Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780857285713 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Anthem Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
| Series: | Anthem Irish Studies |
| Pages: | 190 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
P. S. O'Hegarty (1879â"1955)
Sinn Féin Fenian
By Keiron Curtis
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2012 Keiron CurtisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85728-571-3
CHAPTER 1
THE FENIAN PAST
Civic nationalism maintains that the nation should be composed of all those – regardless of race, colour, creed, gender, language or ethnicity – who subscribe to the nation's political creed. This nationalism is called civic because it envisages the nation as a community of equal rights bearing citizens, united in patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices and values.
The men of ninety-eight put out of their organisations and their propaganda all questions of class or race or religious beliefs, they asked no man to rally to them for the sake of Catholicity or Protestantism, peasant or landlord, Gael or Norman or Cromwellian.
Theobald Wolfe Tone, pioneer of Irish Republicanism, believed the best way to end sectarianism among 'Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter' was to drive English rule out of Ireland. A backer of the Universalist ideas born of the Enlightenment, Tone rejected discrimination and institutionalized religion, believing instead that political destinies should rest with the nation's citizens. Thus, he saw Republicanism and its championing of civil liberties and representative government as legitimizing statehood. However, the divisions Tone and the United Irishmen set out to heal nonetheless proved crucial factors in deciding the disastrous outcome of the expected patriotic 1798 Rebellion, which not only failed to achieve military defeat of England but also deepened sectarian hatreds. The resulting bloodbath pitted Catholics against Protestants, both of whom were united only in fearful solidarity, with the two main Anglican and Presbyterian Protestant traditions in opposition to their Catholic nationalist rivals.
One other major result of 1798 that drew to a close a decade S. J. Connolly describes as decisive in shaping unionist and nationalist political identities was England's absorption of Ireland through the 1801 act of union. Later the same year, a second equally unsuccessful nationalist rebellion was launched, this time led by the soon-afterwards executed Robert Emmet, who followed Tone into the growing canon of nationalist martyrs. Since then, nationalists of all persuasions, from Daniel O'Connell to modern-day Sinn Féin, have refused to accept neither the legality of the union, nor English rule in Ireland. (For Sinn Féin founder Arthur Griffith, the English parliament had unlawfully seized the authority of legitimate government in Ireland, that is, 'Grattan's Parliament', set up in 1782, named after its founder Henry Grattan.) Protestant enthusiasm for the union, limited to begin with, eventually warmed to the point where, during the height of the nationalist campaign for repeal of the union in the 1840's, it became the main bulwark against Catholic power.
The union also left a question mark over Ireland's standing within the British Empire and confusion over its 'semi-colonial' status. Unique, also, when compared to similar events among England's other colonial possessions, was that events in Ireland had a marked impact on state and nation building in England. As Nadav Morag writes in a recent article, 'Though Britain later controlled colonies far larger than Ireland, no territory was to confound them as much, because events in Ireland often had a more direct impact on the internal politics of Britain than far off colonies.' From the outset, then, simply as a new constitutional experiment in governance, the union caused problems on all sides. Following Andrew Thompson's line that sets these complexities firmly within the broader considerations of British colonial policy, Paul A. Townend suggests that:
Whether or not the Irish experience was more distinctive than that of, say, India or South Africa, there can be no doubt that Ireland's connection to the empire was complex, for reasons that many have elaborated. England's oldest colony was also her best integrated, even if many agree ... that imperial dynamics ultimately served to divide Ireland from the rest of Britain.
Townend's major criticism of modern historical research in this late nineteenth-century period points to the insularity that neglecting the broader imperialist project tends towards, especially when focused on Anglo-Irish relations. However, at the same time, he concedes great difficulties inherent in trying to pin down what view Irish nationalists, principally parliamentarians, held towards the wider empire as distinct from their simply holding anti-English views. This, in turn, caused further complexities: long before Ulster Unionists decreed it their right in 1912 to resist government while remaining loyal to the English crown, many Irish nationalists also made a similar distinction. Though often aggrieved by English rule, many nationalists held a genuine fondness for the British monarchy. As James H. Murphy points out in his Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria, even O'Connell's fiery meetings in aid of repealing the union ended with singing 'God Save the Queen'.
Despite this, as Charles Townshend comments, a mixture of well-intended, but un-sustained policy reforms (mostly responding to periodic outbreaks of unrest), served only to strengthen the nationalist view that, since the act of union, Ireland remained merely an afterthought in British politics. Indeed, as Michael de Nie further comments, 'For much of the nineteenth century, British views of Ireland were in a constant dialogue of sympathy and hostility, producing a persistent ambivalence with regard to the Irish and Irish matters.' This was compounded by a centralized bureaucracy made up of civil servants and headed by an Undersecretary, who, between them, consistent with efficient colonial policy throughout the empire, effectively ran the country. The continued concentration of power and authority within this small unaccountable executive served only to increase Catholic dissatisfaction with the union.
Possibly the first instance of this came from Ireland's Catholic gentry which was disappointed that legislative union did not abolish nor allow for any relaxation of the 'Penal Laws', the description given to anti-Catholic legislation as practiced in Ireland since 1788. The subsequent successful repeal of these laws in 1829, led by Daniel O'Connell (later dubbed 'The Liberator' by his followers), organized Catholic Ireland on a mass scale, which became the source of most of his support for Repeal of the Union. At the beginning of this (unsuccessful) campaign, O'Connell won support from a small, radical group, The Young Irelanders, led by cultural nationalist enthusiast Thomas Davis, cofounder with Charles Gavan Duffy and others of its journal, The Nation (1842–96) and including men advocating the use of physical force, such as John Mitchel and Fintan Lalor. The form of cultural nationalism developed by Thomas Davis strongly influenced both O'Hegarty and Arthur Griffith. (One can see later, with its invocation of civic virtue and a cultural heritage shared in common between Irish Protestant and Catholic, how this form became intrinsic to O'Hegarty's separatist philosophy.)
O'Hegarty and Griffith shared in common with their Young Irelander forebears the idea that neither race nor religious creed decided national identity, with the nation (following Tone's Republicanism) equally home to all. Similar to them as well, O'Hegarty and Griffith undoubtedly underestimated the depth of unionist opposition to this, indeed did so even in the face of what became after 1912, in expectation of the passage of limited self-government to an all-Ireland parliament, an organized Ulster Unionist body that, by 1913, in its determination to prevent this also boasted an armed militia. In Davis, O'Hegarty suggested, Griffith saw his spiritual master and exemplar, who, 'freed his people on Davis's principles as surely as O'Connell emancipated them.' In John Mitchel (Griffith named his first paper after Mitchel's The United Irishman), the most militant of the Young Irelanders, O'Hegarty saw, 'the greatest Irishman of the nineteenth century, her greatest political genius, and her greatest literary figure as well.' Serializations of Mitchel's writings featured regularly in the separatist journal The Republic, normally sited in 'Lucan's' weekly column, one of two pseudonyms (the other being 'Sarsfield'), used by O'Hegarty, during his years as an employee of the British Civil Service.
Though existing on the fringe of political nationalism, the Young Irelanders steadily grew more critical of O'Connell's hugely supported movement with its strict adherence to pacifism before eventually attempting a (failed) rebellion in 1848 (a 'damp squib ... never in all history was an insurrection conducted so ineptly', as O'Hegarty describes it in his A History of Ireland Under the Union). Crushed easily, the 1848 Rising, however, helped maintain belief throughout the rest of the century that Ireland represented a continual threat to the empire. Despite the hopelessness of the rising, the Young Irelanders developed many ideas that would influence Griffith's Sinn Féin Policy, which also sought cures for Ireland's economic, demographic and cultural shortages while holding English misrule in Ireland as responsible for creating and continuing these. This, combined with England's installation of an armed, military trained police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary, in barracks throughout Ireland since 1830, did little to alter separatists' – chiefly the IRB's – view that only through force of arms did England rule Ireland.
Arguably, the fallout from the Young Irelanders' rebellion produced the beginnings of Fenianism. As argued by O'Hegarty, and, before him, former Fenian chief John O'Leary, military defeat in 1848 did not crush the spirit or enthusiasm behind the rebellion, or the Young Ireland movement. Fleeing the empire, many rebels took with them their deepening resentments, and, in regrouping, found, especially in the United States, a large, sympathetic audience.
Formed in 1858, the 'Fenians', later Clan na Gael, the United States equivalent of their IRB counterparts, were an open and legal organization, bolstered by a large population of Irish-American emigrants, and the chief source of funding for their illegal, Irish-based brethren. In contrast, to help guard against spies and informers, the Irish Fenian chief James Stephens, himself a veteran of 1848, gave the organization its name (taken from the ancient Irish warriors, the Fianne), and its distinctive secretive cell construction. Individual cells (members knew only the identities of those within their own cell) grouped to form districts; these in turn constituted seven provinces, each with an elected head or 'centre' that, with three further co-opted representatives, made up the Supreme Council, itself presided over by an alternating elected IRB President.
Regarding physical force, then, two failed IRB rebellions in 1858 and 1867 (as argued here), held major importance for O'Hegarty and, indeed, formed the foundations on which he based his reasons for supporting the movement. In the six years between its failed 1867 rising and its reorganization at its Dublin convention on St. Patrick's Day 1873, the IRB underwent a major transformation. Here, for the first time, O'Hegarty writes, 'a definite written, [IRB] constitution was promulgated', and for the first time, its recognition of a need to adopt a long-term strategy of resistance. Crucially, too, the constitution contained the following about physical force:
The military authority shall at all times be and remain subject to the civil Government ... [That] the I.R.B. shall await the decision of the Irish Nation as expressed by a majority of the Irish people, as to the fit hour for inaugurating a war against England, and shall, pending such an emergency, lend its support to every movement calculated to advance the cause of Irish independence, consistently with the preservation of its own integrity.
Naturally, as a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, O'Hegarty supported the use of physical force as necessary to end English rule in Ireland. Like most nationalists of his day, he hearkened back to past leaders and glorious rebellions with the aim of building up a similar body of nationalist, patriotic feeling among Irishmen and women of his own generation. Unlike most, however, he did not seek to revive patriotism and national sentiment in Ireland alone among its (mainly) Catholic and nationalist population. His aim of reawakening the people of the nation and making them once more, 'alive to their danger,' included all Ireland's traditions, classes and creeds, all equally playing a part in saving the 'nation's soul'. In this, he believed the Irish nation found its most potent champion in the IRB, simply in its realization (and expounded most forcefully by it) that the Irish people must prove themselves willing to use physical force to defeat and expel their enemy. Again, for O'Hegarty, this was part of, 'the irrepressible national instinct, mould[ing] all impulses and all men to its own purpose.' In aiming to end English rule in Ireland, this and similar propaganda formed a major part of his strategy, that is, in inspiring the spiritual nation and stirring the Irish people into national consciousness.
While Irish separatists assumed rather than debated the merits and demerits of republican government, concentrating instead on winning Irish freedom, republicans such as O'Hegarty and Bulmer Hobson nonetheless retained a flexible view of independence as a central part of their outlook. As Hobson explains, the IRB-run Dungannon Clubs, noted below, were similar to Griffith's National Council and, 'aimed at building up a political and economic organization on conventional lines.' However, the clubs, 'sought ... to create an intense conviction and a passionate faith' and therefore between them in his view lay, 'profound differences in ... mental attitude and in ... method of approach to ... questions.'
Sinn Féin Fenians
The central Post Office at Mount Pleasant in London seems to have housed many Irish national radicals, particularly perhaps those from the Cork area, like P. S. O'Hegarty. Many of the young men who revitalised the IRB, the Gaelic Athletic Association ... and the all-important Gaelic League were civil servants, and they felt more free to engage in this quasi-subversive form of activity after the advent of the Liberal government of 1906.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, two influential forces stood out as pioneers of Irish republicanism, urging and shaping the IRB into a vigorous and active organization. Both Denis McCullogh, in his personal memoir, and Bulmer Hobson, in his much later autobiographical account, were often principle sources for the IRB's re-establishing its position as a contending force in Irish separatist politics. Transformed thus, within a few years the IRB reprised what O'Hegarty considered its usual role as the moving-centre of separatism, in his words, 'the guide, the watcher' at the forefront of Irish resistance to English rule. Also, as well as every other useful movement since its creation in 1858, he credited the IRB with Ireland's twentieth-century cultural and political revival, especially that of the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin, organisations he saw as inspired by and imbued with the IRB's separatist philosophy. While in his writing O'Hegarty admits Fenianism a moribund (if not defunct) power, subject to the long dominance of constitutionalism that began in the 1880s and with, 'Parnell's crowding the IRB out of national life' through to when his own generation took over, it nonetheless remains for him an omnipresent, unbroken force. In this, we might see how for O'Hegarty, the IRB, or Fenianism, remained always the same throughout its history, essentially unaffected over time and circumstance.
While not addressing earlier criticisms of O'Hegarty's controversial view of the IRB in this chapter (which is dealt with separately in the first chapter of Part III), two recent major studies, one by Matthew Kelly, the other by Owen McGee, while not openly at variance with O'Hegarty's claims, do challenge him on the IRB between these years. Both (like O'Hegarty) see the IRB as far more active than recent scholarship suggests, but raise some interesting questions, too. To take Kelly's study first, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, while agreeing largely with O'Hegarty, differs from him in not presupposing a dual distinction existing between separatists and constitutionalists, a distinction O'Hegarty sees as clear cut (see below). Kelly makes the convincing argument that even as far back as the 1860s, this association was always blurred, with cooperation extending into Parnell's era and that preceding O'Hegarty's generation. Here, too, in, 'a direct continuation of Parnell's strategy', the IRB supported John Redmond in local elections campaigns, the link often cooperative, 'across the apparent divide.' One major strength of Kelly's more nuanced, practical view of the IRB in this period is its explanation (in tune with other reasons, including the Great War and the 1916 Easter Rising) of separatism's mass appeal from 1916 onwards. Despite home rule's dominance in this period, rather than remaining 'muted' (as Kelly describes O'Hegarty – 'ever the advocate of the centrality of the I.R.B. in pre-1922 Irish politics'), Kelly sees the IRB as detached from more broadly-based nationalist opinion and sympathetic to the separatist cause. Thus, Kelly sees Irish separatism as, 'a more complex and popular political and cultural presence in Irish national society.' Though agreeing with O'Hegarty that the IRB was a much weakened force throughout the 1880s, for Kelly, part of its resilience came from its forming, under newly-returned IRB exile, John O'Leary, cultural ties within broad nationalist circles, for example, the Young Irelander Societies. Kelly writes:
A second generation of Fenians ... [responded] to the ascendency of constitutional nationalism by developing within Fenianism a fresh separatist dynamic based on the nurture of a distinctly Irish culture ... The major but not the only vehicle for this ... [was] the Young Ireland Societies.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from P. S. O'Hegarty (1879â"1955) by Keiron Curtis. Copyright © 2012 Keiron Curtis. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.