John Redmond. Dermot Meleady

the Party, and he is now appearing before the country as the champion of unity – always a popular cry… Before your speeches at Drumkeeran and Limerick… O’Brien and his followers were absolutely unable to get a meeting in Mayo or indeed in any part of Connaught. But now the idea has gone abroad that you are more or less in sympathy with this agitation… if this is allowed to continue, I fear the effect on the position of the Party will be disastrous….180

      Redmond refusing further meetings with O’Brien, the standoff continued into the new year.181 O’Brien and Healy responded positively, however, when the principles agreed before Christmas were published and endorsed by the Directory as the basis on which the dissidents might return to membership of a pledge-bound party. In turn, the party approved this declaration, Dillon proposing the readmission of all MPs who accepted the principles and signed the party pledge. On 18 January 1908, the Freeman announced ‘The Triumph of Unity’ and published friendly correspondence between O’Brien and Redmond.182 Privately, Redmond wrote to O’Brien: ‘I sincerely trust that we are now at the end of our quarrels which have been a great source of unhappiness to me all through.’183

      The agreement covered the O’Brienite MPs Augustine Roche, D.D. Sheehan and John O’Donnell. Esmonde announced a week later that he would rejoin the party in deference to the wishes of his friends, but had ‘no great hopes’ in the efficacy of parliamentary action.184 Dolan was a different matter. On 30 January, he finally declared his resignation and his intention to stand for Sinn Féin. The by-election was fixed for 21 February. The campaign, in reality an eight-month affair, lived up to the best traditions of violent Irish elections.185 Dolan’s support lay among the members of the North Leitrim UIL Executive who had opposed the Council Bill and had mandated him in June to go to the National Directory to call for the party’s withdrawal from Westminster. At Redmond’s October meeting at Drumkeeran in the constituency, Dolan had tried to speak, but was met with cries of ‘Clear out’ and ‘Traitor’, followed by the throwing of mud and stones.186

      The party took seriously the electoral challenge from Sinn Féin, and threw its resources into the Leitrim campaign under the direction of McHugh. Griffith, Hobson and other prominent Sinn Féiners campaigned for Dolan, who was supported by a local newspaper and eleven Sinn Féin clubs. The campaign revealed Devlin in the role of the party’s ‘enforcer’. AOH members imported by him from Ulster – termed by one historian the Home Rule movement’s ‘Belfast stormtroopers’ – were used to disrupt Dolan’s meetings and assault his supporters. The Freeman reported ‘lively scenes’ at a meeting at Kiltyclogher when a Sinn Féin band drowned out the supporters of the party candidate, F.E. Meehan. ‘Stormy scenes’ were reported from other towns. At Drumkeeran, Dolan was accompanied by Anna Parnell and George Gavan Duffy, who were pelted with eggs and mud by party supporters. Parnell had a pail of water thrown over her. In the election, Meehan polled 3,103 votes to Dolan’s 1,157 in an electorate of 6,324.187 From an anti-parliamentarian point of view, this was considerably better, at 27 per cent of the poll, than the six to one defeat suffered in their previous challenge to the party in February 1900. Griffith hailed the result as a moral victory, depicting it in Sinn Féin as a declaration of Irish independence and comparable with Daniel O’Connell’s historic 1828 victory that had paved the way for Catholic Emancipation. However, it remained true, as Jackson points out, that an outgoing MP had been unable to mount a serious defence of his seat.188

      Sinn Féin continued for a time to profit from the Irish Party’s weaknesses. The number of its branches, having risen from twenty-one in 1906 to fifty-seven the following year, rose again to 115 in 1908. In the January 1908 municipal elections, it won three of the nine seats it contested in Dublin Corporation.189 The year 1909 would see its fortunes decline as those of the Irish Party rose again: by August of that year there were only 581 paid-up members in the entire country, 211 of them in Dublin.190

      Another development of 1907 would have been noticed by few except for the police at Dublin Castle. Hobson, McCullough and others of the young men who had reluctantly accepted Griffith’s dominance of Sinn Féin had also become members of the supreme council of the IRB, edging out the old guard. There, joined by Thomas Clarke, the ex-Portland prisoner for whose release Redmond had campaigned throughout the 1890s, just returned from the US to open a tobacconist shop in Dublin, they awaited the downturn in British fortunes that might enable them to strike.191

      Notes and References

1F.J., 12 Oct. 1905.

2Ibid., 21, 26 Oct. 1905; Dillon to Redmond, 26 Oct., 2 Nov. 1905, NLI Ms. 15,182 (8). Dillon wondered if there was a safe way to communicate with Campbell Bannerman: ‘If he were to make a really bad speech, the situation would become very bad indeed.’

3F.J., 9, 11 Nov. 1905.

4F.J., 13 Nov. 1905.

5Ibid., 11 Nov. 1905. ‘I am proud… that no victory in the House of Commons for the last five years … has been obtained by the Labour Party that was not obtained through the help and instrumentality of our votes (cheers),’ he added. The Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie, sent a telegram of congratulations on this ‘epoch making’ speech. Keir Hardie to Redmond, 11 Nov. 1905, RP Ms. 15,193 (7). Redmond would repeat this theme several times, as at Sunderland in March 1909, where he stood on a Labour platform for the first time. F.J., 16 Mar. 1909.

6Memorandum of Redmond interview with CampbellBannerman, 14 Nov. 1905, RP Ms. 15,171 (2).