that this particular die had been cast long before 7 May. The crisis had its source at the breakfast with Campbell Bannerman eighteen months earlier, and the acceptance by Redmond and Dillon of the ‘instalment’ concept. For many nationalists, Home Rule itself represented a compromise; to have it thus further diluted was too much to accept. Redmond failed to register the new spirit of scepticism, induced by the cultural nationalist movement and the wide circulation of Griffith’s book, which greeted any concession from any British Government. His temperamental reluctance, mentioned by both Gwynns, to discuss political matters outside of formal settings – a trait that would now be described as a failure to ‘network’ – and that strange indifference to his own reputation that would surface again at later times of crisis, were at least partly to blame.123
The YIBs resolved that henceforth the party should refuse to consider any proposal short of Home Rule. For more radical nationalists, the debacle was confirmation of the bankruptcy of Irish Party attendance at Westminster. Griffith’s Sinn Féin (the successor to United Irishman) pilloried Redmond as having lost all authority, and drew an ideological conclusion:
We were convinced the Devolution bill would be worthless… For the last intelligent man who lingered in the hope of achievement for Ireland through Parliamentarianism, Mr Birrell has rung down the curtain.124
Popular disappointment was reflected in the party’s Irish fund-raising. Contributions to the parliamentary and national fund for the year would total a mere £7,000, only half the out-turn of £14,000 for 1906 and the lowest figure since Redmond’s election as leader.125
For Sir Antony MacDonnell, the episode marked the end, for the time being, of his influence in Irish affairs. Even after his demotion by Walter Long to the status of a normal under-secretary, he had continued to act as though a Cabinet minister in his own right. The party had come to see in him as great a threat as the Ulster Unionists had seen him to be with regard to the Union in 1904. As the only one of the protagonists who believed in the intrinsic merits of the Council Bill, he now tendered his resignation to Birrell, but withdrew it when he heard that the Irish Party was about to start a campaign against him in the House. Birrell remained ‘quite determined’ to get rid of him:
He [Birrell] is extremely bitter against him and attributes the failure of the bill entirely to him and Bryce. He does not seem at all bitter about our action…I am satisfied Sir A will speedily disappear. B said he had ‘more than enough of MacDonnellism and would not swallow any more’.126
VI
The May events had wider repercussions in the party, in Parliament and in Ireland. Moving quickly to re-establish his authority, Redmond convened a party meeting at Westminster on 11 June and issued a statement that called the Convention decision ‘an event of the first magnitude’ that showed that the people would reject any measure calculated to undermine the National movement, and criticized the Government for refusing to be guided by the Irish representatives. For British friends of Irish liberty, the lesson was ‘the folly of the policy of minimizing measures’. For nationalists, the decision was ‘a fresh and vigorous call to arms… with the object of forcing the Irish question to the forefront of the politics of the hour’.127 An opportunity to underline the party’s independence presented itself in the Jarrow by-election in July, when Irish voters were urged to vote for the independent Home Rule candidate, Alderman O’Hanlon, rather than for the Liberal or the Labour candidate. Speaking to an audience of working men in this most Irish of British constituencies, Redmond reminded them of his party’s record, which entitled him to ask for their confidence.128 The ‘dramatic and sensational effect upon the cause of Home Rule’ he hoped for did not materialize, the Labour candidate being victorious and O’Hanlon coming last.129
Such rallying calls and flourishes of independence did not still the rumbles of revolt in the party. At the Directory meeting on 20 June, the Gaelic-speaking MP for Kerry West, Thomas O’Donnell, indicating the penetration of Sinn Féin ideas into the party, moved that after the ‘betrayal of Irish hopes’ the party should ‘withdraw from an assembly which neither legally nor morally has a right to make laws for Ireland’, and should initiate at home a campaign of ‘constructive work, combined with open and defiant hostility to all English interference in our internal affairs’. Four MPs supported him, one of them the member for North Leitrim, C.J. Dolan. Another amendment from O’Donnell, to have O’Brien, Healy and their followers invited into the party, received support from eight of those present, including two other MPs.130 Two days later, Dolan announced his resignation from the party while stating that he would retain his seat. James O’Mara, MP for South Kilkenny, then resigned his membership and his seat, complaining that the Irish vote had been given to the Liberals in 1906 without a definite bargain.
On 20 July, Sir Thomas Grattan Esmonde, MP for North Wexford, resigned as Chief Whip of the party, later announcing that he would join the Sinn Féin group without giving up his seat.131 Called upon to resign in fulfilment of his pledge, he announced in mid-August his intention to stay in the party, on the condition that O’Brien and Healy were invited to rejoin.132 Responding on 14 August to an invitation from Wexford Corporation to be conferred with the Freedom of the Borough, Redmond referred to the ‘strange and perplexing situation’ in north Wexford. The only thing that was clear was that Esmonde was determined not to submit his ideas to the people of Wexford, who were unanimously opposed to them, just as Dolan had ‘run away from the poll’.133 He told an Esmonde constituent that the situation seemed ‘absolutely intolerable… no one wants to put any indignity on Sir Thomas Esmonde at all, but it is quite impossible for us to recognize a “conditional” member of the party….’134
In the midst of these defections, Redmond came under fire from his former ally, now advocate of the Sinn Féin abstention policy, John Sweetman, who republished his letter of 1894 to Justin McCarthy indicating his dissatisfaction with the anti-Parnellite Liberal alliance of that time. Sweetman unfairly advanced egotistical motives for Redmond’s clinging to a bankrupt policy:
The applause which his elocutionary powers receive in that House is the very breath of his life. To take John Redmond from the House of Commons would be as cruel as to take a great actor from the stage….135
To counter further Sinn Féin advances in Dublin, Redmond asked Harrington in August to organize a public meeting at the Mansion House to revive party support there. He suggested that, following the National League precedent, a UIL central branch should be formed in Dublin with fortnightly meetings: ‘I am convinced that a reaction is setting in in Dublin against these Sinn Féin people and that a reorganization of the National forces is possible.’136 Harrington assured him hopefully that ‘Dublin is really as sound as ever’. Sinn Féin, he claimed, were composed of people who had always been hostile, but were no more influential than they had ever been; it was only that ‘owing to mistakes on our own part they have been allowed to become a little more prominent’.137 In September, Harrington reported that the spirit had been much improved by the Mansion House meeting.138 The new central branch was inaugurated on 23 October as a forum for the discussion of current political topics.
The May debacle also galvanized Birrell into action to assuage nationalist feelings. By the end of June he was ready with an Evicted Tenants Bill that embodied the compulsion principle for the first time. The Freeman reckoned that it had kept faith with the tenants, and would finally settle the problem if allowed to do so by the Lords.139 Its passage through Committee was made tortuous, however, by intensive debating of hostile Unionist amendments. The sharpest controversy turned on the issue of the power to dispossess ‘planters’ – the new tenants who had long ago taken evicted farms – in order to restore the evicted, the limits on the numbers to be restored and the amount of land to be acquired for the purpose. Urged on by Redmond, the Government on 22 July applied the closure to the debate, causing uproar in the House.140 Passing the Commons by 228 votes to 49 on 2 August, the bill went to the Lords, who proceeded to undo much of Birrell’s work. Birrell’s willingness to compromise led to agreement by the end of August on compensation and other
