The reasons for the almost total collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the interval between the general elections of 1910 and of 1918 have long intrigued historians. That a phenomenon like the withering of a great national institution is best understood by reference to developments at a sub-national level goes without saying, and the diversity of local experience revealed by the several investigations undertaken since the appearance of David Fitzpatrick’s influential work on County Clare, Politics and Irish Life, 1913-21 (1977) underlines the necessity for further research at local and regional level. Both as an addition to knowledge and as a contribution to a debate, therefore, this study will be welcomed.
Michael Wheatley’s focus is on those developments prior to Easter Monday 1916 which left Redmond’s party vulnerable and unable ‘to withstand the shocks and disasters by which it was to be assailed’ in the aftermath of the armed rebellion which broke out on that date. His field of study is a region he designates ‘middle Ireland’: the small counties of Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Longford and Westmeath, stretching between the north-west coast and the midlands. Covering a little more than a tenth of the island of Ireland (roughly the same as the county of Cork), the region held one thirteenth of its population. It was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic (93%) and nationalist, predominantly rural and dependent on pastoral agricultural, but not, by and large, as poverty stricken as places like Conamara and West Mayo. If any region may be considered ‘typical’ of nationalist Ireland, this segment has a good claim, and it was previously visited by Paul Bew in Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland, 1890-1910 (1987), to which the present volume may be considered a companion.
The principal source consulted by Wheatley was the local press –all eighteen titles– which detailed the activity of an almost bewildering variety of local bodies. In this regard, the author quotes an English journalist, Sydney Brooks: ‘More than any country I am acquainted with, more even than Poland itself, Ireland is a network of ‘organisations’, leagues, factions and cliques. Almost every department of life seems to be on a committee basis… A genius for combination penetrates to the lowest strata’ (p.33).
It is Wheatley’s view, however, that the proliferation of ‘leagues’ did not always have the effect of dispersing power widely, and he shows that there were powerful individuals, with business interests that were intertwined with their public roles, who achieved virtual hegemony at local level. He instances Patrick Flynn (pp.32-33), a substantial farmer, rentier, undertaker, farm machinery dealer, and grocer of Carrick-on-Shannon whose public functions included the following: magistrate, county council vice-chairman, member of (national) General Council of County Councils, county infirmary committee chairman, county agricultural committee chairman, district council chairman, United Irish League branch president, local parliamentary fund treasurer, and member of the old age pensions committee.
Such individuals had come to prominence because they represented the grievances of grassroots farming members of the Irish Parliamentary Party’s affiliates, in particular the United Irish League (UIL). Wheatley argues that there was distance in ‘middle Ireland’ by 1910 between the UIL’s local leadership and its constituency, that because their major grievance had been addressed by the land acts of 1903 and 1909, farmers had withdrawn from active politics. With an absence of pressure from below, and nationalist values so deep-rooted in the Catholic community as to smother all other collective aspirations, he seeks to show that the significant political tensions within nationalism in c.1910-16 derived from the personal rivalries of leaders and would-be-leaders, rather than from class divisions. In this regard, the picture he paints is very different to the contemporaneous Galway presented by Fergus Campbell in Land & Revolution, (2005). Grassroots inertia, notwithstanding, Wheatley maintains that the party remained a representative force and a relatively vibrant one, at least until 1914 when the Volunteers introduced their more participative form of politics, and provided an arena for an alternative leadership to develop. The coup de grâce to the Irish Party, he argues, was delivered by its leader, John Redmond, in September 1914 when he began to actively recruit for the army, thus offending against the ‘deeply-pervasive Anglophobia’ (p.74) of the nationalist constituency.
Wheatley’s case is supported by his detailed analysis of politics in Roscommon, Westmeath and Sligo town, presented in three key chapters. That he takes into account the disposition of organised labour (treating it as an element of nationalism) to an extent that is exceptional in studies of provincial Ireland is one demonstration of the thoroughness of his research. But it is here that his argument about the relative unimportance of class division within nationalism in 1910-16 is least persuasive, specifically in his treatment of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (ITGWU) in Sligo town. With regard to Sligo, he concludes that the ‘success of labour would have been impossible without vigorous Irish Party leadership’(p.154). On the basis of the evidence offered, however, it might rather be argued that it was labour’s very strength (and success) that attracted the interest of elements from the faction-ridden nationalist movement in that town. Certainly, there were alliances of convenience between the ITGWU and a succession of local nationalists, but this does not seem to have compromised labour’s independence or its class orientation, with the behaviour of the Sligo Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) during the great Dublin lock-out of 1913-14 being a case in point. In Dublin, the AOH was a virulent opponent of the ITGWU during the dispute, but, responding local pressure, the Sligo AOH broke ranks and came out in support of the locked-out Dublin workers.
But if one does not quite agree with every conclusion, one cannot fail to be impressed by the research and by the scholarship. Michael Wheatley has uncovered a largely hidden Ireland, and added to our understanding of the Irish revolution. His book will be greatly appreciated by others working on the period.
Michael Wheatley’s focus is on those developments prior to Easter Monday 1916 which left Redmond’s party vulnerable and unable ‘to withstand the shocks and disasters by which it was to be assailed’ in the aftermath of the armed rebellion which broke out on that date. His field of study is a region he designates ‘middle Ireland’: the small counties of Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Longford and Westmeath, stretching between the north-west coast and the midlands. Covering a little more than a tenth of the island of Ireland (roughly the same as the county of Cork), the region held one thirteenth of its population. It was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic (93%) and nationalist, predominantly rural and dependent on pastoral agricultural, but not, by and large, as poverty stricken as places like Conamara and West Mayo. If any region may be considered ‘typical’ of nationalist Ireland, this segment has a good claim, and it was previously visited by Paul Bew in Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland, 1890-1910 (1987), to which the present volume may be considered a companion.
The principal source consulted by Wheatley was the local press –all eighteen titles– which detailed the activity of an almost bewildering variety of local bodies. In this regard, the author quotes an English journalist, Sydney Brooks: ‘More than any country I am acquainted with, more even than Poland itself, Ireland is a network of ‘organisations’, leagues, factions and cliques. Almost every department of life seems to be on a committee basis… A genius for combination penetrates to the lowest strata’ (p.33).
It is Wheatley’s view, however, that the proliferation of ‘leagues’ did not always have the effect of dispersing power widely, and he shows that there were powerful individuals, with business interests that were intertwined with their public roles, who achieved virtual hegemony at local level. He instances Patrick Flynn (pp.32-33), a substantial farmer, rentier, undertaker, farm machinery dealer, and grocer of Carrick-on-Shannon whose public functions included the following: magistrate, county council vice-chairman, member of (national) General Council of County Councils, county infirmary committee chairman, county agricultural committee chairman, district council chairman, United Irish League branch president, local parliamentary fund treasurer, and member of the old age pensions committee.
Such individuals had come to prominence because they represented the grievances of grassroots farming members of the Irish Parliamentary Party’s affiliates, in particular the United Irish League (UIL). Wheatley argues that there was distance in ‘middle Ireland’ by 1910 between the UIL’s local leadership and its constituency, that because their major grievance had been addressed by the land acts of 1903 and 1909, farmers had withdrawn from active politics. With an absence of pressure from below, and nationalist values so deep-rooted in the Catholic community as to smother all other collective aspirations, he seeks to show that the significant political tensions within nationalism in c.1910-16 derived from the personal rivalries of leaders and would-be-leaders, rather than from class divisions. In this regard, the picture he paints is very different to the contemporaneous Galway presented by Fergus Campbell in Land & Revolution, (2005). Grassroots inertia, notwithstanding, Wheatley maintains that the party remained a representative force and a relatively vibrant one, at least until 1914 when the Volunteers introduced their more participative form of politics, and provided an arena for an alternative leadership to develop. The coup de grâce to the Irish Party, he argues, was delivered by its leader, John Redmond, in September 1914 when he began to actively recruit for the army, thus offending against the ‘deeply-pervasive Anglophobia’ (p.74) of the nationalist constituency.
Wheatley’s case is supported by his detailed analysis of politics in Roscommon, Westmeath and Sligo town, presented in three key chapters. That he takes into account the disposition of organised labour (treating it as an element of nationalism) to an extent that is exceptional in studies of provincial Ireland is one demonstration of the thoroughness of his research. But it is here that his argument about the relative unimportance of class division within nationalism in 1910-16 is least persuasive, specifically in his treatment of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (ITGWU) in Sligo town. With regard to Sligo, he concludes that the ‘success of labour would have been impossible without vigorous Irish Party leadership’(p.154). On the basis of the evidence offered, however, it might rather be argued that it was labour’s very strength (and success) that attracted the interest of elements from the faction-ridden nationalist movement in that town. Certainly, there were alliances of convenience between the ITGWU and a succession of local nationalists, but this does not seem to have compromised labour’s independence or its class orientation, with the behaviour of the Sligo Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) during the great Dublin lock-out of 1913-14 being a case in point. In Dublin, the AOH was a virulent opponent of the ITGWU during the dispute, but, responding local pressure, the Sligo AOH broke ranks and came out in support of the locked-out Dublin workers.
But if one does not quite agree with every conclusion, one cannot fail to be impressed by the research and by the scholarship. Michael Wheatley has uncovered a largely hidden Ireland, and added to our understanding of the Irish revolution. His book will be greatly appreciated by others working on the period.