John Redmond's Last Years Part 4

Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the new Young Ireland.

But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party--Redmond's essential limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. What his followers gave him was admiration, liking and profound respect. No less than this was strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal pettiness, his control of temper. In twelve years I heard many complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: I scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. He was always spoken of as "The Chairman"; no one attributed to him sole responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a fault.

Yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. He had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled.

CHAPTER III

THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912

The year 1912, in which the straight fight on Home Rule was to begin, opened stormily. Mr. Churchill was announced to speak under the auspices of the Ulster Liberal a.s.sociation in the Ulster Hall at Belfast. It was the hall in which his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had used the famous phrase "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." Belfast was determined that the son should not unsay what the father had said in this consecrated building; it would be, as an Ulster member put it in the House of Commons, "a profanation." On this first round, Ulster won; Mr. Churchill spoke at Belfast, but not in the Ulster Hall. There were angry demonstrations against him; his person had to be strongly protected and he went away from the meeting by back streets. It was noticeable that no such precautions were needed for Redmond, who attended the meeting and walked quite unmolested through the crowd. The British electorate, as a whole, was somewhat scandalized by the exhibition of so violent a temper; but the education of the British electorate was only beginning.

Congestion of business from the previous session deferred the introduction of the Home Rule Bill till April. Great demonstrations for and against it were held in advance. In Dublin on March 31st was such a gathering as scarcely any man remembered. O'Connell Street is rather a boulevard than a thoroughfare; it is as wide as Whitehall and its length is about the same. On that day, from the Parnell monument at the north end to the O'Connell monument at the south, you could have walked on the shoulders of the people. Four separate platforms were erected, and Redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief. He dwelt on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven corporations were represented officially by their civic officers; professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore. But one section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent. To Ulster he had this to say:

"We have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. We have one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the arrival of the day of reconciliation."

A feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, a.s.sumes strange significance in retrospect. At one platform Patrick Pea.r.s.e, then headmaster of St. Enda's school, spoke in Irish. What he said may be thus roughly rendered:

"There are as many men here as would destroy the British Empire if they were united and did their utmost. We have no wish to destroy the British, we only want our freedom. We differ among ourselves on small points, but we agree that we want freedom, in some shape or other. There are two sections of us--one that would be content to remain under the British Government in our own land, another that never paid, and never will pay, homage to the King of England. I am of the latter, and everyone knows it. But I should think myself a traitor to my country if I did not answer the summons to this gathering, for it is clear to me that the Bill which we support to-day will be for the good of Ireland and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. I am not accepting the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We are here only to say that the voice of Ireland must be listened to henceforward.

Let us unite and win a good Act from the British; I think it can be done. But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and I am one of them, that will advise the Gael to have no counsel or dealings with the Gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. Let the Gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war in Ireland."

The platform where Pea.r.s.e spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the General Post Office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of Redmond's lifetime. At that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the speech, also in Irish, of Professor John MacNeill from another platform, which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with Pea.r.s.e.

But Redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in Ireland. Speaking on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill on April 11th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the Irish people wanted separation and that the Irish leaders were separatists in disguise:

"I will be perfectly frank on this matter. There always has been, and there is to-day, a certain section of Irishmen who would like to see separation from this country. They are a small, a very small section.

They were once a very large section. They are a very small section, but the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present system and give into the hands of Irishmen the management of purely Irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will disappear; and if it survives at all, I would like to know how under those circ.u.mstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief than at the present moment."

Sincerer words were never spoken, nor, I think, a better justified forecast. Where Redmond and all of us were wrong was that we underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what Pea.r.s.e ultimately accomplished, even when a.s.sisted by the widespread disillusionment and sense of betrayal which was the atmosphere of 1916.

But no one in Ireland in 1912 thought of a separatist rebellion. What was on all tongues was the possibility of physical resistance to Home Rule. The debate on the first reading went by with little reference to this contingency, but Mr. Bonar Law closed his speech on that note. He had attended the great counter-demonstration in Belfast which followed ours in Dublin and had seen in it "the expression of the soul of a people."

"These people look upon their being subject to an executive Government taken out of the Parliament in Dublin with as much horror, I believe with more horror, than the people of Poland ever regarded their being put under subjection by Russia; they say they will not submit except by force to such government. These people in Ulster are under no illusion.

They know they cannot fight the British Army. But these men are ready, in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down their lives."

Bloodshed, if bloodshed there was to be, was antic.i.p.ated in Ulster only, and the resistance indicated at this point was purely pa.s.sive. But even after the Bill had been introduced, Tories entertained the hope that a Nationalist Convention might save them trouble and reject what the Government offered. Even Mr. O'Brien, however, had given the Bill a lukewarm approval, and at this moment Redmond's prestige stood very high. When the Convention a.s.sembled, he utilized that advantage to the full. These a.s.semblies presented a problem which might intimidate the most capable chairman. Theoretically deliberative, they had at least a representative character; all branches of the United Irish League, all branches of the Hibernians and Foresters, all county and district councils sent up their chosen men, to whom were added such clergy as chose to attend. The result was a ma.s.s of over two thousand persons packed into a single room; they deliberated in the physical conditions of a crowd; hearing was difficult, disorder only too easily brought about. I have seen one of these Conventions sharply divided in opinion, and counting of votes would have been impossible. On this day, however, there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the proposition that it was their "duty" as Nationalists to accept what he described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered. He further indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting, proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party.

This was promptly carried by acclamation. All decisions were unanimous that day.

But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention, Redmond asked the mult.i.tude there to give, what they gave most willingly, a welcome to Mr. Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member of Parliament had just voted for the Bill. The greeting which he received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last years had been.

In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the struggle from 1886 to 1893:

"Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. One is Mr.

Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. The other is the Irish response to Mr. Gladstone. It was not the a.s.sent of mere tacticians who had gained an advocate and a point. It was genuine, warm and living feeling, a response of grat.i.tude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as his own."

If Redmond's task from 1912 onwards was not lightened by the existence of any such genuine, warm and living feeling for any of Mr. Asquith's Ministry, perhaps Ireland is not to blame. There was no intense grip of any fact in the Government's att.i.tude, and on one cardinal point they were unstable as water. Sir Edward Carson, in opposing the introduction of the Bill, had used the words: "What argument is there that you can raise for giving Home Rule to Ireland that you do not equally raise for giving Home Rule to that Protestant minority in the north-east province?" Redmond, following him, made one of his few false moves in debate. "Is that the proposal? Is that the demand?" he asked. Sir Edward Carson shot the question at him: "Will you agree to it?" Seldom does the House see a practised speaker so much embarra.s.sed; Redmond in confusion pa.s.sed to another topic. He was soon to be confronted with that same line of reasoning, pushed not dialectically by an opponent, but as a step in parliamentary negotiation from the Treasury Bench. Mr.

Churchill, who introduced the Second Reading, made it apparent that the demonstration in Belfast had not been wasted on him.

"Whatever Ulster's rights may be," he said, "they cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of Ireland. Half a province cannot impose a permanent veto on the nation. The utmost they can claim is for themselves. I ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves? Do the counties of Down and Antrim and Londonderry, for instance, ask to be excepted from the scope of this Bill? Do they ask for a parliament of their own, or do they wish to remain here? We ought to know."

This was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain. Mr. Gladstone, with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in Ireland, would have known that concession on such point was a very different matter from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the Parliament. It admitted, in fact, the contention that Ireland was not a nation but a geographical expression.

As soon as the Bill went into Committee, the result was seen. The first serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Derry, and it was moved from the Liberal benches. Three Liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which lasted to the third day--and on the division the majority, which had been 100 for the Second Reading, fell to 69. Mr. Churchill did not vote--nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did Mr.

Lloyd George.

Thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself. By the mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use of troops, Ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge into the composite Home Rule alliance, and into the Cabinet itself. All this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line of attack.

Nor was the full extent of weakness revealed. In such a case, much depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and Mr.

Agar-Robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the Government ranks. Twentieth-century Liberalism wears a somewhat drab and serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would have been in his place among the votaries of Charles James Fox. The climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated Protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the alteration of the Coronation oath to a formula less offensive to Catholics. n.o.body doubted that his Cornish const.i.tuents would endorse whatever he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but no one took him very seriously as a politician. This particular view of his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable a.s.sociate, Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against Ulster's claims as Agar-Robartes did for them.--_Sunt lacrimae rerum_.

I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair, side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches. The two brilliant lads--for they were little more--have gone now, swept into the abyss of war's wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains, virulent as ever.

Agar-Robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the Bill henceforward; the other Liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the Government lobby. What had really mattered was Mr. Churchill's speech on the Second Reading. Captain Pirrie, one of Redmond's few closely attached friends outside the Irish party, bound, I think, far more in affection to the Irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily of the Government's evasive reticence. This brought up the Prime Minister, whose speech was brief and direct:

"This amendment proceeds on an a.s.sumption which I believe is radically false, namely, that you can split Ireland into parts. You can no more split Ireland into parts than you can split England or Scotland into parts."

When Sir Edward Carson had spoken, the Ulster leader's speech enabled Redmond to point out that Ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a means by which Ulster might be reconciled to Home Rule, but were ready to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment. General opinion on both sides of the House agreed that the amendment made the Bill impossible; and the majority held that therefore Ulster must give way. Ulster, on the other hand, held that therefore there must be no Home Rule Bill. But there was a Liberal element evidently not convinced that Home Rule might not be possible with Ulster excluded. Mr. Birrell admitted that the plan of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on the merits, as unworkable. Still he professed himself open to conviction. The argument which Mr. Bonar Law decided to use was a threat. Government are saying to the people of Ulster, he said, "Convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else." Captain Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister antic.i.p.ated that Ulster's objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. "If the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty's dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge."

This temper soon had ugly expression. On June 29th an excursion party of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Roman Catholic counterpart to the Orange Order) met with another excursion party of Protestants, mainly Sunday-school children, at a place called Castledawson. Taunts were exchanged and one of the Hibernians tried to s.n.a.t.c.h a flag from the other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children were hurt and many frightened. This discreditable incident was magnified with all the rancour of partisanship--as in the state of feeling must have been expected. But the reprisals were startling. All Catholics were driven out of the Belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two thousand men were still deprived of work on July 12th, when the Unionist party held a great meeting at Blenheim. Mr. Bonar Law, facing for the first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of Parliament, he had counselled action outside const.i.tutional limits. Now, he emphasized it that he took the same att.i.tude as leader of the Unionist party.

"We shall use any means--whatever means seem to us to be most likely to be effective--any means to deprive them" (the Government) "of the power they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have deceived. The Home Rule Bill in spite of us may go through the House of Commons. There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people."

Sir Edward Carson said on behalf of Ulster: "It will be our duty shortly to take such steps--and, indeed, they are already being taken--as will perfect our arrangements for making Home Rule absolutely impossible. We will shortly challenge the Government to interfere with us if they dare.

We will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and inconvenience. They may tell us, if they like, that this is treason."

Well might Mr. Bonar Law say in returning thanks that this day "would be a turning-point in their political history."

Moderate opinion was by no means glad to have reached this turning-point, and _The Times_ rebuked Mr. Law for his violence. But, tactically, the Unionists were right: they had a Government indisposed to action and they made the most of their opportunity. Mr. Churchill again took up the conduct of the controversy, and in the recess proceeded to outline a policy which he described as federal devolution.

The Prime Minister had said you could no more split Ireland into parts than England or Scotland. But Mr. Churchill argued that, in the interest of efficiency, England must be divided into provincial units with separate a.s.semblies; that Lancashire, for instance, had on many matters a very different outlook from that of Yorkshire. He did not draw the conclusion; but it was not difficult to infer that Mr. Churchill was at least as ready to give separate rights to Ulster as to any group of English counties, and was equally ready to pitch overboard the Prime Minister's argument for refusing part.i.tion in Ireland.

In the meantime Ulster's preparations continued. It was indicated that they would bear a religious character, and the Protestant Churches were deeply involved. The proposal of a Covenant was made public in August, though the actual signing of it was deferred to "Ulster Day," September 28th. Sir Edward Carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the pageant. These things excited a good deal of derision, and the language of the Covenant was held to be only "hypothetical treason." The main words were:

"We stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland."

The Covenant in that committed the signatories to no breach of the law; it was only a pledge to refuse to recognize the authority of a Parliament not yet in being. All Ulster's proceedings might so far be dismissed, as the Attorney-General, Mr. Rufus Isaacs, dismissed them, as being "a demonstration admirably stage-managed, and led by one of great histrionic gifts." The threats of the use of force, said the Attorney-General, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. Mr.

Asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his conclusions. Speaking at Ladybank on October 5th, he denounced "the reckless rodomontade of Blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete grammar of anarchy." But he was careful to point out that there was no demand for separate treatment for Ulster, and that Irish Unionists were simply refusing to consent to Home Rule under any conditions. He refrained from saying how a demand for separate treatment of Ulster would be dealt with if it were made.

When Parliament resumed its sittings, in a temper much heated by all the challenge and controversy of the recess, Mr. Lloyd George pushed this line of argument a shade further. He argued that Sir Edward Carson himself persisted in treating Ireland as a unit.

"Until Ulster departs from that position there is no case. Ulster has a right to claim a hearing for separate treatment; she has no right to say, 'Because we do not want Home Rule ourselves the majority of Irishmen are not to have Home Rule.'"

Yet upon the balance of events, Unionists were probably disappointed. A very strong British feeling against Sir Edward Carson and his Belfast following had been generated by the expulsion of Catholics from the shipyards and in general by the advocacy of civil war. In October 1912 several notable men who had previously counted as Unionists--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir J. West-Ridgway--all declared for Home Rule. Exasperation against the incidence of the new Insurance Act lost the Government votes at every by-election; but the Irish cause on the whole gained ground, and the chief cause of that advance was the respect universally felt for Redmond's personality and leadership. On November 22nd he attended a huge meeting of the National Liberal Federation at Nottingham along with the Prime Minister and received a wonderful welcome. The step was novel. Never since Parnell's work began had the leader of the Irish people stood on the same platform in Great Britain with the leader of any English party. It was, however, the return of a compliment, for Mr. Asquith had come to Dublin in the summer and there spoken along with the Irish leader. Moreover, a recent incident had shown how necessary it was to maintain the closest co-operation; a snap division on November 11th had inflicted defeat on the Government and occasioned loss of perhaps a fortnight's parliamentary time.

But in the very act of thus strengthening his hold on the British electorate, Redmond gave ground to those in Ireland who desired to represent him as a mere tool of the Liberal party, a p.a.w.n in Mr.

Asquith's game. Foreseeing this evil did not help to combat it, and on the whole it was Redmond's inclination to take a sanguine view of his country's good sense and generosity.

The Committee stage of discussion lasted beyond the end of the year. On the finance arrangements Redmond had to face fierce opposition from Mr.

O'Brien's party, which was endorsed by the Irish Council of County Councils. Here difficulties were inevitable, and attack was easy either for the Unionists, who pressed the argument that Ireland was to be started on its career of self-government with a subsidy of some two millions per annum from Great Britain, or for the O'Brienites, who urged that the country was already overtaxed in proportion to its resources, that it needed large expenditure for development, and that the possible budget indicated by the Bill left no serious possibility for reducing taxes or for undertaking even necessary expenditure. Redmond, on the other hand, was bound to conciliate the vested interests of civil servants, officials in all degrees, and the immense police force.