Three great Irish parliamentarians: O'Connell, Parnell and Redmond
The Irish author and lawyer, Charles Lysaght, came to the Embassy recently to deliver our 3rd annual Daniel O'Connell lecture and to talk about his book, Great Irish Lives, a collection of Irish obituaries from The Times. The book's subjects range from the leading 18th century Irish parliamentarian, Henry Grattan, to the wonderful Terry Wogan, who died in 2016.
It is fascinating to read through two centuries of obituaries, covering so many major Irish figures. These pieces reveal almost as much about the times in which they were written as about their subjects. They also expose the ideological leanings of The Times newspaper, which was never an ally of nationalist Ireland.
My interest in the Irish parliamentary tradition at Westminster made me look with particular attention at the obituaries of Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond. They were the three leading figures who represented nationalist Ireland between the Act of Union in 1800 and the 1918 General Election, after which the majority of Irish MPs absented themselves from Westminster to establish an Irish Parliament in Dublin in January 1919.
The Times was hostile to O'Connell and the causes he espoused, and this comes across in their obituary of The Liberator, who is seen as a 'demagogue' whose 'great faculties where put to sordid uses.' The obituary also described O'Connell as 'a democratic idol', a class for whom, in the eyes of The Times in 1848, to 'a high degree the vices of their character predominate over the virtues.'
Nevertheless, the obituary writer recognised him as an 'extraordinary man.' And indeed, that is what he was. Not only did he deliver Catholic Emancipation in 1829 on the back of an unprecedented, peaceful agitation, but during his 18 years in Parliament he also supported the Great Reform Act of 1832, campaigned against slavery and supported Jewish emancipation.
The author of O'Connell's obituary acknowledged that, 'upon the great question of Parliamentary Reform he was surpassed by very few members of either house' and that 'many elements of greatness entered into the constitution of his mind.' The Times' assessment was that his nobler qualities had been stilled by the fact that he had been born 'in a semi-barbarous state of society' and had lived 'among wild enthusiasts and factious priests'
Looking back at our 19th century history, we would now tend to see O'Connell as a moderate figure who established a strand of parliamentary nationalism that was the dominant Irish political tradition from 1829 until after the Easter Rising of 1916. It is revealing to see him being judged by his contemporaries in the British media as an extreme figure stirring up 'the ignorant portion of the Irish people with the pestilent dream - an independent legislature'. This illustrates the huge odds O'Connell faced in securing Catholic Emancipation and in his ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of the repeal of the Act of Union.
By the time of Parnell's ascendancy, Ireland's political profile at Westminster had changed. The intense rivalry between the Liberals and the Conservatives offered Irish nationalist MPs an opportunity to extract maximum leverage from their political influence. This led to Gladstone's Liberals endorsing Home Rule in 1885, six years before Parnell's death. Parnell and his party were also more assertive in parliament than their predecessors, unafraid of being unpopular with their fellow MPs.
The Times was as hostile to Parnell as it was to O'Connell. The paper accused him of conspiring with extremists in the Fenian movement and insisted that the Royal Commission on Parnellism and Crime had upheld its allegations against him, even though the key evidence they used was shown to have been forged.
Another way of looking at Parnell's achievement is to credit him with co-opting the more radical elements into a cohesive political movement that succeeded in converting one of the two great British parties to the cause of Home Rule. What would have happened in Ireland had Parnell not fallen from grace in 1890 is one of the great imponderables of modern Irish history. It is possible, of course, that he had already pushed the Home Rule agenda as far as it would go in the absence of a reform of the House of Lords. This did not come until the Parliament Act of 1911, a constitutional change brought about not by events in Ireland, but by a crisis in domestic British politics. But Parnell was a gifted and charismatic leader and the nationalist cause was clearly damaged on the back of his early, controversial demise.
By the time of John Redmond's death in 1918, Home Rule was on the statute book but with its implementation deferred until the end of the war. For his part, Redmond had offered wholehearted support to the war effort and had urged his followers to enlist for military service although he had opposed conscription.
The Times' assessment of Redmond is quite balanced, even perceptive in its recognition that before the war Redmond and his party were 'out of touch' with the new ideas developed by the Gaelic League and Sinn Fein. The obituary also observed that in the years after the two General Elections of 1910: 'Never before had an Irish leader such influence in English affairs.' It also adds a very telling commentary to the effect that 'it seemed improper that a great constitutional issue affecting British destinies should be decided by the votes of Nationalists' (why not, one might well ask?) In fact, there could hardly be a more compelling argument for independence!
It is interesting to note that the next Irish political figure whose obituary appears in this collection, just a few years later, was described as 'one of the most interesting and romantic figures in Irish public life'. He was Michael Collins, a very different character from O'Connell, Parnell or Redmond! But by the time of Collins' death, he could be seen as a foreign leader rather than a dissenting element in British politics as O'Connell and Parnell had been.
Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London.