Sinn Fein had not as yet done, get into direct touch with labour
questions and the labour movement, though perhaps not very successfully.
The first number of _Irish Freedom_ had an article on sweated industries,
pointing out that though Nationalists talked as if Belfast were the only
place in Ireland where workers were underpaid, many Nationalists were open
to the same reproach. It pointed out the duty of the universities in the
matter, pleading for a really scientific study of Irish economic problems,
including (besides the wages system) such questions as the working of the
Land Acts, Co-operation, the conditions of the Congested Districts. It
welcomed with enthusiasm the Co-operative Movement. "The co-operative
spirit," it said, "is perhaps the greatest asset in modern Ireland and it
will require a stronger flame than the speeches of political firebrands to
melt it away." On the occasion of the strikes in Belfast, Dublin, Cork and
other towns in 1911 it took sides with the strikers, in marked contrast to
Mr. Griffith's _Sinn Fein_, which preached something approaching "abject
surrender" on the part of the workers. It induced Mr. George Russell to
contribute an article on the Co-operative Commonwealth. This undoubtedly
went a certain way to bring about a friendlier feeling on the part of
Labour towards Sinn Fein, but it was long before the attitude of strict
Sinn Feiners was forgotten by the workers. Its attitude towards Ulster was
more outspoken and definite. In 1910 the objection of Ulster to the
approaching Home Rule policy of the Liberals began to harden into a
threat of extreme militancy. A section of Ulster Unionists announced their
intention not to submit under any circumstances to the Home Rule Bill even
if it should become law and receive the Royal assent. To the Republicans
this seemed "tantamount to an admission of the whole Irish case for
self-government. If it means anything it means that Ireland, north as well
as south of the Boyne, refuses to recognize any inherent right of the
electors of Great Britain to decide how it shall be governed." The
justness of this appreciation of the Ulster position must be examined
later: but, true or false, it is characteristic of the attitude which the
whole Sinn Fein Party was afterwards to take. But the Ulstermen coupled
with their attitude towards the Liberal Party and its doings a truculent
defiance of all Catholic Ireland. The cause of this hostility the
Republicans found in the attitude of the Parliamentary Party. While that
party was in the height of its success "no attempt was made to understand
their [_i.e._ the Ulster Protestants'] attitude or grapple with problems
that appealed to them, and the economic grievances of Belfast workers were
regarded as their own affair, not as the business of men who professed to
represent the Irish people as a whole. The prevailing idea seemed to be
that they should be left to stew in their own juice, and if they did not
fall in with whatever scheme the Liberals carried through the English
Parliament that they should be, in the phrase of a prominent
parliamentarian, which has never been forgotten, 'overborne by the strong
hand.'... The party of the future must make the conversion of Ulster the
first plank in their platform and recognize that a national settlement
from which Ulster dissented would not be worth winning." In the Ancient
Order of Hibernians, all sections of Sinn Fein as well as the Labour Party
saw a menace to any prospect of an accommodation with Ulster. This
strictly sectarian society, as sectarian and often as violent in its
methods as the Orange Lodges, evoked their determined hostility. "This
narrowing down," wrote _Irish Freedom_, "of Nationalism to the members of
one creed is the most fatal thing that has taken place in Irish politics
since the days of the Pope's Brass Band.... That the driving power of the
official Nationalists should be supplied by an organization of which no
Protestant, however good a patriot, can be a member, is in direct
opposition to the policy and traditions of Irish Nationalism." The Ancient
Order was described as "a job-getting and job-cornering organization," as
"a silent practical rivetting of sectarianism on the nation." The _Irish
Worker_ was equally emphatic. "Were it not for the existence of the Board
of Erin, the Orange Society would have long since ceased to exist.... To
Brother Devlin and not to Brother Carson is mainly due the progress of the
Covenanter movement in Ulster."
Devoted to the cause of an independent Irish Republic and of the union of
Irishmen without distinction of creed under one national banner, the
cause of Wolfe Tone, the movement attracted idealists who had so far held
aloof from the older, non-republican, form of Sinn Fein. Chief among these
were P. H. Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh, both poets and men of fine
literary gifts, both regarded with affection for their high and
disinterested devotion to the cause of Ireland. And in accordance with
Irish Republican tradition it took up an attitude with regard to armed
revolution somewhat different from that of Sinn Fein. While the latter
held that in the present state of Ireland an armed revolution was
impracticable, the Republicans, though not directly advising it, held that
it had a reasonable prospect of success if England should become involved
in a European War. Some Irish revolutionists who had so far held aloof
from all political parties were encouraged by this to join the republican
branch of Sinn Fein and try to infuse into it a more determined
revolutionary spirit.
The Labour Party, whose opinions were expressed by the _The Irish Worker
and People's Advocate_, adopted a similar attitude. Their motto was the
phrase of Fintan Lalor: "The principle I state and mean to stand upon is
this--that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the
sun and down to the centre, is vested in the people of Ireland." Their own
language was equally explicit: "By Freedom we mean that we Irishmen in
Ireland shall be free to govern this land called Ireland by Irish people
in the interest of all the Irish people; that no other people or peoples,
no matter what they call themselves, or from whence they come, now or in
the future, have any claim to interfere with the common right of the
common people of this land of Ireland to work out their own destiny. We
owe no allegiance to any other nation, nor the king, governors or
representatives of any other nation." In spite of the criticism that a
purely Labour movement should confine itself to Labour questions, and
leave the broader political issues to the one side, _The Irish Worker_
declared for an independent Irish Republic: "We know," it said, "that
until the workers of Ireland obtain possession of the land of Ireland and
make their own laws they can only hope for and obtain partial improvement
of their conditions. We ask no more than our rights: we will be content
with no less." The desire for a "free independent nation, enjoying a true
Republican freedom" linked the Labour Party to the republican branch of
Sinn Fein, but on other questions there was much disagreement. The
attitude of Arthur Griffith to the Wexford Strike in 1911 was the subject
of bitter comment. The Young Republicans, who objected to English Trade
Unions sending "English money" to finance the Irish strikers, were bluntly
told to mind their own business: the Gaelic League, which encouraged Irish
manufactures, was said to have failed in its duty by taking no account of
the conditions under which they were manufactured, or of the wages paid to
the workers who made them: "the revival of the Irish language is a
desirable ambition and has our whole-hearted support; but the abolition of
destitution, disease and the conditions that cause them are even more
necessary and urgent. What is the use of bilingualism to a dead man?"
But however they might differ on minor points, both of these new parties,
the Independent Labour Party of Ireland and the Young Republican Party,
were at one with each other and with Sinn Fein in opposition to the
Parliamentary Party. It was pointed out that in the twenty-one years which
had elapsed since the death of Parnell his policy of "blocking the way to
English legislation until Ireland was accorded self-government" had been
abandoned without any other definite policy being substituted for it: that
during ten of those years an English party, professing sympathy with
Ireland, had been kept in office by the Irish vote: that Home Rule was
still in the future and the principles governing the expected measure
still undetermined. In March, 1912, the Executive of Sinn Fein resolved
unanimously: "That this Executive earnestly hopes that the promised Home
Rule Bill will be one that may be accepted as a genuine measure of reform
by the people of Ireland and that it may speedily become law. Should the
Bill, on the contrary, be rejected as unsatisfactory by the people of
Ireland, or should it, though satisfactory, fail to become law--which we
would deplore--the organization is prepared to lead the country by other
and effective methods to the attainment of self-government." In reporting
this resolution _Sinn Fein_ wrote, in words which at the time seemed to
many supporters of the Party offensive, but which now seem charged with
portent: "No new parliamentarian movement will be permitted unopposed to
build upon the ruins of that which goes down with a sham Home Rule
measure. To make this clear before the Home Rule measure be introduced is
the last service we can render the Parliamentary Party. They have had the
Government 'in the hollow of their hands' for years--they have removed the
House of Lords from their path--there is nothing to prevent the Liberal
Government introducing and passing a full measure of Home Rule save and
except its enmity to Ireland. With a majority of over 100 and the Lords'
veto removed the fullest measure of Home Rule can be passed in two years.
It is the business of the Parliamentary Party to have it passed or to
leave the stage to those who are in earnest."
The appearance of the text of the Bill was not reassuring even to those
advocates of Irish independence who were willing to take a measure of Home
Rule as an instalment. The financial provisions of the Bill met with
severe and justified criticism. In spite of the fact that Ireland had been
systematically over-taxed for a century, and that a Parliamentary
Commission had so reported nearly twenty years earlier, the financial
provision for the proposed Irish Parliament could only be described as
beggarly. And almost everything that really mattered in the government of
Ireland was withdrawn from the competence of the Irish Parliament. It was
described in mockery as a "Gas and Water Bill," and even convinced
supporters of the Parliamentary Party had their qualms in declaring their
acceptance of the measure. There was no dubiety about the verdict of the
Nationalist organizations opposed to Mr. Redmond. _The Worker's Republic_
was outspoken in the extreme: it complained that the Bill had been
extorted from the Liberals "by whining and apologizing": in an Open Letter
to the United Irish League of Great Britain, it said, "You are told that
the people of Ireland accepted the Bill as a full and complete recognition
of our claim as Irishmen. That is a lie ... a Bill, which is the rottenest
bargain ever made by a victorious people with a mean, pettifogging,
despised Government." "A beggar," it wrote again, "gets only crumbs and
we, Irish workers, want a country." The verdict of _Irish Freedom_ was
equally emphatic; it was summed up in the phrase, "Damn your concessions;
we want our country."
But whatever individual Irish Members of Parliament may have thought of
the Bill, the Party was as a whole committed to it. No one in Ireland knew
what negotiations, barterings, and bargains preceded the actual drafting
of the measure: what the difficulties and objections were which had to be
met by Mr. Redmond: in how far he had offered concessions, in how far they
had been forced upon him. They only knew that he was prepared to support
the resulting Bill and that the resulting Bill was less than they had been
led to expect. There was little open discussion of principles, criticism
was not relished or welcomed. The Party had done its best for the country
and the country was now called upon to back the Party. A bargain had been
made by the representatives of the Irish people and the Irish people were
expected to stand by the consequences. Under other circumstances this
appeal would have been accepted, but it was no answer to the complaint
that the Irish representatives had not been empowered to abandon in
express words every national claim that went beyond those satisfied by the
provisions of the Home Rule Bill. This was the kernel of the dispute
between the Party and the Nationalists who opposed them. It seemed as if
by the deliberate renunciation of any desire or intention to claim for
Ireland anything more than the status of a dependency of Great Britain,
deprived forever (so far as an act of legislation could deprive her) of
her immemorial claim to be an independent nation, the Party had betrayed
the national demand and sold the national honour. But the Party did not
see (or betrayed no sign of having seen) the relevance of the criticism;
and certainly they miscalculated the strength of the opposition which was
gathering in the country. In the face of Ulster's attitude, they
confidently expected the whole country to rally to their support. And,
after all, what could, or would, the dissentients do about it? Sinn Fein
continued loudly to proclaim its policy of opposition to the use of
force. It was all very well to say "Sinn Fein is the policy of to-morrow.
If Ireland be again deceived as to Home Rule, she has no other policy to
fall back upon"; but the same article (December, 1912) contained the
words: "The great offence of Sinn Fein indeed in the eyes of its opponents
is that it does not urge an untrained and unequipped country to futile
insurrection." If Sinn Fein then would only talk, and the only place to
talk to the purpose was the House of Commons, what was there to prevent
Home Rule from being an accomplished fact "in the not far distant future?"
Ulster supplied the answer, not for itself only, but for the rest of
Ireland.
THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT.
The genius of Ulster (perhaps through some happy combination of primitive
stocks) has always been practical and militant. It was the last Irish
province to submit to English rule. The Celtic population which survived
the clearances and the plantings has exercised upon planters and settlers
the ancient charm of the Celtic stock and made them, in spite of
themselves, _ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores_. The O'Neills were the most
formidable antagonists whom the invaders encountered in Ireland. They made
the last great stand for national independence. When Owen Roe O'Neill died
the Irish nation was, in the words of Davis, "sheep without a shepherd
when the snow shuts out the sky" and the flight of the Earls was the sign
that the resistance of Ireland was over with the resistance of Ulster. In
later times and under changed conditions Ulster retained the prerogative
of leadership. The Volunteers who forced the Constitution of 1782 were
largely Ulstermen; the leaders of the United Irishmen were to be found in
Ulster and the compact of their Union was sealed on the mountain that
rises above Belfast. John Mitchel, who led the Young Irelanders in action
as Davis was their master in thought, was the son of an Ulster
Presbyterian minister. Other Irishmen may have excelled in literature and
the arts, have voiced more eloquently the aspirations of their country or
sung with more pathos of its fall, but the bent of Ulster has been on the
whole towards action and movement. The heart and brain of Ireland may beat
and think elsewhere, but Ulster is its right arm. Ireland is proud of
Ulster. Under an unnatural and vicious system of government they have
quarrelled; but if Ulster were reconciled to Ireland Ulster might lead it
where it chose.
On the question of the Home Rule Bill Ulster was almost equally divided.
The majority of the Ulster Protestants were against it, though a minority,
among whom traditions of Protestant Nationalism had survived the sordid
bigotries fostered for a century, were strongly in its favour; the
majority of the Catholic population were in favour of it. Among the
Nationalists there was a minority who professed the creed of Sinn Fein and
of Republicanism: late in 1913 a branch of the Young Republican Party in
Belfast, composed of Gaelic Leaguers, members of Freedom Clubs and Trades
Unionists unfurled its banner of an orange sunburst on a green ground with
the motto in white, "Young Republican Party--Dia agus an Pobul," and there
had been branches of Sinn Fein established in Ulster some years earlier;
but on the whole the Ulster Nationalists supported the Parliamentary
Party. No geographical or ethnological line of political demarcation could
be drawn. There was no district in Ulster which was not politically
divided: there was no stock in Ulster which had not members in both
political camps. Some of the most outspoken and vehement of the Unionist
Party bore, and were proud of, purely Irish names; many of the
Nationalists were the bearers of names introduced into Ireland with the
planters sent by King James. The settled policy of the Act of the Union
had done its work with almost complete success. The Protestant had learned
to regard the connection with England as essential to the maintenance of
his religious and civil freedom: he believed not only that the Roman
Catholic Church was officially intolerant, but that all Roman Catholics
were, as a matter of fact, intolerant in conduct and in practice, and
incapable of being anything else. And Irish Catholics seemed to him to be
peculiarly susceptible to the intolerant influences of their
ecclesiastical leaders. When the views of the Catholic Hierarchy in
Ireland and those of Irish Nationalists coincided he saw in their
agreement the triumph of the "priest in politics": when they differed he
was either at a loss to account for an occurrence so far removed from the
settled habits of nature or saw in it an obscure but interesting symptom
of a fear of Home Rule on the part of the Hierarchy, a fear that Home Rule
might jeopardise their own predominance. But not even the supposed
hesitations of the Hierarchy could reconcile him to the prospect of a Home
Rule under which the electoral majority would be "priest-ridden." Unkind
critics might have urged that people whose whole political outlook was
hag-ridden by the phantoms of popes and priests were not in a position to
call those "priest-ridden" who at any rate sometimes differed sharply from
their clergy in political and civil affairs; but the Ulster Protestant was
proof against mere logical quibbles and rhetorical retorts. He had done
his thinking about politics with the Act of Union: he had taken his stand:
he was careless of taunts, cajolery and threats: let those meddle with him
who dared. He spurned the allegation of intolerance, but he was intolerant
without knowing it and (to do him justice) for reasons which, had they
corresponded with the facts, would have been sound. An Ireland under
ecclesiastical despotism, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be no
place for a man to live in, and to exchange the Legislative Union with
England for a legislative union with Rome would indeed be a disastrous
bargain. As a matter of fact, had the Ulster Protestant realized it, there
was no fear of any such result. In the Irish Catholic mind there was
clearly defined the limit of the sphere in which the Church was supreme.
That sphere was much larger than the restricted area within which the
Protestant allowed his Church to legislate at its ease: but it was subject
to limitations all the same. And it was growing narrower and narrower.
Individual ecclesiastics may have roamed at large (and did roam at large)
over the whole sphere of human activities: individual priests made
monstrous claims upon the submission of their flocks in matters with
which they had no kind of concern. The intense devotion to their religion
which marks Catholic Irishmen, the respect which they feel for the
priesthood which stood by them in dark and evil days, had induced a spirit
of patience in submission to claims which could not be substantiated. But
with the revival of interest in political thought the position was
changing. The battle for political freedom of thought and action which the
Fenians had fought had its result. Ecclesiastical claims in civil matters
were subject to a close scrutiny. The Gaelic League had more than once
asserted with success its claim to be free in its own sphere from any kind
of ecclesiastical dictation, and in every instance the people of Ireland
has taken its side. The attempt of the Roman Curia to interfere with the
subscription to the Parnell testimonial had been an ignominious failure;
and the boast of an Irish leader that he would as soon take his politics
from Constantinople as from Rome was generally acknowledged to be sound as
a statement of theory. But there were still instances enough of impossible
claims on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities to afford the Ulster
Protestant a good _prima facie_ brief against Home Rule.
Allied to the fear of the "priest in politics" was the fear that under
Home Rule every position in Ireland worth speaking of would be given to
Roman Catholics and that Protestants would be systematically and
ruthlessly excluded. This was an apprehension very difficult to deal with
because the real grounds of it were seldom openly expressed. These grounds
were first, the consciousness that Irish Catholics had been for
generations systematically excluded from all posts that were in the gift
of Irish Protestants and the consequent probability that reprisals would
be called for and taken; second, the innate conviction, born of
generations of religious controversy and suspicion, that Catholics were
"not to be trusted," that, whatever they said to the contrary, they were
certain to act harshly towards Protestants, and that the accession to
power in Ireland of a permanent Catholic majority would mean persecution
in matters of religion and corruption in matters of administration. This
position was fortified by a set of arguments, crude in themselves, but
less crude than the convictions that required to employ them. It was
pointed out that Irish Catholics, being deprived for generations of
acceptable opportunities of higher education, and of practically all
opportunities of administrative experience, could not be expected to have
the necessary qualifications for the posts to which they were certain to
be appointed: that this was not their fault (it certainly was not) but
that, facts being facts, reasonable persons must take account of them and
frame their attitude in accordance with them. It may seem strange that all
this was called "adherence to the principles of civil and religious
liberty," that persons calling for religious toleration in the abstract
should refuse to practise it in any number of given cases: but though
there was a certain amount of conscious artifice in the use of words,
arising from a dim feeling that the profession of tolerant and liberal
sentiments was more likely to arouse outside sympathy than a blunt
statement of religious prejudice, there was, after all, the idea that the
only way to preserve civil and religious liberty in Ireland for anybody
was to curtail its exercise in practice by the Roman Catholic and
Nationalist portion of the country. It was easy for Catholics to point to
the number of Protestants who had been honoured and trusted leaders of the
national movement, to the friendly terms upon which Protestants and
Catholics for the most part lived together in the South and West of
Ireland, to the Protestants who had been appointed to positions of trust
and profit under boards and in institutions managed by Irish Catholics.
The answer was that such Protestants either were the only persons who
could be trusted to perform the duties of their position or had proved
"accommodating" enough to suit, or that their appointment was part of a
deep-laid plan to conceal the real feeling of Catholics to Protestants
until such time as, the bait being taken, Protestants would confide in
their enemies and hand themselves over to their mercies.
It is evident that no line of argument would have dispelled feelings such
as these; and there does not seem to be in fact any possibility of
dispelling them by mere professions of friendliness, or by any other means
than an experience to the contrary which can build up gradually an
opposite conviction.
The religious difficulty was the root difficulty in Ulster with regard to
Home Rule. If it had been removed or removable the rest would have been
easy; but it was not the only difficulty. There was the fear, widely held
by the Belfast merchants and manufacturers, that a Home Rule Parliament
would ruin their industries: directly by means of taxation and indirectly
by public mismanagement. It was held that an Irish Parliament could not
"pay its way" without the imposition of extra taxation, and that no source
of profitable taxation was to be found in Ireland save and except the
prosperous industries of the North. In the second place, it was believed
that, Ireland being largely agricultural, the new Parliament would
represent a predominantly agricultural interest and that its legislation
might be expected to fail to take into account the industrial interests of
the country, mainly represented in the North. Again, an untried Parliament
would for a time be almost certainly guilty of mismanagement and
incapacity from which the business interests of the North would be sure to
suffer.