great unknown boon’.117 Healy had justified his own First Reading vote on exactly the same grounds, but there was substance in his charge of a failure of leadership, as he told the Irish Independent:
To have allowed it to be brought in was a disaster… to summon a Convention to deal with this wretched business is an abdication by those claiming to be National leaders of the exercise of ordinary judgment and foresight, and an attempt to throw responsibility on others less acquainted with the play of political forces in England and its Parliament.118
Redmond’s action held the party together, and secured the withdrawal of the bill on 3 June. The unionist press hailed the latter. The Liberal press and politicians were critical of the Irish leadership’s failure to educate its public on a measure of administrative reform, or felt it had been ‘got at’ by the priests, while more radical Liberals blamed the debacle on the overcautious safeguards for the minority built into the bill at the behest of the Liberal Imperialists in Cabinet.119 Redmond told Dillon of his sense that neither Birrell nor Campbell Bannerman had had any belief in the bill:
… and I think what has happened will strengthen their hands in the Cabinet against the Roseberyites… I am urging the Government very strongly to go on at once with their other Irish legislation.120
The damage to Redmond’s position lay in the impression – fostered by both unionist and nationalist critics – that he had secretly favoured the bill but had been forced by an angry public to do a last-minute about-turn. At the very least, the disparity between his initial non-committal reception of it and his unequivocal stance at the Convention left him looking indecisive.121 (An anecdote in Margaret Leamy’s memoirs raises an intriguing possibility regarding his private attitude. Staying with the Redmonds at Leeson Park at that time, she heard him say ‘My idea is, take it – at least it gives us a bill with a united Ireland’; after the Mansion House meeting he came home ‘crestfallen and disheartened at the opportunity they had within their grasp and were throwing away’).122
The harm done might have been reduced had the party’s MPs, at least, been taken into the leadership’s confidence as to what the bill was and was not. The episode showed up the drawbacks of the party’s consultative mechanisms, with all major decisions increasingly taken by the quadrumvirate of Redmond, Dillon, O’Connor and Devlin. Moreover, while Dillon’s instinct was to be less critical of Liberal than of Tory legislation, popular expectations were always higher with the Liberals in power. Paradoxically, a more modest Tory measure similar to Bryce’s early drafts might have been easier to ‘sell’ on its merits as a measure of local government reform. As it was, a council with more members than the entire Irish representation at Westminster, sitting merely to oversee administration and lacking legislative powers, was bound to focus attention on what was withheld rather than on what was granted.
Was Redmond’s conduct of the affair between 7 and 21 May the ‘astute handling of a very difficult situation’ of Denis Gwynn’s description, or the ‘maladroit handling… underlining his shortcomings as leader’ of A.C. Hepburn’s account? The second judgment must be taken as closer to the truth, with the proviso that this particular die had been cast long before 7 May. The crisis had its source at the breakfast with Campbell Bannerman eighteen months earlier, and the acceptance by Redmond and Dillon of the ‘instalment’ concept. For many nationalists, Home Rule itself represented a compromise; to have it thus further diluted was too much to accept. Redmond failed to register the new spirit of scepticism, induced by the cultural nationalist movement and the wide circulation of Griffith’s book, which greeted any concession from any British Government. His temperamental reluctance, mentioned by both Gwynns, to discuss political matters outside of formal settings – a trait that would now be described as a failure to ‘network’ – and that strange indifference to his own reputation that would surface again at later times of crisis, were at least partly to blame.123
The YIBs resolved that henceforth the party should refuse to consider any proposal short of Home Rule. For more radical nationalists, the debacle was confirmation of the bankruptcy of Irish Party attendance at Westminster. Griffith’s Sinn Féin (the successor to United Irishman) pilloried Redmond as having lost all authority, and drew an ideological conclusion:
We were convinced the Devolution bill would be worthless… For the last intelligent man who lingered in the hope of achievement for Ireland through Parliamentarianism, Mr Birrell has rung down the curtain.124
Popular disappointment was reflected in the party’s Irish fund-raising. Contributions to the parliamentary and national fund for the year would total a mere £7,000, only half the out-turn of £14,000 for 1906 and the lowest figure since Redmond’s election as leader.125
For Sir Antony MacDonnell, the episode marked the end, for the time being, of his influence in Irish affairs. Even after his demotion by Walter Long to the status of a normal under-secretary, he had continued to act as though a Cabinet minister in his own right. The party had come to see in him as great a threat as the Ulster Unionists had seen him to be with regard to the Union in 1904. As the only one of the protagonists who believed in the intrinsic merits of the Council Bill, he now tendered his resignation to Birrell, but withdrew it when he heard that the Irish Party was about to start a campaign against him in the House. Birrell remained ‘quite determined’ to get rid of him:
He [Birrell] is extremely bitter against him and attributes the failure of the bill entirely to him and Bryce. He does not seem at all bitter about our action…I am satisfied Sir A will speedily disappear. B said he had ‘more than enough of MacDonnellism and would not swallow any more’.126
VI
The May events had wider repercussions in the party, in Parliament and in Ireland. Moving quickly to re-establish his authority, Redmond convened a party meeting at Westminster on 11 June and issued a statement that called the Convention decision ‘an event of the first magnitude’ that showed that the people would reject any measure calculated to undermine the National movement, and criticized the Government for refusing to be guided by the Irish representatives. For British friends of Irish liberty, the lesson was ‘the folly of the policy of minimizing measures’. For nationalists, the decision was ‘a fresh and vigorous call to arms… with the object of forcing the Irish question to the forefront of the politics of the hour’.127 An opportunity to underline the party’s independence presented itself in the Jarrow by-election in July, when Irish voters were urged to vote for the independent Home Rule candidate, Alderman O’Hanlon, rather than for the Liberal or the Labour candidate. Speaking to an audience of working men in this most Irish of British constituencies, Redmond reminded them of his party’s record, which entitled him to ask for their confidence.128 The ‘dramatic and sensational effect upon the cause of Home Rule’ he hoped for did not materialize, the Labour candidate being victorious and O’Hanlon coming last.129
Such rallying calls and flourishes of independence did not still the rumbles of revolt in the party. At the Directory meeting on 20 June, the Gaelic-speaking MP for Kerry West, Thomas O’Donnell, indicating the penetration of Sinn Féin ideas into the party, moved that after the ‘betrayal of Irish hopes’ the party should ‘withdraw from an assembly which neither legally nor morally has a right to make laws for Ireland’, and should initiate at home a campaign of ‘constructive work, combined with open and defiant hostility to all English interference in our internal affairs’. Four MPs supported him, one of them the member for North Leitrim, C.J. Dolan. Another amendment from O’Donnell, to have O’Brien, Healy and their followers invited into the party, received support from eight of those present, including two other MPs.130 Two days later, Dolan announced his resignation from the party while stating that he would retain his seat. James O’Mara, MP for South Kilkenny, then resigned his membership and his seat, complaining that the Irish vote had been given to the Liberals in 1906 without a definite bargain.
On 20 July, Sir Thomas Grattan Esmonde, MP for North Wexford, resigned as Chief Whip of the party, later announcing that he would join the Sinn Féin group without giving up his seat.131 Called upon to resign in fulfilment of his pledge, he announced in mid-August his intention to stay in the party, on the condition that O’Brien and Healy were invited to rejoin.132 Responding on 14 August to an invitation from Wexford Corporation to be conferred with the Freedom of the Borough,