REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN
I
The Parliament of 1892-5 was barren of results for Ireland, being
consumed by factious strife, at Westminster between the Houses and in
Ireland between the parties. With Gladstone's retirement it seemed as if
Home Rule were dead. But thinking men realized that the Irish question
was still there to be dealt with, and approach to solution began along
new lines. When Lord Salisbury returned to power in 1895, Land Purchase
was cautiously extended with much success: the Congested Districts
Board, originally established by Mr. Arthur Balfour, was showing good
results, and his brother Mr. Gerald Balfour, now Chief Secretary, felt
his way towards a policy which came to be described as "killing Home
Rule with kindness." A section of Irish Nationalist opinion was scared
by the menace contained in this epigram; and consequently, when in 1895
Mr. Horace Plunkett (as he then was) put forward proposals for a
conference of Irishmen to consider possible means for developing Irish
agriculture and Irish industries under the existing system, voices were
raised against what was denounced as a new attempt to divert Nationalist
Ireland from its main purpose of achieving self-government. Mr.
Plunkett's original proposal was that a body of four Anti-Parnellites,
two Parnellites and two Unionists should meet and deliberate in Ireland,
during the recess. In the upshot the Nationalist majority refused to
take any part; but Redmond, with one of his supporters, Mr. William
Field, served on the "Recess Committee" and concurred in its Report, out
of which came the creation of the Department of Agriculture and
Technical Instruction.
In 1896 the Commission on Financial Relations, which had been set up by
the Liberal Ministry in 1894, reported, and its findings produced a
state of feeling which for a moment promised co-operation between
divided interests in Ireland. Unionist magnates joined with Nationalists
in denouncing the system of taxation, which the Commission--by a
majority of eleven to two--had described as oppressive and unjust to the
weaker country.
Redmond was one of the members of this Commission, which included also
distinguished representatives of his Nationalist opponents--Mr. Blake
and Mr. Sexton; and he no doubt cherished hopes arising from the
resolute demands for redress uttered by Lord Castletown and other Irish
Unionist Peers. Those hopes were soon dispelled; nothing but much
controversy came of the demand for improved financial relations. Mr.
Gerald Balfour's schemes were more tangible, and in 1897 Redmond
announced that the Government's proposal to introduce a measure of Local
Government for Ireland should have his support. The Bill, when it came,
exceeded expectation in its scope, and Redmond gave it a cordial welcome
in the name of the Parnellites. The larger group, however, then led by
Mr. Dillon, declined to be responsible for accepting it.
Later, in the working of this measure, Redmond pressed strongly that
elections under it should not be conducted on party lines and that the
landlord class should be brought into local administrative work. His
advice unfortunately was not taken.
Then followed the South African struggle, and in giving voice to a
common sentiment against what Nationalist Ireland held to be an unjust
war the two Irish parties found themselves united and telling together
in the lobby. Formal union followed. By this time the cleavage between
Parnellite and Anti-Parnellite was less acute than that between Mr.
Healy's section and the followers of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien. The
choice of Redmond as Chairman was due less to a sense of his general
fitness than to despair of reaching a decision between the claims of the
other three outstanding men.
The sacrifice to be made was made at Mr. Dillon's expense, and he did
not acquiesce willingly or cordially. The cordiality which ultimately
marked his relations with Redmond was of later growth--fostered by the
necessity which Mr. Dillon found imposed on him of defending loyally the
party's leader against attacks from the men who had been most active in
selecting him.
A part of the compact under which Redmond was elected to the chair
limited the power of the newly chosen. He was to be Chairman, not
leader; that is to say, he was not to act except after consultation with
the party as a whole: he was not to commit them upon policy. This meant
in practice that he acted as head of a cabinet, which from 1906 onwards
consisted of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor--the last
representing not only a great personal parliamentary experience and
ability, but also the powerful and zealous organization of Irish in
Great Britain. Redmond adhered scrupulously to the spirit of this
compact. There was only one instance in which he took action without
consultation. But that instance was the most important of all--his
speech at the outbreak of the war.
Another thing which governed his conduct in the chair of the party, as
indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror
of the years which Ireland had gone through since Parnell's fall. He
loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for
the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain
the greatest possible degree of unity among Irish Nationalists. Yet in
the end he unhesitatingly made a choice and took an action which risked
dividing, and in the last event actually divided, Nationalist Ireland as
it had never been divided before. There were things for which he would
face even that supreme peril. Deep in his heart there was a vision which
compelled him. It was the vision of Ireland united as a whole.
All this, however, lay far in the future when he was elected to the
chair; for the moment his task was to reunite Irish Nationalists, and it
began prosperously. From the first his position was one of growing
strength. Irishmen all the world over were heartsick of faction and
rejoiced in even the name of unity. Redmond made it a reality. While
leading the little Parnellite party, reduced at last to nine, his line
of action was comparable to that pursued by Mr. William O'Brien from
1910 onwards. It had, to put things mildly, not been calculated to
assist the leader of the main Nationalist body. In 1904, Justin
McCarthy, then retired from politics, wrote in his book on _British
Political Parties_: "Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service
of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and
was utterly unsparing in his denunciations of the men who maintained the
other side of the controversy. From this it was not unnatural to expect
difficulties occasioned both by the leader's temper and by the temper of
those whom he led. But men who had been adverse assured me that they had
changed their opinions and were glad to find they could work with
Redmond in perfect harmony and that his manners and bearing showed no
signs whatever of any bitter memories belonging to the days of internal
dispute."
In truth, the man's nature was kindly and tolerant; courtesy came more
natural to him than invective. Above all, he was sensitive for the
reputation of his country in the eyes of the world, and the spectacle of
Irishmen heaping vilifications on each other always filled him with
distaste. Whether the taunts passed between Nationalist and Unionist or
Nationalist and Nationalist made little difference to his feeling. With
him it was no empty phrase that he regarded all Irishmen in equal degree
as his fellow-countrymen.
In 1902 he was once more a party to a continued effort made by Irishmen
outside of party lines to solve a part of the national difficulty. The
policy of land purchase had proved its immense superiority over that of
dual ownership and had even been introduced on a considerable scale. But
its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence
there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of
purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the
other side of the mearing. Renewed struggle against rent led to new
eviction scenes on the grand scale; and by this time landlord opinion
was half converted to the purchase policy, as a necessary solution. The
persistency of one young Galway man, Captain John Shawe Taylor, brought
about the famous Land Conference of 1902, in which Mr. O'Brien, Mr.
Healy, Mr. Redmond and Mr. T.W. Russell on behalf of the tenants met
Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson Poe and Colonel Nugent
Everard representing (though not officially) the landlord interest: and
the result of the agreement reached by this body was seen in Mr.
Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903. This great and drastic measure
altered fundamentally the character of the Irish problem. Directly by
its own effect, and indirectly by the example of new methods, it changed
opinion alike in Ireland and Great Britain. In Ireland hitherto, as has
been already seen, resistance to Home Rule had come primarily from the
landlord class, by whom the Nationalist desire for self-government was
construed as a cloak for the wish to revive or reverse the ancient
confiscations. Now, the land question was by general consent settled, at
least in principle; in proportion as landlords were bought out the
leading economic argument against Home Rule disappeared. The opposition
reduced itself strictly to political grounds; and it began to be plain
that the true heart of resistance lay in Ulster.
Also, lines of cleavage in the Unionist camp began to appear. Already,
landlords in the South and West had found a common ground of action with
representatives of the tenants. It was felt, alike in Ireland and
England, that this precedent might be developed further.
In England political opinion was much affected by the apparent success
of an attempt to deal with the Irish problem piecemeal. The Congested
Districts Board had done much to relieve those regions where famine was
always a possibility; Local Government had given satisfactory results;
and now Land Purchase was hailed as the beginning of a new era. The idea
of seeing how much farther the principle of tentative approach could be
carried took strong hold of many minds, and the word "devolution" came
into fashion.
When it became known that Sir Antony MacDonnell, then Under-Secretary at
Dublin Castle, had, in consultation with Lord Dunraven, drafted a scheme
for transferring parts of Irish administration to a purely Irish
authority, a situation rapidly defined itself in which Ulster broke away
from the more liberal elements in Irish Unionism. The Ulster group
demanded and obtained the resignation of Mr. George Wyndham; they
demanded also the dismissal of the Under-Secretary. But Sir Antony
MacDonnell was not of a resigning temper; he had not acted without
authority, and he was defended zealously by the Irish members. The
section of Liberal opinion which adhered rather to Lord Rosebery than to
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman probably drew the conclusion that the Irish
party were prepared at least to tolerate the policy of approaching Home
Rule step by step; and beyond doubt they were impressed by the prestige
of Sir Antony MacDonnell's record and personality. The son of a small
Irish Catholic landlord, educated at the Galway College of the Queen's
University, he had entered the Indian Civil Service and in it risen to
the highest point of power. The recommendation that he should be brought
home to assist in the Government of Ireland had come from Lord
Lansdowne, then Governor-General of India, who knew that the famous
administrator of the Punjab was a Catholic Irishman of Nationalist
sympathies. He had been accepted by Mr. Wyndham, his official chief,
"rather as a colleague than as a subordinate." Officially and publicly,
the credit for the Land Act of 1903 went to the Chief Secretary, and Mr.
Wyndham deserves much of it. But no one who knew the two men could have
doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of
detail, the leading part must have been taken by the Irish Civil Servant
who in India had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of
land reform.
Proposals to alter the method and conduct of Irish administration before
touching the parliamentary power to legislate and to tax came with
extraordinary weight in coming from such a man; and the history of the
previous Home Rule Bills was not encouraging to anyone, especially to
those who had been members of Mr. Gladstone's two last administrations.
From the time of the Parnell divorce case onwards, the Irish question
had brought to Liberals nothing but embarrassment and embitterment. The
enthusiasm for Home Rule which grew steadily from 1886 up to the
severance between Gladstone and Parnell had vanished in the squalid
controversies of the "split." Moreover, now, by the action of Mr.
Chamberlain, a new dividing line had been brought into British politics.
The cry of Protection seemed in the opinion of all Liberals to menace
ruin to British prosperity; the banner of Free Trade offered a splendid
rallying-point for a party which had known fifteen years of dissension
and division. Prudent men thought it would be unsafe, unwise and
unpatriotic to compromise this great national interest by retaining the
old watch-word on which Gladstone had twice fought and twice been
beaten.
It was clear, too, that a Home Rule Bill would provoke a direct conflict
with the House of Lords and would raise that great struggle on not the
most favourable issue. Statesmen like Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith
probably believed that a partial measure, an instalment of
self-government, to which some influential sections of the Tory party
would not be unfriendly, might have strong hopes of passing into law.
So it came to pass that in the election of 1906 the Liberal Party came
into power with a majority of unexampled magnitude, but with a
Government pledged, negatively, not to introduce a Home Rule Bill in
that Parliament, but, positively, to attempt an Irish settlement by the
policy of instalments.
In all this lay the seeds of trouble for the Irish leader. Liberals have
never understood that Ireland will not take from them what it would take
from the Tories. It will accept, as a palliative, from the party opposed
to Home Rule what it will not accept from those who have admitted the
justice of the national demand.
II
"For myself," said Redmond in his speech to the Irish Convention in May
1907, "I have always expressed in public and in private my opinion that
no half-way house on this question is possible; but at the same time I
am, or at any rate I try to be, a practical politician. In the lodgment
this idea of instalments had got in the minds of English statesmen I
recognized the fact--and after all in politics the first essential is to
recognize facts--I recognized the fact that in this Parliament we were
not going to get a pure Home Rule Bill offered, and I consented, and I
was absolutely right in consenting, that whatever scheme short of that
was put forward would be considered calmly on its merits."
This meant that during the whole of the year 1906 and a part of 1907 the
proposal of the new Irish Bill was under discussion with the Irish
leaders. The course of these deliberations was undoubtedly a
disappointment. Mr. Bryce was replaced by Mr. Birrell as Chief
Secretary, but the scheme still fell short of what Redmond had hoped to
attain. Unfortunately, and it was a characteristic error, his sanguine
temperament had led him to encourage in Ireland hopes as high as his
own. The production of the Irish Council Bill and its reception in
Ireland was the first real shock to his power.
Mr. Birrell in introducing the measure spoke with his eye on the Tories
and the House of Lords. He represented it as only the most trifling
concession; he emphasized not the powers which it conveyed but the
limitations to them. Redmond in following him was in a difficult
position. He stressed the point that to accept a scheme which by reason
of its partial nature would break down in its working would be ruinous,
because failure would be attributed to natural incapacity in the Irish
people. Acceptance, therefore, he said, could not be unconditional and
undoubtedly to his mind it was conditioned by his hope of securing
certain important amendments, which he outlined. None the less, the tone
of his speech was one of acceptance, and he concluded:
"I have never in all the long years that I have been in this House
spoken under such a heavy sense of responsibility as I am speaking
on this measure this afternoon. Ever since Mr. Gladstone's Bill of
1886 Ireland has been waiting for some scheme to settle the
problem--waiting sometimes in hope, sometimes almost in despair;
but the horrible thing is this, that all the time that Ireland has
been so waiting there has been a gaping wound in her side, and her
sons have had to stand by helpless while they saw her very
life-blood flowing out. Who can say that is an exaggeration? Twenty
years of resolute government by the party above the gangway have
diminished the population of Ireland by a million. No man in any
position of influence can take upon himself the awful
responsibility of despising and putting upon one side any device
that may arrest that hemorrhage, even although he believed, as I
do, that far different remedies must be applied before Ireland can
stand upon her feet in vigorous strength. We are determined, as far
as we are concerned, that these other remedies shall be applied;
but in the meantime we should shrink from the responsibility of
rejecting anything which, after that full consideration which the
Bill will receive, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to
relieve the sufferings of Ireland and hasten the day of her full
national convalescence."
There is no doubt that the element in him which urged him to welcome
anything that could set Irishmen working together on Irish problems made
it almost impossible for him to throw aside this chance. It was clear to
me also that by long months of work in secret deliberation the proposals
originally set out had been greatly altered, so much so that in
surveying the Bill he was conscious mainly of the improvements in it;
and that in this process his mind had lost perception of how the measure
was likely to affect Irish opinion--especially in view of his own
hopeful prognostications. At all events, the reception of Mr. Birrell's
speech, even by Redmond's own colleagues, marked a sudden change in the
atmosphere. Some desired to vote at once against the measure; many were
with difficulty brought into the lobby to support even the formal stage
of first reading. In Ireland there was fierce denunciation. A Convention
was called for May 21st. The crowd was so great that many of us could
not make our way into the Mansion House; and Redmond opened the
proceedings by moving the rejection of the Bill. In the interval since
the debate he had been confronted with a definite refusal to concede the
amendments for which he asked.
These were mainly two, of principle: for the objection taken to the
finance of the Bill was a detail, though of the first importance. The
Bill proposed to hand over the five great departments of Irish
administration to the control of an Irish Council. The decisions of that
Council were to be subject to the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant, as are
the decisions of Parliament to the veto of the Crown. But the Bill
proposed not merely to give to the Viceroy the power of vetoing proposed
action but of instituting other action on his own initiative. Secondly,
the Council was to exercise its control through Committees, each of
which was to have a paid chairman, nominated by the Crown.
"It would be far better," Redmond had said in the House of Commons, "to
have one man selected as the chairmen of these committees are to be
selected, to have charge, so far as the Council is concerned, of the
working of the Department, and then all these chairmen acting together
could form a sort of organic body which would give cohesion, would
co-ordinate and give stability to the whole of the work. I am afraid
that the Government seem to have shrunk from that for fear the argument
would be used against them that they were really creating a Ministry."
That was the real difficulty. A Council subject only to a veto on its
acts, even though it could neither pass a by-law nor strike a rate,
would undoubtedly be said by the Unionist opposition to be a rudimentary
parliament. A group of chairmen possessing administrative powers like
those of Ministers would be labelled a Ministry; and the Liberals who
had pledged themselves not to give effect to their Home Rule principles
were sensitive to charges of breach of faith.
It is a curious fact in politics that the public promise conveyed in
the adoption of certain principles is generally taken to be on the level
of ordinary commercial obligation. Failure to keep it jeopardizes a
man's reputation for political stability, just as failure to pay a
tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. But a promise to
political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles
stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make
good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an
adamantine resolution.
From 1907 onwards it was with Mr. Asquith that Redmond had chiefly to
count. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who, personally, had given no such
limiting pledges, and who during his two years of leadership commanded a
respect, an affectionate allegiance, from his followers in the House
without parallel at all events since Mr. Gladstone's day, was fast
weakening in health. He lived long enough to give freedom to South
Africa, the one outstanding achievement of that Parliament; and by the
success of that great measure he did more to remove British distrust of
Home Rule than even Gladstone ever accomplished. It was no fault of his
if Liberalism failed to settle the Irish question at the moment when
Liberal power reached its highest point.
The failure of the Council Bill had one good result, and one only. It
cleared the way for a definite propaganda on Home Rule. But before this
could be undertaken it was necessary to pull Nationalist Ireland
together, for it was once more rent with division and distrust. Mr.
Healy, who in 1901 had been expelled from the Irish party and its
organization on the motion of Mr. O'Brien and against Redmond's advice,
and Mr. O'Brien, who had subsequently retired from the party against
Redmond's wish, were both of them formidable antagonists; and each was
vehement in attack on the main body of Nationalists and their leader. It
was some time before Redmond braced himself to the struggle; but from
the opening of the autumn recess in 1907 he undertook a campaign
throughout Ireland which it would be difficult to overpraise. In a
series of speeches at chosen centres, delivered before great audiences,
he laid down once more the national demand as he conceived it; and in
each speech he dealt with a different aspect of the case for Home Rule.
A formal outcome of this campaign was the re-establishment of national
unity. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy returned to the Irish party for a brief
period. But the more important result was the re-establishment of
Redmond's personal position. He had made an effort which would have been
great for any man, but for him was a victory over his own temperament.
That temperament had in it, negatively, a great lack of personal
ambition and, positively, a strong love for a quiet life. He did his
work in Parliament regularly and conscientiously, always there day in
and day out; and it was work of a very exacting kind. This had become
the routine of his existence and he did it without strain. But to go
outside it was for him always an effort. He hated town life; but more
than this, he hated ceremonies, presentations, receptions in hotels, and
all the promiscuous contact of political gatherings. Nevertheless, when
he came to such an occasion no living man acquitted himself better.
Apart from his oratory, he had an admirable manner, a dignified yet
friendly courtesy which gained attachment. In the course of the autumn
and winter following the Irish Council Bill he must have met and been
seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period
of his leadership. People all over Ireland heard him not only on the
public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu
speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where
an Irish leader most needs to be strengthened--in the hearts of the
people. The hold which he gained then stood to him during the years
which followed and up to the outbreak of the war. But it could have
been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force
in him, he would have strengthened it. More than that, if he had
realized his full value to Ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do
so. Modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave
all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to
leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, Mr. Dillon and
Mr. Devlin--who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders
than lieutenants, so far as Ireland was concerned.
Circumstances helped to emphasize this tendency. His work lay very
greatly in London, Parliament occupied every year a longer and longer
space. The task of platform advocacy all over England was urgent, and in
England Redmond stood out alone. It was little to be wondered at that
when each long deferred recess came he made it a vacation and not a
change of work. The seclusion from direct intercourse with the mass of
his followers which conditions imposed upon him was further accentuated
by his personal tastes and his choice of a dwelling.
In the early years of the nineteenth century the mountain range which
runs along the east coast from outside Dublin through Wicklow into
county Wexford was a country difficult of access and unsubdued. Here in
1803 Emmet found a refuge, and after Emmet's death here Michael Dwyer
still held out: Connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible,
till the "military road" was run, little more than a hundred years ago,
from Dublin over the western slopes of Featherbed, past Glencree, and
through Callary Bog, skirting Glendalough and traversing the wild
recesses of Glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those
beautiful streams which meet in the Vale of Ovoca. From Glenmalure the
road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide downward curves
across the seaward side of Lugnaquilla--fifth in height among Irish
mountains. Here, at the head of a long valley which runs down to the
Meeting of the Waters, was built one of the barracks which billeted the
original garrison of the road. Later, these buildings had been used for
constabulary; but with peaceful times this grew needless, for there was
little disturbance among these Wicklow folk, tenants of little farms,
each with a sheep-run on the vast hills. Nothing could be less like the
flat sea-bordering lands of the Barony of Forth in which the Redmonds
spent their boyhood than these wild, sweeping, torrent-seamed folds of
hill and valley; but the place came to him as part of his inheritance
from "the Chief." Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from
here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property
stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack
was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his
life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to
his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those
others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in
this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. After Parnell's death
Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it
became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed,
Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately,
felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a
way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.
Partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings
appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly
emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have
recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be
difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are
featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born
artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to
beauty in all kinds--yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical,
graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its
beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea--yet with a
difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and
Aughavanagh was a place of rest. Ireland is a good country to rest in.
But it would have been far better for Redmond and for Ireland if Ireland
had been the place not of his rest, but of his work.
His work was essentially that of an agent of Ireland carrying on
Ireland's affairs in a strange capital. He spent more of his time in
London than in Ireland, but he was never part of the life of London,
never in any sense a Londoner. He was part of the life of the House of
Commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to
Aughavanagh as a man returns from the City to his home. This home of his
was in no sense connected with his active occupations. He was no lover
of gardening or of farming; he had none of the Irishman's taste for the
overseeing of stock or land; he enjoyed shooting, but he was not a
passionate sportsman. What was a passion with him--- for he sacrificed
much to it--was rest in the place of his choice.
It was not a lonely habitation. He was no recluse, and when there he was
always surrounded by his friends. I do not know precisely how one could
constitute a list of them--but half a dozen men at least came and went
there as they chose. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Hayden, "Long John" O'Connor, Dr.
Kenny--these, and above all, Paddy O'Brien, the party's chief acting
whip--were constant there. Some came to shoot, and Willie Redmond used
to come over from his house at Delgany, where the Glen of the Downs
debouches seaward; walking generally, for he was the fastest and most
untiring of mountaineers: very few cared to keep beside him on the
hills. Others were content to share the daily bathes, morning and
afternoon, in a long deep pool where the little stream tumbling down a
series of cascades makes a place to dive and swim in. These were the
friends of Redmond's own generation, and they were also his son's
friends; but the two daughters had their allies, and one way or another
the party was apt to be a big one--very simply provided for. When I went
there first (in 1907) you climbed a narrow stone stair to the first
floor; on the left was a dining-room, beyond that a billiard-room; on
the right, Redmond's study, and beyond that his bedroom. Another flight
took you to the upper regions, where were two dormitories--the girls to
the right, the men to the left. Later, he made some alterations, and the
upstair rooms were subdivided off; the garden was developed; it became
more of a house and less of a barrack; but the character of the life did
not change. It was most simple, most hospitable, most unconventional and
most remote.
Certainly a great part of Aughavanagh's charm for him lay in its
remoteness. It was seven Irish miles up a hilly road from the nearest
railway station, post office or telegraph station. Aughrim was three
hours' train journey from Dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were
few. Until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach,
he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in Clare or Mayo.
So it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical
district of Ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score
of Irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading
associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is
Ireland--and perhaps from much that was most important to him. Political
opinion is created in the towns, and he knew the Irish townsfolk, so far
as he could manage it, only through his correspondence, and through
those business visits to Dublin which he made as few as possible.
If his work had lain, where it should by rights have lain, in a
ministerial office in Dublin, all would have been well. As it was, the
deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in Ireland weakened his
influence. He was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too
unambitious to care. Work he never shrank from. But the daily
solicitations of people with personal grievances to lay before him,
personal interests which they desired him to promote, made a form of
trouble which in his periods of rest from work he refused to undergo.
The same qualities in him were responsible for his persistent refusal to
accept private hospitality where he went on public business. Whether in
Ireland or in Great Britain, he must stay at a hotel, and many were the
magnates of Liberalism whose ruffled feelings it was necessary to smooth
down on this account. He detested being lionized and wanted always, when
the public affair was over, to get away to his own quarters.
The demands on him in England for platform work were portentous. Every
constituency which wanted a meeting on the Home Rule question wanted
Redmond and no other speaker. Of course he could not go to one-twentieth
of the places where he was asked for; and his objection to going was not
the effort involved but the impossibility either of indefinitely
repeating himself or of finding something new to say each time. "If it
was in America," he would say, "I would speak as often as you asked me"
(it was my misfortune to have to do the asking), "because they never
report a speech." The fact is worth noting, for in scores of instances
what was adduced by opponents as quotation from his utterances in the
United States represented simply some American journalist's impression,
perhaps less of what Redmond said than of what, in the reporter's
opinion, he should have said. Those who represented him as putting one
face on the argument in America and another in Great Britain did not
know the man. "I have made it a rule," he said to me more than once, "to
say the extremest things I had to say in the House of Commons."
However, all the machinery which was employed by the opponents of Home
Rule to prejudice Ireland's case in the British constituencies proved
very ineffectual. For one thing, the lesson of South Africa had gone
home. For another, and perhaps a greater, no cause ever had a missionary
better adapted to the temperament of the British democracy. The dignity
and beauty of Redmond's eloquence, the weight which he could give to an
argument, his extraordinary gift for simplifying an issue and grouping
thoughts in large bold masses--all these things carried audiences with
them.
III
Between 1908 and 1910 we were still, though with rapidly increasing
success, trying to get a hearing for the Irish question--trying to push
it once more to the front. The change of leadership from Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm. We got
solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though
Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like
that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. A highly contentious
measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909. But a new power was
coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. Mr.
Lloyd George put a new fighting spirit into Liberalism: but the objects
which he had at heart could only be achieved by a great expenditure of
electoral power, and among those objects Irish self-government found
only a secondary place. When Mr. Gladstone spoke of liberty he thought
of what he had helped to bring to Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and
Montenegro--what he had tried to bring to Ireland. When Mr. Lloyd George
spoke of liberty, he thought of what he wanted to bring to England
first, and to Ireland by the way; his conviction that Ireland needed
self-government was not so deeply rooted as his conviction that the poor
throughout the United Kingdom needed help.
Old Age Pensions had been popular, but had not been a fighting issue.
Mr. Lloyd George provided the fighting issue with a vengeance when he
set himself to pay for them. Unfortunately, Nationalist Ireland had no
enthusiasm for the Budget which English Radicalism made its flag. A
country of peasant proprietors was easily scared by the very name of
land taxes. But above all the Finance Bill dealt drastically, and many
thought unfairly, with the powerful liquor trade, which in its branches
of brewing and distilling included the main manufacturing interest of
southern Ireland, and on its retail side was incredibly diffused through
the whole shopkeeping community.
The dissident Nationalists saw their chance. Mr. O'Brien emerged from
one of his periodic retirements to lead a whirlwind campaign against the
"robber Budget." Redmond and our party were obliged to oppose a measure
which pressed so hard as this undoubtedly did on Ireland. Our opposition
to the land taxes was withdrawn when valuable concessions had been made,
but no such compromise was considered possible on the liquor taxes. On
the other hand, it grew clear that the measure was likely to produce a
conflict in which the power of the House of Lords might be challenged on
the most favourable ground: and for that reason, when the third reading
was reached, the Irish party abstained from voting against it. This
course, while it facilitated close co-operation with Liberalism in the
general election which followed, weakened us in Ireland; and eleven out
of the eighty-three Nationalist members returned in January 1910 ranked
themselves as outside the party; though Mr. O'Brien's actual following
was limited to seven Cork members and Mr. Healy.
IV
The action of the Lords in rejecting the Budget of 1909 had an important
personal result. It placed Mr. Asquith in a rôle which no one was ever
better qualified to fill--that of a Liberal statesman defending
principles of democratic control menaced after a long period of
security. The Prime Minister, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now
became the protagonist; and this was to Redmond's liking, for he felt
that Mr. Asquith was more concerned with the problems which had occupied
Gladstone's closing years and Mr. Lloyd George with those of a later
day.
Yet in the first grave encounter after the rejection of the Budget,
Redmond and the leader of the Liberal party came to sharp differences.
The general election had amply justified the advice which was urged by
him on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman when the House of Lords rejected the
Education Bill in 1906--namely, that the Liberal party should take up at
once the inevitable fight before their enormous strength had been
frittered away in a series of disappointments. The majority of 1906 was
too swollen to be healthy: owing to the ruling out of Home Rule, it
included a number of men only partial adherents of the full Liberal
programme; and a diminution of its proportions owing to the traditional
swing of the pendulum was certain. But in January 1910 the losses were
more than even sanguine Tory prophets predicted. Tories came back equal
in strength to the Liberals: Labour was only forty, so that the Irish
party held the balance in the House.
The election had been fought expressly on the issue of Government's
claim to enable a Liberal Government to deal with certain problems,
among which the Irish question occupied the foremost place. It was easy
now for the Tories to argue that the Government appealing to the country
on that issue had lost two hundred seats. They said: "You have authority
to pass your Budget--but for these vast unconstitutional changes you
have no mandate." The temper of their party, which had more than doubled
its numbers, was very high: in the Liberal ranks depression reigned and
counsels were divided.
At the beginning of the election Mr. Asquith had made a great speech in
the Albert Hall in which he outlined the Liberal policy. In it he
declared that the pledge against introducing a Home Rule Bill was
withdrawn, and that the establishment of self-government for Ireland,
subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, was among the
Government's main purposes. But the House of Lords was in the way.
"We shall not assume office and we shall not hold office unless we can
secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary for the
legislative utility and honour of the party of progress."
This was universally taken to mean that he would obtain a guarantee that
the King would, if necessary, consent to the creation of sufficient new
peers to override the hostile majority. But as the election progressed,
uncertainties developed and an alternative policy of attempting to
reform the Upper House was advocated in certain quarters. The question
arose also as to whether the first business of the new House should be
to pass the Budget which the Lords had thrown out or to proceed with the
attack on the power of veto.
Redmond's view on this was not in doubt. At a meeting in Dublin on
February 10, 1910, he declared in the most emphatic manner that to deal
with the Budget first would be a breach of Mr. Asquith's pledge to the
country, since it would throw away the power of the House of Commons to
stop supply. This speech attracted much attention, and the memory of it
was present to many a fortnight later when Mr. Asquith was replying to
Mr. Balfour at the opening of the debate on the Address. The Prime
Minister dwelt strongly on the administrative necessity for regularizing
the financial position disturbed by the Upper House's unconstitutional
action. He indicated also the need for reform in the composition of that
House. But, above all, he disclaimed as improper and impossible any
attempt to secure in advance a pledge for the contingent exercise of the
Royal prerogative.
"I have received no such guarantee and I have asked for no such
guarantee," he said.
The change was marked indeed from the moment when he uttered in the
Albert Hall his sentence against assuming office or holding office
without the necessary safeguards--an assurance at which the whole vast
assembly rose to their feet and cheered. Every word in his speech on the
Address added to the depression of his followers and the elation of the
Opposition. Redmond followed him at once. In such circumstances as then
existed, it was exceedingly undesirable for the Irish leader to
emphasize the fact that his vote could overthrow the Government: and the
least unnecessary display of this power would naturally and properly
have been resented by the Government's following. No one knew this
better than Redmond, yet the position demanded bold action. His speech,
courteous, as always, in tone, and studiously respectful in its
reference to the position of the Crown, was an open menace to the
Government. He quoted the Prime Minister's words at the Albert Hall, he
appealed to the House at large for the construction which had been
everywhere put on them; and it was apparent that he had the full
sympathy not only of his own party and of Labour, but of most of Mr.
Asquith's own following. He concluded in these words:
"If the Prime Minister is not in a position to say that he has such
guarantees as are necessary to enable him to pass a Veto Bill this
year, and if in spite of that he intends to remain in office and
proposes to pass the Budget into law and then to adjourn--I do not
care for how short or how long--the consideration of the Bill
dealing with the veto of the House of Lords, that is a policy which
Ireland cannot and will not support."
The effect on the House was such that no one rose to continue the
debate. Next day it was resumed, and not only Labour speakers, but one
after another of the Liberals, including some of the Prime Minister's
most docile, old-fashioned supporters rose and declared that Redmond and
not the Leader of the House had expressed their views. So began a
remarkable struggle in which the combined forces of the private
members--Liberal, Labour and Irish--united by a common desire to destroy
the domination of the Peers, contended against the Cabinet's policy of
attempting not merely to limit the power of veto but to reconstitute the
Upper House. In such a process men saw that the driving force of the
majority would waste away and that the composite character of their
alliance would lead to certain disruption.
Before the debate on the Address concluded it was plain that Redmond had
won. From that period onwards his popularity, and, through him, the
popularity of the party which he led, was immensely increased in Great
Britain. He was regarded as one of the men who had rendered best service
to democracy against privilege. He himself believed that in this first
contest Ireland had decided the victory--had decided the overthrow of
the House which had so long opposed its liberties. Labour had then
neither the essential leader nor the necessary parliamentary strength:
Liberalism was confused and uncertain at the critical moment.
Yet in the very process of achieving this success Redmond laid himself
open to attack. The Budget was regarded with dislike by a very large
section of Irishmen, and apart from considerations of political strategy
the Irish members would certainly have voted against it. Now, the power
was in their hands to defeat it finally. By so doing they would, of
course, justify to some degree the unconstitutional action of the Lords;
but this consideration did not weigh with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy.
They accused Redmond of selling the real interests of Ireland to keep a
Government in office which could offer nothing in return but a gambling
chance of limiting the veto of the Lords. Mr. O'Brien was firmly
confident that no such measure would ever pass. He denounced the
bargain, not merely because it was a bargain in which Redmond accepted
what was in his view a ruinous injustice to Ireland, but because it was
a bargain in which the Irish had been outwitted. This line of argument
was to be dinned into the ears of Ireland during all the remaining years
of Redmond's life. The only conclusive answer to it was to gain Home
Rule. If, in the long run, it came to appear that the attackers had been
right in their contention, and that Ireland had never received the
expected return, the fault for that result lay with Ireland itself no
less than with England; it most assuredly did not lie with John Redmond.
A great weight of responsibility rests on those who from the first hour
of Ireland's opportunity ingeminated distrust to an over-suspicious
people.
For the moment, however, the attack made no headway. Irishmen have a
shrewd political sense, and they felt that in the struggle to pin
Liberal Ministers to the true fighting objective Redmond had won. They
were also delighted to see the Irish party openly exert its power--not
quite realizing that such exhibitions were against the interest of the
democratic alliance, which had to undergo a grave test. The Government's
vacillation had rendered another general election necessary if the Veto
question were to be fought out.
On April 29th the House adjourned for the Whitsuntide recess, after
which the crisis was to come with the decision of the House of Lords
whether to accept or reject the Veto Resolution, which had then passed
the Commons. On May 7th, after a short and sudden illness, King Edward
died. Both the great English parties were unwilling to renew the most
acute political struggle of modern times at the opening of a new reign,
and means of accommodation was sought through a Conference which sat
first on June 16th and held twenty-one meetings. No representative of
Ireland was on this body. On November 10th it reported that no result
had come of its efforts, and a new general election was fixed for
December 1st.
When the Conference finally broke down Redmond was on his way back from
America, whither he had gone accompanied by Mr. Devlin. Mr. T.P.
O'Connor at the same time undertook a tour in Canada. The success of
these missions showed that the interest and the confidence of the Irish
race were higher than at any previous period: the ambassadors brought
back a contribution of one hundred thousand dollars to the election
funds, and the ship on which they came was saluted by bonfires all along
the coast of Cork. Ireland, too, was subscribing as Ireland had not
subscribed since Parnell's zenith: and this was an Ireland in which the
land-hunger had been largely appeased. The theory that Ireland's demand
for self-government was merely generated by Ireland's poverty began to
look ridiculous.
It was the cue of the Tory Press at this moment to excite prejudice
against the Liberals by representing them as the bondslaves of the
"dollar dictator"--ordered about by an Irish autocrat with swollen
money-bags from New York. This line of argument did us little harm in
Great Britain; in Ireland it improved Redmond's position, for it was a
useful answer to Mr. O'Brien's representation of him as the abject tool
of Liberal politicians. The election, on the whole, strengthened our
party. Mr. Healy was thrown out; and Mr. O'Brien, though he retained the
seven seats held by his adherents in Cork, failed in two out of three
personal candidatures.
In Great Britain the second election of the year 1910 had the surprising
result of reproducing almost exactly the same division of parties: and
this added greatly to the strength of the Government. The Tory leaders
now, instead of insisting on a maintenance of the old Constitution, went
into alternative proposals--including the adoption of the Referendum.
This was their constructive line; the destructive resolved itself
largely into an endeavour to focus resistance on the question of
Ireland--the purpose for which alone, they said, abolition of the veto
was demanded. As has often happened, action taken by the Vatican gave
the opponents of Home Rule a useful weapon. The _Ne Temere_ decree,
promulgated in the year 1908, laid down that any marriage to which a
Roman Catholic was a party, if not solemnized according to the rites of
the Church of Rome, should be treated as invalid from a canonical point
of view. Although legally binding, it should be regarded as no marriage
in the eyes of an orthodox Roman Catholic until it was regularized in
the manner provided by the Church, The case of an unhappy mixed marriage
in Belfast was exploited with fury on a thousand platforms. Another
decree, the _Motu Proprio_, was construed as seeking to establish
immunity for the clergy from proceedings in civil courts. This, however,
was of less platform value, because no instance could be found of a
practical application; whereas the McCann case unquestionably gave Tory
disputants a formidable instrument for evoking the ancient distrust of
Roman Catholicism which is so deeply ingrained in the Protestant mind.
In spite of all, the English democracy remained steady in its purpose.
Party feeling, however, ran to heights not known in living memory. In
July 1911 the Parliament Bill went to the Lords, where it was altered
out of all recognition. On July 20th Mr. Asquith sent a letter to Mr.
Balfour stating that the King had guaranteed that he would exercise his
prerogative to secure that the Bill should be passed substantially as it
left the Commons. On the 24th the extreme section of the Tory party,
headed by Lord Hugh Cecil, refused to allow the Prime Minister a hearing
in the House of Commons.
From an Irish point of view the episode was noteworthy. At the outset of
this critical session Redmond had cautioned his party to abstain from
giving provocation and from allowing themselves to be provoked. The
counsel was the harder to follow because some of the most vehement of
the younger Tories sat below the gangway, almost in physical contact
with Irish members, and hot words passed. Still, it was grounded into
all that we should not allow the great issue then at trial to be
represented as an Irish quarrel. Our cause was linked with the whole
cause of democracy as against privilege: it was an issue for the whole
United Kingdom; and that was never plainer than on this day of July.
English, Scottish and Welsh members hurled interruptions and taunts at
each other across the floor of the House, while Irish members sat
watching. Something older and more far-reaching than the opposition to
Ireland's demand now was felt itself assailed; and a force in which the
Irish movement was only one stream of many swept against it. Anger in
the Tory party was not directed against Ireland's representatives; and
an odd chance made this plain. The fierce scene in the House reached its
culmination when Ministers withdrew in a body from the Treasury Bench
and the two sides of the House stood up, one cheering, the other
hooting, in opposite ranks. For a moment it seemed as if the affair
would come to blows, till Mr. Will Crooks, with a genial inspiration,
uplifted his voice in song: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" The
tension was relaxed and members moved out in groups--we Irishmen
necessarily among the Tories. In the movement I saw Willie Redmond go up
to one of the fiercest among the Ulstermen, whose face was dark with
passion. Colloquy began: "Isn't it a hard thing that you wouldn't let us
speak?" The Ulsterman turned: "Not let you speak? My dear fellow, we'd
listen to you for as long as you liked--it's only these accursed English
Liberals." And upon this mutual understanding the two Irishmen walked
down the floor into the Lobby exchanging expressions of mutual goodwill
and possibly of mutual comprehension.
This little piece of by-play, so full of Irish nature, struck me at the
time as something more than amusing--as having in it a ray of hopeful
significance. But the most sanguine imagination would never have
foreseen the series of events which brought it to pass, not merely that
these two men should wear the same uniform, on a common service, but
that the same Gazette should publish both their names as enrolled on the
same day in the French Legion of Honour. On that day Mr. Charles Craig
was a prisoner in Germany, wounded in a famous fight; and Willie Redmond
was in a grave towards which Ulster comrades had been the first to carry
him. There is an Irish saying, "Men may meet, but the mountains stand
apart." In July 1911 such an association as the Gazette of July 1917
illustrated would have seemed hardly more possible than the meeting of
the everlasting hills.
The dramatic crisis of the parliamentary struggle between the two Houses
of Parliament did not, and could not, come in the House of Commons. Its
place was in the final citadel of privilege, and privilege surrendered
on August 10th, when the Bill passed the Lords after the most exciting
and uncertain division that is ever likely to be known. But there were
elements in the Tory party which did not accept defeat, though they had
not yet clearly decided on what battleground to renew their efforts. For
the moment, however, men were disposed to pause and take stock of the
new situation.
But at such a time events cannot stand still, and almost at the same
moment as the Parliament Act was carried, the Government took a step
which gravely affected the Irish party. Payment of members was
established by a resolution of the House of Commons.
Irish Nationalist members had always been paid from the party fund, that
is to say, by their supporters. Payment was conditional, not of right,
and it was not made except when the member was in attendance: it
amounted only to twenty pounds a month. The new payment came from the
British Treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of
constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum
which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing.
Unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in
the eyes of Ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain.
All this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by
Redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike Irish members out of the
application of the resolution. But the situation was hopelessly
involved, the Irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members
as part of the Radical programme which they supported as affecting any
normally governed country; and Government refused to make the exception.
As a result, Redmond's following lost much of the prestige which had
resulted from scrupulous observance of the understanding that no
Nationalist member should take office under Government. To join the
Irish party had been, in effect, for most men, to make a vow of
poverty. Now, on the contrary, it involved acceptance of what was in
Ireland's eyes a well-paid and unlaborious office. The Irish are no less
prone than any other nation to take a cynical view of these matters.
Yet assuredly no man ever gave more service for less pay than the
Nationalist leader, and it was the harder because he was a man who liked
comfort and had no ambition. If at the time of the great "split" he had
stood down from politics, success would have been assured to him at the
Bar in Ireland, or, more surely still, and far more profitably, at
Westminster itself. There never was anyone so well-fitted for the work
of a parliamentary barrister who has to deal with great interests before
a tribunal largely composed of laymen. No one had the House of Commons
tone more perfectly than Redmond, and no one that I ever heard equalled
his gift for making a complicated issue appear simple. When he was
thrown out of Parliament at the Cork election, he thought of retirement,
mainly for one reason: it would be better for his children. Yet, first
by personal loyalty to Parnell, later by his loyalty to Ireland, he was
held firm to his task--always a poor man, always knowing that it lay in
his power, without the least sacrifice of principle, to become rich by a
way of work less laborious and infinitely less harassing than that which
he pursued.
The effect upon the Irish situation produced by the payment of members
was slow to develop, and obscure. But an obvious and grave complication
was introduced into both British and Irish politics at the moment when
the democratic alliance had achieved its first great objective.
Parliament had been in session almost continuously since the beginning
of 1909, with the added strain of two general elections thrown in. There
was a widespread desire to clear the autumn of 1911, so that members
might have some breathing space, and, not less important, devote
themselves to propagandist work in their constituencies for the new
struggle of carrying measures under the hardly won Parliament Act. Each
of these measures must involve a fight prolonged over three years.
But this desire ran against the purposes of Mr. Asquith's chief
lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. Mr.
Lloyd George in the course of the session had introduced his Insurance
Bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of
the House. As discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and
difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they
provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for
politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. Most of the
Liberal party would have preferred to drop the Bill temporarily and
refer it to a Committee of Enquiry. Mr. Lloyd George was convinced that
this would be fatal to his measure, concerning which he was possessed by
a missionary zeal. Probably when his career comes under the study of
impartial history it will be perceived that never at any moment was he
so passionately and so honestly in earnest as upon this quest. But it is
certain that by pursuit of it he created enormous difficulties in the
way of those reforms which the democratic alliance at large most desired
to achieve. He carried his point; an autumn session followed, in which
the mind of the electorate was diverted from the Irish question and all
other questions except that of Insurance, and Parliament itself was
jaded to the brink of exhaustion.
The matter was difficult for us in Ireland because, owing to the
different system of Public Health Administration, many of the most
important provisions could not apply, and because the Bill as a whole
was framed to meet the needs of a highly industrialized and crowded
community. Broadly speaking, it was less desired in Ireland than in
Great Britain; and even for Great Britain Mr. Lloyd George was
legislating in advance of public opinion rather than in response to it.
Mr. O'Brien and his following vehemently opposed the application of the
Bill to Ireland; and the Irish Catholic Bishops, by a special
resolution, expressed their view to the same effect. The Bill, however,
had a powerful advocate in Mr. Devlin, and the Irish party decided to
support its extension to Ireland, subject to certain modifications which
they obtained.
Apart from the new unsettlement of public opinion which it created both
in Great Britain and in Ireland, the Insurance Act added to our
difficulties on the Home Rule question. It was clear already that the
question of finance lay like a rock ahead. Up to 1908 the proceeds of
Irish revenue had always given a margin over the cost of all Irish
services, though that margin had dwindled almost to vanishing-point. Old
Age Pensions completely turned the beam and left us in the position of
costing more than we contributed. Now the outlay on Insurance added half
a million a year to the balance against us.
Still, difficulties and perplexities were not limited to one side. The
Tory party were much divided since the crisis on the Parliament Act. A
section, and the most active section, had been violently opposed to the
surrender on the critical division, and these men were profoundly
discontented with Mr. Balfour's leadership; so Mr. Balfour, yielding to
intimations, suddenly resigned. Somewhat unexpectedly, Mr. Bonar Law was
chosen to succeed him, Mr. Long and Mr. Chamberlain waiving their
respective claims.
This choice was of sinister augury. Mr. Law did not know Ireland. But,
Canadian-born, he came from a country in which the Irish factions and
theological enmities had always had their counterpart; his father, a
Presbyterian Minister, came of Ulster stock. All the blood in him
instinctively responded to the tap of the Orange drum. As far back as
January 27, 1911, he had urged armed resistance to Home Rule.
This was a line which Mr. Balfour did not see his way to take, and
probably here rather than elsewhere lay the reason for the choice of Mr.
Bonar Law. The most active section of the Tory party--probably a
minority, for in such cases minorities decide--regarded the passing of
the Parliament Act as an outrage on the Constitution, which should be
resisted by any means, constitutional or unconstitutional. But no
possibility existed of mobilizing a force in Great Britain to fight for
the veto of the House of Lords, nor again did the resistance to a new
Franchise Act, or even to Welsh Disestablishment, promise to be
desperate. In one part only of these islands was there material for a
form of struggle in which the ballot-box and the division lobby might be
supplemented, if not replaced, by quite other methods of political war.
The Tory party saw in Ulster their best fighting chance. There was no
use in telling them that they jeopardized the British Constitution; from
their point of view the British Constitution--as they had known it--was
already gone; it was destroyed in principle and must be either restored
or refashioned according to their mind.
This temper, with the attitude towards parliamentary tradition which it
produced, rendered the political history of the next two and a half
years unlike any other in the history of these countries. The main
purpose of this book is to record and illustrate Redmond's action during
the period which began with the opening of the Great War. But since that
action was conditioned by the circumstances preceding the war--since in
two notable ways it aimed at a solution of the fierce political struggle
which the war interrupted--the political history connected with the
passage of the Home Rule Bill through Parliament must be outlined in
detail, with avoidance, so far as may be, of a controversial tone.
V
It is however necessary, before closing this preliminary review, to take
some account of Redmond's relation to his party, and, in general, of the
working of the parliamentary machine. Difficulties were imposed on him
and on the party from 1910 onwards by our very success.
Electoral chances had placed us apparently in the position of maximum
power. From January 1910 onwards we had a Government committed to Home
Rule, yet so far dependent on us that we could put it out at any moment.
Yet this was by no means an ideal state of affairs. The Government's
weakness was our weakness, and they were liable to the reproach that
they never proposed a Home Rule measure except when they could not
dispense with the Irish vote. Still, from this embarrassing position we
achieved an extraordinary result. Right across our path was the obstacle
of the House of Lords. It was not an impassable barrier for measures in
which the British working classes were keenly interested--for it let the
Trades Disputes Bill go through; but it was wholly regardless of Irish
and of Welsh popular opinion. Under Redmond's leadership we smashed the
House of Lords. The English middle class instinct for compromise was
asserting itself, when he took hold and gave direction to the great mass
of popular indignation which the hereditary chamber had roused against
itself.
Yet guiding action in an alliance of which he was not the head was
delicate work. A clumsy speaker in debate might do infinite mischief.
When a party is in opposition, all its members can talk, and are
encouraged to talk, to the utmost; little harm can be done to one's own
side by what is said in criticism of measures proposed. Support and
exposition is a much more ticklish business. Add to this the fact that
under the fully developed system of parliamentary obstruction--that is,
of using discussion to prevent legislation from being put through--the
best service that a member can render to Government is to say nothing,
but vote.
The tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important
debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to
delay a division were pushed further in the Irish party than elsewhere.
We were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective
was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood
the position. We recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for
Redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not
be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. But the net result was
that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was
worse, that Ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. It followed,
not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be
as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could
have been of service in debate. They did not any longer see their
members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack
on the Government; they heard very little of them at all. They knew
little and cared less about the work of education in British
constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of Irish
members.
Redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to
attract men of talent into his ranks. Parnell had that power. He had,
and used, the right of suggesting names. But under the constitution of
the United Irish League (originally the work of Mr. William O'Brien when
reunion was accomplished in 1900) the machinery of local conventions was
set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the
central directorate--which could only insist that a man properly
selected must take the party pledge. Whether this machinery was
inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but Redmond himself complained
repeatedly in public that it worked badly. Candidates were often chosen
purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any
real thought of finding the man best fitted to do Ireland's work at
Westminster.
This evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in
a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others.
There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of
constituencies, any contest was deprecated--and from some points of view
rightly--as leading to possible faction between Nationalists. The choice
of a member really fell into too few hands; the electorate as a whole
was not sufficiently interested. Nevertheless, several able men came
into our ranks, and under the conditions it was not possible to utilize
their talents fully, as they would have been utilized had we been in
opposition, not in support of the Government. More could have been done,
however, to give them their opportunity, and the responsibility for not
varying the list of speakers rests on Redmond. It was his policy to
avoid personal intervention, and to leave such choices to be settled by
proposals from the party itself. This was a real limitation to his
excellence as leader--for leader he was.
There was, however, an even more important limitation arising out of his
personal temperament. As chairman, I never expect to see his equal. He
had the most perfect public manners of any man I have known, whether in
dealing with some vast assembly or small confidential gathering. The
latter type of meeting is the more difficult to handle, and nothing
could exceed his gift for presiding over and guiding debate. He could
set out a political situation to his party with extraordinary force and
lucidity. He could also, when he chose, so present an issue as to
suggest almost irresistibly the conclusion which he desired--and this
was how he led. Where he came short in the quality of leadership was in
the personal contact.
His relations with all his followers in the party were courteous and
cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always
aloof. He did not invite discussion. It needed some courage to go to him
with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a
"Yes" or "No." He lacked what Lord Morley attributed to Gladstone, "the
priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock." No one thought
more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would
not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. Men like
being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, I have
reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon
him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from
pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not
going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more
enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one
who liked discussion for discussion's sake.
Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I
cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently
aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his
team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and
a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the
separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He
welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both
as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally
speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented
mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the
new Young Ireland.
But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they
were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party--Redmond's essential
limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities
which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. What his followers gave him
was admiration, liking and profound respect. No less than this was
strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal
pettiness, his control of temper. In twelve years I heard many
complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: I
scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. He was
always spoken of as "The Chairman"; no one attributed to him sole
responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a
fault.
Yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one
against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. He
had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in
his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled.