Feargus O'Connor

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Feargus Edward O'Connor (1794 – August 30, 1855) was an Irish Chartist leader and advocate of the Land Plan.

Born into a Protestant family, the son of Irish Nationalist Politician Roger O'Connor (1762-1834) and nephew of Arthur O'Connor (1753-1852), the agent in France for Robert Emmet's rebellion; both of whom famous for belonging to the United Irishmen. Much of his early life was spent on his family's estates in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied law before inheriting an estate from his uncle in 1820. During the 1830s he emerged as an advocate for Irish rights and democratic political reform as a notable critic of the Whig government's policies on Ireland.

In 1832, he was elected to the British House of Commons as Member of Parliament for County Cork, but was disqualified in 1835 because he failed to satisfy the property requirement for MPs. In 1837 he founded a radical newspaper, the Northern Star. He was the leading figure in Chartism. When the first wave of Chartism ebbed he founded the Chartist Land Company in 1845. The Land Company aimed to buy large agricultural estates in order to subdivide the land into smallholdings which could be let to individuals. Unfortunately the scheme was unsuccessful and the company was declared bankrupt in 1851. When Chartism again gained momentum he was elected MP for Nottingham and organised the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common, London, in 1848.

O'Connor never married, but according to his biographers had a succession of affairs and fathered several illegitimate children, including Edward O'Connor Terry, the celebrated music hall artist and theatre owner.

In 1852, O'Connor visited the United States. On his return, he insulted the MP Beckett Denison. Certified a lunatic, he was committed to an asylum in Chiswick, where he died in 1855.

Most of the early historians of Chartism were quite negative about his role. In recent years, however, there has been a trend to reassess him in a more favorable light. [Dorothy Thompson: The Chartists, p96]