Gailey on 'Kindness'

Century of Endeavour

Ireland and the Death of Kindness

Andrew Gailey

Cork University Press, 1987

I had always been aware that the political background of the co-operative movement in Ireland had been somehow decoupled from the national independence movement, and that Plunkett was somewhat of an outsider, due to his Unionist political background. I encountered Owen Dudley Edwards in a context where he was in the leading support group of the Carleton Summer School in August 2007, which Janice and I attended. We got discussing Plunkett and the 'killing Home Rule with kindness' epoch, and he put me on to Gailey's book. What follows is not a 'review' but a sequence of snapshots culled from it, which I hope may lead to some sort of concluding overview, and suggest some further trails to follow.

Background

Ulster Unionism was led by landed gentry, but included many Protestant working people among its supporters, who tended to look favourably on the Land League, despite a tendency to look down on the south from a sense of superiority. The scene in 1885-6 '...was very much a coalition of opposites, enticing under the anti-Home Rule banner numerous mutualy antagonistic groups. In the countryside where the land war of the 1880s revaged the properties and deflated the over-riding confidence of the ascendancy, many Ulster landlords were horrified to find that in the early stages their protestant tenants were sympathetic to the "communistic" demands of the nationalist Land League. So also, to a degree, was the presbyterian church..'(p12).

On p17ff we have an assessment of Plunkett as being primarily motivated by the need for a politically educated electorate to take advantage of the electoral reforms of the 1870 and 80s, fit to avoid being led astray by populist demagogues. He saw the agricultural co-operatives as the key to this political education. Self-help through helping others would lead to public-spirited awareness of the communal good and respect for good leadership. Gailey regards Plunkett as being a promoter of '..a highly conservative social creed against the modern evils of democracy and socialism... establishing a "rural civilisation in Ireland"...'. This was all expected to happen within a 'unionist economic strategy'.

The Recess Committee

The Parnellite Home Rule aspiration had vanished when the Tories returned to office under Salisbury in 1895. Arthur Balfour had been Chief Secretary from 1887 to 1891 and his brother Gerald was from 1895 to 1990; between them they introduced the Congested Districts Board, reformed local government with the 1898 Act and initiated various light railway schemes in the west; the latter also created the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI), for which Plunkett had lobbied on behalf of the co-operative movement. He was succeeded by George Wyndham from 1900 to 1905, under whom the 1903 Land Act confirmed and finalised the trend into 'peasant proprietary'. This all added up to what amounted to a period of 'constructive Unionism'.

Plunkett, when in 1895 he tried to set up 'a recess committee of all political persuasions to work out a common programme for Irish re-development', was blocked by the anti-Parnellite faction on the grounds that this would be 'killing home rule by kindness'. He tended to see the idea of a 'recess committee' of all Irish-based Westminster politicians as a means of generating ideas for legislation relating to Ireland, and thus a sort of alternative to Home Rule. He tended to see the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) as an instrument of this process of undermining Home Rule by positive political development work within the Union. He described the IAOS to Lord Cadogan, the lord lieutenant, as 'a most valuable agent of government' against the agitators(p56).

The result of the Recess Report was a DATI linked in to local councils (via County Committees etc, as have survived to this day) which were '..not radical ventures into democracy but a highly conservative attempt to reconcile Irishmen to the responsibilities of government... to resurrect the creed of individual initiative..'(p61). Thus the local government reform was basically Balfour, with a modest Plunkett flavour. In this context however Balfour found himself increasingly depending on '...Plunkett and his IAOS lieutenants R A Anderson, T P Gill and Fr Finlay, as well as on Ulster liberal unionists Thomas Sinclair and Thomas Andrews'(p74). These channels of influence led Cadogan to describe Plunkett as the 'Irish leader' to whom he confided cabinet secrets, rather than the political leaders John Dillon and the Duke of Abercorn(p75). This led to a decided impression in Dublin Castle that the Recess Committee was 'in office', and much argument between Plunkett, Balfour, Cadogan and others about the nature and powers of the 'popular element' in the DATI links with local government. The experience of the 'kindness' epoch undoubtedly was that Irish government issues could not be dealt with effectively and with understanding by a London cabinet(p89). The potential for the Recess Committee to evolve, in effect, into a recognised step towards Home Rule Government, was lurking in the wings.

Unionism, Finance and the Tory Government

The liberal unionist MP for Tyrone T W Russell was a junior minister in the Local Government Board and in that context developed a feel for how the Union left Irish government under-funded, to the embarassment of Balfour; there had even been murmurings of support for this position from Dunraven, who had been 'hobnobbing with the infamous Fenian John Daly', and references to the 'financial injustice that lost the American colonies' (p102ff). In this context the Recess Committee failed to find financial common ground across the political spectrum. An attempt by Gerald Balfour to set up a Board of Agriculture, at the behest of Plunkett, was blocked by failure of unionists and nationalists to agree on how it should be financed. The nationalist element, representing the small-town shopkeepers, saw the Bill as a means of steering funding towards Plunkett's dreaded IAOS (p125).

T W Russell in his 1900 book Ireland and the Empire welcomed the DATI and the local government reform, and attacked landlordism as the barrier to progress and a danger to the Union; the presbyterian tenant farmers were supported in their demand for compulsory purchase by the Prebyterian General Assembly (p144). Unionist unity in the North was under threat.

The Boer War introduced a new wave of problems for the Tory government and for the Recess process; Plunkett was appalled at the Irish support for the Boers; Maude Gonne he labelled 'Miss Gone-mad' (p132). The Irish Party re-united under Redmond; Plunkett who by now was heading the DATI however nodded in the direction of nationalist opinion by recruiting TP Gill to the secretaryship; the latter was a nationalist MP and an ex-Land Leaguer. This prompted the Kildare St Club lobby to see to it that Plunkett was opposed in the next election, so that with the split vote Plunkett's seat was lost to the nationalists (pp 133, 157). Thus it would seem that under the influence of the changing Irish situation, Plunkett was effectively evolving in the direction of a Home Rule supporting position, despite his nominal unionism.

Wyndham succeeded Gerald Balfour in 1900; he was sympathetic to Catholicism and took an interest in the literary revival. He promoted the land reforms of 1901-02 as a means of pre-empting the more radical compulsory purchase movement led by Russell in the North (p171). Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Wyndham's cousin, played a part in the negotiations with the landlord lobby. The politics of the foundation of the National University of Ireland was going on in the background. Wyndham attempted to get the TCD Provostship for Mahaffy; in the end it went to Traill, who was a rigid Ulster Unionist. Plunkett in his 1904 book Ireland in the New Century showed that he was acutely aware of the conflict of interest between the Irish people and the Unionist leadership (p210). The book was 'a cry of panic, of powerlessness', with the DATI and the IAOS at loggerheads. His position as a Unionist government minister was in serious conflict with the implied policy criticisms in the book (p214).

The Unionist environment was fractionating; on the one hand we had Dunraven and his supporters seeking to come to terms with Home Rule, and on the other we had Russell and his compulsory purchase movement of presbyterian tenants aspiring to develop a populist all-Ireland unionism. Russell, in a conversation with Plunkett, identified the leadership problem in a Home Rule environment (p226). There was a sort of search going on for a new Parnell, to make Home Rule acceptable to unionists, paradoxically. On the fringe of this emerged the Independent Orange Order, seeking to assert populist working-class influence on the unionist leaderhip; a rally in Ballymoney in 1904 produced 10,000 Russellite supporters (p228). William Walker was active in Belfast against the Belfast corporation and the '...reactionary landlord party who call themselves unionists'. In 1905 however the Ulster Unionist Council was set up, with the Northern unionists seeking to distance themselves from southern unionist heresy, as exemplified by Dunraven. This was dominated by an executive nominated mainly by the Tory landlord unionist element, with the 3/4 of the General Council who were nominated by the Orange Lodges in effect disfranchised.

Transition to Home Rule

In 1902 Blunt suggested to Wyndham that his reforms were increasingly suggestive that he was at heart a Home Ruler (p235). In this context, TP Gill observed that 'the best Unionist policy is Home Rule'. In the end Wyndham resigned in March 1905, under the pressure of the conflict between London Tory government and his aspiration to introduce reforms relevant to the Irish situation. A factor in the situation was one MacDonnell who had a background in India; there was some complex relationship with the Younghusband expedition to Tibet in 1903. (I must admit to some bafflement regarding this episode!) On the whole by 1905 it was evident that the Tory attempt to develop constructive unionist policies in Ireland in support of the Union were in ruins, and the 'progressives, now discredited... slid quickly though not quietly towards political irrelevance..' (p290).

The political scene was dominated by a range of new socio-cultural organisations: the GAA, the Gaelic League, Sinn Fein, the IAOS and the Independent Orange Order. 'George Birmingam' (Canon Hannay of Westport) despaired at the possibility of an accepted central political leadership emerging (p297). He did however make moves in the direction of bringing together Sinn Fein and the IOO, in an attempt to recapture the 1790s (p307), with the aid of Lindsay Crawford; the Magheramore Manifesto in July 1905 embodied an emergent sense of united nationality, and 'Hannay was ecstatic' (p308). But narrow sectarianism re-asserted itself, and in the end Hannay was hounded out of his parish.

Concluding Situation in 1906

Overall the effect of the land reforms and the 'kindness' epoch of Tory rule produced a 'fiercely parochial and conservative society which would have little interest in social revolution' (p314). This ethos was subsequently conserved in the Free State environment. The IAOS and the shopkeepers were at loggerheads, though both groups shared a nationalist political outlook. The combination of Plunkett, Dunraven and T W Russell, sharing the middle ground, in the end however became reconciled to the Redmond-O'Brien wing of the nationalists, agreeing that confrontation was not the best way forward, though Dillon persisted in regarding the land issue as a nationalist weapon which had been blunted by the reforms (p316). The fruits of the Recess Report and the establishment of the DATI were positive achievements.

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