were available. On 6 October, the Irish bishops had privately endorsed a public appeal from Cardinal Vaughan to Redmond to continue his support for the bill in Parliament; an action prevented by the party decision to withdraw. Redmond, mandated to explain their reasons confidentially to the bishops, wrote to them that, while the party was ‘deeply sensible’ of the burdens on their Catholic countrymen in Britain, still heavier burdens were placed on the Catholics of Ireland by Government policies affecting ‘the very existence of our people in their own country’.86 It was an old discomfort for Irish Catholic nationalists to be caught between the demands of English Catholics, mostly Tory and anti-Home Rule, and those of Nonconformists opposed to rule by bishops of all hues but sympathetic to Home Rule.87
Redmond returned to London from New York on 9 November, almost two weeks after the party’s withdrawal to Ireland, to hear of attacks by Healyites and the Independent for its desertion of the bill, and calls for its immediate return to Westminster. Addressing a reception committee at Kingstown ten days later, he warned against a conspiracy by ‘certain men’ acting under the guise of safeguarding Catholic education in England, who had never shown their faces when the party had plodded through the lobby for weeks in support of the bill, but who now saw a chance ‘to come out of their lairs’ to attack the unity of the party. The party’s absence from Parliament could not now influence the bill’s enactment, since it had passed the Commons with huge majorities and was now in the Lords.88 Redmond’s speech stirred the Catholic bishops, silent until now, to open dissent and, on 25 November, the press carried a letter from Archbishop Walsh of Dublin calling the party’s abstention from the Education Bill debates wrong and its consequences bad. The Freeman, until then fully behind Redmond’s stance, began to wobble, writing of the ‘regrettable’ difference of opinion.89 O’Brien wrote, with characteristic overstatement, to Redmond:
His Grace’s performance is characteristic. Brayden’s [Freeman editor] feebleness is much worse. I daresay we will have a cannonade of similar clerical pronouncements with probably a few desertions by the weaker men… These men’s conduct at a moment like this in the fate of Ireland is one of the most horrible crimes in history….90
Redmond expected the storm to blow over, and cautioned O’Brien not to add fuel to the flames: ‘The party is quite sound. There are not three men who needed to be feared to turn tail tho’ no doubt many men here have got a fright.’ However, the row would give a ‘new lease’ to the increasingly Healyite Independent, and:
… we must now face a fresh campaign of abuse and blackguardism – and we cannot rely on the Freeman… I wish you had possession of the Independent. It is not safe for the movement to have to rely solely on the Freeman.91
Over the following days, the Freeman pressed for a change of stance, alleging that the bill was no longer safe without Irish votes, and publishing reports of opposition to the party’s policy at meetings of elected local bodies.92 On 29 November, having received an urgent telegram from a group of Donegal priests representing their bishop, Redmond immediately wired O’Brien that he feared ‘hostile action unless some nominal concession such as promising to return if Lords seriously injured bill’.93 The bishop in question was Patrick O’Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe, one of the leading intellects in the Catholic Hierarchy and a trustee of the party’s parliamentary fund. Such a powerful supporter could not be ignored. That day, Redmond publicly notified all party MPs that their action had been misunderstood by the bishops, ‘who, of course, on a question of this kind, have a special right to have their views listened to with the deepest respect’. In the autumn session, they would have swelled huge Government majorities needlessly; however, the bill might yet have been damaged, or improved, in the House of Lords, and ‘the presence of the Irish Members in the House of Commons, when the measure returns to that Assembly, may be of real importance’. Accordingly, ‘and in deference to the strong views expressed by the Irish Hierarchy’, he requested members to be ready to come to London if called on.94 Redmond confided to O’Brien his frustration at his inability to resist clerical power. Writing the letter was ‘a choice of evils’:
Any appearance of backing down must of course injure the prestige of the party – that I am quite conscious of. On the other hand, I am convinced Dr O’Donnell’s withdrawal would mean the immediate breakup of the movement here and abroad – the end of our Funds – and a split in the party at once. My letters and wires indicate all this…. P.S. I feel greatly disheartened. Our people are not able to stand up against the Church and the Church always, in every critical moment, has gone wrong. In ’52, in ’67, in Parnell’s crisis and now! – not to go further back.95
In mid-December, the contingency foreseen by Redmond materialized when the Commons considered a Lords amendment to put the cost of repairs to denominational schools on the rates, an improvement of particular benefit to the Irish Catholic schools in Britain that made it imperative for Redmond to issue a whip. Fifty-seven MPs rallied to Redmond’s call on 16 December, carrying the amendment by a majority of thirty-eight. The following day, they helped defeat, by a twenty-two-vote majority, a Nonconformist-backed attempt to weaken the rights of bishops in disputes over religious teaching.96 The Liberal Daily News, a long-time advocate of both secularism and Home Rule, lamented: ‘Mr Redmond’s tactics have answered magnificently as a demonstration of the power of organized Irish democracy… its crucial influence on our politics was never more powerfully illustrated’.97
Redmond’s deft handling ensured that the Education Bill episode was a threatened rather than an actual crisis for the party, yet its elements and actors foreshadowed the pattern of future crises: powerful former members now acting against it; two newspapers, one hostile, the other a sometimes unreliable ally and the interference of turbulent clerics appealing to the nationalist electorate over the heads of their elected representatives, seeking to bend the latter to their will.
VI
Parliamentary work was only one part of the party’s strategy to advance the land reform issue; the other was the promotion of vigorous agitation all over the country, which, Redmond stated in a letter to his MPs published in the press in late August 1901, was ‘a duty quite as important and imperative as attendance at Westminster’.98 Already by that date, with 100,000 members in 1,000 branches, the UIL had surpassed in size the Land League and National League.99 A programme of public League meetings was published, and Redmond led with a visit to O’Brien’s heartland of Westport on 1 September. The agitation, he said at Lismore in September, should be ‘of so strong, so intense, and so menacing a character that the landlords who are holding out against us and the Government will be forced… to come in and deal seriously with this matter… If you are in earnest, make this winter the last winter of Irish landlordism (cheers).’ However, any form of violence or outrage was ‘foreign to our programme and injurious to our cause’.100 In reality, ‘agitation’ skirted the borders of illegality with its boycotts and intimidation of people deemed obnoxious to the UIL – those who took evicted farms or grazing lands wanted for subdivision. Among those who showed greatest gusto was Willie, who gave his brother’s lofty words a populist gloss by calling