Authors: Gabriel Doherty
Public expressions of sympathy for the leaders of the rebellion, not just for their ‘misguided’ followers, now appeared regularly in the nationalist
press. Early on, it had carried syndicated news stories about the ‘pathetic’ marriage of Joseph Plunkett on the eve of his execution, about how the green-clad Countess Markiewicz had kissed her revolver when she surrendered, or of how Thomas MacDonagh was ‘glad to die for Ireland’.
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In mid-May three papers, the
Westmeath Independent
,
Sligo Nationalist
and
Western Nationalist
, published an eye-witness account of the rebellion by an Athlone army officer, R.K. Brereton, who had been held captive in the Four Courts. The rebel officers, according to Brereton, were ‘out for war, observing all the rules of civilised warfare and fighting clean. So far as I saw they fought like gentlemen.’ They were ‘men of education, incapable of acts of brutality’. The
Westmeath Independent
contrasted Brereton’s treatment by Volunteer officers at the Four Courts (noting ‘the soldierly and civilised actions of these insurgent officers’) with the treatment of those same Volunteer officers by the army. At least one of these, Ned Daly, had been put up against a wall and shot.
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During June and July, the
Sligo Champion
,
Sligo Nationalist, Strokestown Democrat, Western Nationalist
,
Westmeath Examiner
and
Westmeath Independent
demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the military censorship. Between them, they published Pádraig Pearse’s last letter to his mother, his poems
The Wayfarer
and
A Mother Speaks
, accounts of the heroic deaths of John MacBride and Con Colbert and complimentary assessments of the lives and characters of Pearse, Connolly, MacDermott, and Clarke.
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The
Longford Leader
was an exception, but at the beginning of August made up by carrying an extensive interview with the Sinn Féin and IRB man John Cawley. The interview, published over two weeks, was conducted after Cawley’s return home from his deportation to England. For years a critic and political enemy of J.P. Farrell, Cawley was given a platform by Farrell’s newspaper to state:
I think I can safely say that the Irish Volunteers are the finest and cleanest young fellows of any army in the world, and for deep religious convictions and ardent enthusiasm they would hold their own with any lay community in the world.
The interview concluded with Farrell’s newspaper publishing
A Soldier’s Song
.
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V
The response of the Irish party to the Rising, in this part of Ireland at least, had far more in common with Dillon’s bitter anger against English repression than with Redmond’s almost immediate attack on the party’s Sinn Féin foes. Redmond, however, maintained his stance throughout 1916. In early October he spoke at Waterford. He did announce to loud cheers that the Irish party was going into parliamentary opposition, but he also re-iterated his belief that the Rising had been engineered by men who were the enemies of the constitutional movement for home rule. A few weeks later in Sligo, he would declare that ‘the country has been suffering from what the Americans call a brain storm … a gust of passion’.
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During this period, though, his views were not widely expressed in his party, which instead evidenced more sympathy for ‘the cause’ and its martyrs. Redmond’s followers also faced the challenge of deciding whether, as constitutional home rulers, they now had any credible role in Irish politics. It was all very well for Redmond to declare at Waterford that ‘the constitutional movement shall go on’, but with British and Irish opinion increasingly convinced that the Rising was indeed a Catholic, nationalist ‘struggle for freedom’, the justification for the party’s wartime strategy – that if the Irish alienated British opinion they would lose home rule – was in tatters.
The party’s first public defence of its continuing existence appeared as early as 9 May, in a formal manifesto issued by the parliamentary party. This tried to strike a balance between condemning the ‘mad attempt at revolution’ and expressing shock and horror at the executions and martial law, but far and away its longest section was a repetition of all the achievements of constitutional nationalism concerning land, housing, education and self-government. The Rising was a dangerous blow to the heart and hopes of Ireland, which faced the choice of being given over to hopeless, fruitless anarchy or giving its full support to the constitutional movement. As the
Longford Leader
wrote in commenting on the manifesto, either the Irish people stuck by the movement until its programme was achieved, or they faced ‘anarchy, confusion and bloodshed’. If the people rejected the Irish party for ‘a more exciting but definitely much more dangerous policy, then it is on their own shoulders’.
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Presenting the Irish people with this choice was entirely consistent with Redmond’s support for the war effort and his undiminished intention not to alienate British and unionist opinion. Home rule had to be secured and could only be so with the assent of British democracy. The use of force was therefore not only futile but also
entirely counter-productive. Ireland’s rights could be won only through constitutional action.
Locally, Redmond’s strongest cheerleader was John Hayden MP, writing leading articles week after week that were published, almost identically, in both the
Roscommon Messenger
and
Westmeath Examiner.
Hayden, who for years had fought factional disputes in both Roscommon and Westmeath (notably against the Tully family and the independent MP Laurence Ginnell) remained the most bitter critic of the rebels and of the post-Rising, nationalist enemies of Redmond’s party. The party, he declared in May, could be replaced only by secret societies, anarchy and socialism. In June he wrote that ‘floodgates of claptrap’ had been opened in an attempt to destroy the party. In August Ireland had to make proper use of the weapon forged by Parnell, but the party could do its work only if it had whole-hearted support. In September Hayden attacked ‘the policy of a small section of the race, which culminated in the rebellion which Irish soldiers suppressed in five days’ and which ‘had nothing about it of a constructive character’. The Irish party in parliament could not be overcome – provided that they had the backing of the people. Hayden’s papers backed every attempt of the party leadership to secure agreement with or concessions from the British. He hailed any parliamentary or oratorical success of Redmond, who had again donned ‘the mantle of Parnell’. Redmond’s speeches were ‘marvels of fearless and merciless criticism’. Hayden lauded the party’s efforts to obtain tangible benefits for Ireland, whether relating to teachers’ pay, old age pensions, pensions for wounded soldiers, government control of the railways or the export of potatoes. The party was also given the sole credit for stopping the executions, freeing 1,400 detainees, blocking conscription and, at the top of the list, saving the constitutional movement from destruction. Only through the constitutional movement could wrongs be righted and reforms won.
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The difficulty with this approach was that it looked more and more barren and ineffective as the year progressed. The ability of the Irish party to deliver any amelioration of local conditions appeared small at best. Martial law was not lifted. Press censorship and the ban on unlicensed political meetings continued. Some deportees were released, but only in dribs and drabs. New wartime controls and regulations were announced almost every week. The use of non-jury, ‘coercion’ trials by stipendiary magistrates was extended. Ireland was subjected to what the
Longford Leader
called ‘pinprick coercion’, though the paper also went on to say that all Ireland was now branded as disloyal and untrustworthy; every week the life-long
haters of Ireland called out for more coercion and for conscription. ‘Ireland
is to be crucified in this war and her sacrifices spurned.’
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Above all, the circumstances of the aborted ‘Lloyd George settlement’ (for the immediate implementation of home rule and the partition of six Ulster counties – a saga that ran from mid-May to the end of July) undermined the case that constitutional action could achieve anything. First in this sequence of events came the announcement by Asquith in mid-May that the Castle system of government had failed and that David Lloyd George would attempt to negotiate an alternative. This announcement raised exaggerated hopes of a settlement. However, it also inculcated a belief that physical force had achieved results denied to constitutional methods. John Fitzgibbon observed that the Rising had certainly brought home to England that there must be something wrong in Ireland when men would be willing to make such a sacrifice.
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By August, the
Sligo Nationalist
could state that Easter Week demonstrated what could be achieved by the methods of Carson, ‘carried out in real sincerity and with real ardour and courage’. Farrell’s
Longford Leader
was more trenchant. The ‘smug hypocrites’ who oppressed Ireland ‘move along lines of such smug self-confidence that it requires an earthquake like the Dublin Rebellion to get them to waken up’. English uppishness precipitated the rebellion and ‘gave to young, hot-blooded Irishmen the notion that nothing could ever be got from England except by force’.
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By September, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) inspector general reported the widespread belief across Ireland that one week of fighting had achieved more than twenty five years of constitutional agitation.
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Secondly, the negotiation of the deal, and the rapid realisation that it did entail a ‘clean cut’ partition of six Ulster counties, triggered a wave of protest across the south and west of Ireland, as well as in Ulster. Repeated charges of weakness and surrender were made against the parliamentary politicians. Locally, protests against partition were voiced not just by individuals but also by party bosses, UIL branches, AOH divisions and county political executives. It was specifically on this issue that two further nationalist papers, the
Strokestown Democrat
and
Westmeath Independent,
broke with Redmond’s leadership. For the
Westmeath Independent
, so long a bastion of Irish party propaganda, the game was clearly up at the beginning of June, when the headline of its leading article was ‘Home Rule, Moyrah!’ Cutting off a piece of Ulster would not be a settlement, but instead ‘an outrage that would cry to heaven for vengeance’.
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These defections meant that locally there were now as many nationalist papers (six) opposing Redmond as supporting him.
Thirdly, the collapse of the deal in late July was portrayed by the party as the result of unionist and English betrayal. In the party’s eyes, they had tried honourably to complete the deal, and had faced what Hayden’s papers called ‘the wrecker conspiracy’ of factionist and unionist opposition. The
Westmeath Examiner
denounced the utter inability of British statesmen to understand Ireland and ‘mean and contemptible’ conduct within the government. Now that there was deliberate betrayal and bad faith, it was impossible for Redmond to deal further with the government. Thomas Scanlan MP would later announce that Ireland was governed by ‘despotism’. Britain would not get Irish cooperation in the war until Ireland achieved self-government. There was an ‘almost incurable’ atmosphere of distrust. ‘Ireland will never again accept a promise from a British minister.’
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If that was indeed the case, though, what was the point of seeking constitutional concessions from a British government or in parliament?
Finally, the news that the deal had collapsed was combined with the reinstatement of Castle government and the extension of coercion measures. For the
Longford Leader
, the government was ‘building up the wall of hate’. Ireland now had a unionist chief secretary, DORA, martial law, the Crimes Act and ‘40,000 English troops … No doubt we shall have to submit to such degrading and insulting conditions. Ireland cannot do otherwise. She is unarmed – undrilled and defenceless’. This was a view of Ireland depicted not by Sinn Féiners but by staunch party loyalists. The
Western Nationalist
lamented that ‘the best of Irish blood is being shed for the treaty-breaker’ and called on its readers to prepare: ‘There are new Prussians at our doors.’
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In this environment, the ability of the constitutional party to achieve reforms and right wrongs was rendered, in the earlier phrase of Gladstone, ‘almost a nullity’. The process of peacefully seeking concessions from the British government appeared exhausted. The response of the party leadership was to make it clear that they would go into parliamentary opposition, call for unity, and plead with their followers not to give up. The
Western Nationalist
, a week after calling on its readers to prepare for ‘new Prussians’ at their doors, now called on its readers not to despair. Ireland’s tide would turn, and her ‘impregnable line of defence’ was that home rule was on the statute book. The
Roscommon Messenger
and
Westmeath Examiner
praised the ‘sagacity and foresight’ of the party’s leaders and claimed that black was white in a leader headed ‘The constitutional movement vindicated’. The
Longford Leader
welcomed the party’s return to opposition, to ‘the days of Biggar and Parnell’. However, it also highlighted the
party’s continuing dilemma, that it dared not abandon its support for the war. The paper wrote that if the party were to attack the government for its conduct of the war, ‘and so bring comfort to the enemies of the country, they will be accused of playing a traitorous part which will tell very badly against them in England’. Home rule would be ‘very seriously affected’.
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