Writers and Politics

by Conor Cruise O'Brien

  Like much else in Borstal Boy that judgment recalls the kindness and curiosity of Huckleberry Finn. Mr. Behan’s indignation when it occurs is always vehement and picturesque, but discriminating. Unlike many prison books Borstal Boy never settles into a groove of “exposure-for-reform.” He hated Walton Prison and most of the officials there, but even there he tells how, after he was brutally beaten up by two warders, the librarian called him “Paddy” (kindly) and offered him a book about Ireland. His only general comment on this sequence of events is: “It’s a queer world, God knows, but the best we have to be going on with.”

  About Borstal itself, on the other hand, he has nothing, or almost nothing, but good to say. This part of his book is indeed a striking vindication of the Borstal system, and highly creditable to the people who ran Hollesley Bay. It is remarkable that in the atmosphere of wartime a youth who had committed Behan’s offence could have been as decently treated as he was, once he was out of the hands of the Liverpool warders. The present-day Mr. Behan, who is unreconstructed in his political views, freely recognizes that the activities for which he was sentenced were not such as to evoke the warmhearted approbation of the British people.

  The first day he was in Liverpool [he writes about a comrade] an incendiary primer exploded in his pocket and, with half his face burned off, he was savaged and nearly lynched by the populace, who apparently disapproved of having the kip burned about their ears.

  Against that kind of background the record of how Borstal treated Brendan Behan is something remarkable and something of which Englishmen have every right to be proud, provided they are ashamed of a few other things.

  TIMOTHY MICHAEL HEALY

  A hundred years ago last year Tim Healy was born in Bantry, County Cork. The centenary, as far as I know, went completely unmarked. Ireland has forgotten, or remembers only with a faint aversion, one of the most remarkable and gifted of her sons. It is true, of course, that more historical figures are more forgotten than we like to think—one hears of university graduates who have difficulty in identifying Henry Grattan. True also that Healy’s generation more than others has suffered from what Sir Thomas Browne denounced—“the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattering her poppy.” The poppies that were scattered in 1918 in that anti-khaki election when Ireland chose her present destinies, obliterated from the nation’s memory the most prominent of Healy’s contemporaries—John Dillon, William O’Brien, John Redmond. Yet Healy himself, although he had been the ablest parliamentarian of them all, was not one of those who went down with the parliamentarian ship. He had already broken with the Irish party—or it with him; he had clearly foreseen its downfall and the rise of Sinn Fein; he was on sufficiently good terms with the new Ireland to become the first Governor-General of the Irish Free States—an ambiguous eminence but still an eminence whence he could contemplate the waste of waters which had engulfed the companions of his political life. We may be sure the spectacle agreed with him; he was no inconsolable survivor. The sardonic side of his character may have been pleased at the reflection that thirty years before he had buried his leader “in the name of the party” and that he had now succeeded in burying the party as well. Yet the reflection would not have afforded him amusement for very long. The book he wrote in these last years, Letters and Leaders of My Day, is to a great extent a justification of the part he played in Parnell’s downfall. Many years after his own death his daughter, Mrs. Maev Sullivan, wrote another book, No Man’s Man, which is, in entirety, a defence of her father’s memory through a denunciation of Parnell. When that last book was written Parnell had been more than fifty years in the grave. His ghost, it seems, is hard to lay. And Healy, impressionable and imaginative behind his cruel public mask, was an excellent subject for haunting.

  In this series of talks we have been concerned mainly, by definition, with the period from the death of Parnell to the rising of 1916. The peculiarity of Healy’s life is precisely that its most positive periods came before the death of Parnell and to a less extent after the rising of 1916. As Parnell’s helper or, in the end, Parnell’s hunter he had cut a great figure; in the new Ireland of after the treaty he becomes, again, at least imposing. In the three decades between—the years which would normally be those of the maturity and fulfilment of a public life—he is as active as ever, but squalidly in a sort of wilderness within a wilderness, spraying his deadly invective impartially on all his political associates—except those who could trace their origin to Bantry, County Cork. It would be meaningless, in discussing his strange career, to confine ourselves to this period which, in his case, can only be understood as a postscript to a relationship: the relationship of Healy to Parnell.

  Parnell, during the divorce crisis, claimed that he had discovered Healy and put him on the road to success. Healy himself preferred to imply that his success was solely due to his own talent. Both claims were slightly misleading. It is true that Healy’s beginnings in life were modest: his father was a workhouse clerk, first at Bantry, then at Lismore, County Waterford. He himself, as he tells us in Letters and Leaders, finished his education at thirteen years of age after some schooling in Fermoy with the Christian Brothers. His first regular job, at seventeen, was as a railway clerk in Newcastle-on-Tyne. It was an unpromising start for the great parliamentarian, the Queen’s Counsel, the Governor-General to come. Healy’s worst enemy—a title for which there was always acute competition—never denied his remarkable innate ability: but ability alone, without the aid of luck or influence, might never have carried him out of earshot of the Newcastle goods yard. But fortunately Healy was well-connected —not certainly as contemporary England or Ireland interpreted that expression—but in terms of the historical realities of the day. A semi-revolutionary period, characterized by a particularly intense parliamentary action, was opening before Healy’s generation in Ireland. Healy had the advantage, over other bright young men of his day, that relatives of his, men of talent also, were placed where they could help him most. T. D. Sullivan, who had married his aunt, was a well-known member of parliament on the popular side; his patriotic songs, like God Save Ireland, were loved by nationalists throughout the country. A. M. Sullivan, T.D.’s brother, was a parliamentarian of great ability, and a gifted writer: one of his books, The Story of Ireland, converted Winston Churchill, for a time, to Irish nationalism. Even more important, the brothers Sullivan controlled the weekly Nation, then the organ of what might be called the “advanced constitutional” section, the section which had, then, a great future before it. And a more distant connection of Healy’s, John Barry, with whom he lived for a time in Manchester, was the leader of the same section among the Irish in England—the same Barry who was very soon to precipitate the downfall of Isaac Butt, and who, thirteen years later, was the most resolute of the enemies of Parnell. With such a background it is not surprising that the young Healy was a patriot, and honourably ambitious, and that a career was open to his talents. His first political job, which brought him to London in 1878, at the age of twenty-three, was that of parliamentary correspondent to The Nation. The salary was one pound a week but the post was a key one. It was from The Nation that Nationalist Ireland liked to hear about Parnell, and it was Healy who was telling them. Just at this time the obstructive tactics of Westminster of the so-called active section of Home Rulers led by Parnell and Biggar were beginning to achieve fame in Ireland and notoriety in England. The only newspaper that praised them was The Nation, in Healy’s articles. This was good for Parnell, for The Nation, and for Healy. The articles themselves were very well written, with shrewd observation, by a man mad about politics, and they were not weakened by any excess either of deference or of charity. To his brother Maurice he complained in surprise of the “sensitivity” and “childish resentment of criticism” of many members. These were phenomena that he was destined to encounter again and again, always with surprise, throughout his long and turbulent life.

  Inevitably the parliamentary correspondent of The Nation was taken to a grea
t extent into Parnell’s political confidence. Healy, closer to the people than Parnell could be, and brimming over with intelligence, was a man whose advice was worth having and for three years he was, in his own words, Parnell’s closest counsellor. But even Parnell’s closest counsellor was not particularly close: the relation between the two men never seems to have been one of real friendship, merely an association for purposes of political business, useful to both. Of Parnell’s feelings towards Healy at the time—if he had any feelings—we know nothing. Healy’s feelings towards Parnell as recorded in his letters to his brother Maurice Healy are of much interest. Indeed, if Balzac had been minded to give us the letters of an ambitious young man—his own Rastignac for instance—he might have invented something like the progression of feelings in these letters. For the first few months Healy’s letters express uncritical admiration of his protector: then we have a cessation of overt admiration and a number of minor criticisms: in this phase he notes Parnell’s shortcomings on certain aspects of politics—electoral organization for example—and implies that he himself is better equipped in these matters. The third phase is that of open admiration for himself and Parnell as a team, with the implication that he himself is the brains of the team. “As I tell Parnell …” In the fourth phase the disciple lets it be known that his master is something of a sham. In the grand parliamentary manner which he sometimes affected in his letters to his admiring brother he wrote: “I regard it as almost a calamity that our political interests compel us to idolize this man in public, so insecure do I feel as to the possible protrusion of those ‘feet of clay’ at any instant before the crowd of worshippers whom it would drive into immediate and unriskable derision.” This was in 1879, eleven years before those feet of clay were to crumble to dust under Healy’s hammer.

  Publicly, this was the period of Healy’s closest association with Parnell. He accompanied him on his American tour at the beginning of 1880 and afterwards became his secretary. He acted as organizer on Parnell’s behalf, in the General Election of 1880, as a result of which Parnell—who had until then no official title to leadership—became chairman of the Home Rule party in Parliament. Healy, who was not returned at this election, continued as Parnell’s secretary until the following year. The incident which brought about his resignation is obscure, as we know of it only through reminiscence which we must suspect as being possibly coloured by later events. From Healy’s own account it seems that, in an unexplained absence of his chief’s, he handed over some private correspondence to be examined by two of his political colleagues. On the following day, he tells us he resigned his post as Parnell’s secretary. The timing of the break is interesting, for Healy had just taken his seat in the House of Commons as member for Wexford. He was now an important person in his own right, not a mere adjunct of Parnell’s. Years later Parnell’s widow told the young Henry Harrison that Healy’s hatred of Parnell had a definite cause. She claimed that Parnell had told her that Healy had been a suitor of one of his sisters and had taken mortal offence when he, Parnell, had dismissed the idea on account of Healy’s social origins. This was probably a fantasy: Mrs. O’Shea was a highly imaginative woman and had good reason to detest Healy. But a contemporary fantasy can be revealing and Mrs. O’Shea, in stressing the class factor in the relationship, was surely right. This late Victorian time was the Golden Age of conscious and overt snobbery. It was a thorny, lacerating world for a man making his way up, and Healy, who was less thick-skinned than he liked to claim, got his share of cuts and scratches. In this world of Gentlemen and Players, Healy was a very talented Player; the Captain of the side at the time had to be a Gentleman and Healy resented the fact. He felt himself to be the stuff of which leaders were made; he found himself playing Figaro; he thought of himself as a Grey Eminence. The situation was both irksome and confused, and therefore dangerous.

  Meanwhile he continued to rise. In Parliament, at a very troubled time, he was at first intensely unpopular. The policy of the Irish members at this time was to obstruct the business of Parliament; Healy’s method of carrying out this policy was characteristic. He did not, like others, read Bluebooks or spin out long and rambling declarations. He spoke briefly and to the point, but with calculated and astonishing violence of language, unerringly directed at vulnerable personalities. The effect of this tactic was, by arousing general indignation, to induce the English to waste their own time. This unusual and effective parliamentary debut naturally made Healy popular overnight in Ireland. More surprisingly it succeeded in gaining for Healy the ear and the unwilling respect of the House. He became in a short time an accomplished parliamentarian: some have held that the day when Gladstone came over to him in his place in the House and congratulated him on a speech was decisive of his future development. Outside Parliament he became widely known as a journalist and pamphleteer and he was called to the Bar in Ireland in 1884. His career as a lawyer does not concern us directly, but a description of his methods at the Bar may shed some light on the personality that shaped important political events which still implicate us all. We are fortunate in having a very good description of Healy as a barrister, by an eminent and not unfriendly authority, Sir James O’Connor, who had experience of him both as a colleague and as an opponent and also from the Bench. Sir James tells us that Healy was no lawyer, and that he was not even a good advocate. “But,” he adds, “he has been known to get the truth out of a hostile witness by unscientific and sledgehammer daring which no other advocate would attempt, though I am sure the same methods have often cost him the verdict. By sheer force of personality and perhaps a little stage-craft he often created a favourable atmosphere for his client, which made up for the absence of more regular advocacy. In Ireland the clients rather than the attorneys chose him: he said such good things that they thought all things which he said should be good. Ireland too is full of people who would rather lose a law case gladly—with the salt rubbed into the sore spots of the opponent’s carcase—than win it soberly and sombrely!”

  Healy’s recklessness and his taste for rubbing salt into sore spots may have been more costly to Ireland than to his clients. The first clear sign of his political recklessness came in 1886, at the time when his party, the party led by Parnell, was on the verge of its greatest victory: the so-called conversion of the Liberal party to Home Rule. At this moment, in February 1886, Parnell nominated Captain O’Shea as Nationalist candidate in a by-election in Galway. The candidature was preposterous, and was almost certainly forced on Parnell by a kind of blackmail. But the party as a whole felt obliged to acquiesce because of the need for unity and discipline. Only Healy and Joe Biggar decided to rebel: they went to Galway to oppose O’Shea and there they let the truth be known, that O’Shea was the husband of Parnell’s mistress. This was certainly proof of rugged independence on their part—and of no more than that, in Biggar’s case. For Biggar had not been, as Healy was, engaged in political conversations with the liberals behind Parnell’s back. Healy had conveyed, through Labouchere, to wavering liberals like Joseph Chamberlain, the assurance that Parnell’s intransigence need not be feared: the party, according to Healy, was controlled behind the scenes by a small group which included himself; Parnell was a mere figurehead. Now those liberals who disliked Gladstone’s Home Rule ideas knew that Gladstone attached a condition to putting these ideas into practice: the condition was that Parnell should be able “to keep his men together.” Healy’s talk of caucuses and puppets was therefore very interesting to Chamberlain and his friends: Healy’s open act of rebellion was even more interesting: if the Irish party were to split, or Parnell’s authority be severely shaken, a great deal of inconvenience might be saved. Chamberlain was to be disappointed: Parnell went down to Galway, and Healy crumpled.

  For the next five years Parnell was the undisputed leader and Healy, now distrusted by him, became himself something of a figurehead, no longer a political strategist but an orator merely. His chance of independent action, of free play for his great talents, did not co
me until, at the end of 1890, the O’Shea divorce case threw open the question of Parnell’s leadership. In the dislodgment of Parnell from the chairmanship of the party, as distinct from his leadership, Healy’s part was not decisive. He began by making a brilliant speech, in Dublin, for the retention of Parnell as leader: then in Committee Room 15, at Westminster after Gladstone had intervened against Parnell, Healy made an even more brilliant speech—it is indeed one of the masterpieces of Irish oratory—urging Parnell to retire from the chair. Then he wavered again, moved to tears by what seemed a conciliatory gesture of Parnell’s. It was only towards the end of the debates, when that gesture had proved a feint, that he found the note, the note of cruel mockery, that was to be his original, and perhaps decisive, contribution to the destruction of Parnell. When Redmond said that Gladstone was claiming to be “the master of the Irish party,” Healy put in, “And who is to be the mistress of the party?” Parnell had, of course, been re-elected as chairman by his party in full knowledge of the divorce: the party rejected him because of a political circumstance, that Gladstone said he could no longer work with him. Parnell’s other opponents—men like Justin McCarthy, William O’Brien, John Dillon—shrank from this kind of thing, but Healy, as we know, liked rubbing salt into wounds. He was probably right in his view that ridicule, the mockery of a detected sexual offender, was the only weapon which could destroy Parnell in the country. In his speeches, and in the new anti-Parnellite paper, The National Press, he concentrated on this theme and reaped his reward: the petticoats on poles flourished by youths at Parnell meetings with shouts of “Kitty O’Shea!” In this salty way Parnell’s candidates were defeated in three successive by-elections; Parnell collapsed and died. Within a few weeks of his death Healy referred publicly to his widow as “this British prostitute”: Mrs. Sullivan admits that on this occasion her father failed, as she puts it, to find the mot juste.