BIGGAR AND PARNELL--THE "UNITED IRISHMAN "--THE O'CONNELL CENTENARY.
The General Election of 1874 was remarkable as the first since the Union
which had clearly and distinctly returned a majority of Irish members of
Parliament as Home Rulers. Previously most of them had been returned as
Liberals or Tories. It is memorable in my eyes, as it was the occasion
when two of my personal friends, Alexander Martin Sullivan and Joseph
Gillis Biggar, first entered Parliament. It was in the year after he was
elected that Mr. Biggar made his _debut_ as an "obstructionist."
Charles Stewart Parnell having been, in the spring of 1875, elected as
successor in the representation of Meath to "honest John Martin," it was
not long before the famous "Biggar and Parnell" combination, which was
destined to revolutionize the whole system of Parliamentary procedure,
was created.
Feeling the necessity for a newspaper representing the views of the Home
Rule Confederation and chronicling its work from week to week, the
Executive promoted the formation of a limited liability company for the
purpose, and the outcome was the issue of the "United Irishman," the
first number of which appeared on June 4th, 1875. I was appointed
manager, and was also the publisher, the paper being produced at my
place of business, 68 Byrom Street, Liverpool. The following were the
Directors--Andrew Commins, LL.D., Chairman; and John Barry, Joseph
Gillis Biggar, M.P., John Ferguson, Richard Mangan, Bernard MacAnulty,
and Peter McKinley. William John Oliver was Honorary Secretary, with
Hugh Heinrick as Editor at the commencement, and Daniel Crilly
afterwards.
The newspaper was fortunate in its Honorary Secretary, for William John
Oliver was one of the most enthusiastic workers we ever had in the Home
Rule movement. He was at this time engaged in commerce in Liverpool,
having previously been an officer in the Royal Navy. He was ever willing
to be "the man in the gap" in case of an emergency, and that was how he
became for a time the Honorary General Secretary of the Home Rule
Confederation. He was always a cheery and, at the same time, an
eminently practical man. He took a leading part in our local elections
in Liverpool from the time we began to fight them on Home Rule
principles--when the necessity arose, as I have elsewhere explained, to
have public men who were not afraid to identify themselves with the
national cause.
Hugh Heinrick, our editor, was a brilliant writer, who had, for several
years, been a strenuous worker in the Home Rule cause. He was a frequent
contributor of poetry to the "Nation" and other national journals,
generally over the signature of "Hugh Mac Erin." He was born in the
County Wexford in 1831. Before taking up the editorship of the "United
Irishman" he was for many years resident in Birmingham, where he was a
schoolmaster. He died in 1887.
Daniel Crilly, one of the most active and eloquent advocates of the
Irish cause in Liverpool, succeeded him--this being his maiden effort in
journalism. He was afterwards on the staff of the "Nation," and also did
good service while a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Among other contributors to the "United Irishman" were Isaac Butt, Dr.
Commins, Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Michael Clarke, Captain Kirwan, and Frank
Byrne. Our poetry was a strong point with us--Dr. Commins, Frank Fox,
John Hand, Patrick Clarke, Heber MacMahon, and Miss Bessie Murphy being
among the contributors.
When the "United Irishman" was started, the offices of the Home Rule
Confederation, which had previously been in Manchester, were for
convenience removed to my place of business. As the executive meetings
and the meetings of the newspaper directors were held there, I
frequently had the pleasure of meeting under my own roof Irishmen who
either then were or afterwards became prominent members of the Irish
Parliamentary Party, including Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell, and
Joseph Biggar.
Mr. Biggar and I were always great friends. He had the reputation of
being close-fisted and penurious; but that this was not so I knew from
many circumstances, though it is quite true he would not allow himself
to be defrauded of a penny.
He became a Catholic in his later days. Though such of us as were of
the household of the faith welcomed him into the fold, his conversion
did not increase his value in our eyes--indeed, from a political point
of view, he was of more service to the cause as an Irish Protestant,
there being too few of them in our ranks. He had a fresh, pleasant,
shrewd-looking face, and spoke with a decided northern accent, which had
somewhat of a metallic ring. Some of his brother Members of Parliament
thought his "obstruction" methods highly ungentlemanly, but he believed
in fighting England with her own weapons. If good Irish measures were
not allowed to pass, he would throw every obstacle in the way of English
measures being carried. The tempest of rage that assailed him in the
"House" only added to his popularity outside. Not only was he an immense
favourite amongst Irishmen, but with democratic Englishmen also; and at
great mass meetings of English miners and agricultural labourers he
could always get resolutions carried by the honest, hard-handed sons of
toil in favour of the restoration of Ireland's rights.
Biggar used to get many letters approving of the attitude he and Parnell
had taken up in Parliament. One in particular, from a warm admirer, he
used to show to his friends with great glee. It was a song in the old
"Come-all-ye" style. A few lines I can remember sang in words of high
commendation of--
--Joseph Biggar,
That man of rigour,
Whose form and figure
Do foes appal!
My place being the head-quarters of the Confederation at this time, the
fact of my being known to be generally on the spot made me a kind of
"man in the gap," to fill up engagements likely to fall through for want
of a speaker. In this way I was often rushed off to distant parts of the
country at the shortest notice.
The most important Irish event in 1875 was the celebration of the
O'Connell Centenary in Dublin, on Friday, August 6th. Our Confederation
was well represented in the processions, there being, as might be
expected from its proximity, a large contingent from Liverpool. So great
was the rush to cross the Channel for the celebration that we chartered
several of the fine steamers of the City of Dublin Company, and kept
them for several days fully employed in crossing and recrossing.
The pity of it was that there should be two processions--the magnificent
display organised by the official Centenary Committee and the procession
got up by the Amnesty Association.
The speeches of Messrs. Butt, Sullivan, and Power on the platform
erected in what was then Sackville Street, when the outdoor display
broke up, explained why the Amnesty Committee and their friends
considered that a protest was necessary and justifiable--hence the
second procession. The chief objections to the action of the official
committee were that, while all honour was to be paid to the memory of
O'Connell as the Liberator of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, his
services as the champion of the political freedom of the Irish people
were being kept in the background. Also--and that was why the Amnesty
Association for the release of political prisoners took the initiative
in the protest against the action of the Centenary Committee--because,
on a great national occasion like this, the very existence of the
martyrs for freedom, who were suffering in English prisons, appeared to
be forgotten. Such forgetfulness was considered at the least highly
inappropriate.
There was much indignation, too, that Lord O'Hagan should have been
chosen to speak the panegyric on O'Connell, seeing that he had actually
sentenced some of those very prisoners.
The Irish organisation in Great Britain sympathised with these views,
and the various branches sending contingents showed their feelings by
throwing in their part with the Amnesty Association.
The contingent from Great Britain was, on the proposition of Mr. Patrick
Egan, given the place of honour in front of the amnesty procession
which, on the morning of the Centenary celebration, the 6th of August,
1875, started from Beresford Place, near the Custom House. The banners
of the three Liverpool branches were a picturesque feature in the
procession, as also was the Sarsfield Band, a body of fine young
Liverpool Irishmen who headed our contingent.