THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.--"DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE"
The English people, either collectively or individually, do not want to
give Ireland freedom. Some of them are willing to concede the name of
freedom whilst reserving its machinery, but they are few. Most of them do
not understand the Irish question, which is an international one, as being
a dispute between two Sovereign Nations, and not an Imperial or Domestic
one, and none of them want to understand it.
Similarly with English political parties. Neither the Liberal Party nor
the Tory Party desires to give Ireland freedom, and if they have coquetted
with various schemes for extending local government, they have only done
so because it was necessary, owing to the Irish vote in the English
constituencies or in Parliament, to their retention in office, or because
the situation in Ireland necessitated some kind of sop to the sentiment
there, and they have taken good care that these coquettings came to
nothing. In Mr. Gladstone's case he could coquet with Home Rule with a
perfectly easy mind, because he knew that no Home Rule Bill introduced by
a Liberal Government would ever pass the House of Lords. So that he had
not to take any special measures to ensure that the Bill did not pass;
all he had to do was to let events take their normal course, and blame the
House of Lords. How a man like Parnell could have believed that a Liberal
Government, even if it wanted to pass a Home Rule Bill, could do so has
always astonished me.
When Mr. Asquith, in order to ensure the passing of advanced Radical
legislation, upon the passing of which the continued existence of his
Party depended, weakened the House of Lords, the situation changed, and it
became necessary to seek some new method of insuring that the Bill should
not pass into law, at any rate in any form which would be of the least
benefit to Ireland. And that method was provided, possibly at the instance
of both parties in England acting together for the benefit of England, and
certainly with the full connivance of the Liberal Government, by Sir
Edward Carson and his friends in the organisation of the Ulster
Volunteers. Mr. Redmond was assured, while the Volunteers were being
formed, that the Government would not permit any threats to influence them
with regard to the Bill, and then at the last moment they took refuge
behind the Ulster Volunteers and regretted that they could give Ireland
Home Rule only by Partition. And Partition it would have been were it not
for the Irish Volunteers.
The idea of a Volunteer force under Irish control was not a new thing in
Ireland. Such a force had made history in the years 1779 to 1782, and
there has probably been no generation of Nationalists since which has not
at some time or other gone into the possibility of the establishment of a
Volunteer force. And long before the Ulster Volunteers were started, one
of the things which Nationalists looked forward to as amongst the first to
be done under any Irish government was the establishment of a Volunteer
force, whether that power came with the Bill or not. But the objection
that had always met any schemes for the establishment of Volunteers, or
for any public arming or drilling, was the certainty that, whatever the
law on the subject might be, no Irish Volunteer force or analogous body
would be permitted by England to come into being. But with the
establishment and arming of the Ulster Volunteers, with the connivance of
England, it dawned upon many people that there was a sporting chance that,
in order to keep up the semblance of impartiality, England would find
herself unable to suppress an Irish Volunteer force, unless at any rate
the Ulster force were at the same time suppressed. And accordingly the
Irish Volunteers were established.
To Sir Edward Carson let the greater praise belong.
The men who established the Irish Volunteers were drawn from several
sources. There were some Fenians, some Sinn Feiners, some
Parliamentarians, and some who had not hitherto been identified at all
with politics. They did not establish the Volunteers as a counterblast to
the Ulster Volunteers, or with any idea of either fighting or overawing
Ulster. No member of the Irish Volunteers would ever have fired a shot
against an Ulster Volunteer for refusing to acknowledge an Act of the
English Parliament, even though that Act were a Home Rule Act. Nor were
they established to help Mr. Redmond to achieve Home Rule. They had a
vision which went a long way beyond Home Rule. They were established
because half-a-dozen Irishmen had the inspiration at about the same time
that here was a God-given opportunity of providing Ireland with an armed
Volunteer force, which should do as much for Ireland to-day as the Irish
Volunteers of 1779-1782 had done for the Ascendancy Parliament. These men
were, as the "Freeman's Journal" put it, "nobodies," but their work has
endured.
The Irish Parliamentary Party did not want an Irish Volunteer movement,
not even under their own control. They had degenerated into such
ineffective and incapable politicians that they had no glimmering of the
way in which they were being fooled, and they were still convinced that
speech-making in the House of Commons was the only way to help the Home
Rule Bill. And when, at the outset, they and their chief supporters were
invited to identify themselves with the movement, in which they would of
course have a majority, they peremptorily refused. They believed then that
the movement, without their sanction, would not come to anything.
The Government evidently thought so, too, for it allowed the movement to
develop, although, in order to be on the safe side, it prohibited the
importation into Ireland of arms and ammunition a week after the formation
of the first corps. But it soon became evident that the movement was going
to be a force to be reckoned with, as parish after parish fell into line,
and the Party began to be concerned for their power. In public they made
no pronouncement as a Party against the Volunteer movement, but in
private they did their best against it, to no purpose. Then there were
some open attacks, by Mr. Hazleton and Mr. Lundon (I think), and still the
Volunteers grew. Then a secret order was issued to the A.O.H. Branches to
go into the Volunteers and get control of them, but they were refused
affiliation as Branches and their members had to come in as individuals,
and were posted haphazard to the various companies, thus breaking up their
solidarity.
The Parliamentary Party were now seriously alarmed about the Volunteer
movement. It continued to grow, and its recruits included not alone men
who had never been members of the U.I.L. or A.O.H., but men who were
actually members of these organisations and who now gave their first
allegiance to the Volunteers. Public opinion had swung over to the
Volunteers, and the Party were faced with practical extinction unless they
could in some way manage to "get in" on the Volunteer Executive. And
therefore a new move was tried. Mr. Redmond opened up secret negotiations
with the Volunteers, or rather with Eoin MacNeill, and made various
demands for the representation of the Parliamentary Party on the Volunteer
Executive. While these negotiations were still in progress, the Press
machine and the "public men" machine were set going all over the country,
and from all quarters the Party supporters began to bombard the public
with statements to the effect that Volunteering was quite the right thing,
but that the men in control were unknown and inexperienced men, and that
the movement would be safer and more stable, and, it was whispered, more
effective, in the hands of the "elected representatives" of the people.
After this had gone on for some little time, Mr. Redmond suddenly
delivered an ultimatum to the Volunteer Committee to accept a nomination
of 25 representatives from him or else he would instantly split the
Volunteers. This nomination would give him a controlling majority on the
Volunteer Executive, but it was accepted as the lesser of two evils.
Mr. Redmond's objects in securing control were three: first, to prevent
any further development of the movement on lines which constituted a
menace to his own power; second, to prevent the arming of the movement and
confine it to a paper Volunteer movement with the sole purpose of
establishing a counterpoise to the Ulster Volunteers; and, third, to
ensure that any arms which were obtained should be placed with safe
men--men, that is, who would place the Irish Parliamentary Party first and
the Volunteers second. But in none of these objects was he successful. The
Volunteer movement continued to grow, and continued to grow on its own
lines, and its own lines naturally led it away from the whole atmosphere
and philosophy on which the Parliamentary Party depend: and arms were got
in and were placed in the hands of men whose first allegiance was to
Ireland and not to Mr. Redmond; for in ability, even the ability to run
committees and to organise, Mr. Redmond's nominees were handsomely
outweighted by the original members.
Then came the incidents connected with the gun-running at Howth, to set
all Ireland aflame. In the week which followed it the whole of
Nationalist Ireland swerved into the Volunteer ranks, in thousands in the
cities, and in hundreds in the country places, and "respectable men, with
a stake in the country" offered motor cars, yachts, transit contrivances
of all kinds, for Volunteer purposes. Ireland stirred and raised itself,
as if out of a long sleep, as if the touch of the steel at Clontarf, the
feel of the rifle in the hands of the Volunteers after Howth and Kilcool,
had roused her, had brought back to her some of the old outlook. And it
was a Volunteer force of perhaps 250,000 men, not armed to any extent, and
not well drilled, but the best raw material in the world, that, with the
reverberation of the Scottish Borderers' volley at Bachelor's Walk not yet
banished from their ears, heard suddenly the rumble of the guns of the
war. Mr. Redmond, however, thought otherwise.
Had there been no war, the split in the Volunteer movement might have been
postponed for some time, might even have been postponed indefinitely, if
other events had taken a favourable turn; but the altered situation caused
by the war very soon upset the patched-up peace. When Mr. Redmond
abrogated the Irish claim, on behalf of his Party and of all the influence
he could control in Ireland, the Volunteer Committee trembled but it did
not erupt; but when at Woodenbridge he also pledged the Volunteers to a
similar abrogation, the Volunteer Committee erupted violently, and the
original members expelled Mr. Redmond's nominees and resumed control. Mr.
Redmond immediately formed an Executive of his own, and the Volunteer
split was an accomplished fact: Mr. Redmond had his paper Organisation,
but he had not succeeded in destroying the real Organisation, though he
had badly hampered it. He had diverted the Irish Volunteers from being a
movement representative of the whole of Nationalist Ireland, with the
highest ideals and the broadest national principles, into a movement with
the original ideals and principles, but representative now only of a
minority of the people and, consequently, no longer commanding the same
general respect. The after history of the Irish National Volunteers, as
Mr. Redmond's organisation was called, is the history of a make-believe,
of a paper Volunteer force, whose only public appearance was one which
will be for all time execrated by the people of Ireland.