by Paul Bew
Mr McDonald replied with deference, ‘Good evening, sir’.10
The Irish Party were, in T. P. O’Connor’s phrase, a band of ‘impoverished ascetics’, often lonely and isolated in London. To overcome this problem, J. F. X. O’Brien suggested that they should hold social gatherings. Parnell crushed the idea. Perhaps he feared that such gatherings must foster anti-leadership conspiracies. At any rate, they were not allowed to take place.11
The consolidation of Parnell’s dominant position within the Irish Party in the mid-1880s was accompanied by an important change in the party’s external relationships. In 1885 there was sealed a ‘concordat’ between the Roman Catholic Church and the national movement. The church explicitly supported the ‘national claim’ in exchange for constitutionalism and the party’s support on the matter of Catholic educational interests. It should, however, be noted that Parnell’s relations with the Catholic hierarchy were never close. The ‘concordat’ merely reflected the church’s acquiescence in his leadership. The Catholic clergy were authorised to participate as delegates at the county conventions to select prospective MPs. It was an ambiguous development. As J. J. O’Kelly explained to John Devoy, the republican radicals who ‘stood aside’ had only themselves to blame for the outcome: the increasing influence within the party of clerical and conservative forces.
The English parties were not far behind the Irish hierarchy in perceiving that Parnell’s power was on the increase. They too realised that there was a clear possibility that Parnell and his party might hold the balance of power at Westminster after the next election.
The Liberals, as the party in power, were in the most difficult position. They seemed inexorably to be drawn into conflict with the Irish Party. The government felt that the state of Ireland required the renewal of the coercive legislation of 1882 which was due to lapse at the end of the 1885 parliamentary session. Parnell and his followers were bound to oppose this bitterly. As a means of mollifying the Irish, one member of the government, Joseph Chamberlain, floated what became known as the ‘central board’ scheme. In this project certain powers of legislation in respect of education and communications—land was originally included and then later excluded—were devolved to an Irish council or ‘central board’. This was linked to a comprehensive overhaul of local government at the county level. This was clearly the most substantial attempt yet made to satisfy Irish pressure. However, it stopped a long way short of legislative independence, and Chamberlain made it clear that he feared the separatist implications of the standard Home Rule proposal. In Chamberlain’s concept, any legislation passed by the ‘central board’ would not become law until sanctioned by parliament.
Unfortunately Chamberlain miscalculated Parnell’s response to his proposals. He was probably over-impressed by the Irish hierarchy’s interest in his scheme. He was certainly misled by his intermediary—Captain O’Shea had again inserted himself in this role—who had implied that Parnell would accept the scheme as a final settlement. There was, in point of fact, no possibility of Parnell so doing.
At the very moment when Parnell was privately perusing Chamberlain’s proposals he gave a public indication of where he stood. He was increasingly obsessed with the model—as he saw it—of Grattan’s Parliament: he spoke of it when he received the freedom of Clonmel in early January.12 In a speech in Cork on 21 January 1885 Parnell uttered his most famous words:
We cannot ask for less than the restitution of Grattan’s Parliament. . . . We cannot under the British constitution ask for more than the restitution of Grattan’s Parliament, but no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a right to say to his country: ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no further,’ and we have never attempted to fix the ne plus ultra to the progress of Ireland’s nationhood, and we never shall.13
It is a speech which still arouses emotion. St John Ervine observed:
The sentiment has been used by every crack-brained revolutionary who has flourished in Ireland since Parnell’s death, but it may be enough to say that if Parnell had lived to be the first Prime Minister of Ireland, he would have clapped nearly all who make oratorical capital out of his famous passage into Kilmainham. It is one of those passages which appear to mean a great deal, but mean, in fact, very little.14
For Parnell, the most important sentences here were those which referred to Grattan’s Parliament. This was the limit of his own brand of constitutional politics. Parnell was aware that Grattanism was regarded with scepticism by many nationalists: it was hardly surprising that he added some strong language as reassurance. It is certainly fair to say that Parnell would have been embarrassed by the fact that the speech was later used to justify the most exaggerated forms of nationalism.
At the time the speech had a rather more limited function. To grasp fully its meaning, we have to ask exactly what Parnell understood by ‘Grattan’s Parliament’. Parnell’s message—hardly historically accurate—was to claim that in the Grattan epoch (1782–1800) Irish legislative independence had meant genuine independence. Grattan’s Parliament, he claimed, quite without accuracy, ‘had a constitution which would have enabled it to remedy all its own defects. . . . It had power over itself, over its own formation and future, as well as the future of Ireland.’15 The purpose of all this is clear: Parnell was marking out his maximum demand before the opening of the negotiating season. His terms would have to come down, and he knew it. Katharine O’Shea twigged him on precisely this point:
When I would point out in friendly malice that his ‘nationalism’ of one year need not necessarily be that of another and could very easily be less comprehensive, he would answer with smiling scorn, ‘That only means that lack of judgement is righted by growth in understanding.’16
Certainly for Parnell—whatever the effect of his words—the nation was never an imperative which overrode other broader humanitarian considerations.
Chamberlain’s scheme floundered not only on the rock of Parnell’s opposition but also as a consequence of opposition within the Liberal cabinet, which eventually decided to introduce coercion without any remedial Irish legislation. Chamberlain and his Radical allies resigned on 20 May 1885, though this was not made public. The government continued to be torn by foreign and domestic issues, as well as by the Irish question. On 8 June 1885 it was defeated by a combination of Tories and Parnellites.
2
Parnell’s action at this juncture was typical. His Westminster strength lay in his freedom of manoeuvre. His duty was to pursue the interests of his electorate, and while in a general way this was perhaps best pursued by association with the Liberals, there were exceptions to this rule. In the summer of 1885 such an exceptional situation clearly existed. The Liberals had committed themselves to introducing a further measure of repression in Ireland. Meanwhile Parnell had received a strong hint from Lord Randolph Churchill that a Conservative ministry might not consider it necessary to renew coercion. And with a general election only a few months off, a caretaker minority Conservative government might also be prevailed upon to do something for Ireland.
This indeed proved to be the case. The Conservatives not only dropped coercion, but they also passed the Ashbourne Act, which was a useful step in the creation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. Parnell must have been well satisfied.
However, Parnell’s rapport with Conservative views on the Irish land question was not a startling development—leading Liberals had noted it many times—the whole situation turned on whether a deeper accommodation on Irish self-government could be reached. And here the appointment of the Earl of Carnarvon as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with a seat in the cabinet was significant. Carnarvon was known to be sympathetic to the notion of Home Rule. On 6 July, however, the new Conservative premier, Lord Salisbury, warned Carnarvon that he as Prime Minister would not split the Tories on the issue of Ireland.
With Salisbury’s consent, a secret meeting was arranged between Parnell and Carnarvon for 1 August 1885. They seem to have
been mutually impressed. Parnell agreed that in ‘the first instance’ the land question could be left to the imperial parliament for settlement, but he insisted that protection for Irish industries was a ‘public necessity’. Carnarvon was impressed by Parnell’s moderation. It is much more important to note, though, that the vast majority of Tories were not prepared to go as far as Carnarvon. The Tory leadership as a whole seems to have been anxious to keep Parnell as sympathetic to their side for as long as possible for largely opportunist reasons.
Parnell seems to have felt that Carnarvon accepted not just his political but also his economic nationalism: ‘We were discussing a general outline of a plan for constituting a legislature for Ireland on the colonial model. When I took occasion to remark that protection for certain Irish industries against English and foreign competition would be absolutely necessary, upon which Lord Carnarvon said, “I entirely agree with you but what a row there will be about it in England.”’17
Carnarvon’s reply is hardly a ringing denial as to his own attitude, though, of course, it does insist that the government had made no decision on the matter:
As regards the question of protection, I remember his alluding to his belief that some kind—I think ‘some limited kind of protection’—was necessary for the promotion of Irish industries, to which I replied that whatever individual opinion might be on the subject of protection, such a proposal must arouse great objection among many classes. I do not remember using the particular words attributed to me though the sense is not far removed. But I must repeat that I said nothing to imply any concurrence on the part of the government in a proposal to ‘give a statutory parliament power to protect Irish industries’.18
Parnell behaved as if he thought all the elements for a Conservative parliamentary settlement were coming into place. In early August 1885 he drew attention to the reality that Irish landlords now seemed more interested in land purchase schemes than Irish tenants. Later in the month, in his Arklow speech, he expressed his optimism that the land question would be solved and endorsed again the idea of protection for Irish industries. Then, in early October 1885 in Wicklow, he explicitly addressed Chamberlain’s hostility to protection. He refused to give way, though he did say Ireland would need protection for only ‘two or three years’.
Carnarvon was not alone in his wooing of the Irish leaders—a key figure was Howard Vincent, the first director of the CID and Conservative candidate for Sheffield. He had helped to arrange the Parnell–Carnarvon meeting and, months later, he personally met with Tim Harrington at the headquarters of the National League and with William O’Brien at the offices of United Ireland. In O’Brien’s view, ‘The high designs imparted to Parnell by the Viceroy were evolving into a marked preference for the “Kings, Lords and Commons of Ireland” plan of Grattan’s parliament, with certain modern adjustments as contrasted with the proper system of federal subordination proposed by Butt.’19 On 7 October Salisbury delivered a speech on foreign and domestic affairs at Newport, Monmouthshire: the Parnellites interpreted it as an invitation to revive Grattan’s Parliament, while the Conservatives saw it as a pledge that any concessions depended upon the result of a general election.
It soon appeared as if this tactic had achieved excellent results. On the eve of the general election on 21 November 1885, having failed to draw Gladstone into the bidding for Irish support, Parnell took the step of issuing a manifesto advising the Irish voters in Britain to vote against the Liberals.
In a biography of his father, Winston Churchill reported a conversation between Lord Randolph Churchill and Parnell at about this time at the former’s London home: ‘There was no compact or bargain of any kind,’ Churchill said to a friend a year later, ‘but I told Parnell when he sat on that sofa [in Connaught Place] that if the Tories took office, and I was a member of their government, I would not consent to renew the Crimes Act.’ Parnell replied: ‘In that case you will have the Irish vote at the elections.’20 T. P. O’Connor, however, insisted that he and Parnell remained in daily contact during the election, and if they had felt there was any possibility of a Tory landslide, they would have withdrawn Irish support.21
It has often been argued that Parnell committed a major tactical error in this instance. His intervention, it is claimed, deprived the Liberals of just that amount of support which would have enabled them to pass a satisfactory measure of Home Rule. In fact such an assessment of Parnell’s policy is too harsh. Parnell must have assumed that the closer the totals of the two main parties, the greater his own influence. Certainly it is simplistic to assume that a Liberal landslide in 1885 would have guaranteed Home Rule. (A Liberal landslide in 1906 was brutally to expose this illusion.) The reality at the time of the election in 1885 was that neither majority party accepted the principle of a Dublin parliament. However, even if a convincing defence of Parnell can be offered, it should not obscure the element of wishful thinking in his strategy. If anything, Parnell felt, the Tories were more likely to deliver. He placed too much reliance on the sympathetic views of Carnarvon and—at this time—Lord Randolph Churchill. He did not adequately analyse the balance of forces within the Conservative Party as a whole.
There can be little doubt that this failure of Parnell’s was not a mere accident. His myopia arose out of an obsession with a ‘conservative’ settlement conceived in the broadest terms: the settlement that most ensured social peace and industrial development in Ireland, achieved by an arrangement with the English Conservative Party. As the English Radical MP Labouchere put it, ‘Home Rule apart, he was himself a Tory.’ Parnell’s broad conception was revealed in a conversation recorded by Andrew Kettle which took place shortly after his meeting with Carnarvon and immediately after his speech at Arklow in which he claimed that the Irish land question would soon be solved and insisted on the necessity of an Irish parliament having the power to protect many industries:
‘You were at Arklow yesterday,’ I said, ‘opening the quarry and selling the stones to the [Dublin] Corporation, but what was the meaning of your strange speech on protection and Irish industries? Are you going to break with the Free Traders?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we have a rather big project on hands.’ He then explained the meeting with Lord Carnarvon and the project of Aristocratic Home Rule, with the colonial right to protect our industries against English manufacture. I seemed to be knocked dumb, as I really was, by the unexpected news, and he went on to explain that it was not from a motive of justice or generosity that the Conservative Party were making the proposals. Inspired chiefly by Lord Randolph Churchill, the classes in Britain were afraid that if the Irish democratic propaganda were to continue, in conjunction with the English Radicals, class rule might be overturned altogether. So to save themselves they are going to set up a class conservative government in Ireland, with the aid and consent of the Irish democracy, or in other words, with our assistance, having no connection with England but the link of the Crown and an Imperial contribution to be regulated by circumstances.22
Kettle’s response was striking:
The world will be surprised and astounded when this becomes known, but you know what I always thought on this subject? England could not afford to delegate the governing powers of England into the hands of any class other than that ruling England at the time. Here was I thinking that we would have to wait for home rule until the English radicals and the Irish democrats would become powerful enough to rule the Empire, and now it is coming from the top instead of the bottom. It is simply astounding but I fear it will not come to pass. You will not be able to get the Tories in a majority to do this. The Irish in Britain will not vote for them, and besides I fear that the Irish landlords, owing to their crimes in the past, are not destined to be placed so easily at the heads of the people’s affairs in Ireland. But all the same, I am intensely interested, and I shall do the little I can to help you with the experiment.23
What is revealed here is that though we can defend the Conservative–Parnellite alliance of 1885 purely in terms
of calculations concerning the balance of power at Westminster, it had a very much deeper significance for Parnell. It was his old dream of a ‘class conservative government’ in Ireland which inspired him: a government dominated by the forces of respectability and an ethos of Conservatism.
In general terms, the Parnellites fought the election on an aggressive but perfectly legitimate constitutionalist programme. Home Rule meant a parliament in Dublin, though it did not mean a complete separation from Britain, or a separate army, navy and foreign service; but that was all that was known, except that the Irish would try to obtain for their parliament as many powers as possible, including, as far as Parnell was concerned, trade protection.
Of course, there was always room for the occasional suitably vague rhetorical flourish. It is worth noting that at a meeting in Liverpool during the election campaign Parnell had been careful—though only after the reporters had left—to give his supporters a tangy hint of his old militancy which, as William O’Malley recalled, ‘electrified and even astonished his audience’:
With a firm, set face and flashing eyes, and a voice trembling with passion, he said: ‘Ireland has been knocking at the English door long enough with kid gloves, and now she will knock with a mailed hand.’
Here Mr Parnell moved his arm as if knocking, and the effect upon the vast meeting was most extraordinary. It rose, shouted and cheered for several minutes after Mr Parnell resumed his seat.24
