From the very beginning of the conflict in the East, Irish members in the upper and lower Houses responded to a variety of policies, issues and events that were related to the war. Some were Irish in nature and others Irish in origin, but they were more often of a generic or even ‘imperial’ nature. Either way, the most common response of Irish MPs and peers in those years was criticism of the government's policies. That being said, no matter how abundant the criticism, it was more often imbued with patriotic sentiments. Such expressions, similar to those in the public and religious spheres, which will be analysed later, were of an imperial nature, or indeed directed at the broader United Kingdom. They also conformed to the Earl of Derby's declaration in early 1854, that while the Conservative Party would cordially support the war, the government would still be faced with unsparing criticism. The first expression of this criticism emerged as early as the summer of 1853 when the diplomatic situation in the East began to deteriorate and Britain and France responded with diplomatic notes and the movement of their fleets. However, before this chapter can go into the details, not only of how Irish MPs and peers responded, to what specifically, and who those men actually were, it must first give some background to the political system as it stood in Ireland and Britain in the 1850s, and how that impacted upon the politics of the war.

The politics and parliament of the United Kingdom c. 1854

The Crimean War occurred in the middle of a thirteen-year-long period of political flux in the United Kingdom; it exacerbated pre-existing factors and problems and exerted an influence on politics throughout Ireland and Great Britain. The instability of the period was largely due to a number of political events which occurred between 1846 and 1852: the fall and later accidental death of Sir Robert Peel and the splitting of the Conservative Party, the death of Daniel O'Connell and the disintegration of the Repeal Party, the Conservative leadership of the Earl of Derby and the premiership of John Russell.