The English people, either collectively or individually, do not want to give Ireland freedom. Some of them are willing to concede the name of freedom whilst reserving its machinery, but they are few. Most of them do not understand the Irish question, which is an international one, as being a dispute between two Sovereign Nations, and not an Imperial or Domestic one, and none of them want to understand it.
Similarly with English political parties. Neither the Liberal Party nor the Tory Party desires to give Ireland freedom, and if they have coquetted with various schemes for extending local government, they have only done so because it was necessary, owing to the Irish vote in the English constituencies or in Parliament, to their retention in office, or because the situation in Ireland necessitated some kind of sop to the sentiment there, and they have taken good care that these coquettings came to nothing. In Mr. Gladstone’s case he could coquet with Home Rule with a perfectly easy mind, because he knew that no Home Rule Bill introduced by a Liberal Government would ever pass the House of Lords. So that he had not totake any special measures to ensure that the Bill did not pass; all he had to do was to let events take their normal course, and blame the House of Lords. How a man like Parnell could have believed that a Liberal Government, even if it wanted to pass a Home Rule Bill, could do so has always astonished me.
When Mr. Asquith, in order to ensure the passing of advanced Radical legislation, upon the passing of which the continued existence of his Party depended, weakened the House of Lords, the situation changed, and it became necessary to seek some new method of insuring that the Bill should not pass into law, at any rate in any form which would be of the least benefit to Ireland. And that method was provided, possibly at the instance of both parties in England acting together for the benefit of England, and certainly with the full connivance of the Liberal Government, by Sir Edward Carson and his friends in the organisation of the Ulster Volunteers. Mr. Redmond was assured, while the Volunteers were being formed, that the Government would not permit any threats to influence them with regard to the Bill, and then at the last moment they took refuge behind the Ulster Volunteers and regretted that they could give Ireland Home Rule only by Partition. And Partition it would have been were it not for the Irish Volunteers.
The idea of a Volunteer force under Irish control was not a new thing in Ireland. Such a force had made history in the years 1779 to 1782, and there has probably been no generation of Nationalists since which has not at some time or other gone into the possibility of the establishment of a Volunteer force. Andlong before the Ulster Volunteers were started, one of the things which Nationalists looked forward to as amongst the first to be done under any Irish government was the establishment of a Volunteer force, whether that power came with the Bill or not. But the objection that had always met any schemes for the establishment of Volunteers, or for any public arming or drilling, was the certainty that, whatever the law on the subject might be, no Irish Volunteer force or analogous body would be permitted by England to come into being. But with the establishment and arming of the Ulster Volunteers, with the connivance of England, it dawned upon many people that there was a sporting chance that, in order to keep up the semblance of impartiality, England would find herself unable to suppress an Irish Volunteer force, unless at any rate the Ulster force were at the same time suppressed. And accordingly the Irish Volunteers were established.
To Sir Edward Carson let the greater praise belong.
The men who established the Irish Volunteers were drawn from several sources. There were some Fenians, some Sinn Feiners, some Parliamentarians, and some who had not hitherto been identified at all with politics. They did not establish the Volunteers as a counterblast to the Ulster Volunteers, or with any idea of either fighting or overawing Ulster. No member of the Irish Volunteers would ever have fired a shot against an Ulster Volunteer for refusing to acknowledge an Act of the English Parliament, even though that Act were a Home Rule Act. Nor were they established to help Mr. Redmond to achieveHome Rule. They had a vision which went a long way beyond Home Rule. They were established because half-a-dozen Irishmen had the inspiration at about the same time that here was a God-given opportunity of providing Ireland with an armed Volunteer force, which should do as much for Ireland to-day as the Irish Volunteers of 1779-1782 had done for the Ascendancy Parliament. These men were, as the “Freeman’s Journal” put it, “nobodies,” but their work has endured.
The Irish Parliamentary Party did not want an Irish Volunteer movement, not even under their own control. They had degenerated into such ineffective and incapable politicians that they had no glimmering of the way in which they were being fooled, and they were still convinced that speech-making in the House of Commons was the only way to help the Home Rule Bill. And when, at the outset, they and their chief supporters were invited to identify themselves with the movement, in which they would of course have a majority, they peremptorily refused. They believed then that the movement, without their sanction, would not come to anything.
The Government evidently thought so, too, for it allowed the movement to develop, although, in order to be on the safe side, it prohibited the importation into Ireland of arms and ammunition a week after the formation of the first corps. But it soon became evident that the movement was going to be a force to be reckoned with, as parish after parish fell into line, and the Party began to be concerned for their power. In public they made no pronouncement as a Partyagainst the Volunteer movement, but in private they did their best against it, to no purpose. Then there were some open attacks, by Mr. Hazleton and Mr. Lundon (I think), and still the Volunteers grew. Then a secret order was issued to the A.O.H. Branches to go into the Volunteers and get control of them, but they were refused affiliation as Branches and their members had to come in as individuals, and were posted haphazard to the various companies, thus breaking up their solidarity.
The Parliamentary Party were now seriously alarmed about the Volunteer movement. It continued to grow, and its recruits included not alone men who had never been members of the U.I.L. or A.O.H., but men who were actually members of these organisations and who now gave their first allegiance to the Volunteers. Public opinion had swung over to the Volunteers, and the Party were faced with practical extinction unless they could in some way manage to “get in” on the Volunteer Executive. And therefore a new move was tried. Mr. Redmond opened up secret negotiations with the Volunteers, or rather with Eoin MacNeill, and made various demands for the representation of the Parliamentary Party on the Volunteer Executive. While these negotiations were still in progress, the Press machine and the “public men” machine were set going all over the country, and from all quarters the Party supporters began to bombard the public with statements to the effect that Volunteering was quite the right thing, but that the men in control were unknown and inexperienced men, and that the movement would be safer and more stable, and,it was whispered, more effective, in the hands of the “elected representatives” of the people. After this had gone on for some little time, Mr. Redmond suddenly delivered an ultimatum to the Volunteer Committee to accept a nomination of 25 representatives from him or else he would instantly split the Volunteers. This nomination would give him a controlling majority on the Volunteer Executive, but it was accepted as the lesser of two evils.
Mr. Redmond’s objects in securing control were three: first, to prevent any further development of the movement on lines which constituted a menace to his own power; second, to prevent the arming of the movement and confine it to a paper Volunteer movement with the sole purpose of establishing a counterpoise to the Ulster Volunteers; and, third, to ensure that any arms which were obtained should be placed with safe men—men, that is, who would place the Irish Parliamentary Party first and the Volunteers second. But in none of these objects was he successful. The Volunteer movement continued to grow, and continued to grow on its own lines, and its own lines naturally led it away from the whole atmosphere and philosophy on which the Parliamentary Party depend: and arms were got in and were placed in the hands of men whose first allegiance was to Ireland and not to Mr. Redmond; for in ability, even the ability to run committees and to organise, Mr. Redmond’s nominees were handsomely outweighted by the original members.
Then came the incidents connected with the gun-running at Howth, to set all Ireland aflame. In theweek which followed it the whole of Nationalist Ireland swerved into the Volunteer ranks, in thousands in the cities, and in hundreds in the country places, and “respectable men, with a stake in the country” offered motor cars, yachts, transit contrivances of all kinds, for Volunteer purposes. Ireland stirred and raised itself, as if out of a long sleep, as if the touch of the steel at Clontarf, the feel of the rifle in the hands of the Volunteers after Howth and Kilcool, had roused her, had brought back to her some of the old outlook. And it was a Volunteer force of perhaps 250,000 men, not armed to any extent, and not well drilled, but the best raw material in the world, that, with the reverberation of the Scottish Borderers’ volley at Bachelor’s Walk not yet banished from their ears, heard suddenly the rumble of the guns of the war. Mr. Redmond, however, thought otherwise.
Had there been no war, the split in the Volunteer movement might have been postponed for some time, might even have been postponed indefinitely, if other events had taken a favourable turn; but the altered situation caused by the war very soon upset the patched-up peace. When Mr. Redmond abrogated the Irish claim, on behalf of his Party and of all the influence he could control in Ireland, the Volunteer Committee trembled but it did not erupt; but when at Woodenbridge he also pledged the Volunteers to a similar abrogation, the Volunteer Committee erupted violently, and the original members expelled Mr. Redmond’s nominees and resumed control. Mr. Redmond immediately formed an Executive of his own, and the Volunteer split was an accomplishedfact: Mr. Redmond had his paper Organisation, but he had not succeeded in destroying the real Organisation, though he had badly hampered it. He had diverted the Irish Volunteers from being a movement representative of the whole of Nationalist Ireland, with the highest ideals and the broadest national principles, into a movement with the original ideals and principles, but representative now only of a minority of the people and, consequently, no longer commanding the same general respect. The after history of the Irish National Volunteers, as Mr. Redmond’s organisation was called, is the history of a make-believe, of a paper Volunteer force, whose only public appearance was one which will be for all time execrated by the people of Ireland.
The promoters of the Volunteer movement had not contemplated insurrection, nor had they identified themselves with any extreme or physical force policy. They were not committed to Separation, to Sinn Fein, or to Parliamentarianism, but to the defence of Irish rights, and to the obtaining of arms and ammunition for that purpose. Each of them had his own idea of what exactly the movement stood for, as had the rank and file, but all were content to sink differences and subscribe to the simple formula of defending Irish rights, which embraced them all and embraced all their policies. Upon that basis they carried Ireland with them, united, despite political machines and jealousies, for the first time for generations.
The outbreak of war however changed that, and made it imperative on every section to reconsider the position, and to revise policy. The Parliamentarians and the Fenians were the first to make up their minds, the one to work for an insurrection and the other not alone to suspend Ireland’s claims but actively to support England. The resultant split left Mr. Redmond with an imposing organisation, on paper, but left only one genuine body of Nationalist Volunteers in Ireland—the original Irish Volunteers. But its membership wasnow reduced to the extreme men—using the term to denote every school of Nationalist thought which went beyond Parliamentarianism. And that inevitably ensured the controlling influence to the Fenians, the only men who were out with a definite policy. The campaign which, immediately after the expulsion of Mr. Redmond and his followers, was carried on against the Volunteers by the united forces of the Government and of the Parliamentary Party hardened them and inclined the whole body towards the policy on which the Fenians were building, and although there were to the end two sections in the Volunteers, one which wanted an insurrection and one which only contemplated it in the event of Partition or Conscription and desired to keep the organisation intact with a view to its weight being used in any post-bellum attempt at settlement, yet the temper of the whole body was such that the Fenian element dominated it for all practical purposes. The self-denying ordinance under which they had at the beginning refrained from being prominently identified with the movement had no further justification, and they controlled the Executive, as representing the majority opinion of the organisation. The result we know.
When the Volunteers expelled Mr. Redmond’s nominees it was considered good tactics by the Parliamentarian press to dub the original Irish Volunteers the “Sinn Fein” Volunteers, the Party having judged that Sinn Fein as a policy was beyond the possibility of resurrection: and in course of time the name “Sinn Feiner” came to be used where up to that time “Factionist” had been the favourite term. When theinsurrection occurred it was promptly labelled a “Sinn Fein” insurrection, and the papers were full of stories about the “Sinn Fein” colours, stamps, commandoes, and desperadoes. All this with the object of discrediting the insurrection, the name “Sinn Fein” not being in good odour in the country. Thus Sinn Fein, from being politics, and discredited politics, suddenly became history. And at the same time the Unionists made their contribution to its rehabilitation.
The “Irish Times” is the organ of the governing classes in Ireland and the organ in Ireland of the Unionist Party of England. On the 1st May, 1916, its first appearance after the insurrection, it wrote: “All the elements of disaffection have shown their hand. The State has struck, but its work is not yet finished. The surgeon’s knife has been put to the corruption in the body of Ireland, and its course must not be stayed until the whole malignant growth has been removed. In the verdict of history weakness to-day would be even more criminal than the indifference of the last few months. Sedition must be rooted out of Ireland once for all. The rapine and bloodshed of the past week must be finished with a severity which will make any repetition of them impossible for many generations to come.” How strangely fatuous that reads now! And on May 2 the Dublin correspondent of “The Times,” who is the editor of the “Irish Times,” wrote: “There are a few persons, not now prisoners of the law, about whose fate the public is beginning to be curious. They are men who until the moment of the insurrection were closely identified with the extreme propaganda of Sinn Fein, whoencouraged the movement, made violent speeches, wrote violently in newspapers, but at the last moment did not come out with uniforms and guns. At least half a dozen such men are notorious.” The men referred to were Mr. Arthur Griffith and other leaders of the old Sinn Fein Movement. These counsels of the “Irish Times” and of the London “Times” were adopted by the Government, the first executions taking place on May 3rd, and being followed by the arrest and deportation of everybody who had ever been connected either with the Volunteers or the old Sinn Fein Movement, so that many moribund branches of Sinn Fein found themselves together again—in Richmond Barracks, or in a deportation prison.
Now as a matter of actual fact Sinn Fein had nothing to do with the insurrection, which was, as even the Hardinge Commission evidence shows, a Fenian insurrection. Of the seven men who signed the republican proclamation only one was in any sense a Sinn Feiner—Sean Mac Diarmada—and most of the others would have objected very strongly to being identified with Sinn Fein. Of the Sinn Fein leaders proper, most were not out in the insurrection at all, nor were they, apparently, in the counsels of the men who directed it. Facts, however, stand no chance in modern times against journalism, and the Volunteers and the Insurrection were duly labelled “Sinn Fein”; and when public opinion swung over and that opinion coalesced in a new and formidable movement, the name which had been known as a reproach was taken up as a battle-cry, while the policy of deporting the old Sinn Fein leaders merely rehabilitated them in thepublic eye for their failure to be “out,” and gave them the moulding of the policy of the new movement. It, in fact, provided what was an emotional impulse with a policy ready-made and adaptable to the new conditions, a policy moreover which had already brains behind it.
The policy of Sinn Fein to-day is the old Sinn Fein policy, outlined in Chapter IV, with two alterations. In the first place it is based frankly on separation, with no mention of the Constitution of 1782; and in the second place its immediate objective is the Peace Conference. Mr. Griffith believes intensely, and he has carried the movement with him, that it is possible to get the case of Ireland taken out of England’s hands altogether as an international question. But whether that view be correct or not is immaterial, for Sinn Fein, in working for the Peace Conference, does not drop any portion of its constructive policy, and its main reliance is upon the Sinn Fein policy proper. The Peace Conference is, as it were, a temporary weapon forged by circumstances, which will be available, if at all, during a limited period, and which it would be folly to neglect; but the Sinn Fein policy is the permanent weapon and the main reliance of the movement.
Sinn Fein represents at present a combination of forces. It represents the old Sinn Fein Movement, Fenianism, and the whole public opinion which has swung round from the Parliamentarian policy to the policy of no compromise. There are many sections in it, separated on minor points but agreed on the main point, that Ireland must work out her own salvation,and that so long as she concentrates within herself she is impregnable. It represents the culmination of the cumulative efforts of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League, the Sinn Fein Movement of 1905, and the Irish Volunteers. These were all manifestations of the national perception of loss of the essentials of nationality, and cumulatively they represent the evolution of a national philosophy rather than a political portent.
More than a year ago Mr. Lloyd George, speaking at Westminster and referring to Sinn Fein, said: “The point is that there is a demand for sovereign independence for Ireland. It has never been claimed by my honourable friends bellow the gangway. They have always sincerely accepted the complete supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and membership of the British Empire.” It is precisely because the Irish people as a whole have come to realise that that they have swung over to Sinn Fein. The whole strength of the Parliamentarian Movement lay in the Separatist spirit, and its continued hold on the country depended upon its success in retaining the confidence of the country that it stood, ultimately, for independence. There has never been in Ireland a constitutional, or quasi-constitutional, movement which was not founded in Fenianism, impregnated with Fenianism, and propagated with Fenianism, save the movement under Mr. Butt and Mr. Shaw, which never held the Irish people. If the Parliamentarian speeches are examined, they will be found until quite recently to be full of Tone, and Emmet, and Fitzgerald, appeals not to any material or “reasonable” or “practical” spirit,but to national tradition. If their speeches in Westminster were on the whole more moderate than their speeches at home, allowance was always made for the fact that they were only playing a game of tactics. And so long as their home voice drowned their Westminster voice they retained the trust of the people. But when events convinced the people that their Westminster voice had finally and definitely conquered the home voice, when they realised that what they had taken for a Nationalist in disguise was really an Imperialist, then they dropped the Parliamentarians as they will always drop any Party which compromises the fundamental right of the Irish Nation to independence.
What really happened when the mass of the Irish people swung over to Sinn Fein was not that from being constitutional they suddenly became revolutionary, but that the historic Irish Nation shook itself clear of the after effects of the eighteenth century and ousted the conception of an Ireland deriving its constitutional authority from English decrees. There have been in Ireland two traditions: one, that of the ancient historic Irish Nation, with its separate language, culture, history, and mentality, and the other, dating from the creation in the eighteenth century of an artificial State based upon the subjection of the historic Irish Nation, having its origin in the English invasion of Ireland, deriving its authority from the decrees of English kings, and accepting the status of an English colony, with no rights not subject to withdrawal by the English Parliament. Events forced the resurgent Irish Nation unconsciously to base itselfafter 1829 on the artificial garrison tradition, which weakened its own separate tradition and would eventually have eliminated it altogether. But when in 1893 it rediscovered its separate language it set up a mental revolution which grew until it had involved every national activity in Ireland and which finally re-awakened the historic Irish Nation and overthrew the garrison tradition.
Whatever, therefore, may happen to Sinn Fein as a movement, the future is with the spirit of it, with the historic Irish Nation of which it is the expression. For the first time since Hugh O’Neill signed the Treaty of Mellifont that Nation has become passionately and definitely articulate. And not all the world can put the garrison tradition into the saddle again.