As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Harrington represents Westmeath from February 1883 to November 1885. In 1885 he is elected for the new constituency of Dublin Harbour, which he represents until his death. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin three times from 1901 to 1904.
Harrington owns two newspapers, United Ireland and the Kerry Sentinel, and is a member of the so-called Bantry band of prominent nationalist politicians from the Bantry vicinity. They are also more pejoratively known as the Pope’s brass band. Tim Healy is another prominent member of this unofficial group.
In 1884, Harrington publishes a pamphlet, “Maamtrasna Massacres – Impeachment of the Trials,” in which he dismantles the Crown Prosecution’s case against the eight men accused of the murders of the Joyce family on August 17, 1882. He provides evidence that Crown Prosecutor George Bolton had deliberately suppressed evidence that would have acquitted Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), who was hanged, and four men who were sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude.
Thereafter Harrington becomes excluded from Redmond’s closed circle of confidants, retains sympathy with O’Brien, and represents the interests of the tenant farmers at the 1902 Land Conference negotiations which lead to the enactment of the unprecedented WyndhamLand Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903.
On September 7, 1901, as the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Harrington kicks off at the official ceremony to open Bohemian F.C.‘s new home, Dalymount Park.
Harrington retains the party nomination for the Dublin Harbour constituency in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election, largely because of local divisions about who should succeed him and because an O’Brienite offer to pay his election expenses deters rivals from going to the polls. He decides that the finely balanced result of the general election means that every nationalist vote would be required at Westminster. He therefore travels to London, but shortly after attending the parliamentary party meeting on February 23 he suffers a stroke. After some days’ recuperation he is brought home to Dublin, but his condition deteriorates and he dies on March 12, 1910, at his home, 70 Harcourt Street. He is buried near the Parnell circle at Glasnevin Cemetery.
Harrington is celebrated by a statue erected in 2001 at the east end of Castletownbere near the Millbrook bar.
Healy is one of twins, the third son born to Maurice, a Poor Law Union clerk, and Eliza (née Sullivan) Healy. His mother dies during the birth. It is said that the nurse places him in his brother Tim‘s arms and said, “This little boy has no mother now and you will have to be a mother to him.” As he grows up, he becomes very close to his elder brother. The orphaned children are effectively raised by their maternal grandmother, Jane Sullivan. The family moves to Lismore, County Waterford, where he is educated at the local Christian Brothers school. Both brothers marry Sullivans who are first cousins to their husbands and to each other.
Admitted as a solicitor in 1882, Healy practises as such and is returned to parliament four times, first as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party for Cork City from 1885 to 1900, in which year standing as a Healyite nationalist he is defeated by William O’Brien in a bitter campaign. He is returned again for Cork City in May 1909 to January 1910.
Healy’s force in parliament is land law. He is a close confidant of his brother Tim and although more retiring and stolid than his better-known elder brother, he is considered the more intelligent and often acts as a counterbalance to his brother’s emotionality. On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 a son of each enlists in one of the Irish Divisions.
Maurice (junior) moves to England after the founding of the Irish Free State where he is both a successful lawyer and a broadcaster for the BBC during the early years of World War II. He writes the well-known legal memoir The Old Munster Circuit and the popular Stay Me with Flagons: A Book about Wine and Other Things.
O’Brien is a ship builder and designer, and his notable boats include the Kelpie (used for gun running in 1914), the Saoirse (in which he circumnavigates the globe) and the Ilen (a Falkland Islands service ship).
O’Brien is credited with two buildings in his lifetime: the Co-operative Hall in County Donegal and the People’s Hall in County Limerick. He is also known as a naval architect, having designed two ships, the Saoirse and the llen. He later captains both of these ships himself.
In Saoirse, a 20-ton, 42-foot ketch designed and built in 1922 in Baltimore, County Cork, he and three crew members circumnavigate the globe between 1923 and 1925 – the first recorded by an amateur skipper from west to east, the first yacht circumnavigation by way of the three great capes: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin, and the first boat flying the Irish tri-colour to enter many of the world’s ports and harbours. His voyage begins and ends at the Port of Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives. His account of the voyage, Across Three Oceans, (1927) becomes one of the classics of maritime literature.
Up until O’Brien’s circumnavigation, this route is the preserve of square-rigged grain ships taking part in the grain race from Australia to England via Cape Horn (also known as the clipper route).
O’Brien’s seagoing experiences are put to use in his design of the Ilen, which is built for the Falkland Islands as a service boat and launched in the spring of 1926. In 1998, Ilen returns to the site where she was first built, on the River Ilen near Baltimore, County Cork, where she undergoes a full restoration and is re-launched in May 2018. This task provides work-based learning for the students of the Ilen School.
O’Brien has some involvement with gun running in 1914 on behalf of the Irish Volunteers, for political reasons and because he has experience in sailing. On July 26, 1914, nine hundred guns are brought to Howth harbour aboard Erskine Childers‘ yacht Asgard. As part of the same operation, O’Brien transports arms on his yacht, Kelpie. The guns on Kelpie are transshipped to another yacht, Chotah, owned by Sir Thomas Myles, before being landed at Kilcoole in County Wicklow on August 1, 1914. After the gun running incidents, he serves in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
In 1928, O’Brien marries a well-known artist, Kathleen Francis, the youngest daughter of Sir George Clausen, RA. The couple thereafter moves to Ibiza, where they live on the Saoirse until Kathleen’s death in 1936. They have no children. Relocating to Cornwall, where he lives with his sister, he writes books on sailing and works of fiction for children. Although too old for active service when war with Germany breaks out in 1939, he assists the British war effort by serving in the Small Ships Pool, which delivers support vessels across the Atlantic and brings food supplies from the United States in private yachts.
In 1940 O’Brien sells Saoirse to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club. The boat remains in use until 1980, when it is lost off the Jamaican coast. After the war he retires to another sister’s home in Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives and continues to write books for children until his death on April 18, 1952.
Boland is born on September 16, 1870, at 135 Capel Street, Dublin, to Patrick Boland, businessman, and Mary Donnelly. Following the death of his mother in 1882, he is placed with his six siblings under the guardianship of his uncle, Nicholas Donnelly, auxiliary bishop of Dublin.
Boland is educated at two private Catholic schools, the Catholic University School, Dublin, and Birmingham Oratory in Birmingham, England, where he becomes head boy. His secondary education at the two schools help give him the foundation and understanding to play an influential role in the politics of Great Britain and Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century, when he is a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which pursues constitutional Home Rule.
In 1892, Boland graduates with a BA from London University. He studies for a semester in Bonn, Germany, where he is a member of Bavaria Bonn, a student fraternity that is member of the Cartellverband. He studies law at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a BA in 1896 and MA in 1901. Although called to the Bar in 1897, he never practises.
Boland is the first Olympic champion in tennis for Great Britain and Ireland at the first modern Olympics, which take place in Athens in 1896. He visits his friend Thrasyvoulos Manos in Athens during the Olympics, and Manos, a member of the organising committee, enters Boland in the tennis tournament. He promptly wins the singles tournament, defeating Friedrich Traun of Germany in the first round, Evangelos Rallis of Greece in the second, Konstantinos Paspatis of Greece in the semifinals, and Dionysios Kasdaglis of Greece in the final.
Boland then enters the doubles event with Traun, the German runner whom he had defeated in the first round of the singles. Together, they win the doubles event. They defeat Aristidis and Konstantinos Akratopoulos of Greece in the first round, have a bye in the semifinals, and defeat Demetrios Petrokokkinos of Greece and Dimitrios Kasdaglis in the final. When the Union Jack and the German flag are run up the flagpole to honour Boland and Traun’s victory, Boland points out to the man hoisting the flags that he is Irish, adding “It [the Irish flag]’s a gold harp on a green ground, we hope.” The officials agreed to have an Irish flag prepared.
Following a visit to County Kerry, Boland becomes concerned about the lack of literacy among the native population. He also has a keen interest in the Irish Language.
Boland’s patriotic stand is well received in nationalist circles in Ireland. This and a lifelong friendship with John Redmond gain for him an invitation to stand as a candidate for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the safe seat of South Kerry, which he holds from 1900 to 1918. He is unopposed in the general elections of 1900 and 1906, and the first of 1910. In the second election of 1910 he is challenged by a local man, T. B. Cronin, who stands as an independent nationalist in the interest of William O’Brien. Boland stands down at the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
In 1908, Boland is appointed a member of the commission for the foundation of the National University of Ireland (NUI). From 1926 to 1947, he is General Secretary of the Catholic Truth Society. He receives a papal knighthood, becoming a Knight of St. Gregory in recognition for his work in education. In 1950, he is awarded an honorary Doctor of Law by the NUI.
Boland marries Eileen Moloney at SS Peter and Edward, Palace Street, Westminster, on October 22, 1902, the daughter of an Australian Dr. Patrick Moloney. They have one son and five daughters. His daughter Honor Crowley succeeds her husband Frederick Crowley upon his death sitting as Fianna FáilTD for South Kerry from 1945 until her death in 1966. His daughter Bridget Boland is a playwright who notably writes The Prisoner and co-writes the script for Gaslight, and, among other books, co-authors Old Wives’ Lore for Gardeners with her sister, Maureen Boland.
In 1918, a system called plural voting is in place in both Britain and Ireland. Plural voting is a practice whereby one person might be able to vote multiple times in an election. Property and business owners can vote both in the constituency where their property lay and that in which they live, if the two are different. In the newly formed Irish Free State this system is ended by the Electoral Act 1923 and is abolished in the United Kingdom by the Representation of the People Act 1948. Plural voting remains in effect in Northern Ireland until 1969.
Sinn Féin is founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. He believes that Irish nationalists should emulate the Ausgleich of Hungarian nationalists who, in the 19th century under Ferenc Deák, had chosen to boycott the imperial parliament in Vienna and unilaterally establish their own legislature in Budapest.
Griffith initially favours a peaceful solution based on “dual monarchy” with Britain, that is two separate states with a single head of state and a limited central government to control matters of common concern only. However, by 1918, under its new leader, Éamon de Valera, Sinn Féin has come to favour achieving separation from Britain by means of an armed uprising if necessary and the establishment of an independent republic.
In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, the party’s ranks are swelled by participants and supporters of the rebellion as they are freed from British gaols and internment camps. At its 1917 Ardfheis (annual conference) de Valera is elected leader, and the new, more radical policy is adopted.
Prior to 1916, Sinn Féin had been a fringe movement having a limited cooperative alliance with William O’Brien‘s All-for-Ireland League and enjoyed little electoral success. However, between the Easter Rising of that year and the 1918 general election, the party’s popularity increases dramatically. This is due to the failure to have the Home Rule Bill implemented when the IPP resists the partition of Ireland demanded by Ulster Unionists in 1914, 1916 and 1917, but also popular antagonism towards the British authorities created by the execution of most of the leaders of the 1916 rebels and by their botched attempt to introduce Home Rule on the conclusion of the Irish Convention linked with military conscription in Ireland (see Conscription Crisis of 1918).
Sinn Féin demonstrates its new electoral capability in four by-election successes in 1917 in which George Noble Plunkett, Joseph McGuinness, de Valera and W. T. Cosgrave are each elected, although it loses three by-elections in early 1918 before winning two more with Patrick McCartan and Arthur Griffith. In one case there are unproven allegations of electoral fraud. The party benefits from a number of factors in the 1918 elections, including demographic changes and political factors.
The Plan of Campaign is a stratagem adopted in Ireland between 1886 and 1891, co-ordinated by Irish politicians for the benefit of tenant farmers, against mainly absentee and rack-rentlandlords and the tyrannical regime of enforced massive rents and evictions. It is launched to counter agricultural distress caused by the continual depression in prices of dairy products and cattle from the mid-1870s, which leaves many tenants in arrears with rent. Bad weather in 1885 and 1886 also cause crop failure, making it harder to pay rents. The Land War of the early 1880s is about to be renewed after evictions increase and outrages become widespread.
The Plan, conceived by Timothy Healy, is devised and organised by Timothy Harrington, secretary of the Irish National League, William O’Brien and John Dillon. It is outlined in an article headed Plan of Campaign by Harrington which is published on October 23, 1886, in the League’s newspaper, the United Ireland, of which O’Brien is editor.
Dillon is among those who organise a campaign whereby tenants pay their rents to the Land League instead of their landlords. If the tenants are evicted, they are to receive financial assistance from a general fund established for that purpose. As a result of his involvement in this campaign, Dillon spends a number of months in jail.
The measures are to be put into operation on 203 estates, mainly in the south and west of the country though including some scattered Ulster estates. Initially sixty landlords accept the reduced rents, twenty-four holding out but then agreeing to the tenant conditions. Tenants give in on fifteen estates. The chief trouble occurs on the remaining large estates.
The organisers of the Plan decide to test a number of their measures, expecting the remainder will then give in. Widespread attention is focused on it being implemented by Dillon and O’Brien on the estate of Hubert de Burgh-Canning, 2nd Marquess of Clanricarde, at Portumna, County Galway, on November 19, 1886, where the landlord is an absentee ascendancy landlord. The estate comprising 52,000 acres, or 21,000 hectare, yields 25,000 sterling annually in rents paid by 1,900 tenants. The hard-pressed tenants look for a reduction of twenty-five percent. The landlord refuses to give any abatement. The tenant’s reduced rents are then placed into an estate fund, and the landlord informed he will only receive the monies when he agrees to the reduction. Tenants on other estates then follow the example of the Clanricarde tenants, the Plan on each estate led by a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) Campaign activists including Pat O’Brien, Alexander Blane or members of its constituency organisation, the National League. Some 20,000 tenants are involved.
In 1887, a rent strike takes place on the estate of Lady Kingston near Mitchelstown, County Cork. Another of the Land Leaguers, William O’Brien, is brought to court on charges of inciting non-payment of rent. Dillon organises an 8,000 strong crowd to demonstrate outside the courthouse. Three estate tenants are shot by police and others are injured. This incident becomes known as the “Mitchelstown Massacre.”
In December 1890, following the verdict in the O’Shea v O’Shea and Parnell divorce case, the IPP splits. This diverts attention from the Campaign which slowly peters out. The IPP also wants to disassociate itself from the more violent aspects on the approach to the Second Home Rule Bill that narrowly succeeds with a majority of 30 in the House of Commons but is then defeated by the House of Lords in 1893.
(Pictured: Eviction scene, Woodford Galway 1888, during the Plan of Campaign. The Woodford evictions become some of the most highly resisted with numerous pamphlets, during the period, referring to them)
Rice is born on June 1, 1766, at Westcourt, Callan, County Kilkenny, the fourth of seven sons of Robert Rice, a farmer, and his wife, Margaret Tierney. His education begins at a local hedge school. He subsequently transfers to a school in Kilkenny before being apprenticed in 1779 to his uncle, a prosperous merchant at Waterford. He amasses a fortune in the lucrative provisioning trade of the city, and in 1785 he marries Mary Elliott, the daughter of a local tanner. Their only child, Mary, has intellectual disabilities and Rice suffers additional heartbreak with the death of his wife in 1789 following an accident, possibly by a fever that set in afterwards.
The death of his wife clearly affects Rice’s life. While he continues in trade and is an active member of the Catholic committee in the city, his priorities are radically changed. From this point he becomes increasingly involved in pious and charitable pursuits. He assists in the foundation of the Trinitarian Orphan Society in 1793 and the Society for the Relief of Distressed Roomkeepers in 1794. He joins religious confraternities and devotes considerable attention to the plight of prisoners. His endeavours become more focused in 1797 when, in response to a controversial pastoral of BishopThomas Hussey of Waterford and Lismore, he embraces the cause of Catholic education. In 1802, he establishes a religious community of laymen who set out to do for the neglected poor boys of Waterford what Nano Nagle had done for poor girls in Cork. His community is the genesis of both the Presentation Brothers and the Irish Congregation of Christian Brothers. Rice’s “monks” follow a variation of the Presentation rule, and his school curriculum is a pragmatic combination of best practice of the time overlaid by an uncompromisingly Catholic emphasis. By the time of his death in 1844, the Christian Brothers run forty-three schools, including six in England.
Rice is pivotal in the revival of Irish Catholicism following the severe dislocation of the penal era. Among the urban poor the Brothers make a landmark contribution in widening the social base of the institutional church. Through their teaching and catechetical instruction, they introduce the poor to the new forms of devotion which become the hallmark of nineteenth-century Catholicism. This effort brings a previously marginalised class within the ranks of the institutional church, which in time becomes the backbone of the emerging Catholic Ireland. The Brothers also play a determined role in the Catholic response to the proselytising efforts of the protestant Second Reformation in the country. Rice’s Brothers assist in the moulding of a distinctively Catholic urban working class, by promoting literacy alongside piety and instilling in their pupils the middle-class virtues of personal discipline, hard work, and sobriety.
Rice collaborates closely with other Catholic leaders of his age. His congregation is central to the success of Theobald Mathew‘s temperance movement. In 1828, at the height of the emancipation campaign, he invites Daniel O’Connell to lay the foundation stone of the Brothers’ model school at North Richmond Street, Dublin. This “monster meeting” attracts an attendance of 100,000, before which O’Connell hails Rice as the “patriarch of the monks of the west.” During the Repeal campaign, too, the Brothers frequently host the Liberator. Reflecting on their efforts, O’Connell declares that “education to be suited to this country must be Catholic and Irish in its tone, having as its motto Faith and Fatherland.”
Rice’s uncompromising adherence to these principles is not without difficulty. It leads to a predictably acrimonious relationship with the secular national board and his eventual withdrawal of the Brothers’ schools from the system in 1836. Rejection of the national board imposes serious financial burdens on the Christian Brothers which are relieved only by the bounties provided by the Intermediate Education Act (1878). Withdrawal also serves to alienate many friends and benefactors, including Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, who is a commissioner of national education. But the bishops gradually adopt Rice’s stance. After 1838 they become increasingly hostile to the national board, and the Brothers’ schools, with their acclaimed textbooks, are recognised as a bulwark against non-denominational education. For similar reasons, the Brothers become closely associated with Irish nationalism. In 1892, the MPWilliam O’Brien observes that “the Christian Brothers system was regarded in Ireland as the really national system.”
The 1830s bring a rapid deterioration in Rice’s health. Financial difficulties frustrate his plans, and the plight of the three Dublin foundations is particularly acute. Rice resigns as superior general of his congregation in 1838, but fraught relations with his successor, Br. Michael Paul Riordan, blights his later years.
From this time on, Rice spends an increasing proportion of his time at Mount Sion and the adjoining school, showing a continued interest in the pupils and their teachers. He also takes a short walk each day on the slope of Mount Sion, but his increasingly painful arthritis leads the community superior, Joseph Murphy, to purchase a wheelchair for his benefit. At Christmas time in 1841, his health takes a turn for the worse and even though expectations of his imminent death do not turn out to be justified, he is increasingly confined to his room.
After living in a near-comatose state for more than two years and in the constant care of a nurse since May 1842, Rice dies on August 29, 1844, at Mount Sion, Waterford, where his remains lie in a casket to this day. Large crowds fill the streets around his house in Dublin to honour him. He is beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1996.
(From: “Rice, Edmund Ignatius” by Dáire Keogh, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Lynch’s father, who is a committed, non-violent Fenian, dies when she is young. Her mother, Anna Theresa Calderwood, is married twice. She grows up in a cultivated, literary, very female household with her mother and ten sisters and half-sisters. Her stepfather is James Cantwell, also a Fenian, who runs the Star and Garter Hotel. From her early childhood she is familiar with many leading political agitators and writers in Dublin. Having been educated at a convent school in France, she considers training as a doctor and later as a concert pianist. However, economic circumstances lead to her to work as a sub-editor for a provincial paper and as a governess in Europe.
A nationalist like her father and stepfather, Lynch is an executive member of the Ladies’ Land League and as a result closely associates with Fanny Parnell. She writes extensively, producing short stories and satirical sketches, as well as Land War fiction, travel writing, translations and literary criticism. Her satirical pieces include “A Dublin Literary Coterie Sketched by a Non-Pretentious Observer” (1888) and “My Friend Arcanieva” (1895). She publishes William O’Brien‘s paper United Ireland from France, after it is suppressed in Ireland. She disagrees with William Butler Yeats on the literary merit of Emily Lawless, calling her work “highly polished literary stories.”
Lynch also writes fiction on the subject of political and cultural affairs in Ireland, sometimes meeting controversy. Her first novel, Through Troubled Waters (1885), is a fictionalised version of a real-life incident in Galway in which the daughters of a prosperous landowning family are murdered to make way for the sons to inherit the land. The novel also depicts the rural clergy as complicit, by denouncing the victims from the pulpit. The newspaper United Ireland strongly criticises the novel, claiming it peddles in anti-Irish stereotypes for a British audience. She responds by stating that she had intended the book for an Irish publisher and audience, and that she should not be asked “to prove my patriotism at the expense of truth.”
Lynch publishes across Ireland, the United Kingdom and from Paris. Her political work eventually leads to a breakdown in her health, after which she spends a period recuperating on the Isle of Wight. By 1896, she has settled in Paris, having also lived in both Spain and Greece. She speaks Greek and French. She then returns to lecture in Ireland and is a part of the salons of Paris in the Belle Époque as well as the Irish Literary Revival in Dublin. She is friends with the historian, biographer and literary critic Arvède Barine (pseudonym of Louise-Cécile Vincens), the writers Mabel and Mary Robinson, and the medievalist Gaston Paris. Her work however does not bring significant income, and she is forced to apply to the Royal Literary Fund for help on multiple occasions. Eventually it takes a toll on her health. She spends time in hospital in Margate, England in 1903.
Lynch dies at 60 Rue de Breteuil in Paris on January 9, 1904, where she spends much of her working life.
In his early years, Devlin is active in various local debating societies, where his associates include Cathal O’Byrne, who he retains a personal friendship despite later political differences. A committee member of the Belfast branch of the Irish National League (INL) in 1890, he joins the anti-Parnellite faction during the O’Shea divorce scandal (1891), becoming local secretary of the Irish National Federation (INF). His political model at this time is Thomas Sexton, MP for Belfast West, whose campaign he organises at the 1892 United Kingdom general election.
Although Healyism is strong in CatholicUlster, Devlin aligns himself with the faction led by John Dillon and, from 1899, with the United Irish League (UIL), founded by William O’Brien. From the late 1890s this brings Devlin into conflict with the Belfast Catholic Association of Dr. Henry Henry, bishop of Down and Connor (1895–1908). This organisation, though sometimes regarded as Healyite, is essentially based on the view that mass nationalist political mobilisation in Belfast can only bring trouble and ostracism, and that Catholic interests are best represented by allowing a small group of lay and clerical notables to broker concessions from the unionist majority. After a series of local election contests in Catholic wards and controversies between the pro-Devlin weekly Northern Star and the clerically controlled The Irish News, Devlin succeeds in marginalising the politically maladroit Henry by 1905. In the process, however, he takes on some of the qualities of his “Catholic establishment” opponents. At the same time, he moves onto the national political stage.
Returned unopposed for North Kilkenny (1902–06), Devlin is appointed secretary of the United Irish League of Great Britain in 1903, and of the parent body in Dublin in 1904. A speaking tour of the United States in 1902–03 convinces him of the organisational potential of Catholic fraternal organisations, and in 1905 he takes over the presidency of the Board of Erin faction of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), a specifically Catholic body which he proceeds to develop as an organisational arm of the Nationalist Party. Under his tutelage the AOH expands from 10,000 members in 1905 to 60,000 in 1909, despite opposition from some Catholic bishops who distrust it because of its close affiliation to Dillonism, its secrecy, and its habit of staging dances and other entertainments without paying what they regard as due deference to local priests. His AOH also faces opposition from a rival separatist body, the Irish-American Alliance AOH. Though far less numerous, this group is able to draw on the support of separatists within the American AOH and hinder Devlin’s attempts to mobilise the American organisation in his support. The AOH expands further after 1910 and is strengthened by becoming an approved society under the National Insurance Act 1911.
Belfast is where Devlin’s political career begins and where it ends. Organisational skill contributes substantially to his hold on the largely working-class seat of Belfast West, which he wins in 1906 on a platform that seeks to transcend religious boundaries by combining labour issues with the home rule demand. A lifelong bachelor, though short in stature, he is apparently highly attractive to women, and takes a special interest in their problems, no doubt mindful of the influence they might have on the political behaviour of their spouses. He founds a holiday home for working-class women. When the scholar Betty Messenger interviews former Belfast linen workers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she is startled to discover the extent to which Devlin is remembered as a champion of the workers decades after his death. This image persists among Protestant workers as well as Catholics, and he is generally credited with various ameliorations of workplace conditions even when he had not been responsible for them.
Possessed of great oratorical skills and even greater organisational ability, Devlin effectively becomes the key organiser of the Nationalist Party from the early years of the twentieth century, relieving the party leader, John Redmond, of a great deal of the administrative burden of party affairs, and becoming well known abroad through fund-raising trips, especially in North America. His personal geniality makes him a great favourite at Westminster, and Irish socialists are dismayed at the willingness of British Labour Party MPs to accept him as an authentic Labour representative. Several MPs elected after 1906 can be identified as his protégés, and groups of Hibernian strong-arm men uphold the party leadership in such contests as the 1907 North Leitrimby-election and the 1909 “baton convention” which witnesses the final departure of William O’Brien and his supporters from the UIL. He is the only post-Parnellite MP to be admitted to the tight leadership group around Redmond. In 1913 he is a leading organiser of the National Volunteers.
When William O’Brien embarks on his personal initiative to deal with the Ulster problem through conciliation in the early Edwardian period, he finds a stern critic in Devlin and in turn demonises the “Molly Maguires” as sectarian corruptionists. Personally non-sectarian, Devlin, like other party leaders, endorses the shibboleth that home rule will prove a panacea for Ireland’s problems, including Ulster, and uses his credentials as a labour representative to dismiss popular unionism as a mere product of elite manipulation. In a period when the Vatican‘s Ne Temere decree on religiously mixed marriages is heightening Protestant fears about the “tyranny” of Rome, he seems to be oblivious to how his integration of Hibernianism and nationalism is exacerbating that problem. As the third home rule bill passes through Parliament and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) mobilises, he encourages the Irish party leaders in the view that the Ulster unionist campaign is a gigantic bluff, dismissing contrary opinions even when held by other nationalist MPs. During these years the AOH clashes with the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) during the Dublin lock-out, and from late 1913 the AOH spearheads the Redmondite attempt to take over and dominate the Irish Volunteers.
Devlin endorses Redmond’s support for the British war effort and engages in extensive recruiting activity. He seems to be motivated, at least in part, by the belief that after the war nationalist ex-soldiers can be used to overawe the Ulster unionists by the threat of force. According to Stephen Gwynn, Devlin wishes to apply for an officer’s commission but is asked not to do so by Redmond on the grounds that the party needs his organisational skills.
Devlin’s career is decisively shaped by his decision to use his influence to persuade northern nationalists to accept temporary partition, in fulfilment of the flawed agreement arrived at between David Lloyd George, Sir Edward Carson, and Redmond in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising. He later claims he has been decisively influenced by the prospect that under this agreement the excluded area would be governed directly from Westminster, rather than by a local, Orange-dominated parliament. He forces the agreement through a Belfast-based convention despite protests from west Ulster nationalists, but the proposal collapses after it transpires that Lloyd George has made incompatible commitments to nationalists and unionists. Northern nationalism immediately splits between west and south Ulster dissidents and Devlin’s loyalists predominant in Belfast and east Ulster, and the next year sees massive secessions of AOH members outside Ulster to Sinn Féin. Although he retains a core of loyal supporters, he is reduced from a national to a sectional leader. As a member of the Irish convention (1917–18) he sides with Bishop Patrick O’Donnell against Redmond on the issue of seeking a compromise settlement with southern unionists on the basis of home rule without fiscal autonomy. He is offered the leadership of the Nationalist Party on Redmond’s death in 1918, but concedes the honour to his long-standing mentor, John Dillon.
Devlin holds Belfast West until 1918 and easily sweeps aside an attempt by Éamon de Valera to displace him from the Falls division of Belfast at the general election of that year, though the electoral decimation of the Nationalist Party elsewhere leaves him leading a rump of only seven MPs. In the ensuing parliament he is an outspoken critic of government policy towards Ireland and highlights sectarian violence against northern nationalists. Clearly discouraged and with boundary changes militating against retention of the Falls seat, he unsuccessfully contests the Liverpool Exchange constituency as an Independent Labour candidate in 1922. Elected for Antrim and Belfast West to the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1921, he eventually takes his seat in 1925, holding it until 1929, when he combines representation for Belfast Central with that for Fermanagh and South Tyrone at Westminster.
Only after the boundary commission ends the border nationalists’ hopes of speedy incorporation in the Irish Free State is Devlin able to assert leadership of northern nationalism as a whole on the basis of attendance at the northern parliament. Even then he is considerably handicapped by recriminations over the events of 1916–25. He embarks on his last significant political campaign in 1928, when he seeks to unite minority politics through the agency of the National League of the North (NLN). The initiative, emphasising social reform, is unsuccessful. His own political baggage is a hindrance to the unity of the factions that minority politics had thrown up over the previous ten years, while the minority community itself is politically demoralised by the fate that has overtaken it, and the unionist government shows itself unwilling to make concession to him. The project, moreover, coincides with the onset of the gastric illness, exacerbated by heavy smoking, that takes his life on January 18, 1934. For some time before his death he ceases to attend the Northern Ireland parliament.
Devlin’s political career is one of great promise only partially fulfilled, its ultimate realisation undermined firstly by the fallout from the Easter Rising that destroyed the vehicle of his political ambitions, and secondly by the sequence of events that led to the creation of a constitutional entity so constructed that all nationalist politicians, regardless of talent, were effectively denied a route to power. Only at his death does the unionist regime adequately acknowledge his political stature. His funeral is attended by at least three Northern Ireland cabinet ministers, together with representatives of the government of the Irish Free State. Northern nationalism never again produces a leader of his ability in the Stormont era. His ability to use Westminster to promote the interests of Ulster nationalists is comparable to John Hume‘s use of Europe for the same purpose from the mid 1970s. After his death the nationalist party in Belfast grows increasingly reliant on middle-class leadership and is eventually displaced by nationalist labour splinter groups, some of whose prominent activists, such as Harry Diamond, had begun their careers as election workers for Devlin.
Croke gains the good opinion of the Irish ecclesiastical authorities and is rewarded in 1870 by his promotion to Bishop of Auckland in New Zealand. His former professor, Paul Cullen, by then Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, is largely responsible for filling the Australasian Catholic church with fellow Irishmen. His strong recommendations lead to Croke’s appointment. Croke arrives at Auckland on December 17, 1870, on the City of Melbourne. During his three years as bishop, he restores firm leadership to a diocese left in disarray by his predecessor, Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier. He devotes some of his considerable personal wealth to rebuilding diocesan finances and also takes advantage of Auckland’s economic growth following the development of the Thames goldfields to further his aims, ensuring that all surplus income from parishes at Thames and Coromandel is passed on to him, and he institutes a more rigorous system for the Sunday collection at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He imports Irish clergy to serve the growing Catholic community, and with Patrick Moran, the first Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Dunedin, he tries unsuccessfully to secure an Irish monopoly on future episcopal appointments in New Zealand. Croke supports separate Catholic schools and their right to state aid and voices his opposition to secular education as Auckland’s Catholic schools are threatened by the provincial council’s Education Act 1872, which helps to create a free, secular and compulsory education system. However, generally, Croke’s image is uncontroversial. On January 28, 1874, after barely three years in office, Croke departs for Europe, on what is ostensibly a 12-month holiday, and he does not return to New Zealand.
Croke becomes a member of the Irish hierarchy when he is translated to be Archbishop of Cashel, one of the four Catholic Irish archbishoprics in 1875. Archbishop Croke is a strong supporter of Irish nationalism, aligning himself with the Irish National Land League during the Land War, and with the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell. In an 1887 interview he explains that he had opposed the League’s “No rent manifesto” in 1881, preferring to stop payment of all taxes.
Croke also associates himself with the Temperance Movement of Fr. Theobald Mathew and Gaelic League from its foundation in 1893. Within Catholicism he is a supporter of Gallicanism, as opposed to the Ultramontanism favoured by the Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Cullen. His support of nationalism causes successive British governments and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland‘s governments in Dublin to be deeply suspicious of him, as are some less politically aligned Irish bishops.
Following the scandal that erupts over Parnell’s relationship with Katharine O’Shea, the separated wife of fellow MP Captain William O’Shea, Archbishop Croke withdraws from active participation in nationalist politics.
seamus dubhghaill 