farmers and shopkeepers intervened to frustrate much of what he aimed to do. Unionism Before entering Parliament Plunkett had been involved in the Unionist reaction to the Liberal leader William Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule, predicting in a speech to an 1886 Unionist demonstration that Home rule would lead to "'squalid poverty and violent social disorder, which before long is almost certain to end in civil war". At the 1892 general election he was elected as the Irish Unionist Alliance Member of Parliament (MP) for South Dublin, gaining it from the Anti-Parnellite incumbent Sir Thomas Esmonde against a split nationalist vote. He successfully held the seat against a sole nationalist (Parnellite Nationalist) challenger Edmund Haviland-Burke in 1895. Early in his career, Plunkett opposed home rule because of the danger of partition. In 1893 he asserted that one of the leading objections to any measure of home rule was that if it were possible to enforce it on Ulster . . . "it would intensify and perpetuate a state of things in which the Boyne seemed to be broader, deeper and stormier than the Irish Sea". He lost his seat in 1900 to John Mooney of the Irish Parliamentary Party, after his conciliatory approach to nationalists led to hardline unionists standing Francis Elrington Ball as an independent unionist candidate, splitting the unionist vote. Expanding cooperation Continuing his policy of conciliation, Plunkett suggested in a letter to the Irish press in August 1895 that a few prominent persons of various political opinions, both nationalist and unionist, should meet to discuss and frame a scheme of practical legislation for pursuing national development, and to make recommendations on the Agriculture and Industries (Ireland) Bill of 1897. The outcome of this proposal was the formation of the Recess Committee, with Plunkett as chairman and members of divergent views, such as the Earl of Mayo, John Redmond, The O'Conor Don, Thomas Sinclair, Thomas Spring Rice, Rev Dr Kane (Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen), Father Thomas A. Finlay, Mr John Ross, MP, Timothy Harrington MP, Sir John Arnott, Sir William Ewart, Sir Daniel Dixon (after Lord Mayor of Belfast), Sir James Musgrave (Chairman of the Belfast Harbour Board), Thomas Andrews (Chairman of the Belfast and County Down Railway). T. P. Gill acted as Honorary Secretary to the committee. In July 1896 the Recess Committee issued a report, of which Plunkett was the author, containing accounts of