"On reflection I think what I said to you in our conversation at Eaton may have amounted to the conveyance of a hope that the Government would take a strong and early decision on the Irish Question. This being so, I wish, under the very peculiar circ.u.mstances of the case, to go a step further and say that I think it will be a public calamity if this great subject should fall into the lines of Party conflict. I feel sure that the question can only be dealt with by a Government, and I desire especially on grounds of public policy that it should be dealt with by the present Government. If, therefore, they bring in a proposal after settling the whole question of the future government of Ireland my desire will be, reserving, of course, necessary freedom, to treat it in the same spirit in which I have endeavoured to proceed in respect to Afghanistan and with respect to the Balkan Peninsula."
To this statesmanlike offer Mr Balfour immediately replied:
"I have had as yet no opportunity of showing your letter to Lord Salisbury or of consulting him as to its contents, but I am sure he will receive without any surprise the statement of your earnest hope that the Irish Question should not fall into the lines of Party conflict. If the ingenuity of any Ministry is sufficient to devise some adequate and lasting remedy for the chronic ills of Ireland, I am certain it will be the wish of the leaders of the Opposition, to whatever side they may belong, to treat the question as a national and not as a Party one."
And not less clear or emphatic were the views of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, spoken on 23rd December 1885, as to the feasibility of settling the Irish problem by Consent:
"On one point I may state my views with tolerable clearness. In my opinion the best plan of dealing with the Irish Question would be for the leaders of the two great parties to confer together for the purpose of ascertaining whether some _modus vivendi_ could not be arrived at by which the matter would be raised out of the area of party strife."
It will thus be seen that at a very early stage indeed of the discussions on Home Rule, distinguished statesmen were agreed that the ideal way of settling the Irish Question was by an arrangement or understanding between the two great British parties--otherwise by those methods of Conference, Conciliation and Consent which Mr William O"Brien and Lord Dunraven were so violently and irrationally a.s.sailed by Mr Dillon and his supporters for advocating. The great land pact was arranged by those methods of common agreement between all parties in Parliament--it could never have been reached otherwise. And, as these pages will conclusively show, the "factionism" of Mr O"Brien and those a.s.sociated with him consisted in pressing a settlement by Conference methods consistently on the notice of the leaders of all parties. But Mr Wyndham was treated by the Dillonite section as "a prisoner in a condemned cell"--to use their own elegant metaphor--because he showed a disposition to secure a settlement of the Irish difficulty on a non-party basis. He was ruthlessly exiled from office by methods which confer no credit on their authors, and the Unionist Party retired at the close of the year 1905 with nothing accomplished on the Home Rule issue.
When the Liberals came back to power with an irresistible majority Ireland rang from end to end with glad promises of a great, a glorious and a golden future. The Liberals had the reins of government in their hands, and the tears were going to be wiped from the face of dark Rosaleen. Never again was she to know the bitterness of sorrow or that hope of freedom so long deferred which maketh the heart sick. Mr T.P.
O"Connor wrote to his American news agency that Home Rule was coming at a "not far distant date." It was a fair hope, but the men who gambled on it did not take the House of Lords sufficiently into their calculations. And they forgot also that Home Rule was not a concrete and definite issue before the country at the General Election. The Liberal Party in 1906 had no Home Rule mandate. Its leaders were avowedly in favour of what was known as "the step-by-step" programme.
This policy was less than Lord Dunraven"s scheme of Devolution, but because it was the Liberal plan it came in for no stern denunciations from either Mr Dillon or Mr T.P. O"Connor. Even so staunch a Home Ruler as Mr John Morley insisted that Mr Redmond"s Home Rule Amendment to the Address should contain this important addendum: "subject to the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament." The men who shouted in Ireland: "No compromise," who were clamant in their demand that there"
should be no hauling down of the flag," and who asked the country to go "back to the old methods" (though they made it clear they were not going to lead them if they did), showed no disinclination to have their own private negotiations with the Liberal leaders on a much narrower programme.
Mr T.P. O"Connor, in his _Life of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, M.P._, tells us exactly what happened, in the following words:--
"The Irish Nationalists had already become restive, for, while not openly repudiating Home Rule as an ultimate solution, several of the friends and adherents of Lord Rosebery among the leaders of the Liberal Party had proclaimed that they would not only not support, but would resist any attempt to introduce a Home Rule measure in a Parliament that was about to be elected. It was under these circ.u.mstances that I had an interview of any length with Campbell-Bannerman for the last time. He invited a friend and me to breakfast with him.... This exchange of views was brief, for there was complete agreement as to both policy and tactics.... It was shortly after this that he made his historic speech in Stirling. That was the speech in which he laid down the policy that while Ireland might not expect to get at once a measure of complete Home Rule, any measure brought in should be consistent with and leading up to a larger policy. Such a declaration was all that the Irish Nationalist Party could have expected at that moment and it enabled them to give their full support at the elections to the Liberal Party."
This is a very notable statement, because it shows that the Nationalists, who poured out their vials of vituperation upon Lord Dunraven and the Irish Reform a.s.sociation, were now eager to accept an infinitely lesser instalment of Home Rule from their own Liberal friends. And it also demonstrates that for a very meagre modic.u.m of the Irish birth-right they were willing to sacrifice the position of Parliamentary independence, which was one of the greatest a.s.sets of the Party, and to enter into a formal alliance with the Liberals on a mere contingent declaration that "any measure brought in" should be "consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." Note, there was no guarantee, no positive statement, that a measure would be brought in, yet Mr T.P. O"Connor tells us that this declaration was "all that the Irish Nationalist Party could have expected," and that it enabled them "to give their full support at the elections to the Liberal Party." I wonder what Parnell, had he been alive, would have thought of this offer of the Liberals and whether he would in return for it make such an easy surrender of a nation"s claims. And I wonder also whether a paltrier bargain was ever made in the whole history of political alliances. It does not require any special gift of vision to divine who was "the friend" who went with Mr O"Connor to Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman"s breakfast-party and who was in "complete agreement as to both policy and tactics." They were good Liberals both of them, and for my own part I would find no fault with them for this, if only they had been better Nationalists.
Mr Redmond publicly ratified the new policy--or rather, treaty, as it now practically was--of Home Rule by instalments in a speech at Motherwell, in which he announced his readiness to accept any concession "which would shorten and smoothen the road to Home Rule."
But it is significant that although Mr Dillon was in complete agreement with the Liberals "as to both policy and tactics," yet he devoted, with a rather supercilious levity, his speeches in Ireland to a demand for "Boer Home Rule as a minimum." This was the way in which the country was scandalously hoodwinked as to the real relations which existed between the Liberals and Nationalists.
Mr O"Brien had at this time gone abroad and left the stage completely to Mr Dillon and his friends, having, however, made it clear that he was in favour of the Council Bill and suggested certain improvements, which the Government agreed to. His temporary withdrawal from the scene was dictated solely by the desire to give the utmost freedom of action to the Irish Party, seeing that they were acting in conformity with the best national interests in the special circ.u.mstances of the moment. He was also aware that Mr Birrell, who had now accepted office as Chief Secretary, was particularly acceptable to the Nationalist leaders and that they were in constant communication with him on details of the Bill, the safety of which seemed to be a.s.sured. Indeed, when it was introduced into Parliament, Mr Redmond spoke in appreciation of it, reserved in statement, no doubt, as befitting a leader who had yet to see the measure in print, but there is not a shadow of doubt that Messrs Redmond, Dillon and O"Connor were practically pledged to the support of the principle of the Bill before ever it was submitted to Parliament.
When, however, they summoned a National Convention to consider the Bill, to which they were committed by every principle of honour which could bind self-respecting men, to the amazement of everybody not behind the scenes, the very men who had crossed over from Westminster to recommend the acceptance of the measure were the first to move its rejection. A more unworthy and degrading performance it is not possible to imagine. It was an arrant piece of cowardice on the part of "the leaders," who failed to lead and who shamefully broke faith with Mr Birrell and their Liberal allies. True, the Irish Council Bill was not a very great or strikingly generous measure. It had serious defects, but these might be remedied in Committee, and it had this merit, at least, that it did carry out the Liberal promise of being "consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." Its purpose, broadly stated, was to consolidate Irish administration under the control of an Irish Council, which would be elected on the popular franchise. It contained no provision for a Statutory Legislative body.
It was to confine itself to the purely administrative side of Government. The various Irish administrative departments were to be regrouped, with a Minister (to be called Chairman) at the head of each, who would be responsible to the elected representatives of the people. The Council was to be provided with the full Imperial costs (the dearest in the world) of the departments they were to administer, and they were to receive in addition an additional yearly subsidy of 600,000 to spend, with any savings they might effect on the administrative side on the development of Irish resources. Finally, this limited incursion into the field of administrative self-government was to last only for five years. Appeals to ignorant prejudice were long made by misquoting the t.i.tle of the Irish Council Bill as "The Irish _Councils_ Bill"--quite falsely, for one of its main recommendations was that the Bill created _one_ national a.s.sembly for all Ireland, including the Six Counties which the Party subsequently ceded to Carson. Do not these proposals justify the comment of Mr O"Brien on them?--"If the experiment had been proved to work with the harmony of cla.s.ses and the broad-mindedness of patriotism, of which the Land Conference had set the example, the end of the quinquennial period would have found all Ireland and all England ready with a heart and a half for "the larger policy." There would even have been advantages which no thoughtful Irish Nationalist will ignore, in accustoming our people to habits of self-government by a probationary period of smaller powers and of substantial premiums upon self-restraint."
Unfortunately, in addition to having no legislative functions, Mr Birrell"s Bill contained one other proposal which d.a.m.ned it from the outset with a very powerful body of Irish thought and influence--it proposed to transfer the control of education to a Committee preponderatingly composed of laymen. When dropping the Bill later Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman declared: "We took what steps we could to ascertain Irish feelings and we had good reason to believe that the Bill would receive the most favourable reception." One would like to know how far the leaders of the Irish Party who were taken into the confidence of the Government regarding the provisions of the Bill concurred in this clause. To anyone acquainted with clerical feeling in Ireland, whether Catholic or Protestant, it should be known that such a proposal would be utterly inadmissible. But apparently the Government were not warned, although it is a matter of history that the Irish Party entertained Mr Birrell to a banquet in London the night before they went over to Ireland for the National Convention, and it is equally well known, on the admissions of Mr Redmond, Mr O"Connor and others, that they crossed with the express determination to support the Irish Council Bill and in the full expectation that they would carry it.
But they had not reckoned on Mr Devlin and on the younger priests, who had now begun to a.s.sert themselves vigorously in politics. Mr Devlin, in addition to being Secretary of the United Irish League, had also obtained a position of dominating control in the Ancient Order of Hibernians (Board of Erin section), a secret and sectarian organisation of which I will have much to say anon. For some inscrutable reason Mr Devlin set himself at the head of his delegates to intrigue with the young and ardent priesthood against the Bill. Mr Redmond, Mr T.P. O"Connor and their friends got to hear of the tempest that was brewing when they reached Dublin. Mr Dillon, unfortunately, was suffering from a grievous domestic bereavement at the time, and was naturally unable to attend the Convention. The others, instead of standing to their guns like men and courageously facing the opposition which unexpectedly confronted them, and which was largely founded on misunderstandings, basely ran away from all their honourable obligations--from what they owed in good faith to the Liberal Party, as a duty to their country, and as a matter of self-respect to their own good name--and instead of standing by the Bill, defending it and explaining whatever was not quite clear in its proposals, forestalled all criticism by putting up Mr Redmond to move its rejection. A more humiliating att.i.tude, a more callous betrayal, a more sorry performance the whole history of political baseness and political inept.i.tude cannot produce. The feeling that swept through Ireland on the morrow of this Convention was one of disgust and shame, yet the people were so firmly shackled in the bonds of the Party that they still sullenly submitted to their chains. And the worst of this bitter business is that the shameful thing need never have occurred. If Mr Redmond had boldly advocated the adoption of the measure instead of moving its rejection in a state of cowardly panic, there is incontestable evidence he would have carried the overwhelming majority of the Convention with him.
The truth is that the members of his Party had no love for the Bill.
Sensible of their own imperfections, as many of them were, and well aware that, whilst considered good enough by their const.i.tuents for service at Westminster, it was quite possible they would not come up to the standard which national duty at home would set up, they were naturally not very enthusiastic about any measure which would threaten their vested interests. It may appear an extraordinary statement to make to those who do not know their Ireland very well that the members of the Party were not the best that could be got, the best that would be got, under other conditions to serve in a representative capacity.
But it is nevertheless true that the conditions of service at Westminster were not such as to tempt or induce the best men to leave their professions or their interests for seven or eight months of the year, whereas it was and is to be hoped that when the time comes the cream of Irish intellect, ability and character will seek the honourable duty of building up Irish destinies in Ireland. In justice to those who did serve at Westminster let it be, however, said that it invariably entailed loss and sacrifice even to the very least of them, and to very many, indeed, it meant ruined careers and broken lives.
This apart. The Irish Council Bill was lost because of bad leadership and bad faith, and the Irish Party continued to travel stumblingly along its pathway of disaster and disgrace.
CHAPTER XIV
LAND AND LABOUR
The fortunes of every country, when one comes seriously to reflect on it, are to a great extent dependent on these two vital factors--Land and Labour. In a country so circ.u.mstanced as Ireland, practically bereft of industries and manufactures, land and labour--and more especially the labour which is put into land--are the foundation of its very being. They mean everything to it--whether its people be well or ill off, whether its trade is good, its towns prosperous, its national economy secure.
The history of Ireland, ever since the first Englishman set foot on it with the eye of conquest, centres to a more or less degree around the land. We know how the ancient clans tenaciously clung to their heritage and how ruthlessly they were deprived of it by the Plantations and the Penal Laws and by a series of confiscations, the memory of which even still chills the blood. Conquest, confiscation, eviction, persecution--this was the terrible story of Ireland for seven centuries--and the past century worst of all. At the commencement of the nineteenth century Ireland was extensively cultivated. The land had been parcelled out amongst the people; holdings were multiplied and tenancies for life increased amazingly because it meant a larger rent-roll for the landlord and a great increase in the voting power of his serfs. But there came the Corn Laws, making cultivation unprofitable, and earlier the law of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, withdrawing the right of voting from the forty-shilling freeholders, and the crisis was reached when the Great Famine appeared and was followed by the Great Clearances. The Famine lasted for three years, the Clearances endured for over thirty. Houses were demolished, fences levelled, the peasants swept out and the notices to quit kept falling, as the well-known saying of Gladstone expressed it, as thick as snowflakes. Between 1849 and 1860, according to Mulhall, 373,000 Irish families were evicted, numbering just about 2,000,000 in all. "I do not think the records of any country, civilised or barbarian," said Sir Robert Peel, "ever presented such scenes of horror."
Legislation became necessary to counteract the appalling evils arising from such a state of things. It went on through the years with varying fortune, never providing any real solution of the intolerable relations between landlord and tenant, until the blessed Land Conference pact was sealed and signed and the country finally delivered from the haunting terror of landlordism. Now although the entire population may be said in Ireland to be either directly or indirectly dependent on the land, two cla.s.ses were absolutely dependent on it for their very livelihood--namely, the farmers and the agricultural labourers. And through all the various agrarian agitations they made united cause against their common enemy, the landlord. There was also in the days of my boyhood a far friendlier relation between the farmers and labourers than unhappily exists at present. Their joint heritage of suffering and hardship had drawn them together in bonds of sympathy and friendship. The farmer often shared, in the bitterness of the winter months, something out of his own stock of necessities with his less fortunate labourer. And before the arrival of the Creameries the daily allowance of the gallon of "skimmed" milk was made to almost every labourer"s family in the country by kind-hearted neighbouring farmers. In addition, in a land where few were rich, the ancient proverb held good: "The poor always help one another." And it is true that, in the darkest days of their suffering, the farmers and labourers shouldered their troubles and their sorrows in a community of sympathy, which at least lessened their intensity. It is only with the growth of a greater independence among either cla.s.s that the old friendly bonds and relationships have shown a loosening, and newer and more personal interests have tended to divide them into distinctive bodies, with separate cla.s.s interests and cla.s.s programmes.
As a very little boy I remember trudging my way to school with children who knew not what the comfort of boots and stockings was on the coldest winter"s day; who shivered in insufficient rags and whose gaunt bodies never knew any nourishment save what could be got from "Indian meal stir-about" (a kind of weak and watery porridge made from maize). And it was not the children of the labourers alone who endured this bleak and starved and sunless childhood; the offspring of the smaller struggling farmers were often as badly off--they were all the progeny of the poor, kept poor and impoverished by landlordism. This further bond of blood and even cla.s.s relationship also bound the farmers and labourers together--the labourers of to-day were, in countless cases, the farmers of yesterday, whom the Great Clearances had reduced to the lowest form of servitude and who dragged out an existence of appalling wretchedness in sight of their former homes, now, alas, razed to the ground. My mind carries me back to the time when the agricultural labourer in Munster was working for four shillings a week, and trying to rear a family on it! I vowed then that if G.o.d ever gave me the chance to do anything for this woe-stricken cla.s.s I would strive for their betterment, according to the measure of my opportunity. And it happened, in the mysterious workings of Providence, that I was able to battle and plan and accomplish solid work for the amelioration of the labourers" lot.
When Mr William O"Brien was labouring for the wretched "congests" in the West and founding the United Irish League to make the great final onslaught on the ramparts of landlordism, a few of us in the South were engaged unpretentiously but earnestly to get houses and allotments for the agricultural labourers, and to provide them with work on the roads during the winter months when they could not labour on the land. Ten years previously we had laid the foundations of what we hoped would be a widespread national movement for the regeneration of the working cla.s.ses. The founder of that movement was the late Mr P.J. Neilan, of Kanturk, a man of eminent talent and of a great heart that throbbed with sympathy for the sufferings of the workers. I was then a schoolboy, with a youthful yearning of my own towards the poor and the needy, and I joined the new movement. Two others--the one John D. O"Shea, a local painter, and the other John L. O"Shea, a carman (the similarity of their names often led to amusing mistakes)--with some humble town workers, formed the working vanguard of the new movement, what I might term a sort of apostolate of rural democracy.
Our organisation was first known as the Kanturk Trade and Labour a.s.sociation. As we carried our flag, audaciously enough, as it seemed in those days, to neighbouring villages and towns, we enlarged our t.i.tle, and now came to be known as "the Duhallow Trade and Labour a.s.sociation." I was then trying some "prentice flights in journalism and I managed to get reports of our meetings into the Cork Press, with the result that demands for our evangelistic services began to flow in upon us from Kerry and Limerick and Tipperary. But, even as we grew and waxed stronger we still, with rather jealous exclusiveness, called ourselves "the parent branch" in Kanturk. We are, by the way, a very proud people down there, proud of our old town and our old barony, which has produced some names distinguished in Irish history, such as John Philpot Curran, Barry Yelverton and the adored _fiancee_ of Robert Emmet.
In time we interested Michael Davitt in our movement, and we achieved the glorious summit of our ambitions when we got him to preside at a great Convention of our Labour branches in Cork, where we formally launched the movement on a national basis under the t.i.tle of the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation. The credit of this achievement was altogether and entirely due to Mr Neilan, who had founded the movement, watched over its progress, addressed its meetings, framed its programme and carried it triumphantly to this stage of success.
Unfortunately, when all seemed favourable for the spread of the movement, though not in opposition to the National League but as a sort of auxiliary force, moving in step with it, the disastrous Split occurred. It spelt ruin for our organisation because I think it will not be denied that the workers are the most vehement and vital elements in the national life, and they took sides more violently than any other section of the population. After trying for a little while to steer the Democratic Trade and Labour Federation clear of the shoals of disunion, and having failed, Mr Neilan and his friends gave up the task in despair. Meanwhile, however, Mr Michael Austin of the Cork United Trades, who was joint-secretary, with Mr Neilan, of the Federation, succeeded in getting himself absorbed into the Irish Party, and, having got the magic letters of M.P. after his name, not very much was ever heard of him in the Labour movement afterwards.
In the pursuit of journalistic experience I left Ireland for a few years, and on my return I found that a new Labour movement had been founded on the ruins of the old, under the t.i.tle of the Irish Land and Labour a.s.sociation. Mr James J. O"Shee, a young Carrick-on-Suir solicitor, was the secretary and moving spirit in this--a man of advanced views, of intense sympathy with the labourer"s position, and of a most earnest desire to improve their wretched lot. I obtained an editorial position in West Cork which left me free to devote my spare time to the Labour cause, which I again enthusiastically espoused, having as colleagues in County Cork Mr Cornelius Buckley, of Blarney, another of exactly the same name in Cork, my old friend Mr John L.
O"Shea, of Kanturk, and Mr William Murphy, of Macroom--men whose names deserve to be for ever honourably a.s.sociated with the movement which did as much in its own way for the emanc.i.p.ation and independence of the labourers as the National organisations did for the farmers.
It is not my purpose here to recount the fierce opposition that was given to the labourer"s programme. It had at first no friends either in the Party or in the Press. I verily believe that there were otherwise good and honest men who thought the labourers had no citizen rights and that it was the height of conscious daring for anybody to lift either hand or voice on their behalf. But those of us who had taken up the labourer"s cause were well aware of all the difficulties and obstacles that would confront us; and we knew that worst of all we had to battle with the deadly torpor of the labourers themselves, who were trained to shout all right for "the Land for the People" but who had possibly no conception of their own divine right to an inheritance in that selfsame land. Furthermore, since the Land and Labour a.s.sociation was an organisation entirely apart from the Trade and Labour movement of the cities and larger corporate towns we received little support or a.s.sistance from what I may term, without offence, the aristocracy of labour. We nevertheless simply went our way, building up our branches, extending knowledge of the labourers"
claims, educating these humble folk into a sense of their civic rights and citizen responsibilities and making thinking men out of what were previously little better than soulless serfs. It was all desperately hard, uphill work, with little to encourage and no reward beyond the consciousness that one was reaching out a helping hand to the most neglected, despised, and unregarded cla.s.s in the community. The pa.s.sage of the Local Government Act of 1898 was that which gave power and importance to our movement. The labourers were granted votes for the new County and District Councils and Poor Law Guardians as well as for Members of parliament. They were no longer a people to be kicked and cuffed and ordered about by the shoneens and squireens of the district: they became a very worthy cla.s.s, indeed, to be courted and flattered at election times and wheedled with all sorts of fair promises of what would be done for them. The grant of Local Government enabled the labourers to take a mighty stride in the a.s.sertion of their independent claims to a better social position and more constant and remunerative employment. The programme that we put forward on their behalf was a modest one. It was our aim to keep within the immediately practical and attainable and the plainly justifiable and reasonable. In the towns and in the country they had to live in hovels and mud-wall cabins which bred death and disease and all the woeful miseries of mankind. One would not kennel a dog or house any of the lower animals in the vile abominations called human dwellings in which tens of thousands of G.o.d"s comfortless creatures were huddled together in indiscriminate wretchedness. Added to that, most of them had not a "haggart" (a few perches of garden) on which to grow any household vegetables. They were landless and starving, the last word in pitiful rags and bare bones. They were in a far greater and more intense degree than the farmers the victims of capricious harvests, whilst their winters were recurrent periods of the most awful and unbelievable distress and hunger and want. The first man to notice their degraded position was Parnell, who, early in the eighties, got a Labourers" Act pa.s.sed for the provision of houses and half-acre allotments of land. But as the administration of this Act was entrusted to the Poor Law Boards, as it imposed a tax upon the ratepayers, and as the labourers had then no votes and could secure no consideration for their demands, needless to say, very few cottages were built. With the advent of the Local Government Act and the extension of the franchise, the labourer was now able to insist on a speeding-up of building operations. But the Labourers" Act needed many amendments, a simplification and cheapening of procedure, an extension of taxing powers, an enlargement of the allotment up to an acre and, where the existing abode of the labourers was insanitary, an undeniable claim to a new home. Moderate and just and necessary to the national welfare as these claims were, it took us years of unwearied agitation before we were able to get them legislatively recognised.
What we did, however, more promptly achieve was the smashing of the contract system by which the roads of the country were farmed out to contractors, mostly drawn from the big farming and grazier cla.s.ses who, by devious dodges, known to all, were able to make very comfortable incomes out of them. We insisted--and after some exemplary displays of a resolute physical force we carried our point--that in the case of the main roads, particularly, these should be worked under the system known as "direct labour"--that is, by the county and deputy surveyors directly employing the labourers on them and paying them a decent living wage. In this way we removed at one stroke the black shadow of want that troubled their winters and made these dark months a horror for them and their families. But we had still to remove the mud-wall cabins and the foetid dens in the villages and towns in which families were huddled together anyhow, and in our effort to bring about this most necessary of social reforms we received little or no a.s.sistance from public men or popular movements. We were left to our own unaided resources and our own persistent agitation. As I have already stated, I was elected Member of Parliament for Mid-Cork on the death of Dr Tanner in 1901, and Mr O"Shee had been previously elected for West Waterford, but not strictly on the Land and Labour platform as I was. Nevertheless, we heartily co-operated in and out of Parliament in making the Labour organisation a real and vital force, and our relations for many useful years, as I am happy to think, were of the most cordial and kindly character.
In the Land Purchase Act of 1903 Mr Wyndham included a few insignificant clauses bearing on the labourer"s grievances, but dropped them on the suggestion of Mr O"Brien, to whom he gave an undertaking at the same time to bring in a comprehensive Labourers"
Bill in the succeeding session. When that session came Mr Wyndham had, however, other fish to fry. The Irish Party and the Orange gang were howling for his head, and his days of useful service in Ireland were reduced to nothingness. Meanwhile we kept pressing our demands as energetically as we could on the public notice, but we were systematically boycotted in the Press and by the Nationalist leaders until a happy circ.u.mstance changed the whole outlook for us. It was our custom to invite to all our great Labour demonstrations the various Nationalist leaders, without any regard to their differences of opinion on the main national issue. The way we looked at it was this--that we wanted the support of all parties in Ireland, Unionist as well as Nationalist, for our programme, which was of a purely non-partisan character, and we were ready to welcome support from any quarter whence it came.
Our invitations were, however, sent out in vain until, on Mr O"Brien"s re-election for Cork in October 1904, a delegation from the Land and Labour a.s.sociation approached him and requested him to come upon our platform and to specifically advocate the labourers" claims, now long overdue. Without any hesitation, nay, even with a readiness which made his acceptance of our request doubly gracious, Mr O"Brien replied that now that the tenants" question was on the high road to a settlement he considered that the labourers had next call on the national energies and that, for his part, he would hold himself at our disposal.
What followed is so faithfully and impartially related in Mr O"Brien"s book, _An Olive Branch in Ireland,_ that I reproduce it:
"One of our first cares on my return to Cork was to restore vitality to the labourer"s cause, and formulate for the first time a precise legislative scheme on which they might take their stand as their charter. This scheme was placed before the country at a memorable meeting in Macroom on December 10, 1904, and whoever will take the trouble of reading it will find therein all the main principles and even details of the great measure subsequently carried into law in 1906. The Irish Land and Labour a.s.sociation, which was the organisation of the labourers, unanimously adopted the scheme, and commissioned their Secretary, Mr J.J. Shee, M.P., in their name, to solicit the co-operation of the Directory of the United Irish League in convening a friendly Conference of all Irish parties and sections for the purpose of securing the enactment of a Labourers" Bill on these lines as a non-contentious measure. If common ground was to be found anywhere on which all Irishmen, or at the worst all Nationalists, might safely grasp hands, and with a most n.o.ble aim, it was surely here. But once more Mr Dillon scented some new plot against the unity and authority of the Irish Party, and at the Directory meeting of the secretary of the Land and Labour a.s.sociation was induced without any authority from his princ.i.p.als to abandon their invitation, and thus take the first step to the disruption of his own a.s.sociation.
"I bowed and held my peace, to see what another year might bring forth through the efforts of those who had made a national agreement upon the subject impracticable. Another year dragged along without a Labourers"
Bill, or any effort of the Irish Party to bring it within the domain of practical politics. The Land and Labour a.s.sociation determined to rouse the Government and the country to the urgency of the question by an agitation of an unmistakable character. Mr Redmond, Mr Dillon and all their chief supporters were invariably invited to these demonstrations; but the moment they learned that Mr Harrington, Mr Healy and myself had been invited as well, a rigorous decree of boycott went forth against the Labour demonstrations, and as a matter of fact no representative of the Irish Party figured on the Labourers" platform throughout the agitation. This, unfortunately, was not the most inexcusable of their services to the Labourers" cause. When the Land and Labour a.s.sociation held their annual Convention, the secretary, who had infringed their instructions at the Directory meeting, finding himself hopelessly outnumbered, seceded from the organisation and formed a rival a.s.sociation of his own; and sad and even shocking though the fact is, it is beyond dispute that this split in the ranks of the unhappy labourers, in the very crisis of their cause, was organised with the aid of the moneys of the National Organisation administered by the men who were at that very moment deafening the country with their indignation against dissension-mongers and their zeal for majority rule.
"It was all over again the dog-in-the-manger policy which had already kept the evicted tenants for years out in the cold. They would neither stand on a non-contentious platform with myself nor organise a single Labourers" demonstration of their own. It has been repeatedly stated by members who were constant attendants at the meetings of the Irish Party that the subject of the Labourers" grievances was never once discussed at any meeting of the party until the agitation in Ireland had first compelled the introduction of Mr Bryce"s Bill. Then, indeed, when the battle was won, and there was only question of the booty, Mr Redmond made the public boast that he and Mr Dillon "were in almost daily communications with Mr Bryce upon the subject." The excuse was as unavailing as his plea that the finally revised terms of sale of his Wexford estate left him without a penny of profit. What concerned the country was the first announcement of 24-1/2 years" purchase authorised under his own hand which had "given a headline" to every landlord in the country. In the same way, whatever obsequious attendance he might dance on Mr Bryce, when the die was cast and the Bill safe, the ineffaceable facts remain that neither he nor anybody in his party whom he could influence had stood on a Labour platform, or touched upon the subject at the party meeting, while the intentions of the Government were, as we shall see in a moment, undecided in the extreme, but on the contrary were (it may be hoped unconscious but none the less indispensable) parties to an organised effort to split the Labourers" a.s.sociation asunder while their fate was trembling in the balance.
"Their war upon the Land and Labour a.s.sociation was all the more wanton, because Mr Dillon"s persuasion, which gave rise to it that the a.s.sociation had been brigaded into my secret service for some nefarious purpose of my own, was as absurdly astray as all the rest of his troubled dreams of my Machiavellian ambitions. To avoid giving any pretext for such a suspicion, I declined to accept any office or honour or even to become a member of the Land and Labour a.s.sociation, attended no meeting to which Mr Redmond and Mr Dillon were not invited as well as I; and beyond my speeches at those meetings, never in the remotest degree interfered in the business or counsels of the a.s.sociation. A number of men on the governing council of the a.s.sociation were to my knowledge, and continued to be, sympathisers with my critics. Beyond the fact that their president, Mr Sheehan, M.P., happened to be the most successful practiser of my Land Purchase plans in the county of Cork, as well as by far the ablest advocate the Labourers" agitation had called into action, I know of no shadow of excuse for the extraordinary folly which led responsible Irishmen, with the cry of "Unity" on their lips, not only to decline to meet me on a common platform, but to make tens of thousands of absolutely unoffending labourers the victims of their differences with me.
"Despite their aloofness and their attempts to divide the Labourers"
body, the agitation swept throughout the south of Ireland with an intensity which nothing could withstand. Demonstrations of amazing extent and still more remarkable resoluteness of spirit were addressed by my friends and myself in Charleville and Macroom, County Cork; Kilfinane and Drumcolliher, County Limerick; Tralee and Castle Island, County Kerry; Scariff, County Clare; Goolds Cross, County Tipperary; and Ballycullane, County Wexford; and by the time they were over, the field was fought and won. One last difficulty remained; but it was a formidable difficulty. So far from Mr Redmond"s "almost daily communications with Mr Bryce" reaching back to the critical days of the problem, we were already in the first days of summer in the session of 1906 when a communication was made to me from a high official quarter that the Irish Government were so deeply immersed in the Irish Council Bill of the following year that they shrank from the labour and the financial difficulties of a Labourers" Bill in the current session, and an appeal was diplomatically hinted as to whether there was any possibility of slowing down the Labourers" agitation so as to make a postponement to the following session practicable. My reply was undiplomatically clear:--that, if the Government wanted to deprive the Irish Council Bill of all chance of a hearing, they could not take a better means of making the country too hot for themselves than by proposing to fob off the labourers for another year, and that not only would I not, if I could, but could not if I would, moderate their insistence upon immediate redress.
"A short time afterwards, I met Sir Antony MacDonnell in the House of Commons, and he asked "What is your labourers" minimum?" I gave him a brief outline of the Macroom programme. "No rational being could object," he said, "but what does it mean in hard cash?" I replied, "Roughly, four millions." And the great Irishman--"the worst enemy that ever came to Ireland" of Mr Dillon"s nightmare hours--ended the interview with these laconic words: "The thing ought to be done and I think can be." At the period of the session at which the Bill was introduced, the opposition of even half-a-dozen determined men could have at any stage achieved its ruin. Thanks, however, to the good feeling the precedent of the Act of 1903 and the admirably conciliatory temper displayed by the labourers themselves in their agitation had engendered, the Bill went triumphantly through and has been crowned with glory in its practical application. I never pa.s.s through any of the southern counties now and feast my eyes on the labourers" cottages which dot the landscape--prettier than the farmers" own homes--honeysuckles or jasmines generally trailing around the portico--an acre of potato ground sufficient to be a sempiternal insurance against starvation, stretching out behind--the pig and the poultry--perhaps a plot of snowdrops or daffodils for the English market, certainly a bunch of roses in the cheeks of the children cl.u.s.tering about the doorsteps--without thankfully acknowledging that Cork was right in thinking such conquests were worth a great deal of evil speech from angry politicians."
CHAPTER XV
SOME FURTHER SALVAGE FROM THE WRECKAGE