A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  Next morning a crowd in O’Connell Street rushed towards the offices of the United Irishman, now held by Parnell’s opponents. Suddenly a carriage sped to the scene, stopping so suddenly that the horse collapsed on the road. Parnell leaped out, his eyes blazing, and smashed open the door with a crowbar to seize back control of the newspaper.

  But Dublin was not Ireland, and Parnell was immediately put to the test in the North Kilkenny by-election. Everywhere, because of his liaison with Katharine O’Shea, he was denounced as an adulterer. An English journalist observed:

  It was no longer the dignified, self-possessed Charles Stewart Parnell of old.... Mr Parnell’s face was thinner than I had ever seen it. The lustre of the eyes was gone.... The ‘Uncrowned King’ is breaking down.

  At Castlecomer local coalminers threw lime into his eyes. When the votes were counted, the anti-Parnellite candidate had won handsomely. Further defeats were to follow. His cause was lost.

  On 25 June 1891 Parnell married Katharine before a registrar in Sussex. For years he had begun letters to her with the words ‘My own Wifie’ and signed them ‘Your own Husband’; now she was, indeed, his wife—but not for long. He returned to campaign indefatigably in Ireland.

  Clearly unwell, he returned to Sussex. He took to his bed on the evening of 6 October. ‘Kiss me, sweet Wifie, and I will try to sleep a little,’ he said. They were the last words he uttered. During the night coronary thrombosis struck. He was only forty-five years old.

  The rift between the Parnellites and the anti-Parnellites was not healed by his death. As the general election of 1892 approached, the two wings of the Irish Party clashed bitterly. The Catholic Church had by now thrown its weight behind the anti-Parnellites. The parish priest of Roundwood, Co. Wicklow, did not mince his words:

  Parnellism is a simple love of adultery and all those who profess Parnellism profess to love and admire adultery. They are an adulterous set, their leaders are open and avowed adulterers, and therefore I say to you, as parish priest, beware of these Parnellites when they enter your house, you that have wives and daughters, for they will do all they can to commit these adulteries, for their cause is not patriotism—it is adultery—and they back Parnellism because it gratifies their adultery.

  Meanwhile Gladstone, the Liberal leader, now aged eighty-two, once more declared that, if his party defeated the Conservative government, he would bring forward a Home Rule Bill. This galvanised the Ulster Unionists. Determined to erase the memory of the vicious rioting which had so besmirched the opposition to the First Home Rule Bill in 1886, Unionist leaders planned a dignified demonstration.

  This time 12,000 delegates were to meet indoors on the plains of Stranmillis in Belfast in a huge specially constructed convention hall on Friday 17 June 1892. Delegates had a choice of twenty-four doors and eight aisles by which they could reach their numbered seats. There they could read mottoes round the hall, including ‘In union is our strength and freedom’, ‘Keep our noble kingdom whole’ and (perhaps surprisingly) the slogan of the 1798 rebels, ‘Erin go Bragh’ (Ireland Forever). The Northern Whig declared: ‘There were the rugged strength and energy of the North, still Liberal, still Conservative, on his occasion and in this cause they know but one name—that of Unionist.’

  The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, Robert Knox, began the proceedings by asking God to send down ‘Thy Holy Spirit to guide our deliberations for the advancement of Thy Glory, the safety of the Throne, and the integrity of the Empire’. Then, led by a male-voice choir, all sang the versified Psalm 46: ‘God is our refuge and our strength’.

  The Liberal Unionist Thomas Sinclair gave the most effective speech:

  Cost what it may, we will have nothing to do with a Dublin parliament (loud cheers). If it be ever set up, we shall simply ignore its existence (tremendous cheering).... If Mr Gladstone, in mad wantonness, can induce parliament to pass it into law, Ulstermen will be idiots, if they do not utterly repudiate it (loud applause).

  Gladstone won the election. And he was indeed determined to induce parliament to pass his Second Home Rule Bill into law.

  Episode 204

  THE SECOND HOME RULE BILL

  The general election of July 1892 delivered a crippling blow to those who remained faithful to the memory of their former leader, Parnell. Only nine Parnellites, led by John Redmond, were elected, while seventy-one anti-Parnellites, now led by Justin McCarthy, were returned. Nevertheless, the Liberals had been able to form a government, and Gladstone, now re-elected for his fourth term as Prime Minister, drafted a fresh Home Rule Bill to give Ireland a parliament of its own.

  No bill in the nineteenth century occupied so much parliamentary time. Fighting the provisions clause by clause, Unionists—as the Conservatives and Liberal dissidents opposed to Home Rule now called themselves—spoke 938 times for a total of almost 153 hours over 82 days. The Liberals and Nationalists, that is, Parnellites and anti-Parnellites, made 459 speeches, lasting over 57 hours in all. In the protracted debates the Parnellites and anti-Parnellites were unable to prevent their bitter quarrel breaking out in public. McCarthy wrote: ‘It is all a conflict of jealousies and hates and the national cause is forgotten.... I feel terribly depressed.’

  On 28 March 1893 representatives of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce met Gladstone in a vain attempt to persuade him to change his mind. Next day Adam Duffin, the Liberal Unionist MP, wrote to his wife:

  Dearest—

  As I expected we did not get much change out of Gladstone yesterday.... The old man was jumping with impatience.…

  We shall defeat this conspiracy.... George Clark says the old man is mad & we ought to publish the fact & give no other answer! I say he is bad. He has the look of a bird of prey and the smile of a hyena.

  Arthur Balfour, the former Conservative Chief Secretary, came to Belfast, and on 4 April he stood for four hours on a great platform in front of the Linen Hall to watch a march-past of 100,000 loyalists. Thomas McKnight remembered:

  Such a display the city had never before seen.... There was one vast sea of heads ... as the various bodies, most of them with bands and banners, filed past. A copy of the Home Rule Bill was burnt publicly and stamped upon amid great cheering.

  All this effort notwithstanding, the House of Commons passed the bill by a majority of thirty-four votes on 2 September 1893. The House of Lords was packed when it gave its verdict six days later. It was said that only two Unionist peers were absent without valid excuse—one shooting lions in Somaliland, the other killing rats in Reigate. The Lords threw out the bill by 419 votes to 41. A constitutional crisis should have followed this rejection of the will of the elected representatives of the people. But the Liberals had not the stomach to renew the fight. The Nationalists in turn were too demoralised by their bitter internal quarrels to conduct an effective campaign outside Westminster. As Michael Davitt, the anti-Parnellite MP, put it, ‘I feel almost ashamed to go before an educated English audience while we are showing ourselves so unworthy of Home Rule.’

  Exhausted and dispirited, Gladstone retired in 1894, replaced by Lord Rosebery. He made it clear that he would not bring forward a new Home Rule Bill. Archbishop Croke of Cashel wrote that ‘The hope of attaining a legislature for our country within measurable time is no longer entertained by reasoning men.’

  In 1895 the Unionists returned to office. The new Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, had no doubt that that his government should leave ‘Home Rule sleeping the sleep of the unjust’. Salisbury had once told supporters that the Celtic Irish were unsuited to self-government and that democracy

  works admirably when it is confined to people who are of Teutonic race.... You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots, for example.

  The Conservatives were to be in power without a break for the next ten years. Lord Salisbury had stated firmly that what Ireland needed was twenty years of resolute government. His nephew, Gerald Balfour, who served as Irish Chief Secretary, was determined to pr
ovide that. In particular, firm coercive measures suppressed any manifestation of disorder in the countryside. At the same time, Balfour was keen to show that Westminster could govern Ireland well, making a devolved parliament in Dublin unnecessary. Some came to describe this Conservative policy as ‘killing Home Rule with kindness’. Actually, since the Nationalists were in disarray, there did not seem to be much Home Rule to kill, and so the kindness could be rationed to no more than what the British electorate considered just.

  As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Ireland was remarkably peaceful and calm. One reason for this, undoubtedly, was that so many young Irish men and women siphoned off discontent from the countryside simply by leaving the island altogether.

  Episode 205

  ‘THE COUNTRY IS BLEEDING TO DEATH’

  So farewell to my friends and relations,

  Perchance I shall see you no more,

  And when I’m in far distant nations,

  Sure I’ll sigh for my dear native shore.

  Between 1851 and 1921 two and a half million people emigrated from Ireland. No other country in Europe experienced such an outflow—the rate of emigration from Ireland was triple that of the nearest rivals, Norway, Sweden and Scotland. The census figures showed that a quarter of those aged between the ages of five and twenty-four had left the island for abroad.

  This remarkable exodus largely explains why Ireland was the only country in Europe to experience a fall in population in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The Irish had formed one-third of the United Kingdom’s population in 1841; by 1911 the proportion had fallen to one-tenth.

  Emigration was highest in areas where there was little alternative employment apart from working on the land. The west consistently provided the highest proportion of emigrants. Living standards had risen remarkably since the Great Famine of the 1840s, in spite of acute destitution during the 1880s. The truth was that opportunities abroad were unrivalled. And the habit of emigration had already become ingrained earlier in the century.

  Sons and daughters of farmers dominated the emigrant lists. Unlike all other emigrating peoples from Europe, except the Swedes, as many female Irish emigrated as males. Indeed, the province of Connacht exported more women than men. Those most likely to leave were aged between twenty and twenty-four, not yet married, and ready to enter the labour market.

  Irish emigrants left with distinct advantages. Though a high proportion came from Irish-speaking districts, the majority—thanks to the effectiveness of the National Schools—could not only speak English but also read and write in English. By the beginning of the twentieth century nine-tenths of Irish emigrants were literate. National School teachers often helped children to write specimen letters to prospective employers overseas. Irish girls were in strong demand for domestic service in the United States, not least because they could read and write grocery lists.

  The most important emigrant port was Cóbh in Cork harbour, then called Queenstown. Leinster emigrants chose Dublin, and those from Ulster left from Derry and Belfast. Few expected to see their departed loved ones again. One Donegal man remembered how ‘the shouting, the roaring, and the lamentation of the people on the quays would deafen you’.

  Families generally raised the money themselves for the fare, which for a steerage passage across the Atlantic was usually four guineas. Every emigrant felt obliged to send money home by postal order not only to help their parents pay the rent and shopkeepers’ bills, but also to fund the fares for younger brothers and sisters to come after them.

  For the vast majority, America was the preferred destination. In 1880 Robert Vere O’Brien, a land agent, observed: ‘I think they all set towards the west, more or less. In my part of the country I think they have got as many relations in Boston as they have in Clare.’

  The United States now applied strict immigration controls. From 1882 onwards convicts, lunatics, idiots and destitutes were excluded. Along with tens of thousands from other parts of Europe, Irish immigrants sailing into New York harbour stood anxiously in lines to undergo medical and other screening checks on Ellis Island. Shipping companies were obliged to take back across the Atlantic those who failed to gain admission.

  Views were mixed on the impact of emigration back in Ireland. In evidence to the Dudley Commission in 1908, witnesses bemoaned the departure of the strong and healthy, while ‘the delicate bird in every clutch’ and ‘the cripples and the paralytics’ stayed at home. A shopkeeper from Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, concluded:

  As soon as their children reach the adult age, through the scarcity of employment, they join their uncles and aunts and cousins in the United States, one son remaining on the farm; and if the parents do not get him married before they die, he generally sells out and goes too. Thus the country is bleeding to death.

  Emigration, simply by reducing the population on the land, did at least ensure a steady increase in the average size of the family farm. And emigrants’ remittances assumed a vital role in the Irish economy, particularly in impoverished western districts. A Co. Leitrim curate commented:

  We are living on credit, and on the returns from America. Our incomes are microscopic in their smallness.... Wiped out [the farmers] would have been long ago but for American aid.

  However, as the twentieth century opened, the Conservative government was to put through revolutionary legislation which, for most farmers, would make the payment of rent a thing of the past.

  Episode 206

  KILLING HOME RULE WITH KINDNESS

  ‘Are ye right there, Michael are ye right,

  Do you think that we’ll be home before the night?’

  ‘We’ve been so long in startin’, that ye couldn’t say for sartin.’

  ‘Still, ye might now, Michael, so ye might.’

  At Lahinch the sea shines like a jewel,

  With joy you are ready to shout,

  When the stoker cries out: ‘There’s no fuel,

  And the fire’s taytotally out’ ...

  Percy French, a Board of Works employee from Roscommon who became a hugely popular ‘parlour’ songwriter, poked fun at the shortcomings of the West Clare Railway. There is no doubt, however, that the extension of the railway network brought about a vast improvement in the quality of life of the Irish people. By 1880 2,370 miles had been opened. The 1890s and early twentieth century saw another surge in railway construction. The Conservative government, in power for most of these years, did something which then would have been unthinkable in other parts of the United Kingdom: it subsidised public transport. The construction of light railways provided much-needed employment and, extending to towns such as Clifden in Connemara and Cahirciveen in Co. Kerry, reached out to remote communities. Local people looked in awe at, for example, the erection of a great viaduct over the estuary at Ballydehob for the Skibbereen to Schull railway in west Cork.

  It was now possible to introduce standard time, known as Dublin Mean Time (which was 25 minutes behind Greenwich Mean Time until 1916). Connected by light rail, places such as Bundoran, Co. Donegal, and Mulranny, Co. Mayo, became popular seaside resorts. Remote rivers and loughs became accessible to English fishermen, now able to alight, for example, from the station at Ballynahinch, Co. Galway, where in 1892 eighty-six men found employment as bailiffs, watchers and gillies. In the far west, lobsters, brought in by currachs and sailing boats known as hookers, glothogues and pookhauns, arrived in creels at railways stations ready to be rushed to the London market.

  Railways greatly stimulated the production of eggs. In 1892 seventeen tons of eggs, or 244,800 a week, were loaded onto the Leitrim Railway at Manorhamilton, Dromahair, Glenfarne and Belcoo—a total of some 13 million eggs a year from these four small towns alone.

  This was all part of a Conservative policy which has been described as ‘constructive Unionism’. It was begun by Chief Secretary Arthur Balfour, who set up the Congested Districts Board in 1891 to provide regeneration in the west. His brother, Gerald,
was appointed Chief Secretary in 1895. In that year he explained to his constituents in Leeds: ‘The government would, of course, be very glad if they were able by kindness to kill Home Rule.’

  The Congested Districts Board, as extended by Gerald Balfour, subsidised local craft industries such as handloom weaving and knitting, improved roads and built new harbours; the pier at Killybegs, Co. Donegal, for example, still bears the inscription ‘CDB’. The innovative and resourceful Irish Unionist Sir Horace Plunkett enthusiastically backed Gerald Balfour’s schemes. Plunkett had set up co-operative dairies or ‘creameries’ which greatly improved the collection, quality and marketing of Irish dairy produce—indeed, many are still operating today. Gerald Balfour appointed him head of a new Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, which, incidentally, led directly to the construction of major technical colleges in Belfast and Dublin.

  Was good money thrown after bad? Some economists think so. And, since the Nationalists were still deeply divided between Parnellites and anti-Parnellites, kindness could be strictly limited, since there wasn’t much Home Rule to kill. In any case, the Irish had to pay themselves for these improvements. Indeed, in 1896 a government commission reported that Ireland had been overtaxed since the Act of Union had been implemented in 1801.

  Gerald Balfour’s most lasting achievement was the introduction of democracy into the Irish countryside. Until his Local Government Act of 1898 rural Ireland had been ruled by grand juries, unelected self-perpetuating bodies composed mainly of local landlords and their relatives. On the eve of their abolition Nationalists held only 47 out of a total of 704 positions on grand juries. Now they were replaced by county councils and urban and rural district councils. The electorate for these new bodies was very large and—for the first time in Ireland—included women. Nothing did more than this major reform of local government to familiarise the Irish people with the working of representative institutions and to strengthen support for democracy in the years to come.