Authors: Vincent McDonnell
T
he man described as the ‘uncrowned king of Ireland’, Charles Stewart Parnell, was born in Avondale, County Wicklow on 18 June 1846. Parnell was a Protestant and his people were wealthy landowners. Like O’Connell, he did not believe in violence and his dream was to peacefully obtain Home Rule. Under Home Rule, Ireland would have its own parliament in Dublin, but would still maintain close ties with England.
Parnell was a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1875. Immediately, he became aware that the Irish MPs had little influence in the English parliament. In order to become influential, Parnell adopted the tactics of another Irish MP, Joseph Biggar. Whenever a bill came up for debate Biggar would speak for hours on it. This meant that the parliament could not do its work. Other Irish MPs also adopted Biggar’s tactic and brought parliament to a virtual standstill. The British MPs were angry at this, but there was nothing they could do about it.
In 1879, Parnell was elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. As the aim of the IPP was to obtain Home Rule, it became known as the Home Rule Party. In an election in 1885, eighty-five Irish MPs who supported Home Rule were elected. At this time there were two main British parties in parliament, the Liberal Party and the Conservatives. In the 1885 election both ended up with virtually the same number of MPs. This meant that whichever party obtained the votes of Parnell’s eighty-five members could form a government.
William Gladstone was the leader of the Liberal Party, and he was in favour of granting Home Rule. Parnell supported him, and Gladstone became Prime Minister. In 1886 he introduced a Home Rule Bill, but the Conservative Party and Protestant Irish MPs, most of whom were elected in Ulster, opposed it. Because these Protestant MPs wanted the union to continue they became known as Unionists.
Some liberal MPs also opposed Home Rule, as did many other British people. They considered Ireland to be part of the British Empire, which consisted of a great many other countries. The empire made Britain one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world. The British people were frightened that if Ireland was granted Home Rule, other countries within the empire would also seek their freedom. If that happened, it could lead to war, and an end of the empire. Britain then would become weaker and less wealthy, and might be attacked and conquered by her enemies.
Despite the support of Parnell and his MPs, the Home Rule Bill was defeated. Gladstone resigned, and the Conservatives, supported by the Ulster Unionist MPs, came to power. Unionists now spoke out against Home Rule. They described it not as Home Rule but as Rome Rule, meaning that it was the Catholic majority who would rule Ireland. They still remembered the atrocities committed against them in past rebellions, and were frightened of becoming a minority in a Catholic Ireland.
At this time, too, there was bitter rivalry between Protestants and Catholics in Ulster. This bitter rivalry between people, who hold different religious beliefs, is called sectarianism, and in Ulster it led to great unrest. Though the Protestants were more to blame for it than the Catholics, it still made them fearful.
The defeat of the Home Rule Bill was a blow for Parnell and the IPP. But his enemies were not satisfied with having defeated the bill. They knew that Parnell was still powerful, and would try to obtain Home Rule again. So they set out to destroy his reputation. In 1887
The Times
newspaper in London published a letter linking Parnell with what were then known as the Phoenix Park Murders.
The murders had occurred in the Phoenix Park in Dublin on the evening of 6 May 1882. Two men, Lord Cavendish and Thomas Burke, who were high-ranking government officials in Dublin, were brutally murdered. The murders were carried out by a group calling itself The Invincibles. At the time of the murders it was believed that Parnell and the Land League, of which Parnell was President, supported this group. Parnell did not support them and denied that he had anything to do with them. Despite this, many thought he was lying.
When the letter was published, it seemed to prove that Parnell had supported The Invincibles. Luckily for Parnell, the letter was found to be a forgery. It had been written for money by a man named Richard Piggott. When news of this emerged, it made Parnell even more popular and more powerful. People began to think of him as the ‘uncrowned king of Ireland’.
When it seemed as if Parnell might achieve his dream of Home Rule, disaster struck. A Captain William O’Shea filed for divorce from his wife, Catherine, who was also known as Kitty. In the petition, he claimed that Parnell and Kitty were in love, and this was why he was divorcing her. This time the accusation against Parnell was true, and it caused a great scandal. The majority of the members of the IPP and the Irish people turned against Parnell. The party split, thus weakening its influence in the English parliament. It was a terrible blow for Parnell, and he never recovered from it. He died a broken man on 6 October 1891 at the young age of forty-five.
Two years later, in 1893, Gladstone became British Prime Minister once more with the support of the Irish MPs. A year later, in 1894, he introduced a Second Home Rule Bill. It passed through the British parliament, but was defeated in the House of Lords. With its defeat, hope of Home Rule ended for the time being.
It seemed as if Ireland was entering another bleak period. But this was far from the truth. A new sense of what it meant to be Irish was gathering force. In 1884, a group of men, led by Michael Cusack, founded the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), to promote Irish games and pastimes. It was a hugely successful organisation, and within a few years thousands were playing hurling and Gaelic football, and tens of thousands were watching the games.
Two other men, a Protestant, Douglas Hyde and a Catholic, Eoin MacNeill founded the Gaelic League in 1893. This organisation’s principal aim was to foster the Irish language, which had suffered greatly through emigration and the National School System, which, you remember, punished pupils for speaking Irish. The league also supported Irish music, dancing, poetry and other literary pursuits.
A number of famous Irish writers also emerged at this time. Most, but not all of them, were Protestants, and descended from English and Scottish settlers. They were known as Anglo-Irish, and they wished to revive the ancient Irish stories and legends. They also put forward the idea that the Irish people should be proud of their Gaelic heritage. Ireland was an ancient nation with its own language, culture and traditions. Its people might not be free, but they could still be proud.
These new groups, the Gaelic League and the GAA, did help to make the Irish people proud of their country and their heritage. Meanwhile, the IRB, founded at the time of the Fenians, had quite a different aim. This was to gain freedom for Ireland by force of arms. Its members were waiting only for an opportunity to rebel but right then no such opportunity presented itself. They could only watch and wait and plan.
T
he possibility of Home Rule alarmed the Protestants in Ireland, especially those in Ulster, who regarded themselves as Unionists and wished to remain part of Britain. At the beginning of the 1900s these Unionists began to organise opposition to Home Rule. At first, this opposition was political, but later the threat of armed resistance to Home Rule emerged.
The defeat of Gladstone’s second bill, however, appeared to have ended hope of Home Rule. Now, others emerged in Ireland who had more ambitious aims than Home Rule. One of those was Arthur Griffith, who was born in Dublin on 31 March 1872, and worked as a printer. He was a member of the Gaelic League and the IRB. In 1899 he helped found a newspaper, the
United Irishman.
Like many other patriots, he wanted Ireland to be an independent Gaelic nation, proud of its ancient heritage, language and traditions.
Griffith was disillusioned with the IPP. He believed that all they could hope to achieve, if they achieved anything, was Home Rule. This, Griffith felt, would simply make Ireland a puppet of the British Empire. He decided that what Ireland needed was a new party to represent the people and which would not be a British puppet.
In 1905 he founded a party which was to become one of the most important ever founded in Ireland. He named it Sinn Féin, which translates as ‘we ourselves’. Griffith claimed that the Act of Union was illegal, and therefore Irish MPs should not sit in Westminster in London, but in Dublin. Ireland, he said, should become an independent nation and cut its links with Britain. Irish people who were disillusioned with the IPP supported Sinn Féin, and the organisation slowly grew.
Following the death of Parnell, the IPP had split. Later, the two factions reunited under the leadership of John Redmond. But as the Conservatives were now in power in Britain, and were supported by the Ulster Unionists, the IPP had little influence in the British parliament. It wasn’t until 1912, when the Liberals were again in power, and dependant on the IPP for support, that another Home Rule Bill was introduced. By now, the House of Lords no longer had the power to veto a bill and it was passed. However, the Ulster Unionists were still determined to resist Home Rule, or keep Ulster an independent state united with Britain.
Under the leadership of a Dublin-born, Protestant lawyer, William Carson, they threatened to fight rather than accept Home Rule. Huge meetings were held across Ulster, and 200,000 people signed a petition pledging their opposition to Home Rule. The Orange Order also gained new prominence, and began to stir up sectarian hatred. In 1913, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was founded and had 100,000 members. Its aim was to resist Home Rule by any means, including armed resistance. This was no idle threat as guns and ammunition for the UVF were landed at Larne, County Antrim, in April 1914. Though this was illegal, the authorities did nothing to stop it. They didn’t see the UVF as a threat to the British Empire, but as an organisation that favoured keeping the Empire intact.
In response to the UVF, Eoin MacNeill founded a volunteer force in Dublin in November 1913. Named the National Volunteers, its aim was to defend Home Rule when it was eventually introduced. About 150,000 joined, but they had very few arms. While they were attempting to land arms at Howth, County Dublin, in July 1914, the authorities tried to prevent them. The Volunteers succeeded in landing the arms, though the British soldiers killed three people and injured others in an attempt to prevent it. This showed the Volunteers, and indeed those who supported freedom for Ireland, that the British favoured Protestant Unionists over Catholic Nationalists.
At this time, conditions for workers and their families in Dublin and other cities were appalling. While those who lived in rural Ireland had benefited from the various land bills, the ordinary people who lived in the cities had not benefited. Most of these lived in little more than hovels, or in buildings called tenements. These were tall, old structures without running water or sanitation, and virtually on the point of falling down. A whole family, husband, wife, children, and sometimes grandparents, lived in one room. As many as twelve or even more might share a room. They were always hungry and disease was rife. Such were the terrible conditions that a great many children died at birth, or shortly afterwards.
A man named James Larkin decided to try and improve conditions for the poor. He was born in Liverpool in 1876 and later came to Ireland to organise workers into trade unions. In 1913, urged on by Larkin, workers in Dublin went on strike for more pay and better working conditions. The employers locked out the strikers, and the police, who supported the employers, regularly attacked them when they held their meetings or protests.
To protect the workers from attack, James Connolly, a Scotsman, founded the Irish Citizen Army. Connolly was born in Edinburgh to Irish immigrant parents in 1868 and, like Larkin, wished to improve the lot of the workers. His Irish Citizen Army clashed frequently with the police, and with men hired as replacement workers by the employers. The striking workers held out for five months but, unable to survive without their meagre wages, were forced to give in and return to work.
As yet, the Home Rule Bill had not been implemented. The British feared that if they did implement it, the UVF would oppose it by force. This would draw the British army into conflict with the UVF. Already, British soldiers stationed at the Curragh, County Kildare, had refused to take action against the Ulster Unionists. They claimed that it would be just the same as if they took action against people in London or Birmingham. This incident, which is known as the Curragh Mutiny, clearly showed that the army could not be relied on to fight the UVF. Although the refusal of the soldiers was an act of treason, no action was taken against the mutineers. Again this showed that the British authorities favoured the Ulster Unionists despite the fact that they were the ones threatening war against the Empire.
However, before the British government could decide what to do about Home Rule, an event in Europe plunged the whole world into a war, now known as the First World War. The event which brought about this war took place on 28 June 1914. On that day the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo. The assassin, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip, belonged to an organisation called The Black Hand. This organisation was opposed to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which had taken over Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, and was ill-treating the people who lived there.
As a result of the assassination, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia and the allies of both sides were drawn into the conflict. Britain supported Serbia while Germany supported the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Old hatreds quickly surfaced in Europe and a terrible war broke out.
The British government decided to put the question of Home Rule aside until after the war. John Redmond, the leader of the IPP, and a supporter of the National Volunteers, suggested that they should fight for Britain. Eoin MacNeill and others were opposed to this. They felt that Irishmen should not fight for Britain while Ireland was not free.