In many ways, it might not come as a surprise that the Irish Party was sometimes forgotten in the decades after its electoral defeat. The last incarnation of the party in 1918 was a collection of parliamentary veterans— survivors from the Parnell era and others who were often backbench constituency workers. The individuals and the collective lacked the romance of revolutionaries, even those who proceeded to more staid but prominent middle ages in the ranks of Cumann na nGaedheal or, later, Fianna Fáil. Yet, independent Ireland was a period when the legacy of the revolutionary years was never far away; it may have been uncomfortable and there may have been silence in some communities, but the years 1912–23 were still in living memory as Fianna Fáil took power in 1932. The state as arbiter of official memory held commemorations and memorials each year and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Easter Rising was marked in 1941. Yet, this was also a time when there was a state centenary held for the Young Ireland leader Thomas Davis in 1945 and the Free State marked the centenary of Catholic emancipation with enthusiasm in 1929. Nevertheless, the fact remained that the Sinn Féin surge in 1918 was as much a reaction against the Irish Party as against British rule; as this chapter illustrates, commemorating the IPP (or not doing so) raised its own questions and difficulties.

The commemorations of John and Willie Redmond in the 1920s demonstrated a clear vernacular memory of Redmond's Irish Party in a state where it has previously been suggested that it had been forgotten. As seen in Chapter 3, the desire of some of these old followers to relaunch the movement in the form of the Irish National League and that party's rapid collapse helped to undermine Redmondite commemorations. By the 1930s and 1940s, many former Irish Party veterans had passed away and those with home rule roots in contemporary politics began to assimilate into the new politics.