will vindicate the greatness of his chieftaincy.’ In a rhetorical flourish, he summarised the significance of the occasion and what was at stake: ‘We are going to lift up the old flag and unfurl it upon our City Hall, upon our Cathedral and upon the castles and towers of our dear ancient city, and we are going to proclaim Waterford the greatest, the most powerful and the most impregnable stronghold of the principles of John Redmond and constitutional home rule.’85William Redmond won the by-election, by 1,242 votes to White’s 745.86
In the early hours of Sunday 24 March, John Hearne delivered another political speech, this one at a meeting celebrating victory. It was a trenchant and uncompromising address, motivated and shaped by the bitterness of the campaign. He began with an emotional proclamation that the city had been true to John Redmond and his son. He quickly launched into a vitriolic attack on Sinn Féin: ‘The life blood of the late Mr John E. Redmond and the late Major William Redmond [his brother]87 went forth for the same imperishable ideals of nationality. One was shot dead by the enemies of civilisation abroad, the other’s heart broken by the enemies of civilisation at home.’ He referred to Sinn Féin supporters, who had been drafted in for the election, leaving the city after their defeat: ‘Was it any wonder that they [Redmond’s supporters] opened their windows and let in the pure splendour of God’s sunlight, because they knew that the pestilence had gone from the city.’
He continued in a menacing tone: ‘They knew that if they did not go in time, the people of Waterford would see that they would go in eternity.’ Jeeringly, he announced that ‘Mr Darrell Figgis88 had fled from Waterford as he fled from British soldiers in Easter Week and Mr A. Griffith had gone to Clontarf to meditate on Brian Boru.’ He reserved particular bile for those who had voted for White, especially former Redmond supporters: ‘There were men in the city who should hang their heads in shame. There were men even in Ballybricken who might hang their heads in shame – men who stood by John Redmond in sunshine and deserted him in the dark days.’ Hearne then turned his attention to the British government, denouncing its treatment of Redmond, accusing it of doing all it could to ensure that his position was made ‘unbearable’ in the country: ‘They knew that he was the only man powerful enough and with brain enough to restore to Ireland what they had filched from it, their national self-government.’ He linked the behaviour of the government and Sinn Féin together to discredit both: ‘Sinn Féin was the strongest ally the government had in keeping their country in subjection. The government gloried in Sinn Féin, because they knew that as long as the country was in a state of insufferable anarchy, they could say that Ireland was unfit for home rule.’
However, Waterford, he declared, had transformed the situation by showing the world that the country was fit to rule itself. In an assertion inspired by the moment of victory, he proclaimed: ‘It was quite impossible to exaggerate the importance of that tremendous moment in the history of their country. For the past two years there had been an avalanche of abuse launched at the head of John Redmond … Waterford had, once and for all, turned the tide in the teeth of Sinn Féiners and the government.’ Coming to the end of his speech, he urged preparation for the general election, appealing to Home Rule supporters to remain united: ‘They must try to bring their forces together, for the Sinn Féiners did their traitorous work well.’ He finished on a note of menace: ‘Those men should never have been allowed to poll 700 votes in the City of Waterford, and that must not occur again.’89
The importance of the Hearne family in the Home Rule movement in Waterford was confirmed in the aftermath of the March election, when Richard Hearne was re-elected president of the city branch of the United Ireland League.90 In October, a Young Ireland branch of the league was inaugurated. This was inspired by, and modelled on, the branch founded in Dublin in December 1904, which had as its aim the encouragement of a younger membership in the party,91 so that it could ‘infuse new lifeblood into the increasingly sclerotic arteries of the home rulers’.92 John Hearne was the principal speaker at its inaugural meeting. His association with the branch was consistent with his call on supporters during his March victory speech to organise themselves. According to a newspaper report, he was invited to speak because ‘his speeches made such an impression during the election campaign’.93 Canon Furlong, who presided, said in his short address that ‘the eloquence of Meagher,94 Sexton95 and Leamy96 was not dead while they had John Hearne among them’. He was to deliver a significant speech in terms of outlining his political ideas.
Hearne began by delivering a panegyric to John Redmond, who was described as the ‘embodiment’ of nationalism and whose ‘illustrious’ name would be ‘the bright symbol in hopeful future years’. Once again, it was evident that the emotional attachment of Redmond’s followers to their dead leader was akin to that of Sinn Féiners for the 1916 leaders. Both groups of followers operated in the shadow of dead men and, in their public utterances, these followers were in thrall to their political legacies. Hearne stated that it was ‘fitting to inaugurate a Young Ireland branch in Waterford to carry on the old fight, along the old lines … with the master mind of Redmond still controlling the work and his extended hand pointing the steadfast way forward’. He outlined the purpose of the branch and his words echoed those of Redmond: ‘[it] proclaims the unabated, unbroken and unbreakable allegiance of the youth of our city to the age-old principle of parliamentary representation for Ireland, to work for and to win full and final self-government, absolute and unconditional, for our native land’.
Of course, this ‘full and final government’ was to be achieved in the context of Ireland’s continuing membership of the British Empire. Hearne utterly rejected the charge that Home Rule was setting boundaries to the march of the Irish nation. He argued that the alternative to Home Rule was not an Irish republic: ‘The controversy does not lie between these two alternatives, for the one is a practicable and attainable national policy, the other is a morbid and an amorphous and delusive national idea.’ Elaborating briefly on what he meant as a ‘practicable’ policy, he explained that it was to work to win for Ireland ‘a dignified and self-developing status among free peoples’. This policy he contrasted with Sinn Féin’s ‘political extravagances’ and ‘erroneous and maudlin patriotism’. The supporters of Home Rule were ‘not prepared to continue this turmoil that exists in Ireland today on the steadily receding chance of setting up a national republic somewhere about the time the archangel will set one foot upon the water and the other upon the land’. Rather than pursuing a futile dream of a republic, there were urgent issues demanding attention:
In the financial readjustment that will follow the war, the present ghastly and unreal prosperity of Ireland will be made the pretext for taxing our agricultural and industrial interests out of existence by our enemies in Great Britain and Ireland, unless our position be safeguarded and secured by the united, nation-supported efforts of our people in parliament. The status of the teaching profession, the great invaluable secular asset for the island of saints and scholars, must be uplifted from its present scandalous and disreputable condition. Turn where you will, the immediate needs of the nation call for vigorous and violent parliamentary agitation.
In focusing on taxation and education, Hearne was echoing opinions and concerns articulated by leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party. John Redmond had spoken about over-taxation and education on a number of occasions, claiming that misguided British policies in these areas had ‘annihilated’ Ireland. Thomas Kettle97 had identified these issues as among the two most pressing ones for a native government.98 In the light of much work to be done, Hearne called on Home Rule supporters to be organised and disciplined. He concluded his speech with a rousing, rhetorical flourish:
Let them concentrate their energies, let them define their aims, let them pursue them in every circumstance of derision and defeat with fearless and steadfast confidence, and let them persevere to the very end. Let them remember, above all, that when the long night is past, and Ireland stands forth again in the white glory of her risen generation as the spiritual law-giver to the free nations of the earth, as the great commercial emporium between the continent of Europe and the cities of the western world, as the leader in the vanguard of the new freedom which is truth and justice and charity, the achievements will be attributable first, above all, to the men who fought
