Ribbonism, the name assumed by a group of secret associations among the lower classes in Ireland throughout the half century extending from 1820 to 1870, at its greatest height from about 1835 to 1855. Its origin and organisation are alike wrapped in obscurity, but it appears in the beginning at least to have been political in its aims, and O'Connell's opinion seems most probable, that it grew out of the northern Defenders who banded themselves to oppose the Orange organisation. Earlier associations with somewhat similar aims were the Whiteboys and the Threshers, and, in particular corners of the island, the Carders, Shanavests, and Caravats.
Ribbonism, according to O'Connell, was more political in the north, in presence of the organisation of the Orange lodges; in the south it flowed rather into what he characterised as 'driftless acts of outrage.' Although everywhere condemned by the Catholic clergy, it included none but Catholics within its numbers, and it maintained its influence by a system of oaths and secret signs and passwords. Of these many were made known to the authorities by informers, but they were found to contradict completely rather than merely differ from each other. One striking feature of Ribbonism, as distinguished from most Irish patriotic associations, was the fact that its adherents belonged exclusively to the very lowest and most ignorant classes, the humbler peasantry, farm-servants, labourers, and petty shopkeepers, hardly even the smallest farmers or their sons apparently belonging to it in any part of Ireland. So far as there was any unity in its aims, it aimed at making itself a public conscience on all agrarian questions; but, as A. M. Sullivan pointed out, the Ribbonism of one period and of one district was not the Ribbonism of another. 'In Ulster it professed to be a defensive or retaliatory league against Orangeism. In Munster it was at first a combination against tithe-proctors. In Connaught it was an organisation against rack-renting and evictions. In Leinster it often was mere trade-unionism, dictating by its mandates and enforcing by its vengeance the employment or dismissal of workmen, stewards, and even domestics. This latter phase generally preceded the disappearance of the system in a particular locality, and was evidently the lowest and basest form to which it sank or rotted in decay.'
The name, which of course originated in a green badge worn by the members, does not appear to have been attached to it till about 1826; and its influence seems to have grown gradually till about 1855, from which time it began rapidly to decline before a healthier public opinion and a growing political intelligence that recognised the greater advantage of more open and legitimate agitation. Here and there traces of a demoralised Ribbonism survived, capable of an occasional outbreak into malignant crime, but its declaration as illegal by the Westmeath Act of 1871 was hardly better than a mere flogging of the bodies of the slain.
See W. Stewart Trench, Realities of Irish Life (1868), and A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland (1877).