– termed by one historian the Home Rule movement’s ‘Belfast stormtroopers’ – were used to disrupt Dolan’s meetings and assault his supporters. The Freeman reported ‘lively scenes’ at a meeting at Kiltyclogher when a Sinn Féin band drowned out the supporters of the party candidate, F.E. Meehan. ‘Stormy scenes’ were reported from other towns. At Drumkeeran, Dolan was accompanied by Anna Parnell and George Gavan Duffy, who were pelted with eggs and mud by party supporters. Parnell had a pail of water thrown over her. In the election, Meehan polled 3,103 votes to Dolan’s 1,157 in an electorate of 6,324.187 From an anti-parliamentarian point of view, this was considerably better, at 27 per cent of the poll, than the six to one defeat suffered in their previous challenge to the party in February 1900. Griffith hailed the result as a moral victory, depicting it in Sinn Féin as a declaration of Irish independence and comparable with Daniel O’Connell’s historic 1828 victory that had paved the way for Catholic Emancipation. However, it remained true, as Jackson points out, that an outgoing MP had been unable to mount a serious defence of his seat.188
Sinn Féin continued for a time to profit from the Irish Party’s weaknesses. The number of its branches, having risen from twenty-one in 1906 to fifty-seven the following year, rose again to 115 in 1908. In the January 1908 municipal elections, it won three of the nine seats it contested in Dublin Corporation.189 The year 1909 would see its fortunes decline as those of the Irish Party rose again: by August of that year there were only 581 paid-up members in the entire country, 211 of them in Dublin.190
Another development of 1907 would have been noticed by few except for the police at Dublin Castle. Hobson, McCullough and others of the young men who had reluctantly accepted Griffith’s dominance of Sinn Féin had also become members of the supreme council of the IRB, edging out the old guard. There, joined by Thomas Clarke, the ex-Portland prisoner for whose release Redmond had campaigned throughout the 1890s, just returned from the US to open a tobacconist shop in Dublin, they awaited the downturn in British fortunes that might enable them to strike.191
Notes and References
1F.J., 12 Oct. 1905.
2Ibid., 21, 26 Oct. 1905; Dillon to Redmond, 26 Oct., 2 Nov. 1905, NLI Ms. 15,182 (8). Dillon wondered if there was a safe way to communicate with Campbell Bannerman: ‘If he were to make a really bad speech, the situation would become very bad indeed.’
3F.J., 9, 11 Nov. 1905.
4F.J., 13 Nov. 1905.
5Ibid., 11 Nov. 1905. ‘I am proud… that no victory in the House of Commons for the last five years … has been obtained by the Labour Party that was not obtained through the help and instrumentality of our votes (cheers),’ he added. The Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie, sent a telegram of congratulations on this ‘epoch making’ speech. Keir Hardie to Redmond, 11 Nov. 1905, RP Ms. 15,193 (7). Redmond would repeat this theme several times, as at Sunderland in March 1909, where he stood on a Labour platform for the first time. F.J., 16 Mar. 1909.
6Memorandum of Redmond interview with CampbellBannerman, 14 Nov. 1905, RP Ms. 15,171 (2).
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