A CAMPAIGN OF EXTERMINATION AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES
Mr O'Brien went abroad in March 1909, leaving his friends in
membership of the Irish Party. His last injunction to us was that we
should do nothing unnecessarily to draw down the wrath of "the bosses"
upon us and to work as well as we might in the circumstances
conscientiously for the Irish cause. I had some reputation, whether
deserved or otherwise, as a successful organiser, and I wrote to Mr
Redmond offering my services to re-establish the United Irish League
in my own constituency or in any other place where it was practically
moribund. I received a formal note of acknowledgment and heard not a
word more, nor was my offer ever availed of. On the contrary, the fiat
went forth that the constituencies of those who had for five years
remained staunch and steadfast to the policy of Conciliation should be
organised against them and that not a friend of Mr O'Brien should be
allowed to remain in public life. We were not yet actually cut off
from the Party or its financial perquisites, but in all other ways we
were treated as political pariahs and outcasts and made to feel that
there was a rod in pickle for us.
In the autumn of 1909 I was attending my law lectures in Dublin when
it was conveyed to me that a raid on my constituency was contemplated,
that the officials at the League headquarters in Dublin were, without
rhyme or reason, returning the affiliation fees of branches which were
known to be friendly to me, and that a Divisional Conference of my
enemies was summoned for the purpose of "organising" me out of
Mid-Cork. I immediately resolved that if the issue were to be knit at
all the sooner the better, and I took my own steps to circumvent the
machinations of those who were out, so to speak, for my blood. Hence
when the bogus delegates were brought together in Macroom one Saturday
afternoon a little surprise awaited them, for as they proceeded to the
Town Hall to deliberate their plans for my overthrow, another and a
more determined militant body, with myself at their head, also marched
on the same venue. There was a short and sharp encounter for
possession of the hall: the plotters put up a sorry fight; they were
soon routed, and my friends and myself held our meeting on the chosen
ground of our opponents. Moreover, Mr Denis Johnston, the Chief
Organiser of the League, who had come down from Dublin with all his
plans for my extermination cut and dried, dared not take the train
that evening in the ordinary course from the Macroom station, but,
like a thief in the night, stole out of the town in a covered car and
drove to a station farther on.
Thus began the foul attempt to exterminate Mr O'Brien's friends, who,
be it noted, were still members of the Irish Party, against whom no
crime was alleged or any charge of Party disloyalty preferred. The
funds of the League, its organisers and its executive machinery,
instead of being used for the advancement of the Irish movement along
constitutional lines, were brutally directed to the political
execution of Mr O'Brien's friends, who, now that he had gone for good,
and was reported to be in that state of physical breakdown which would
prevent him from ever again taking an active part in Irish affairs,
were supposed to be at the mercy of the big "pots" and their big
battalions.
Mr Maurice Healy, who had been elected for Cork City by an
overwhelming majority over the nominee of "the leaders" after Mr
O'Brien's retirement, was unconstitutionally and improperly refused
admission to the Party, although he was quite prepared to sign the
pledge to sit, act, and vote with it. There was scarcely a thing wrong
they could do which these blind leaders of the blind did not clumsily
attempt at this juncture. They might have shown us, whose only crime
was loyalty to principle and to a policy which had been signally
ratified by the repeated mandates of the people, a reasonable measure
of generosity and a frank fellowship and all would be well.
But no; we had committed the cardinal offence of preferring a policy
to a personality and, in famous phrase, we were marked down to "suffer
for it." Hordes of organisers were dispatched to our constituencies to
"pull the strings" against us. I can aver, with a certain malicious
satisfaction, that wherever they made their appearance in Cork, we met
them and we routed them. This may appear an ill way to conduct a
political campaign, but be it remembered that we were fighting for our
lives, almost resourceless, and that the aggressors had practically
limitless powers, financially and otherwise. I will mention one
incident to explain many. It was announced that Mr Redmond was to
speak at Banteer, on the borders of my constituency. I could not allow
that challenge to pass unnoticed without surrendering ground which it
would be impossible to recover; and so I took the earliest opportunity
of proclaiming that if Mr Redmond came to Banteer my friends and I
would be there to meet him. He never came! Meanwhile through a private
source--for none of his colleagues were in communication with him--Mr
O'Brien heard of the nefarious attempts that were being made to
exterminate his friends and he broke silence for the first time since
his retirement by despatching the following message to the Press
Association:--
"If these people are wise they will drop their campaign of vengeance
against my friends."
Doubtless "these people" thought this the threat of a man helpless
through illness, and not to be seriously noticed, for they went on
with their preparations, surreptitious and otherwise, for our
destruction, in suitable time and form. I will ever remember it with
pride and gratitude that the labourers of the south, the President of
whose Association I was, were gloriously staunch and loyal and that
there never was a demand I made upon them for support and
encouragement they did not magnificently respond to. They gave
repayment, in full measure and flowing over, for whatever little I was
able to accomplish in my lifetime for the alleviation of their lot and
the brightening of their lives.
Meanwhile the Party had matters all their own way, yet their only
"great" achievement was to get the Birrell Land Bill passed into law
and to put an end to the operations of the Purchase Act of 1903 which
was so rapidly transforming the face of the country. They also passed
for Mr Lloyd George what Mr Dillon termed "the great and good" Budget,
but which really added enormously to the direct taxation of
Ireland--imposing an additional burden of something not far from three
millions sterling on the backs of an already overtaxed country. But if
the people were plundered the place-hunters were placated. The Irish
Party had now become little better than an annexe of Liberalism. They
sat in Opposition because it was the tradition to do so, but in
reality they were the obsequious followers of a British Party and
browsing on its pasturage in the hope of better things to come.
Not far off were heard the rumblings of an approaching General
Election. There were the usual flutterings of the "ins" who wanted to
remain in, and of the "outs" who were anxious to taste the social
sweets and the personal pomp of the successful politician, who had got
the magic letters "M.P." to his name. It is wonderful what an appeal
it makes to the man who has made his "pile" somehow or anyhow (or who
wants to make it) to have the right to enter the sacred portals of
Westminster, but it is more wonderful still to see him when he gets
there become the mere puppet of the Party Whips, without an atom of
individual independence or a grain of useful initiative. The system
absorbs them and they become cogs in a machine, whose movements they
have little power of controlling or directing.
It was pretended by the leaders of the Nationalists that their
subservient surrender to the Liberal Party was a far-sighted move to
compel Mr Asquith and his friends to make Home Rule "the dominant
issue," as they termed it, at the General Election. The veto of the
House of Lords, the hitherto one intractable element of opposition to
Home Rule, was to go before long and the House of Commons, within
certain limits, would be in a position to impose its will as the
sovereign authority in the State. Yet it is the scarcely believable
fact that in all these precious months, and after all the servile
sycophancy they had given to the Liberals, neither Mr Redmond nor
those true-blue Liberals, Mr Dillon and Mr O'Connor, had ever sought
to extract from Mr Asquith an irrefragable statement of his intentions
regarding the Irish Question, or whether he and his Government
intended to make it a prime plank in the Liberal platform at the
polls. The rejection of the Budget by the Lords was made the real
issue before the electors, and little was heard of Home Rule, either
on the platform or in the Press. True, Mr Asquith made a vague and
non-committal reference to it at the Albert Hall on the eve of the
election, but the Liberal candidates, with extraordinary unanimity,
fought shy of it in every constituency, except where there was a
considerable Irish vote to be played up to, and one of the Liberal
Party Whips even went so far as to declare there was no Home Rule
engagement at all. Far different was it in other days, when Parnell
was in power. He would have pinned the Party to whom he was giving his
support down to a written compact, which could not be broken without
dishonour, and he would leave nothing to the mere emergencies and
expediencies of politics, which are only the gambler's dice in a
devil's game.
But the men of lesser calibre who had now the destiny of a nation in
their hands "trusted" in the good faith of the Liberals and in return
asked the country to "trust" them. There never was such a puckish game
played in history. Criticism was stifled and the people were told, and
no doubt in their innocence believed it, that Home Rule was already as
good as carried and that the dream of all the years was come true. Mr
Dillon was audaciously flying the flag of "Boer Home Rule as a
minimum," although he had not a scrap of authority or a line of
sanction for his pronouncements.
It seemed as if every friend of Mr O'Brien was to go under in the
campaign of opposition that was being elaborately carried out against
them. Our constituencies were swarming with paid organisers and men
and money galore were pouring in from outside, so that our downfall
and defeat should be made an absolute certainty.
It was in this crisis that the generous spirit of Mr O'Brien impelled
him to come to our assistance. For my own part I never had a doubt
that when the hour struck the champion of so many noble causes would
be found once again stoutly defending the men who had staked all for
the sake of principle, but who, without his aid, must be mercilessly
thrown to the wolves. We were in a most benighted state, without any
trace of organisation of our own (except that I had the Land and
Labour Association unflinchingly on my side), without any newspaper to
report our speeches, and with only the bravest of the brave to come
upon our platforms and say a good word for us. The outlook was as
bleak as it well could be, when suddenly, towards the end of December
1909, the joyous news reached us that "the hero of a hundred fights"
was about to throw himself into the breach on our behalf. Our enemies
laughed the rumour to scorn, but we knew better and we bided in
patience the coming of our man.
One stipulation, indeed, Mr O'Brien did make, that in coming to our
assistance it was not implied that he was to be a candidate himself
and that he was merely to deliver three speeches in Cork City to put
the issue clearly before the people. Matters had now reached so grave
a pitch that not only were Mr O'Brien's own friends to be attacked by
the "Board of Erin," which was now in complete control of the
machinery of the national organisation, but that every other Member of
Parliament who had not bent the knee to its occult omnipotence was to
be run out of public life without cause assigned. All this while there
was rumour and counter-rumour about Mr O'Brien's return. The
Dillonites up to the last moment believed we were playing a game of
bluff and went on right merrily with their preparations for making a
clean sweep of every man who was "suspect" of possessing an
independent mind. Then on one winter's night, shortly before the
election writs were issued, the doubters and the scoffers were once
and for all confounded. Mr O'Brien arrived in the city which was
always proud to do him honour, but which never more proudly did him
honour than on this occasion, when they mustered in their thousands at
the station and lined the streets, a frantic, cheering, enthusiastic
and madly joyous people, to see him back amongst them once again,
neither bent nor broken nor physically spent, but gloriously erect,
acknowledging the thunderous salutations of the tens of thousands who
loved him, even to the little children, with a love which was surely
compensation for many a bitter wound of injustice and ingratitude.