by Paul Bew
The issue of Parnell’s leadership had become linked with other issues of contemporary political concern as his opponents seized upon any stick with which to beat him. Divisive themes in Irish politics suddenly became prominent. Irritations that had lain dormant were no longer suppressed: there was no home truth—on either side—so frank that it could not be spoken. This gives the last year of Parnell’s life a unique interest.
Increasingly Parnell’s moderation on the land question was censured. In 1891 men were prepared to say—as they would never have dared in earlier years—that this was the logical result of having a landlord at the head of the Home Rule movement. Even before the split, for example, in a crucial speech in parliament on 21 April 1890, Parnell had made public his reservations about party orthodoxy on the land question. He was increasingly heedless of the views of his principal supporters. Morley recalled:
In 1890 he was much exercised on land purchase. He once asked me to speak with him, having devised a very complex and impracticable set of proposals which he slowly expounded to me. I asked him would his people like it? He did not care whether they did or not, he had thought it over for ten years.17
Not surprisingly, Morley adds that ‘the most important of Parnell’s lieutenants were mystified by the public declaration when it came. The gist of Parnell’s speech was to stress that the dimension of the Irish land question was customarily exaggerated.18 He spoke as the friend, he said, of the smaller tenantry and middling gentry who were locked in a futile, mutually destructive conflict. (The large landed magnates, in Parnell’s view, were swallowing up the lion’s share of the government compensation so far, while the larger farmers were notoriously unproductive.) He spoke of limiting a land purchase measure to tenants valued at under £50, thus annoying a large section of the Irish tenants, and also suggested a conspicuously low valuation of the whole province of Connacht, which angered Conservative opinion. But after the split it was the Nationalist camp which was to denounce the speech. Jasper Tully critically noted: ‘Mr Parnell is a landlord himself and his most notable speech in the House of Commons was to advocate the retention of the landlords in the country and to oppose the benefit of land purchase to anyone over £50 valuation.’19 James Daly put it even more simply: ‘A landlord himself, he was never truly the enemy of landlordism.’20 Parnell replied at Tralee that his opponents simply did not want the land question settled.21 In May, both in parliament and in a speech at Mullingar, Parnell continued to propound—at times somewhat defensively—his characteristic analysis, though it should be noted that Tim Healy felt he had him on the run.
In July 1891 Parnell returned yet again to the theme in a speech whose moderation was acknowledged by Balfour. The distance from his party’s mainstream agrarian radicalism, was palpable: he repeated his dislike of the attempt to apply the Plan of Campaign to the whole country. He asked Balfour to make sure that the future benefits of land reform went to small farmers and not wealthy graziers.22
In 1891 also it was openly declared that Parnell had failed to transcend his class origin. There is much that is unprincipled and demagogic in these attacks. The divorce crisis had brought Parnell down and any line of attack was legitimate. But one point that Tully was to make did have a certain amount of substance. By establishing a migration company, Parnell had raised hopes in the west in 1883–4 which he had totally failed to satisfy. Parnell’s last series of public speeches were concentrated in that region; this indicates a belated awareness that this was a decisive area of struggle. But by this time there was no hope of mobilising the massive support he needed from the smallholders.
5
Perhaps most important of all, the ideological content of the majority trend in Irish nationalism underwent a significant change during Parnell’s last desperate campaign. Whereas it is true to say that the Land League had been remarkably free of anti-urban, narodnik or overtly sectarian Catholic sentiments, all these themes came to the fore in the opposition to Parnell and, later, Parnellism.23 A new emphasis began to be given to the claim that rural Irishmen were the only reliable Catholics and patriots. Jasper Tully, for example, claimed: ‘Parnell says as Paris is to France so Dublin is to Ireland. As they must take their allusions from French history, we tell them they will meet their La Vendee.’ Dublin, in Tully’s vision, was the ‘moral cesspool of Ireland’ counterposed to ‘the men of the West and South, who love their religion and country’.24 Dubliners, he claimed, had given the infamous Lily Langtry a heroine’s welcome.
With this sort of rhetoric the Irish revolution had come full circle. The young radicals of 1879—of whom Tully had been so conspicuous an example—had self-consciously invoked the spirit of the secular idealism of the French revolution of 1789. Twelve years later they were reduced to invoking—equally self-consciously—the French counter-revolution.
However, tough talking was not limited to the anti-Parnellite side. Parnell too unburdened himself of some unpalatable truths. In doing so, he performed a lasting service for Irish politics. There is a view which presents Parnell’s last year as totally unrepresentative of his broad contribution. In his desire to achieve his objectives, it is said, Parnell adopted a completely unprincipled course. He went down ingloriously locked in a maniacal paroxysm of anti-Catholicism, Fenianism and socialism. There is much superficial truth in this observation. We can accept that Parnell owed his first parliamentary seat to an alliance with the priests, and although he may have occasionally tangled with them in the 1880s, it was the grossest hypocrisy to assault them after the divorce crisis. (Parnell himself generally avoided direct criticism of the Catholic clergy, leaving this to his Catholic supporters.) Again, the Parnell of the 1880s was a firmly constitutional politician. After 1886 he was a supporter of an alliance with the British Liberal Party. Finally, Parnell was a known critic of trade unionism.
But these contrasts are too stark. They have led to a neglect of the historical importance of Parnell’s speeches after the split. It is perfectly true that Parnell made some points in this period because he could afford to or for the merest expediency, but at the same time they often represent his genuine convictions. With Nationalist unity now a thing of the past, he was able to give vent to suppressed beliefs.
Not too much should be made of Parnell’s ‘republicanism’ in this period. There is something gauche and unconvincing about his few remarks that fall into this category. The fact is that right up to his death he refused to admit that constitutionalism had failed. Nor should too much be made of Parnell’s sudden interest in the labour question. His supporters among the Cork workingmen were dismayed in 1891 to find that he knew absolutely nothing about their local problems and aspirations.25 It seems appalling to find Parnell telling Davitt, who had questioned him about the implications of O’Shea’s suit, that ‘trades-unionism [was] . . . a landlordism of labour’ and then to find him a few months later claiming that the future lay with the working classes. But in fact the ‘landlordism of labour’ remark should not be taken too literally. As Davitt himself noted: ‘The extraordinary opinions he gave utterance to were possibly the momentary expression of irritation at being asked a question about the divorce case, and not the reflex of his actual views on labour questions and organisations.’26 Nevertheless, it was for largely opportunist reasons that he sought the support of artisans and labourers, particularly in Dublin in 1891. Republican sentiments were strong enough within this grouping, and they were among his most loyal supporters.
Needless to say, the anti-Parnellites were not impressed by Parnell’s appeal to the ‘hillside men’. One critic commented with heavy sarcasm: ‘Does the fallen leader think that hillside men have no memories? Or does himself forget his evidence before the Times commission, where upon oath he denied, repudiated or watered down every former declaration of his which savoured at all of separation or independence?’At Edinburgh, when Parnell was presented with the freedom of the city, ‘he all but called hillside men lunatics’.27 It is essential to note that he never advoca
ted, even in this period, that the working class should embrace the doctrine of class struggle. Speaking in Belfast in May 1891, he noted that the manufacturing centres had been more free from industrial strife in Ulster than in any part of Great Britain:
I do not know what the reason is. . . . I trust that labour troubles may never come amongst you, but if they do that they may be settled by mutual conciliation on both sides; and to the working classes I say that when mutual conciliation fails the aid of Parliament might be invoked to prevent the rude arbitrament of a strike (cheers).28
This is the authentic voice of Parnell. Political circumstances in 1891 apparently dictated a certain opening to the left, particularly an appeal to the labour constituency. Nevertheless, his words are perfectly consistent with his deep-rooted passion for social harmony in the ‘new Ireland’.
On the other hand, it is fair to say that Parnell did break with what might be called Catholic nationalism—as opposed to a broader non-sectarian conception which has always coexisted uneasily with it. As late as July 1889 Parnell dismissed the critics of Home Rule who raised the special case of north-east Ulster: ‘A sample of their criticisms is the statement that the north-east of Ireland should be detached from the rest of the country in order to protect the Protestant minority.’ Parnell dubiously claimed the critics ‘forgot that the majority of Irish Protestants would still be left under the sway of the College Green parliament’.29 His utterances on the place of Protestants within Irish politics were nonetheless often of piercing accuracy.
In March he travelled north to speak at Newry, and—hillside men notwithstanding—seems to have tailored his remarks to suit an audience which was less than fervent in its nationalism. Parnellites, he said, did not ‘desire to trespass upon any prerogatives of the Crown and to injure any imperial interest, or lessen any imperial controls over those matters which belonged to the pride and dignity of the Empire’. The Nation noted that the ‘attendance was large but a considerable portion of them were Orangemen and other persons well known to have no sympathy for the national movement’.30 This concept—the idea that Parnell was now Orange-friendly and thus damned—began to creep more and more into anti-Parnellite discourse.
In Belfast in May 1891 he went right to the heart of the matter. Parnell’s speech on this occasion was surely one of the most remarkable in his career. St John Ervine justly described it as ‘impressive’. The truth is that it is inconceivable that any of his major lieutenants of the 1880s could have produced so substantive an analysis of the obstacles to Irish unity.
There is no question of characterising the speech as a bitter frenetic outburst. We have a description of Parnell’s bearing on this occasion which rules out this interpretation. It came from a relatively neutral Ulster Presbyterian source:
His style on beginning to speak, was calm, slow, telling. When he had warmed with his subject he became more animated, and at times even warm; but on the whole his tone was reserved, cool and forcible, not a point failing to be pressed home. . . . He discussed with active calmness, moving about freely on the platform, usually in his favourite attitude, with arms folded. . . . Treating it merely as an oratorical effect, we may characterise it as being important, clear, forcible, statesmanlike.31
Parnell broke completely with a carping attitude towards the north’s greater relative prosperity. Belfast Unionist observers were inclined to dismiss Parnell’s new attitude as ‘ritualistic’, but the change of emphasis and tone as compared with, say, his remarks on the same subject in 1886 is remarkable:
Now, everybody who comes to this great city and to the North of Ireland is struck by the difference that it presents to other parts of this country. . . . If I were asked to point out any portion of the world where the population are suitably distributed upon the land, I should point to the province of Ulster (cheers). . . .
Going through your great province one comes, having noted these things, upon thriving manufacturing communities—Lurgan, Portadown, and many other hives of industry—until we reach the climax of all this in this city of Belfast (applause). . . . I admire the manufacturing success of Ulster—(cheers)—and I wish it long life and prosperity.32
But the nub of the speech concerned the relationship between Catholics and Protestants in a period of the political expansion of Irish nationalism. Here Parnell, for the first time in his career, made points which—it was to prove—were unacceptable to many of his Catholic fellow nationalists. There is no doubt that at this juncture Parnell ceased to be the ‘tame’ Protestant leader of the Home Rule movement. His tone was firm yet restrained; in particular, he resisted the temptation to give the divorce crisis itself too much meaning as an index of Catholic–Protestant relationships. (And yet, when all is said and done, the crisis both revealed and increased the power of the Irish Catholic Church.) It deserved, but did not receive, serious discussion among those who took Irish unity seriously as apolitical objective.
I have to say this, that it is the duty of the [nationalist] majority to leave no stone unturned, no means unused, to conciliate the reasonable or unreasonable prejudices of the Unionist minority* (cheers). I think the majority have always been inclined to go a long way in this direction; but it has been undoubtedly true that every Irish patriot has always recognised . . . from the time of Wolf[e] Tone until now that until the religious prejudices of the minority, whether reasonable or unreasonable, are conciliated . . . Ireland can never enjoy perfect freedom, Ireland can never be united; and until Ireland is practically united, so long as there is a large majority, perhaps a bare majority—in Belfast a considerable majority, in the other provinces of Ireland a majority bearing like proportion—so long as there is this important minority† who consider, rightly or wrongly—I believe and feel sure wrongly—that the concession of legitimate freedom to Ireland means harm and damage to them, either to their spiritual or their temporal interests, the work of building up an independent Ireland will have upon it a fatal clog and a fatal drag (cheers). I do not know, my friends, whether there are any elements in the present struggle which are likely to estrange the minority more than they have been. I trust that there are not. I trust that all Irishmen who take part in this struggle on one side or the other will see the importance of the proposition which I put before you to-night, and try to avoid doing anything to attach to this fight more than is possible, or more than is legitimate, of a sectarian or a religious aspect.33
Sadly, the reaction to this speech in the bulk of the Nationalist press was dismissive. Parnell’s ‘tender consideration for the Protestant minority’34 was noted, but without sympathy. Parnell was merely pandering to the anti–Catholic prejudices of an audience largely composed (it was dishonestly said) of Orange lodges in the ‘Black North’.35 The doctrine that there could be no legitimate freedom for Ireland until the minority was conciliated fell on unreceptive ears.36
The reaction of the Unionist press in Ulster is also worth recording. The agrarian radical Derry Standard, whose motto ‘Live and Let Live’ had expressed a certain ecumenism before the rise of nationalism, was particularly revealing:
Parnell said, ‘I am confident, as a Protestant, and I have always been confident, there is no fear to Protestant interests from Catholic freedom.’ He was the most powerful of modern Irish leaders, and yet he failed ignominiously when pitted against the priests. He is the only man in the party possessing statesmanlike qualities, and if he applied his mind seriously to the lessons from North Sligo and North Kilkenny he could not fail to learn that Protestant liberty is safer under the care of the Imperial Parliament than under an assembly elected by the priests.37
This is not to say that the northern Unionists became sotto voce Parnellites. The reality of uneven economic development ruled that out. As the Northern Whig put it:
That what is called Home Rule for Ireland, but what would not be Home Rule for Belfast and the loyal Ulster counties, would make the South and West of Ireland even comparatively as prosperous as Belfast and the districts of whi
ch it is the centre Mr Parnell assumed in his speech: but it cannot be taken for granted. Very much indeed the contrary.38
But they did have a new and decisive ground for characterising the nationalist movement not as a legitimate social and political movement but as the uprising of ‘disloyal’, priest-ridden Catholics. ‘Disloyal’ not just to the Empire now but to their leader. This was in a sense bitterly unfair. Many nationalists who opposed Parnell did so purely on the basis of political opposition to Parnell’s disruption of the alliance with Gladstone. Nor was the influence of the Protestant clergy exactly weak in north-east Ulster. But the construction of popular ideologies has little to do with fairness. Parnell’s fall was confirmation of a vision of the south which a complex of political, social and economic forces had helped to create.
It is clear that the decisive material basis—in this instance the sine qua non—of Ulster Unionism as a mass ideology was the uneven development of Irish capitalism. The American academic D. B. King’s The Irish Question (New York, 1882) was sympathetic to Home Rule, but even King, in his preface, admitted that ‘Ulster . . . seemed like a different country to the rest of Ireland.’ For the loyalist bloc in Belfast it seemed incredibly obvious and ‘natural’ to assume that the south’s backwardness was a product not of deep-rooted structural economic causes but of biological inferiority, fecklessness and the influence of a grasping, oppressive church. Nature had made the southerner lazy, incapable, criminal and barbarous. It was true that a few geniuses were produced, but they were like solitary palms in an arid and sterile desert. In vain did Parnell and other nationalists vigorously contest this world-view. Ironically, the destruction of Parnell himself appeared as positive proof of the northern conception. It appeared also to provide positive proof of clerical domination in Irish politics.