Civil War in Ulster: Fisher Papers

Civil War in Ulster

The Fisher influences in Oxford

A significant influence on my father in the Oxford environment would probably have been H A L Fisher, whose book published by Methuen in 1911 on 'The Republican Tradition in Europe' would have been a topic of conversation. There is an extensive collection of reviews of this in the Fisher papers, and a reprint of his Harvard lectures. The English and American influences on the French Revolution were discussed in depth. Some comment suggested that the concept was in decline, adducing the selection of a monarchy by emergent Norway (3.1).

Fisher was also interested in the Finnish question; there was among his papers a pamphlet by a member of the Finnish Diet surveying their then current constitutional struggle in the context of imperial Russia.

His essay on 'Political Unions' (Clarendon Press, 1911) covered Portugal and Spain 1580-1640, Belgium and Holland, Norway and Sweden etc. He contrasts Ireland and Scotland. On the Union of England and Ireland: '..no one can say it is tranquil, whatever evils may be predicted from its dissolution'.

In the Fisher papers is a document entitled 'proposals for the avoidance of war', dated however 24 Feb 1915, when the war was well started. There is a reference to G Lowes Dickenson, of Kings College, as the secretary of a group concerned with this issue. This must be pre-war. It connects with Fisher's 1912 application for an Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship. Dickenson applied also; there were 10 applicants, and 2 were awarded, one to Dickenson, the other to one P M Roxby.

The Albert Kahn Foundation (3.2) was consciously pursuing a policy of attempting to prevent war by encouraging the travel of intellectuals who were judged to be potential influencers of public opinion. There were foci in the US, in Britain, in Germany and in Japan as well as France, where the Foundation was based. The British focus was in University College London. The Foundation remains in existence with public funding, and is rebuilding its archive, which was looted by the Nazis. In the course of this, they are uncovering evidence of the 'liberal intellectual anti-war network', of which Dickenson and Fisher presumably were a part. JJ applied for an Albert Kahn Fellowship in 1914, and got it, so he would have been part of the network, and in the context would have looked up to Fisher, and to Dickenson as his predecessor.

Fisher took a continuing interest in Ireland; he had a copy of Horace Plunkett's 1918 book on Home Rule and Conscription, in which he made the case against Partition; this when it took place partitioned Plunkett's political legacy, the co-operative movement. JJ campaigned against this, unsuccessfully. Fisher's papers also contain a memo on the Irish situation in 1922 supportive of the Free State Government.

So from the above it is clear that JJ and Fisher occupied the same political niche at this time. It is however ironical that Fisher was involved in drafting Lloyd George's 1920 Government of Ireland Bill, which laid the basis for Partition (3.3).

Notes and References (Fisher)

3.1 According to GK Peatling (in 1999 in Oxford where he was helpful with the JJ backgroun; he is currently in Aberdeen) this comment was published in the "Home University Library" series in which several prominent liberals were co-operating (inc. Fisher's friends Gilbert Murray and G.P. Gooch). He suggests also that JJ may have come across Leonard Hobhouse's Liberalism (London, 1911) , one of three attempts in the same series to come up with a succinct statement of a political creed (Ramsay MacDonald wrote on the labour movement and one of the Cecil's, he thinks Lord Robert, on Conservatism). Hobhouse and Gooch also wrote essays in a collection of essays by leading Liberals and Nationalists to justify the Home Rule Bill, called The New Irish Constitution (London, 1912), edited by J.H. Morgan.

3.2 The Albert Kahn Foundation was based in Paris and was dedicated to developing a global network of liberal intellectuals, having potential as opinion-leaders, in opposition to the perceived threat of world war. It remained in active existence subsequent to the war, though its funding source dried up after the 1929 crash. It was taken over by French public funding sources, and remains in existence as a museum and library.

3.3 Again according to Peatling, no historian has yet attempted a proper analysis of Fisher's role in this legislation, although S. Lawlor's Britain and Ireland, 1914-1923 (Dublin, 1983) is quite perceptive.

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