context_section_description: McCarthy was first elected to Parliament at a by-election on 4 April 1879, when he was returned unopposed as a Home Rule League MP for County Longford. He was re-elected unopposed as a Parnellite Home Ruler in 1880, and when the two-seat Longford constituency was split into two divisions under the Redistribution of Seats Act, he was elected as an Irish Parliamentary Party member for the new single-seat Northern division of Longford. His sole opponent, a Conservative, won only 6% of the votes.
  At the 1886 general election, he was returned unopposed in North Longford, but had also stood in Londonderry City, where he was declared to have lost to the Unionist candidate by the narrow margin of 1778 votes to 1781. However, the result was later overturned on petition, and McCarthy opted to sit for Londonderry City. During the divorce controversy surrounding Charles Stewart Parnell in November 1890, the British Prime Minister Gladstone expressed a warning, given to Justin McCarthy as intermediary, that if Parnell retained leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party it would mean the loss of the next election, the end of their alliance and Home Rule. When the annual party leadership election meeting was called later that month, this threat was somehow not conveyed to the members, who re-elected Parnell leader of the Party.
  After a further historical meeting of the Irish Party MPs early December, Parnell refused to retire, and the Party divided. McCarthy became chairman of the Anti-Parnellite group, or the Irish National Federation and held that post until January 1896; but his nationalism was of a temperate and orderly kind, and though his personal distinction singled him out for the chairmanship during the party dissensions of this period, he was in no active sense the political leader.
  At the 1892 general election, McCarthy again stood both in North Longford and in Londonderry City. In each seat there was a two-way contest between the Anti-Parnellite McCarthy and a Unionist candidate, but the narrow Unionist victory in Londonderry City (by 1986 votes to 1960) was not overturned, and McCarthy sat for North Longford, where he had won over 93% of the votes. He was returned unopposed for North Longford in 1895, and stood down from Parliament at the 1900 general election.
caption: McCarthy caricatured by Spy in Vanity Fair, 1885
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