Isaac Butt: Twixt O’Connell and Parnell

[Review of  David Thornley’s “Isaac Butt and Home Rule” (McGibbon and Kee, 1964, £3.3) by Desmond Greaves in the February 1965 “Irish Democrat” under the initials “HM”.  This book was based on  the PhD thesis of Irish intellectual and  Labour politician David Thornley, 1935-78, which was originally supervised by Professor Theo Moody of Trinity College Dublin.]

The contents of Dr David Thornley’s study are correctly indicated by its title. It is not a “Life of Butt” or a “Life and Times of Butt”, nor is it a history of Home Rule. It is an examination of the part played by a sharp but very amiable lawyer in making the policy of the northern federalists that of the majority of the Irish nation. The national demand was thus scaled down to the lowest point at which unity could be attained.

It should not be forgotten that though Parnell declined to set a limit to the march of a nation, it was O’Connell who proposed to take a longer first stride. Between O’Connell and Parnell lay the age of division and disillusionment, of Stephens and Cardinal Cullen, the emigrant ship and the “Pope’s Brass Band”.

This study does not attempt to shake the accepted view that it was Butt’s achievement through his advocacy at the Fenian trials, to create a constitutional movement to which some of the vitality and glamour of Fenianism had been transferred, and so to prepare the way for the real injection of revolutionism that came with the New Departure. He thus played a positive part in the development of the national struggle which it is right to have remembered.

This book is crammed with information about a somehow neglected period. The analysis begins with the General Election of 1868, fought on the issue of disestablishment, from which Gladstone emerged with a majority of 115. Liberalism was victorious in both countries and Dr Thornley attaches to it a certain uniformity throughout the United Kingdom. Thus it is conceivable from an abstract point of view that Irish liberalism might have maintained a Unionist position rather than becoming transformed into Federalism. This point is emphasised on the dustcover.

Those who feel inclined to speculate on it will find plenty of quotations from leading newspapers, candidates for Parliament and clergymen, but little racy of the common people or the rebel press.

This is a limitation from which the book suffers throughout. For it was precisely the plebeian forces powering the amnesty agitation which proved in practise how impossible it was for Ireland ever to adopt English lines of political demarcation – something that should be remembered by those who today believe that by eliminating the national question and posing Conservative against Labour they will be restoring “normality” to Irish politics.

Fighting is done by the mass of the people. Those leaders who are not of them must fit in their leadership to the wants of the led, and all the pontifical press editorials, policy statements and sermons remain but the reflection of the real movement which is among the people. One misses in this book a sense of the primacy of the common people.

Not, of course, that much cannot be seen in a mirror. The bi-national Liberal front was shattered on the land question.  Hence the “Home Government Association”. This emerges, though the inter-relations are muzzily shown.

In his introduction Dr Thornley presents the thesis that the three great stimuli of the popular movement were land, religion and a sense of nationality. But these are entities in different categories. This is apparent as soon as one turns from reflections and looks at things. The theft of Irish land and the enslavement of its rightful owners was the main thing.

The suppression of the popular religion, followed by the long era of discrimination, was a means to the enslavement. And a sense of nationality was the form through which deprived and enslaved expressed their solidarity in the struggle to throw off their slavery and end their deprivation.

To equate such distinct entities under the category “forces” is to make their “inter-relations” needlessly complex. What happened was that the first land reforms did not return the land to the people. Disestablishment did not complete religious equality, least of all in the economic sense. Hence the revival of national feeling – Ireland must have control of her destinies to solve these problems for herself.

Dr Thornley brings much that is new and significant to the traditional story. There is an interesting and important chapter on “Home Rule, Class and the Ballot” where the social origins of members returned in 1868 and 1874 are compared. It is shown that whereas in 1868 those with landlord connections overwhelmingly predominated, in 1874 the bourgeoisie had won equality of representation.

But what kind of bourgeoisie? The class “shopkeepers and farmers” had only two representatives; the industrialist did not appear at all. The typical Home Ruler was a merchant, financier, newspaper proprietor or professional man. It is worth the three guineas to have the table in which Dr Thornley summarises these important results.

The Home Rule movement thus coincided with the weakening of landlordism and the rise of the merchant-bourgeoisie, brought about against the background of agrarian crisis by disestablishment and the first land reforms. The small industrialist only appeared towards the end of the land struggle and after the1898 Local Government Act. And his political innovation was Arthur Griffiths’ Sinn Fain – not to be confused of course with modern Sinn Fein, which is a continuation of Fenianism.

The struggle between old and new Home Rulers which paved the way for the dominance of Parnell is well worked out, perhaps with a trace of nostalgic bias towards Butt. Again Dr Thornley raises the question of whether the defeat of Butt was historically inevitable. He has already provided the means of answering this question in his class analysis of the party. That Butt the professional man gave way to Parnell the landlord does not belie the assertion that the struggle within the party rested on the conflict between landlord and bourgeois interests.

For the change of Parliamentary tactics was personified in the pork-butcher Bigger, and Parnell’s victory represented the alliance not with the landlords, but with the peasantry. So once again it looks as if what did happen was what could happen. If only we were able to keep our eyes on that test in practical politics!

Dr Thornley’s book thus raises many important questions and will undoubtedly remain a standard work of reference for the period for many years. But while competently written, it still has something of the university thesis about it, something of the examination answer where the student doesn’t want to commit himself to an opinion.

Thus it begins with a “perhaps” which is surely intended to mean “certainly” and we have such amphoteric tropes as “largely irrelevant” and “not uncharacteristically”. In this respect the book takes up as it goes along, possibly because the author could let himself go when there was more happening.

The publishers have adopted the rather irritating practise of spelling Fenian with the miniscule so that the “feni” of the old laws will probably remain in italics when he wants an adjective. And the reader must have a heavy penchant for apostrophes, for example in “1860’s” – plural, not genitive. He even manages to squeeze one into St. Helen’s. 

But these are only wee grumbles about a book so well produced that it should have been perfect in every respect. Dr Thornley has done a valuable service to the critical history of these islands.