or worse’ brought forth a defiant assertion: ‘… here tonight I avow myself personally responsible for every single act of policy of that party for the last two years (applause).’ To the accusation of having joined with the ‘Orangemen’ to drive Wyndham from office, he retorted that they had not raised a finger against Wyndham:
… until we discovered that he was engaged in a deliberate plot to destroy the Irish Party, to create… a centre party in its place and to do so by means which some day or other, probably, will be made public, and which are not creditable either to him or to his Government….113
This previously unheard charge was echoed at Derry on 15 August by Dillon, who hinted darkly at ‘the intrigue of the autumn of 1904’.114 Redmond’s willingness to place such a conspiratorial spin on the devolution proposals welcomed (guardedly) by him as recently as March, marks possibly the low point of his political self-abasement for the sake of party unity. In an exchange of published letters in mid-July, Redmond hastened to assure O’Brien that he did not accuse him or any party members of involvement in the ‘plot’. Pressed by O’Brien for evidence of a plot, he declined further comment, prompting O’Brien to ridicule the whole allegation as ‘wholly imaginary… a cock and bull story’.115
Dillon continued to seek to prod a reluctant Redmond into confronting O’Brien. On 23 August, he wrote that he would ‘give a good deal of trouble during the autumn and winter… unless it is strongly dealt with pretty soon… I can assure you it would be a very great mistake to suppose that the O’Brien campaign can be treated as of no account.’ A week later, he urged: ‘If this campaign is… met and dealt with at the Directory and by you at a couple of big meetings soon after the Directory, it will collapse….’116
An attempt to heal the rift followed when the secretary of the Limerick Executive invited Redmond, Dillon, Davitt and O’Brien to meet together before the next National Convention. Redmond replied from Aughavanagh that he would ‘rejoice most heartily’ if such a conference were held.117 Dillon and Davitt were dismissive, the former urging Redmond to snuff out O’Brien’s movement in two forthcoming speeches by putting the issue of dissension clearly before the country and making no mention of a peace conference.118 Meanwhile, Captain Donelan, the party’s Chief Whip and MP for East Cork, told Redmond that his reply to the Limerick letter had been ‘highly praised’.119
O’Brien had suggested a new initiative in a speech at Watergrasshill on 30 July, an updated version of his call for a great national conference of all Irish groups agreed on ending landlordism, over-taxation and misgovernment. There was no reason, he said, why it should not include ‘Mr Sloan and the Orange democracy of the North, who have recently declared themselves to be Irishmen first of all’, the Irish Reform Association and ‘Mr T.W. Russell and his Presbyterian farmers, who represent a population of half a million’. But the rest of his invitation list – apart from the Gaelic League, the Town Tenants’ Association and the Land and Labour Association, there would be ‘Mr Redmond and his friends, and Mr Dillon and his friends, and Mr Healy and his friends’ – suggested that he had written off the Irish Party as a functioning unit.120
Redmond, at Doon, Co. Limerick, on 8 October, and Dillon, at Swinford a few days later, highlighted the issue of the party’s centrality in almost identical language. Reminding the people that every anti-nationalist newspaper in Britain was eagerly predicting the breakup of their movement due to internal dissension, Redmond asked them, in their assemblies and at the coming General Election, to answer one crucial question: ‘Have we, or have we not, the confidence of the Irish people behind us?’121 He would not say one harsh word about Lord Dunraven or Thomas Sloan and his Independent Orange Order:
… but I say, in God’s name, let them alone (hear, hear). Do not embarrass these men… by falling upon their necks and attempting to join hands with them….122
As attempts continued to follow up the Limerick initiative, still eliciting positive responses from Redmond and dismissals from Dillon, Redmond further dissected the O’Brien conference policy at Wexford on 3 November. Under it, he said, the Irish Party would be ‘… absolutely annihilated of all power and efficiency’. Could such a conference, he asked, discuss Home Rule?
We know… that a Convention [sic] such as that suggested could never be put together except upon the clear understanding that the question of Home Rule was to be excluded altogether from its consideration….123
Redmond’s navigation of the O’Brien difficulty had been rewarded by the party on two evenings following the mid-September National Directory meeting, when he was entertained at a complimentary banquet at the Gresham Hotel, followed the next day at the Mansion House by the presentation to him and Amy of a ‘beautiful and artistic solid silver centrepiece of purely Celtic design throughout’. Dillon, in proposing the toast, praised his success in leading the Irish Party to its present position in Parliament and looked back to 1900:
I was strongly opposed to the election of Mr Redmond; but seeing that I was in a minority, I did my best to make his election a unanimous one… I confess that what I most admire in Mr Redmond’s career is… the perseverance with which he has addressed himself to the task of thoroughly uniting the party and removing all the traces of the bitterness which had existed… [this is] largely due to Mr Redmond’s tact and perseverance and to his uniform and unvarying courtesy to every member of the party….124
Redmond, in reply, continued to hold out a hand to the ‘distinguished Irishman’ [O’Brien] who advocated a policy of his own outside their ranks and who alleged that they had none. Their first policy was to maintain the unity of the party, and this had been his ‘guiding star’ since the beginning of his chairmanship; it could not endure if they allowed themselves to be dragged back to the discussion of differences on ‘non-essentials’. Driving the message home in what O’Brien would call ‘words of immortal unwisdom’, he added:
I hold in the strongest possible way that it would be better for the cause of freedom for Ireland for the National Party to be united in an unwise or short-sighted policy rather than be divided with one section taking a far wiser course.125
Exhausted by the division of his energies between this issue, concerns over the intentions of the Liberal leaders at the coming election and a speaking tour in Ireland and Scotland, Redmond was recovering from a bout of illness when he answered further overtures from Donelan that if the National Convention voted confidence in the leadership:
… there are no limits I would not go to to induce O’Brien to return to the party short of consideration of anything which would hopelessly divide the party itself.126
VI
The early years of Redmond’s leadership coincided with the full flowering of the Irish cultural revival begun in the previous decade. The Gaelic League expanded at an impressive rate, from 120 branches in March 1900 to 860 branches with more than 20,000 members by late 1905. Its organ, An Claidheamh Soluis (‘The Sword of Light’), reached a peak circulation of over 3,000 in 1904.127