Fenians, Ribbonmen and Popular Ideology's Role in Nationalist Politics: East Tyrone, 1906-9 Author(S): Fergal Mccluskey Source: Irish Historical Studies, Vol

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Fenians, Ribbonmen and popular ideology's role in nationalist politics: east Tyrone, 1906-9 Author(s): Fergal McCluskey Source: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 37, No. 145 (May 2010), pp. 61-82 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20750045 Accessed: 31-12-2019 18:31 UTC

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This content downloaded from 82.31.34.218 on Tue, 31 Dec 2019 18:31:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Irish Historical Studies, xxxvii, no. 145 (May 2010)

Fenians, Ribbonmen and popular ideology's role in nationalist politics: east Tyrone, 1906-9

Irish demands nationalist of self-government politics and a resolutionbetween of the1906 land andissue; as1909 such, therevolved around the twin period was demarcated by two pieces of Liberal government legislation: the May 1907 Irish Council Bill and Birrell's December 1909 land act.1 The latter was partially a response to western Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.)-inspired 'agrarian militancy' on the part of the United Irish League (U.I.L.) and the emerging Sinn Fein movement's ability to 'outflank' the Irish Parliamentary Party (LRR) on the issue, which effectively forced Irish Party leader John Redmond 'to adopt a radical agrarian policy in June 1907'.2 However, outside Connacht, the U.I.L. could not be regarded as 'the Land League reborn'.3 In east Tyrone, the demand for self-government dominated the nationalist agenda, a situation rein forced by the fact that local politics had been 'cast in the denominational mould which has characterised them ever since'.4 As a result, the Board of Erin section of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (A.O.H.) was the motor of popular nationalist mobilisation, leaving the U.I.L. 'a somewhat tame organisation in this county'.5 During the 1890s the Hibernians were a small, exclusively Catholic, milifantly nationalist, working-class network concentrated on the eastern shore of Lough Neagh. By 1906-9 the Order had developed into the main adjunct of the constitu tional movement across Tyrone. This expansion took place under Joseph Devlin's stewardship as national president of the Board of Erin from July 1905 onwards. However, Devlin was largely reacting to an organic growth in Hibernianism that can be traced locally to the early 1890s.6 During this period, the local I.R.B, had

1 Leon ? Broin, The chief secretary: Augustine Birrell in Ireland (London, 1969), pp 11-15, 20-4. 2 For evidence of radical agrarianism and Fenian involvement in it, particularly in Galway, see Fergus Campbell, Land and revolution: nationalist politics in the west of Ireland (Oxford, 2005), p. 116. 3 For the argument that the U.I.L. was not 'a semi revolutionary challenge to [the] British state in Ireland', see Paul Bew, Conflict and conciliation in Ireland, 1890-1910: Parnellites and radical agrarians (Oxford, 1987), p. 79. 4 Enda Staunton, The nationalists of Northern Ireland, 1918-1973 (Dublin, 2001), p. 8. 5 Report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., May 1903 (N.A.I., Crime Branch Special, inspector-general and county inspectors' monthly reports (henceforth, N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I.), box 3). 6 By the end of the 1880s, police reports identified three main Hibernian 'objectives': 'to punish land lords; to assist in the gaining of Irish independence (by any means) and to put down the Protestant ascendancy': see precis report, Crime Branch Special R.I.C., 4 Feb. 1889 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO 904/10). An 1891 police survey of Tyrone's seven lodges reported that the leadership comprised three fishermen, one tinsmith, one shoemaker, one

This content downloaded from 82.31.34.218 on Tue, 31 Dec 2019 18:31:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 62 Irish Historical Studies nurtured the A.O.H., seeking to use it as an instrument for separatism. However, these Fenian instrumentalist tactics failed in the face of Devlin's seizure of control of the movement, and by November 1905 the Board of Erin had fifty-two branches in Tyrone. By the following May the number had risen to sixty-six, and by March 1907 there were seventy-nine branches in Tyrone, approximately half of which were in the Order's east Tyrone heartland.7 The Dungannon Clubs were formed by a young Belfast avant-garde infused with the ideas of the Gaelic revival and which sought to redirect the northern I.R.B, towards an open separatist campaign. Chief among their number were Denis McCullough, a piano tuner and son of a prominent Belfast Fenian, and Bulmer Hobson, a young Quaker inspired by the example of the United Irishman. Together, they 'decided to effectively purge the organisation ... and turn it into a voice capable of radical opinion in Belfast and beyond'. To this end, they adopted much of the Sinn Fein programme developed by Arthur Griffith, with a qualified acceptance of dual monarchy given that 'an Irish Republic' was the 'final aim'.8 Two other figures would assume prominence: Sean Mac Diarmada, a Leitrim-born Belfast tram worker, and Patrick McCartan, a returned American emigrant and medical student from Carrickmore, Tyrone. McCartan corresponded regularly with Joseph McGarrity, another Carrickmore native, who, having emigrated to Philadelphia, became the treasurer of Clan-na-Gael and exercised formidable influence over local and national republican politics throughout the period. The formation of the Dungannon Clubs should not be viewed solely as a rejection of traditional northern Fenian policy - a 'characteristically ill-co-ordinated complex of infiltration, subversion, resistance and association'.9 Ambition extended not only to the rehabilitation of northern Fenianism but also to the generation of wider support for Sinn Fein amongst Ulster nationalists. This article explores east Tyrone nationalist politics during the period 1906-9, demonstrating that at that point in time, conditions were not ripe for propelling the local nationalist majority to abandon constitutionalism in favour of the marginal republican alternative represented by the Dungannon Clubs. Between 1906 and 1909 the Belfast Dungannon Clubs used the local I.R.B, organisation to chal lenge constitutionalism's hegemony within east Tyrone nationalism. The resulting struggle highlighted popular ideology's crucial role in generating consensus, and offered insight into the nature of northern constitutionalism. It will also be argued that the struggle was indicative of the wider forces involved in contemporaneous Irish nationalist politics - in particular, the constitutional-nationalist leadership's attempts to reconcile popular expectation on both the land and national questions farmer and one 'scutcher': R.I.C. Crime Branch Special precis report, 1891(ibid.). For links between the A.O.H. and the I.R.B., see reports of the inspector-general and Tyrone county inspector R.I.C, 1903^ (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., boxes 3-6); see also Fergal McCluskey, 'The development of republican politics in east Tyrone, 1898-1918' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Belfast, 2007). 7 Report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C, Nov. 1905 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 8); report... May 1906 (ibid., box 9); report... Mar. 1907 (ibid., box 11). 8 Gerard MacAtasney, Sean Mac Diarmada: the mind of the revolution (Leitrim, 2004), p. 14. The constitution of the Dungannon Clubs was published in their own newspaper, Republic, 17 Jan. 1907. 9 Matthew Kelly, The Fenian idea and Irish nationalism, 1882-1916 (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 134.

This content downloaded from 82.31.34.218 on Tue, 31 Dec 2019 18:31:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms McCluskey - Fenians, Ribbonmen and popular ideology: east Tyrone, 1906-9 63 within the limits of its relationship with the Liberal government that had come to power on the back of a landslide election victory in January 1906. The argu ments will be articulated through a theoretical framework in an effort to highlight effectively the forces at work within Irish nationalist politics.

David Fitzpatrick argues that a Redmondite leadership wedded solely to constitutional methods 'sounded the characteristic public roles of pre-war consti tutionalism': self-government within Britain, loyalty to the Empire, and equality among 'all classes and creeds'.10 Michael Wheatley views this as an elite 'Whig' and 'Buttite' tradition among 'many older, landed, and upper middle-class Catholic nationalists ... themselves assimilated into British life and culture'. Popular senti ment, by contrast, according to Wheatley, exhibited an aggressively nationalist character, with support for imperialism 'confined to a minority'.11 His findings emphasise a tension apparent in constitutionalism since O'Connell's ascendancy. To secure popular support for moderate and sectional interests, successive leader ships employed militant and quasi-separatist language. Often, this rhetoric sat uncomfortably with assimilative-leadership objectives. Arguably, Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony not only helps to explain what was happening in Irish politics at this time but also why this rhetorical ambiguity was necessary. Normally, hegemony - the process whereby the dominant class imposes a consensus, by largely peaceful means, within civil society - is exercised within the 'integral state', representing an 'equilibrium between political society and civil society'.12 This integral balance did not exist in Ireland. The Irish Party's position and relevance rested on the claim that it spoke for the Irish nation. What had Gladstonian home rule or, indeed, the Tory attempt to kill home rule with kindness been but an acknowledgement that nationalism was the dominant force in much of Irish civil society? British control over political society - 'the coercive apparatus of the state' - remained largely unchallenged. However, this was only one of the dual compo nents of an integral state; the coercive option was* always present, but necessary only if absence of an accommodation between British state power and nation alist influence over civil society. By the Edwardian period, the Irish Party had essentially bought into such a relationship. Republicanism sought to subvert con stitutional hegemony in civil society as the preliminary step in a challenge to British control of political society, and ideological struggle was the means towards this end. Gramsci emphasises that it is 'worth recalling the frequent affirmation made by Marx on the "solidity of popular beliefs" as a necessary element of a

10 David Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, 1912-1939 (Oxford, 1998), p. 8. 11 Michael Wheatley, Nationalism and the Irish Party: provincial Ireland, 1910-1916 (Oxford, 2005), pp 75-8. 12 Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (eds), Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London, 1971) (henceforth, Gramsci, Prison notebooks), p. 56. Civil society is the ensemble of organisms commonly called 'private', as opposed to that of 'political society' or 'the state'; power is diffused through civil society as well as being embodied in the coercive apparatus of the state (Gramsci, Prison notebooks, p. 12).

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specific situation'.13 The central thesis here is that, by necessity, the 'solidity of popular beliefs' dictated much of constitutionalism's rhetorical agenda. In the early twentieth century, Irish Party authority had been challenged by the emergence of independent, radical organisations. In response, the I.P.P. had an established policy of 'vampirism' - 'co-opting new organisations, absorbing the activists and leaving the shell'.14 This strategy was successfully employed with the '98 centenary cel ebrations, the United Irish League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Volunteer movement.15 A picture develops, then, of a hegemonic class of 'older, landed, and upper middle-class Catholic nationalists' manipulating popular senti ment in order to control the subordinate classes within Irish society.16 There is an element of truth in this reductionist model, yet it does not represent the whole story; while not equivalent, the relationship between leadership and base was more dialectical than this unidirectional model suggests. Gramsci argues that 'there has to be a more complex synthesis of class objectives with themes that have arisen out of the original and unique history of each country'. Only when the interests of the hegemonic class are welded to the 'national-popular will' is control within civil society achievable.17 For republicanism to challenge constitu tionalism, the appeal would have to draw from a shared source of national-popular rhetoric. This would be achieved through a 'process of criticism of the existing ideological complex'.18 It is, therefore, necessary to establish a framework for examining popular ideology itself. In this case, Gramsci's wider structural model is augmented by the work of George Rude, who clearly acknowledged the debt that his popular ideology thesis owed to the theory of hegemony: so the ground is prepared [by Gramsci] for the study of popular ideology over a wider field: not only among the proletarians of industrial society, but among their forebears, the peasants, the smallholders and the townsmen of a transitional society, when the fundamen tal classes of today were still in the process of formation.19

13 Ibid., pp 376-7. 14 Patrick Maume, Long gestation: Irish nationalist life, 1891-1918 (Dublin, 1999), p. 153. Maume borrowed the phrase from David Fitzpatrick; for 'vampiric' Irish Party policy towards the County Clare Volunteers, see David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life: provincial experiences of war and revolution (Cork, 1988), p. 88. 15 For Irish Party absorption of the '98 movement, see Owen McGee, The I.R.B.: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Fein (Dublin, 2005), p. 265. For a similar process taking place in regard to the U.I.L., see Philip Bull, 'The reconstruc tion of the Irish parliamentary movement, 1895-1903' (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1972), p. 2. For the A.O.H., see Tom Garvin, Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland, 1891-1922 (Oxford, 1987), p. 92. For the National Volunteer movement, see Matthew Kelly, 'The Irish Volunteers: a Machiavellian moment?' in D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day (eds), The Ulster crisis (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 83. Kelly compares the Volunteers to the '98 movement, which also 'ended a period of political quiet' (Kelly, Fenian ideal, p. 224). 16 The description of the class profile of the I.P.P. leadership is from Wheatley, Nationalism & the Irish Party. 17 Gramsci, Prison notebooks, p. 195. 18 'This criticism makes possible a process of differentiation and change in the relative weight that the elements of the old ideologies used to possess. What was previously secondary and subordinate, or even incidental is now taken to be primary - becomes the nucleus of a new ideological and theoretical complex' (ibid.). 19 George Rude, Ideology and popular protest (London, 1980), p. 24.

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As such, a Marxist model of false and true consciousness is problematic.20 Ireland cannot be defined as a modern industrial society. In analyses based on concepts of modernity or its antithesis - which employ a colonial model - Ireland was characteristically a transitional society.21 Traditional classes' from earlier societal models still had an important impact on history. When considering the popular constituency in an Irish context, we are, in fact, concerned with a combination of various groups and classes emanating from the lower classes. 'Popular ideology' then 'is not a purely internal affair and the sole property of a single class or group: that in itself distinguishes it from "class consciousness".' Instead, popular ideology is 'a fusion of two elements, of which only one is the peculiar property of the "popular" classes and the other is superimposed by a process of transmission and adoption from outside'.22 Both constitutionalism and republicanism were essentially 'derived' ideolo gies that could 'only be effectively absorbed if the ground ... [had] already been well prepared'.23 The debate over inheritance rights to the Fenian legacy should be understood in such terms. Similarly, concepts such as home rule itself held very different meanings at leadership and popular levels. Liverpool-based T. P. O'Connor described the Irish Council Bill (1907) as 'Latin for home rule'.24 However, the nationalist grass roots possessed a deeper appreciation of what home rule represented. This tension emerged from the fact that all 'derived' ideas suffer a 'transformation or "sea change'" dependent 'on the social needs or the political aims of the classes that are ready to absorb them'.25 At a popular level, 'Ireland a nation' was imbued with 'inherent' concepts in advance of leadership intentions. These ranged from millenarianism, ingrained nativist communal identity, socio economic considerations and more recent separatist ideas. How did this inherent ideology arrive at this point?26 Rude argues that 'among the "inherent" beliefs of one generation, and forming part of its basic culture, are many beliefs that were originally derived from outside by an earlier one'.27 In effect, previously derived elements had been 'absorbed in the more specifically popular culture'.28 By the twentieth century, Fenianism had become an established feature of Irish popular

20 For a critique of reductionist class models, see G?ran Therborn, The ideology of power and the power of ideology (Verso, 1999), pp 2-5. 21 For the modernity thesis, see Tom Garvin, 'The anatomy of a nationalist revolution: Ireland, 1858-1918'in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28, no. 3 (July 1986), p. 501; for a refutation of the modernity thesis and a defence of the colonial model, see Joe Cleary, '"Misplaced ideas'"? Colonialism, location and dislocation in Irish studies' in Clare Carroll and Patricia King (eds), Ireland and postcolonial theory (Cork & Notre Dame, I.N., 2003), pp 16-45. 22 Rude, Ideology, p. 28, original emphasis. 23 Ibid., p. 29. 24 Bew, Conflict & conciliation, p. 131. 25 Rude, Ideology, p. 36. 26 One would be tempted to look to Daniel Corkery's Hidden Ireland for evidence of a nativist consciousness (Daniel Corkery, The hidden Ireland: a study of Gaelic Munster in the 18th century, 1760-1830 (Dublin, 1925)). Certainly, by 1798 derived republican ideas had been grafted, in a rather confused manner, onto elements of the inherent defender mentalite (Jim Smyth, 'The men of no property': Irish radicals and popular politics in the late eighteenth century (London, 1992), pp 4-6)). 27 Rude, Ideology, p. 28. 28 Ibid., p. 33, original emphasis.

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ideology. As Matthew Kelly argues, Tenianism emerges as the central influence in an Irish nationalist culture that was deeply imbedded in the texture of Irish identity ... home rule did not achieve the same level of emotional resonance with the Irish people'.29 In east Tyrone, both the Irish Party and the Dungannon Clubs' messages targeted the same popular constituency. During the 1908 Leitrim by-election, Cahir Healy remarked on the necessity to ally derived message to inherent sentiment. Healy contrasted the rhetorical effectiveness of a former M.P. named O'Flaherty with the hopeless oratory of Sinn Fein's dominant theoretician, Arthur Griffith. O'Flaherty wooed his Leitrim audience, linking Sinn Fein to the O'Rourkes of Breifne, Owen Roe O'Neill and Wolfe Tone, while Griffith gave a dry account of economic sta tistics and Hungarian history. This led one local Sinn Feiner to advise Healy to 'send home the wee bloke with his goggles and his figures'.30

This study focuses on that part of Tyrone lying within the Roman Catholic dioceses of Armagh and Clogher. On the western extremity of industrialised Ulster, east Tyrone was 'typical of the entire north-eastern section of Ireland, in which the linen manufacture and other industries are carried on'.31 Both the Dungannon and Cookstown Poor Law unions had sizeable working-class communities and significant Fenian activity. In the central area of 'Cookstown Coagh and Coal Island the manufacturer competes with the farmer for labour.'32 The Dungannon area had an industrial workforce of over sixty per cent.33 John McElvogue (the I.R.B.'s Dungannon centre) was selected to represent the working class at the upcoming Urban District Council elections. McElvogue wanted 'to explode the old theory that it was only men with money, whether they had brains or not, [that] were fit to look after the affairs of the town'. The chairman at a meeting of the working-class constituents of Dungannon's majority-Catholic West ward, Hugh Birney - also an I.R.B, member - argued that local Catholics were tired of being represented by 'a class of men who did not give entire satisfaction' and who 'dragged at a tail of another party'. Birney concluded his address with a declaration that he was looking forward to 'routing the old rotten aristocracy who never did any good to the town'.34 Both working-class Fenians and Hibernians had a history of involvement in the Ulster Labourers' Union, and their subsequent

29 Kelly, Fenian ideal, p. 238. 30 'Reminiscences on people I knew', undated (P.R.O.N.I., Healy papers, D/2991/B/140/31). 31 Reports of the Royal Commission on Labour: part I: summary report by R. McCrea, followed by reports upon certain selected districts ... Counties Antrim, Armagh, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Londonderry, Longford, Louth, Meath, Monaghan, Sligo, Tyrone, and Westmeath, 1893, pp 1-129 [C 6894], H.C. 1893-94, xxxvii, 6 (henceforth, McCrea report). 32 Ibid., p. 18. 33 Cormac ? Grada, Ireland: a new economic history (Oxford, 1996), pp 187, 220. 34 The nomination lists demonstrate that McElvogue was nominated by two I.R.B, members, and that the other candidate, James McGartland, was nominated by an I.R.B, member and a Forester. The I.R.B, nominators were Henry Hart, William J. Kelly and Andrew Tee van. See Dungannon News, 5, 19 Jan. 1899.

This content downloaded from 82.31.34.218 on Tue, 31 Dec 2019 18:31:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms McCluskey - Fenians, Ribbonmen and popular ideology: east Tyrone, 1906-9 67 violent political confrontation is interesting by virtue of the profound similarities in their demographic profile and shared militant nationalism.35 The eastern and western areas of the Cookstown union had a shared socio-economic profile.36 The tenuous holding system, a tradition of seasonal and permanent emigration, the hybrid labourer-tenant demographic, and the small independent labourer popula tion mirrored the economy of the western area of this study. This stretched through Kildress (in the Cookstown union) to Pomeroy and Carrickmore (in the Omagh union) in the mountainous Sperrin foothills. The Fenian tradition here was more akin to the Ribbon-Fenianism of southern and western Ulster.37 In this context, popular nationalist politics refers to the majority of the local Catholic population in an area with something of a 'dual economy'.38 Neither rural nor urban Catholics enjoyed comfortable living conditions. However, absolute distress was alleviated by employment in mills, local fishing, seasonal migration, linen scutching and, due to the small labouring population, part-time labouring by smallholders.39 Whereas popular rural politics across much of nationalist Ireland was articulated through land agitation and agrarian violence, the local voice was a sectarian one.40 The Cookstown and Dungannon districts were noted areas of sectarian disturbance, where a religiously divided working class directly competed for employment. It is against this backdrop that the Dungannon Clubs' efforts to convert the majority of local Catholics to a secular republican programme should be considered.

Ill

The unified I.P.P.'s re-emergence coincided with the meteoric rise of 'Wee Joe' Devlin (an elementary-educated member of the Falls Road working-class commu nity, one-time bottle washer and Irish News journalist, whose platform oratory not only earned him the nickname 'Pocket Demosthenes' but the political patronage of John Dillon M.P., eventually leading to his appointment as United Irish League secretary in 1904). Devlin's prominence had its antecedents in the 1798 centenary

35 Tyrone Courier, 23 June 1894. Members of the Dungannon I.R.B, took an active role in the union, the meeting being held in the Forester's Hall (Dungannon News, 15 Feb. 1894); the Ardboe and Stewartstown I.R.B, attended a similar meeting in Stewartstown, which also included a large Hibernian membership (ibid., 16 Aug. 1894; Tyrone Courier, 1 Sept. 1894). 36 McCrea report, pp 5, 17. 37 R. V. Comerford argues that rural Ulster Fenianism constituted yet another faction in a 'faction ridden milieu' (The Fenians in context (Dublin, 1985), p. 118); Breandan Mac Giolla Choille, 'Fenians, Rice and Ribbonmen in County Monaghan' in Clogher Record, vi, no. 2 (1967), pp 221-52. 38 Joseph Lee, 'The dual economy in Ireland, 1800-50' in Historical Studies, viii (Dublin, 1971), pp 191-201. 39 'The 1891 Irish census' in Royal Statistical Soc. Jn., lv, no. 4 (1892), pp 610-12. 40 In his analysis of late nineteenth-century census returns, Brian Walker noted that east Tyrone not only contained a large population of Catholic labourers, but there was a prominent corresponding Anglican working class: see Ulster politics in the formative years (Belfast, 1989), p. 31. As a result, 'Tyrone was probably the most densely organised county, where over a third of adult males were Orangemen in 1912' (Fitzpatrick, Two Irelands, p. 11).

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celebrations and the parallel resurgence of Hibernianism. His election as the home rule M.P. for Belfast West in 1906 'crowned his role as the city's nationalist supremo'. This victory - achieved through a combination of staunchly nationalist and welfarist appeals to his largely working-class and Hibernian constituency - was balanced against reassurances to the city's Catholic middle class 'that his demands went no further than this'.41 Devlin would emerge as one of the most talented and influential constitutional politicians of the period; Cahir Healy later claimed that 'between 1892 and 1918 ... his [Devlin's] power was so great that he could have become a virtual dictator in Irish affairs'.42 In east Tyrone, Devlin won the support of working-class Hibernians through a campaign of populist patriotism that echoed the welfarist and nationalist rhetoric of his success in Belfast. Between 1902 and 1906 Devlinite Hibernians formed a tentative alliance with local Fenians against the middle-class U.I.L.43 Devlin camouflaged the struggle for control of moderate constitutionalism as a battle between democracy and reaction - thus generating Fenian support. Once the initial conservative hurdle was cleared, the democratic and quasi-republican pretence was abandoned, and Devlin directed the A.O.H. against the I.R.B. (Hibernianism's erstwhile wet nurse). This populist programme merged Catholic interests and staunch nationalism with the claim that the Irish Party represented a democratic upsurge capable of protecting lower-class interests. As such, Devlinite Hibernianism presented a militant, socially progressive and quasi-separatist demeanour. The raft of socio political demonstrations provided a sense of power and ownership - no matter how delusory - to the grass roots. Perhaps more interestingly, the Devlinite lead ership connived, at least, in Hibernian sectarian territorial incursion in the first decade of the century.44 The necessity to placate inherent antipathy to rival popular Orangeism was a marked feature of Devlinite control of the A.O.H. It is also an example of how 'derived' constitutionalism suffered a 'sea change' on contact with 'inherent' beliefs.45 Similarly, ameliorative British social and land legislation not only strengthened the argument for continued parliamentary agitation, it also conformed to inherent attitudes of common justice, a 'just' wage and housing for the local working class 46

Devlin's meteoric rise had been accompanied by a shift in republican politics in his native Belfast, culminating in the formation of the Dungannon Club on

41 Staunton, Nationalists of Northern Ireland, p. 9. 42 'Reminiscences on people I knew', undated (RR.O.N.L, Healy papers, D/2991/B/140/19). 43 For an analysis of the relationship between the A.O.H. and the I.R.B, in east Tyrone and their ultimately successful struggle against the conservative U.I.L., see McCluskey, 'The development of republican polities'. 44 Report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Mar. 1905 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.L, box 7); for an analysis of Hibernian processions in Protestant areas, see McCluskey, 'The development of republican polities', p. 46. 45 For the concept of derived ideology suffering a mutation or 'sea change' dependent 'on the social needs or the political aims of the classes that are ready to absorb them', see Rude, Ideology, p. 36. 46 Ibid., p. 30.

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8 March 1905 at 109 Donegall Street. Owen McGee identifies two tendencies within the Ulster I.R.B.: a Belfast avant-garde and an older traditional element that 'attempted to direct the I.R.B.'s new working-class and much more militant following, centred in East Tyrone, with which Hobson and the Dungannon Clubs refused to associate, since they were not educated men.'47 As such, the two Fenian elements 'almost belonged to a different social world and effectively belonged to a different organisation'48 The Young Turks certainly resented the traditional republican social framework. McCullough criticised Belfast's 'irresponsible young publicans and grocer's assistants, with little or no national tradition behind them' whose motivation appeared to be 'Sunday night "ceilidhes" and ... easy access to liquor.' As a result, he and Hobson inaugurated a new movement 'which would do some serious national work and which we could control in Belfast'.49 Similarly, after a sizeable Manchester Martyrs parade in Coalisland on 23 November 1906, McCullough insisted that the local Dungannon Club 'should not be content with annual celebrations, but should continue to carry out their work, in order that their hopes might be realised'.50 However, the Dungannon Club's aversion to strong drink should not disguise the fact that the conversion of this working-class republican constituency was the preliminary step in gaining majority national ist support for the Sinn Fein programme. McCullough identified the 'necessity for organisers as there were only scattered contacts. Mostly old I.R.B, men, like Jack McElvogue and Willy Kelly in Dungannon.'51 Rather than despising this old guard, McCullough encouraged trusted republicans (contemporaries of his father) to capture the Tyrone organisation from local militant Ribbon-Fenians centred on Ardboe's James (Dundee) Devlin, a process that was not consummated until the I.R.B.'s shift away from open Sinn Fein politics around 1909.52

47 McGee,/.#.?., p. 313. 48 Ibid., p. 314; McGee goes further, suggesting that P. T. Daly's tour of Ulster in the summer of 1906 was designed to expel cells linked to Robert Johnston and Henry Dobbyn, 'because they had been trying to build up new circles based around the A.O.H., which McCullough and Hobson detested' (ibid., p. 317). 49 Statement of Denis McCullough to Bureau of Military History, 1957 (U.C.D.A., DMcC, P120/29/3); the R.I.C. inspector-general reported that 'Denis McCullagh [sic] of Belfast went to Coalisland Co. Tyrone' to address a Manchester Martyrs' commemoration made up mostly of 'poor men' (report of the inspector-general R.I.C, Nov. 1906 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 10). 50 The Manchester Martyrs were three Fenians - William Allen, Michael Larkin and William O'Brien - executed for the killing of a policeman in an attempt to rescue leading Fenian prisoners, Colonel Thomas Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy, in the wake of the 1867 rebellion. The annual commemoration was a focus for popular republican and more general nationalist mobilisation; see Owen McGee, '"God Save Ireland": Manchester Martyrs demonstrations in Dublin, 1867-1916' in Eire-Ireland, 26, 3/4 (autumn/winter, 2001), pp 39-66. Coalisland - a small industrial town four miles north of Dungannon - contained a large Catholic majority and a longstanding I.R.B, cell. 51 Manuscript notes for a lecture given by Denis McCullough, 10 Jan. 1964 (U.C.D.A., McCullough papers, P120/33). 52 At a meeting of twenty centres in Dungannon, charges were brought against Devlin by McElvogue and Doris of 'not accounting for funds for I.R.B, purposes'. The C.B.S. noted that 'some circles in Tyrone are in favour of ousting Devlin for the position of "Co. Centre" and appointing in his stead Hugh Devine, but Devlin has a big following': precis report, Crime Branch Special, R.I.C, 29 June 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118).

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From a strategic perspective, the Dungannon Club critique of the northern organisation appeared justified. Carrickmore Fenian Michael Gormley told Joseph McGarrity that 'I have heard an old oft-quoted saying about "England's diffi culty". That difficulty turned up a short time since [the Boer War] and passed off and things remain as before so far as "Irish opportunity" goes.'53 It was against this background and the failure of earlier Fenian instrumentalist designs towards Hibernianism that Sean Mac Diarmada became 'an organiser amongst the Hibernians in Tyrone'. In 1906 he set out for Tyrone with a salary of thirty shil lings a week, a bicycle on hire purchase and a revolver (a 'lead pencil holder') for his protection.54 By the end of 1906, shortly before Mac Diarmada's mission, the police identified only 'two branches of the Dungannon Club ... in the county'.55 These were the result of Patrick McCartan's initiative in Carrickmore and Denis McCullough's attendance at the Coalisland Manchester Martyrs demonstration in November, although clubs had also been established in Kildress and a second in Carrickmore by this time.56 By the end of 1908 the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) estimated that there were ten Dungannon Clubs, all confined to the Cookstown and Dungannon police districts. This corresponded to the territorial limits of the existing Fenian organi sation, and the police stated that 'there is ample reason for believing that the members of this organisation [Dungannon Clubs] are working in conjunction with the I.R.B, society'.57 The inextricable link between the Dungannon Clubs and the I.R.B, was confirmed by Patrick McCartan when, referring to McCullough's visit to Coalisland in November 1906, he told Joseph McGarrity: 'As you will see from the G[aelic] A[merican], we had a good Sinn Fenian meeting in Coalisland on the 23rd November'.58The police continually referred to the humble social origins of those involved, concluding that, as a result, the movement would have little influence in the area (perhaps providing greater information on the force's institutionalised social deference than on the potential efficacy of republican prop aganda). There is also evidence that the R.I.C. underestimated the extent of the

53 Michael Gormley to Joseph McGarrity, 29 Sept. 1903 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8190). 54 Signed and witnessed typescript copy of a statement by Liam Gaynor to the Bureau of Military History concerning his national activities as a member of the no. 1 Dungannon Club in Belfast (U.C.D.A., Gaynor papers, P99). 55 Report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Dec. 1906 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 10). 56 The county inspector reported that 'A meeting of the Dungannon Club was held at Carrickmore on 6th ult. and 47 members were enrolled; this club was denounced by the parish priest and it is possible he may be strong enough to break it up': see report... Jan. 1906 (ibid., box 9); McCartan established a second Dungannon Club in Carrickmore in early May (Patrick McCartan to Joseph McGarrity, 12 May 1906 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8186)); McCullough addressed a Manchester Martyrs demonstration composed of mainly 'poor men' in Coalisland, where he advocated the Dungannon Club platform: report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Nov. 1906 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 10). The Kildress Club was addressed by McCartan in November, Dungannon News, 29 Nov. 1906. 57 For the territorial limits of the Dungannon Clubs, see report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Aug. 1908 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 14); for the number of clubs, see report... Oct. 1908 (ibid.). 58 McCartan to McGarrity, 8 Dec. 1906 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8186), original emphasis.

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Dungannon Clubs' growth between 1906 and 1908; other evidence suggests that a club was formed around practically every one of the twenty I.R.B, cells in east Tyrone. It is equally clear, however, that the Dungannon Clubs' intention to use the existing republican structure as a base to proselytise constitutionalist Hibernians had almost completely failed by the summer of 1908.59 In line with Mick Gormley's counsel that 'the people were not prepared for it yet', opposition to Mac Diarmada's mission quickly became apparent.60 Mac Diarmada described the hostile reception he encountered: the Dungannon club organiser [Mac Diarmada] is having some very narrow escapes from the Ribbonmen [Hibernians] in Tyrone. They have received secret orders to fight Sinn Fein and they are doing so. Their leaders and national chaplain are very aggressive and often brutal in their opposition.61

The Board of Erin's network of over thirty branches in east Tyrone did not repre sent the fertile recruiting ground that the Dungannon Clubs had envisaged. Instead, the A.O.H. became the biggest obstacle to the spread of republicanism in the area. The Dungannon Clubs never really extended beyond the core Fenian base in the area, and the republican initiative actually hardened an enmity between Fenians and Hibernians that would persist for decades to come. This is not to argue that the strategy was doomed from inception. The area's pre-existing I.R.B, struc ture, the influence of staunch nationalism and the large working-class community appeared to render east Tyrone fertile recruiting ground for an open separatist campaign.62 The means were mainly propagandist. In effect, the Dungannon Clubs attempted to expose the hollowness of each segment of the Irish Party's populist patriot platform. Once the dichotomy between rhetoric and actions was exposed, an almost Pauline conversion would overtake the people. The detail of Sinn Fein's programme was not essential; it was merely a vessel to hold the envisaged mass conversion to separatism. Commenting on the northern adoption of Sinn Fein, Bulmer Hobson stated:

We were violently attacked by Tom Kettle and other parliamentarians, who accused Griffith of falsifying Hungarian history. I was much too busy to find out if Griffith's account was

59 Ardboe and Clonoe (Republic, 10 Jan. 1907); Dunamore (report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Mar. 1907 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 11)); Old Engine (Republic, 7 Mar. 1907); Donaghmore (Arthur McElvogue, N.A.I., BMH WS 221); Coalisland (Republic, 28 Mar. 1907); Dungannon (Republic, 4 Apr. 1907); Moortown (report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Oct. 1907 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 12)); Kildress (report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Apr. 1908 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 13)). 60 For Mick Gormley's anxiety, see Patrick McCartan to Joseph McGarrity, 20 Dec. 1905 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, microfilm P8186); for a good overview of opposition to Mac Diarmada's mission, see MacAtasney, Sean Mac Diarmada, p. 24. 61 Sean Mac Diarmada to Joseph McGarrity, 22 July 1907 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, MS 17), quoted in MacAtasney, Sean Mac Diarmada, p. 27. 62 By 1906 there were twenty-two traceable I.R.B, cells. The organisation was strong in a small concentrated area on the eastern side of the Lough Neagh basin, stretching from Toome, down through south Deny, into east Tyrone, and spilling over into north Armagh. The average attendance at cell meetings was around a dozen, although meetings held during events such as fairs saw the number rise to over thirty. The main sources of information for these figures are the Fr Louis O'Kane papers in Armagh (Cardinal ? Fiaich Library Armagh, Fr O'Kane papers, LOK) and guestimates by the R.I.C. Crime Branch Special: see precis report, Crime Branch Special R.I.C, 29 June 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118).

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entirely accurate or not, but I declared at public meetings that the issue was not one of accuracy or inaccuracy about Hungarian history, but whether the policy of abstention was the right one for the Irish people to pursue.63 The organisers (Pat McCartan, Denis McCullough, Bulmer Hobson and Sean Mac Diarmada) concentrated on five interrelated areas of propaganda, of which the contested Fenian legacy was the most prominent. They argued that attend ance at Westminster was neither practical nor moral for a professed nationalist, and that Sinn Fein expressed the Irish-Ireland's genuine ethos as opposed to the Irish Party's piecemeal support. The fourth element of their propaganda focused on anti-imperialism. Finally, the promotion of secular republicanism sat uncom fortably with 'inherent' Catholic attitudes to Protestants. An examination of the republican initiative and, more particularly, the constitutional counter-attack on these five ideological points helps explain the Dungannon Clubs' ultimate failure to gain majority nationalist support for an open separatist programme.

The irony of the respective positions on the Fenian legacy was that while the Irish Party ostensibly claimed to be their successors, the separatists were equally eager to state that Sinn Fein did not solely mean recourse to physical force. Sinn Fein was a practical alternative to parliamentary attendance and the potential seedbed of a future rebellion. Patrick McCartan claimed that Sinn Fein's aim was not 'to take to the hillside and fight England, but although this may be deemed necessary at some future date, it is not necessary for the present.' Rather, repub licans should buy only 'Irish manufactured goods', abstain 'from intoxicating liquors', and boycott the army and police.64 According to Sean Mac Diarmada, the novelty of the Sinn Fein position was that it entailed conscionable opposi tion to imperialism without an impractical rebellion or the anathema of political compromise: Other countries finding themselves in a position similar to what Ireland is today - dissatis fied with foreign government... desirous for freedom, and unable to assert it by recourse to arms, have adopted Sinn Fein ... we hold it is wrong for any Irishman to take an oath of allegiance to the English king. We further see that parliamentarianism has proven an utter failure, and our present parliamentary party are betraying the Irish people.65

On the constitutional side, several ex-Fenian M.P.s acted as 'revolutionary ballast' to republican criticism.66 Joseph Devlin was careful to maintain that the debate was one of means as opposed to ends. At Cork, in September 1909, he declared that They all believed Ireland's destiny was to be a free land under a free sky; but they were all agreed the revolutionists of the past and the constitutionalists of to-day that it was the function of practical and sane patriots to utilise whatever instrument God and progress have given them to forge their way to Irish freedom.67

63 Buhner Hobson statement, 26 Jan. 1948 (N.L.I., Denis McCullough papers, MS 31,653). 64 Dungannon News, 29 Nov. 1906; Gaelic American, 22 Dec. 1906. 65 Dungannon News, 21 Mar. 1907. 66 James McConnel, '"Fenians at Westminster": the Irish Parliamentary Party and the legacy of the new departure' in I.H.S., xxxiv, no. 133 (2004), pp 41-64. 67 Freeman's Journal, 6 Sept. 1909.

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The constitutionalist counter-attack was spearheaded by Tom Kettle, east Tyrone's centrally appointed M.P.68 At a 1909 Dungannon rally, he compared local nationalists to Napoleon's veterans at Waterloo, claiming that while the little corporal's soldiers proclaimed that 'the old guard dies; it never surrenders', the 'land of the O'Neills never dies, never surrenders - it wins'.69 Kettle also employed southern Sinn Fein rhetoric against northern republicans. When Arthur Griffith printed the parliamentary oath with Kettle's name on it, Kettle - seizing on Griffith's fascination with Parnell - righteously replied: 'if you would print the parliamentary oath with his name in it, in your next issue, you would help your readers to appreciate your arguments better'.70 The cult of Parnell and popular affection for Michael Davitt helped deflect criticism of parliamentary attendance. In April 1907, on his return from America, Kettle lambasted Sinn Fein for accusing 'Parnell and Davitt and other men of the past generation of being traitors, who compromised the dignity of Ireland by going to parliament... Such black ignorance' and 'ingratitude to the memory of men like Parnell and Davitt, from whom we inherited the battle we are still carrying on', meant that Sinn Fein would never 'have the support of the people of Ireland. (Cheers.)'71 At a popular level, the local Devlinite Ulster Herald presented the 'national movement' as the Fenians' political heirs.72 An article on the Manchester Martyrs claimed: with their blood they sealed the belief in the indestructible principles of nationality. They proved to the whole world that Ireland was a serf nation struggling bravely against the lions who held her in death grips, they sent a message across the globe which has wrung down the silent years since then, breathing the spirit of that strong self-reliant principle which shall one day, please God, succeed in achieving the national freedom of Ireland.73

Such popular sentiment forced both ideologies to jostle for a claim to the Fenian legacy. In the late 1900s the Irish Party's ultimate assimilative tendencies had not emerged into plain relief; therefore, 'the debate among local nationalists' was 'more about means than ends, should physical force still be employed, or should the "fight" be continued on by constitutional methods?' In east Tyrone, the 'power of traditional rhetoric' outweighed 'explicit form adherence to moderate Home Rule politics'.74 At this stage, it was unclear if these were mutually exclusive positions.

68 For an analysis of Kettle's position within the Young Ireland Branch of the U.I.L., see Maume, Long gestation, pp 63-7. The Devlinite seizure of control of the Tyrone U.I.L. had been enacted at the expense of the clerically-backed middle-class Catholics, particularly the faction surrounding the Omagh solicitor George Murnaghan, sen. It attracted Hibernian and, indeed, Fenian support because it was represented as a struggle for democracy and against central dictation. Ironically, very shortly after the Hibernian seizure of control, Thomas Kettle was appointed as candidate for the Tyrone East constituency in spite of Hibernian calls that a local man should hold the Irish Party nomination. See McCluskey, 'The development of republican polities', p. 50. 69 Freeman's Journal, 30 Dec. 1909. 70 Sinn Fein, 9 Nov. 1907. 71 Dungannon News, 11 Apr. 1907; Irish News, 6 Apr. 1907. 72 Indeed, articles lauding Irish separatist heroes appeared on an almost weekly basis: titles such as 'Fintan Lalor and his legacy to the Irish Party and present movement' were commonplace (Ulster Herald, 7 Apr. 1906). 73 Ibid., 24 Nov. 1906. 74 Wheatley, Nationalism & the Irish Party, p. 82.

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The Fenian legacy was closely related to Griffith's Hungarian policy and absten tion. However, the core of the debate was the legitimacy of any recognition of British authority. Sinn Fein was not an end in itself but a means of articulating the combined forces of Anglophobia and civic virtue at the heart of northern republi canism. At Ardboe in October 1906 Pat McCartan said 'he was not going to paint ... a beautiful maiden decorated with harps and shamrocks, marching to prosperity, nor green flags floating over college green' but 'a road, rough and thorny perhaps, but honourable, with an Irish Republic in the distance'. Attendance 'was not only useless to Ireland, but also misrepresented Ireland before the world'. Ultimately, the Irish people desired freedom, 'but although England would not give us such power, and we cannot at present compel her, by carrying out the Sinn Fein policy we can accomplish the same work'.75 Anglophobia was deeply ensconced in the local nationalist psyche. However, concepts of civic virtue sat less comfortably with Catholic linen workers and subsistence-level farmers. Although a republican nucleus actually abstained at elections, the probable return of a Protestant landowner meant that republican ideology was often subordinated to sectarian electoral realities. While an I.R.B. county meeting voted in favour of abstentionism, the R.I.C. claimed that 'those who voted against the motion supported the nationalist candidate at the election'.76 Even in the event of abstention, to vote against the Irish Party was tantamount to political heresy. Two months later, the Ardboe cell reported that county centre James 'Dundee' Devlin had canvassed 'in the unionist interest', stating categori cally that his actions were 'not in the interests of the I.R.B.'.77 Other aspects of passive resistance were more faithfully followed. The Kildress Dungannon Club was 'under no circumstances' to 'appeal to British courts', and the club offered its 'strongest condemnation of a Cookstown shopkeeper in selling goods and verbally guaranteeing them as Irish manufacture which were found afterwards, not to be'.78 Therefore, when Sinn Fein policy clashed with 'inherent' attitudes, it could be subverted. Only when the ground had 'already been well prepared' were 'derived' ideas accepted without noticeable friction.79 The debate over the practicality of Sinn Fein abstentionist policy represented the most productive means of Devlinite attack. Tom Kettle had only defeated his unionist opponent in the July 1906 Tyrone East by-election by eighteen votes.80 At the Board of Erin St Patrick's Day demonstration, leading local Irish Party supporter and vocal Sinn Fein critic John Taggart told his audience to

75 Dungannon News, 4 Oct. 1906. The meeting was also mentioned in Sinn Fein, 29 Sept. 1906. 76 C.B.S. precis report, 13 Jan. 1910 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/119). 77 C.B.S. precis report, 13 Mar 1910 (ibid.). The I.R.B, operated on a cell structure: below the supreme council, each province had a council, each county in the province electing a centre to represent it; this structure was replicated at county level, where each cell elected a centre, who then voted on the county body to appoint the county centre. 78 Dungannon News, 7 Feb. 1907; Tyrone Courier, 1 Feb. 1907. Kildress is a small rural and predominantly nationalist village on the road between Cookstown and Pomeroy; again, it had an established I.R.B, cell. 79 Rude, Ideology, p. 29. 80 Walker, Parliamentary election results in Ireland, p. 377.

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take for example the constituency of East Tyrone, which we have maintained for over twenty years for Ireland's cause at great sacrifice, and at the binding of this new fanatical association are we going to sacrifice all? (cries of "Never" and cheers) do not admit any member of the Sinn Fein society into the A.O.H., for they do not join your organisation for honest purposes.81

In an area divided along religious lines, abstention appeared to hand political rep resentation to unionism uncontested, as well as negating any possibility of securing ameliorative social legislation. The Irish Party also consistently claimed that con stitutional methods were merely tactical. At an April meeting in Dungannon, on his return from his 1907 American tour, Kettle asserted that 'should the time come for such a resolute movement when they would be asked again to face the prospect of going to British jails by the action of the Liberal government... he only trusted the people of the Sinn Fein party would be among the fighting ranks.' Rather than national apostasy, attendance was a necessary sacrifice, but Kettle would 'go - as unwillingly as any of the promoters of what was called the Sinn Fein policy - to the British House of Commons to attend to their interests'.82

VII

The Dungannon Clubs viewed both the economic and cultural aspects of Irish Ireland as the means by which civic virtue would supplant tokenistic flag-waving nationalism. Denis McCullough extolled the virtues of 'modern Fenianism's' central place in quotidian political agitation: we can bring back the native language of Ireland, we can build up our industries and support nothing but Irish industries; start industries, educate the people, stop emigration, do everything to make Ireland strong and self-reliant and prosperous and free.83 At the aforementioned 1906 Manchester Martyrs demonstration in Coalisland, McCullough claimed that by adopting Sinn Fein, we could thus keep the young men at home who would strengthen Ireland for a physical struggle with her oppressors sometime in the future. If we carry out this work the only unemployed in Ireland after a short time will be the Royal Irish Constabulary.84 The linkage of revivalism with an eventual rebellion and working-class hostility to

81 Ulster Herald, 30 Mar. 1907. The R.I.C. report for March claimed that 'party feeling has been considerably excited by the North Tyrone election, and by the A.O.H. demonstra tion at Stewartstown on the 18th March' at which 5,000 Hibernians attended. See report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C, Mar. 1907 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 11). 82 Irish News, 8 Apr. 1907. In its report of the same meeting, the Ulster Herald recounted how Kettle told his audience that 'he wanted to know why they came to Dungannon, Coalisland and Cookstown to imperil the passage of the constituency for the banner of the reactionary Orange and Tory party' (Ulster Herald, 13 Apr. 1907); the county inspector reported that 'On the 5th and 6th April Mr Kettle M.R held meetings at Dungannon and Cookstown and publicly condemned the attitude of the Sinn Fein party. This incident has not improved the relationship between the United Irish League and I.R.B. Both these parties have been at arm's length for several years'. See report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C, Apr. 1907 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 11). 83 Dungannon News, 11 Oct. 1906; Sinn Fein, 13 Oct. 1906. 84 Gaelic American, 8 Dec. 1906.

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the police exemplifies the fusion between higher 'derived' concepts and ingrained popular opinion. Republicans deliberately contrasted their own activity with constitutionalism's perceived hypocrisy and political cynicism. While Kildress Dungannon Club started local lectures by Mac Diarmada and established an insur ance scheme to protect against 'imminent' state prosecution, it was not averse to having a dig at the double standards of local Irish Party men. The club criticised the 'fortnightly meeting of the Cookstown Board of Guardians', where a letter 'from the Coiste Gnothna executive committee of the Gaelic League asking the guardians to condemn the International exhibition' was received: Eight so called nationalists were present and not one of them raised their voice on behalf of having the resolution adopted by the board, and yet these 'flunkeys' can, at public meetings, profess their nationality, but when it comes to practical work they are nowhere to be found, as it is well understood that the object of the promoters of the international exhibition is to give an impetus to English industries.85

At a further meeting at Coalisland in March 1907, in a characteristic exposition of civic virtue, Patrick McCartan argued that Irish-Ireland's strength lay in the fact that

it teaches that the individual must be made to recognise that he himself owes a duty to the nation and that he cannot delegate this duty to others. In this respect it is at variance with what is known as parliamentarianism, which leads the people to believe that they can evade their personal responsibility to the nation by delegating it to some 83 individuals who will do all that is necessary. A man's duty to his country is not done by merely waving a flag or cheering himself hoarse at a political meeting, or paying a subscription to a party fund. This is what latter day politicians of the parliamentary type would have us believe but it is not the gospel of Sinn Fein.86

McCartan's lofty appeal found local expression in an attack on a prominent resident Irish Party man, John Taggart. At the same meeting, the Coalisland Dungannon Club's chairman, Michael Woods, contrasted genuine revivalists with contemptuous constitutional Tip support'. Woods ridiculed Taggart's claim to have 'always been a supporter of home manufacture, claiming that it was unfortunate that his hat bore the inscription "silk-lined made in England'". Woods then challenged Taggart's taunt that 'Sinn Feiners' were 'in secret alliance with the government', asserting that this was a hypocritical slur from a party that encouraged 'the poor dupes of North Tyrone to choose a castle hack as their representative at Westminster'.87 Many prominent local Party supporters had an established record of support for the language and industrial revival, reflecting Wheatley's conclusion that 'the dividing lines locally between partymen' and 'Gaels' were blurred, and that 'the concept of a separate Weltanschauung was relatively meaningless'.88 Instead of

85 Dungannon News, 21 Feb. 1907. The international exhibition was held in Dublin and ended on 9 November after six months. Almost three million visitors had attended. It was criticised by many Irish-Irelanders. The Republic featured a series of satirical cartoons, including the 'Irish anti-national exhibition 1907' published in March, which was presented as 'a poster for an impending exhibition without apologises to anyone'. This contained a representation of Eirinn as Britannia, and a harp with Redmond's head, surrounded by British goods and three businessmen - one English, the other two foreign, one sporting a fez and the other a Jewish caricature. Republic, 28 Mar. 1907. 86 Dungannon News, 28 Mar. 1907. 87 Ibid. 88 Wheatley, Nationalism & the Irish Party, p. 68.

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Irish-Ireland being the means of creating a nation, constitutionalists reversed the equation, viewing home rule as the means of reviving Irish industry and language. This found expression in an Ulster Herald article entitled 'Home rule an appeal for the Irish language'.89 Despite both movements' adoption of Irish-Ireland, the contrast in emphasis reflected the divide between civic republicanism and utili tarian constitutionalism. This, however, was a vague distinction at the popular level, which may partially explain why Woods resorted to personalised attack. Furthermore, Tom Kettle was well placed to deflect Dungannon Club criticism, often citing his own record in response.90 Kettle's private papers reveal that he played some part in the formulation of the concept of colaisti samhraidh, an annual pilgrimage for Gaeilgeoiri to the present day.91 However, having 'decided that support for the Party was a necessity of practical polities', Kettle's attitude to the cultural revival was consistent with his wider utilitarian outlook.92 In this respect, his position mirrored that of many ordinary local nationalists who, though favourably disposed to Irish-Ireland, were not prepared to jeopardise progress on other issues by adopting a doctrinaire position.

VIII

The Dungannon Clubs situated Ireland within an international framework of anti imperial resistance.93 Anti-imperialism tapped into prevailing local Anglophobia and the communal concept of traditional resistance to English rule. The police reports indicate that anti-recruiting posters and leaflets were circulated by local republicans throughout the period.94 One such poster proclaimed that 'Ireland honours Madar Lai Dhingra, who was proud to lay down his life for the cause of his country'.95 Patrick McCartan attempted to demonstrate his bona fides early on in Carrickmore by posting anti-recruiting 'placards' around the village in April 1906, getting into a confrontation with the local R.I.C. in the process.96 Fusing

89 Ulster Herald, 27 Sept. 1907. 90 Ibid., 13 Apr. 1907. 91 Alice Stopford Green to Tom Kettle, 3 Feb. 1906 (U.C.D.A., Kettle papers, LA/34/128) 92 Maume, Long gestation, p. 41. 93 In an early issue, Republic claimed that 'Sinn Fein policy is Fenianism in practice,' linking the campaign with oppressed peoples across the British Empire, most notably India (Republic, 1 Mar. 1907). 94 C.B.S. precis report, 3 Sept. 1910 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/119); report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., June 1904 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 5); report... Nov. 1905 (ibid., box 8); report... Nov. 1906 (ibid., box 10); report... Aug. 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/78). 95 The police noted that 'at Dungannon, Co Tyrone an informant states that they were delivered by Hugh Devine, I.R.B, secretary to "centres" attending an I.R.B, meeting': see C.B.S. precis report, 22 Aug. 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118). Madar Lai Dhingra, who had recently killed Sir William Curzon-Wylie, aide to the secretary of state for India, was hanged at Pentonville prison by the famous executioner Henry Pierrepoint in August 1909. 96 McCartan told McGarrity that 'as the people have not yet learned to ignore the law it will show those round home that I knew my ground and was doing nothing that I did not realise ... We are best you know when we are fighting': McCartan to McGarrity, 11 Apr. 1906 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8186); Carrickmore is an overwhelming Catholic rural

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anti-imperialism with the Dungannon Clubs' eventual revolutionary objectives, McCullough argued that although we cannot at present adopt the methods of Allen, Larkin and O'Brien [the Manchester Martyrs] by killing English soldiers ... we can weaken England's fighting force by keeping our young men out of her army, navy and police force. Every Irishman we keep out of her immoral army is equal to two soldiers killed, because he is not only lost to England, but is one kept on Ireland's side.97 At a meeting in Carrickmore in October 1906, Bulmer Hobson widened the attack. Sinn Fein's position was one of principle; constitutional nationalism was an abrogation of the inalienable concept of Irish independence. The individual should refuse to recognise British rule 'and render the government of Ireland too heavy an undertaking even for the basted British Empire'. People should 'trust neither the loyal oath M.P. nor the English government, but... trust and rely on themselves ... Sinn Fein amh?in is the watchword of ... the straight movement of militant nationality ... and the establishment of an Irish Republic ... the ultimate aim of the people of Ireland'.98 Hobson, in particular, owed a clear ideological debt to the United Irishmen. Elsewhere, he asserted that 'every evil that exists in Ireland today' is 'due to our connection with England. Since connection with England is the cause of all our ills, the only course for Ireland is to break that connection as soon as possible'.99 Hobson based his analysis within a wider anti-imperialist framework, wherein Sinn Fein acted as a bulwark against the steamroller of imperial cultural and political conformity.100 The Dungannon Clubs advocated principled opposition to connivance in imperial exploitation, consciously rejecting the potential benefits of imperial loyalty. These political arguments were grafted onto local nativist con sciousness. At Carland in July 1909 the police reported that a local Fenian, Pat McAleer, 'wondered how any young man could be found so contemptible as to join the foreign enemy and take the oath of allegiance, thereby desecrating the graves of their noble ancestors who fought and fell in the cause of Ireland'.101 In 1907 the Irish Party's progressive wing wrestled for prominence on the anti imperialist platform. Speaking to a largely Hibernian meeting at Sligo in July 1908, Kettle claimed that the British Empire was not created 'in a fit of absence of

village on the Omagh side of Pomeroy; it had an established cell of the I.R.B. long before McCartan 's attempts at organisation. 97 Gaelic American, 8 Dec. 1906. 98 Dungannon News, 11 Oct. 1906; Sinn Fein, 13 Oct. 1906. 99 Gaelic American, 8 Dec. 1906. 100Hobson stated 'since the coming of the English to Ireland, they had carried out a war of extermination, which was still going actively on. Either the English government or the Irish people had got to go - there was no alternative, and the question for the Irish people to decide was whether they would allow themselves to be crushed out of their own country, or whether they would assert their manhood, and assert the complete independence of their country. At one time England exterminated them by war, at another by famine, now it was by what they called "economic law'": see Dungannon News, 11 Oct. 1906; Sinn Fein, 13 Oct. 1906. 101C.B.S. precis report, 25 July 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118). McAleer was a member of the Donaghmore cell, which was unusual since it had a large Hibernian mem bership. Carland is a small rural nationalist village in Donaghmore parish, situated on the main Dungannon-to-Cookstown road.

This content downloaded from 82.31.34.218 on Tue, 31 Dec 2019 18:31:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms McCluskey - Fenians, Ribbonmen and popular ideology: east Tyrone, 1906-9 79 mind, but in a chronic condition of absence of morals'.102 Kettle's private papers confirm the genuine sympathy he had for non-white nations under British imperial control. Kettle had links with Egyptian nationalists, giving characteristically Francophile expression to his sympathy in a postcard from Egypt.103 Similarly, U.I.L. organiser J. F. Mclvenny 'advised the people to act as recruiting agents for the national army, and not for the R.I.C. or British Army', while local Board of Erin Hibernians consistently passed anti-recruiting resolutions.104 Individual nationalist decisions reflected the choice between incremental, prac tical benefits or an individual and principled stand for doctrinaire beliefs. Local people may well have disliked the Empire, but they exhibited few reservations about being willing to profit from it. The R.I.C. inspector-general touched on another explanation for constitutionalist strength: that 'the Sinn Fein policy entails too much self-denial to be popular'.105 Sinn Fein's demand for individual politici sation entailed a rejection of traditional mobilisation and social expression. Local politics' social element may have upset the Dungannon Club organisers, but it was woven into the fabric of local working-class society.

At another meeting early in the campaign - at Kildress on 29 November 1906 - Patrick McCartan argued that 'Sinn Feinists should be tolerant towards their countrymen ... The Ireland we want is not a Catholic Ireland nor a Protestant Ireland, but an Irish-Ireland'.106 McCartan openly criticised the Irish Party's role in 'the late outbreak of bigotry in Tyrone' during Kettle's election campaign and its direct aftermath:

You may say the Orangemen are on England's side. Still they are Irishmen and we want them on Ireland's side. But we can never get them by throwing stones at them ... Let us therefore argue and reason with them, but reserve our blows for the common enemy [England]. They are on the side of our enemies, and their enemies, not through fear of our Irish Republic, for they are Republicans at heart, but through fear of Rome.107 McCartan claimed that the Irish Party's populist strategy relied on preserving religious division, while 'the Sinn Fein party showed how the individual can and must work, and it is not by getting drunk and shouting home rule'.108 The Devlinite

102Freeman's Journal, 17 July 1908. Kettle's quotation was an allusion to the imperial apologist and Cambridge history professor John Seeley's claim, in The expansion of England (1883), that the English 'seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind'. 103 Tom Kettle's postcard from Egypt [n.d.] (U.C.D.A., Kettle papers, LA34/195). 104C.B.S. precis report, 11 Oct. 1908 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118); report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Mar. 1905 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 7). 105 Report of the inspector-general R.I.C., Sept. 1907 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 8). mDungannon News, 29 Nov. 1906; Gaelic American, 22 Dec. 1906. At Coalisland, McCartan claimed that 'the majority of the Fenians were orthodox Catholics, but at the instigation of England were refused the rites of the Catholic Church ... They were willing to take their religion from Rome but from Ireland, and Ireland alone they took their politics' (Gaelic American, 8 Dec. 1906). 107 Ibid. mDungannonNews, 13 Aug. 1908.

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press claimed that Bulmer Hobson was a spy because of his Quakerism - a smear tactic replicated during the 1908 Leitrim North by-election.109 At a subsequent meeting of Kildress Dungannon Club, in August 1908, McCartan claimed that 'he was told by a young man during the week that he would belong to no organisation of which a Protestant was the head'. McCartan responded 'that there was neither a Protestant nor a Catholic' but 'Irishmen at its head'. However, in somewhat pro phetic vein, he continued: 'If they cannot convince the Protestant and the Catholic, the Hibernian and the Orangeman, that the Sinn Fein policy leads Ireland to happi ness and prosperity, then the Sinn Fein policy is deficient.'110 Although McCartan recognised the prominent sectarian strain within local nationalism, he felt that this could be amended by rational appeal. Such was his missionary zeal that he lent his car to Carrickmore Orangemen during the Larne gun-running episode.111 If McCartan's non-sectarianism was sincere, Irish Party rhetoric, arguably, was less heartfelt. During a July 1906 election rally, Tom Kettle accused the Belfast News-Letter of promoting 'bigotries that should long ago have been allowed to die out' when it claimed home rule represented the 'Roman domination of Ireland'. Yet, in the same breath, he evoked a litany of emotive historical memories: 'when you talk about the Battle of the Boyne, we will not remind you of the Penal Laws, and how you and your friends ground the Catholics of Ireland under your heels, forbade them education, forbade them to hold property, to live as citizens of their own land'. Kettle then appealed for toleration, the true 'spirit of nationalist Ireland, that was the temper in which they ... appealed to the working men, to their Presbyterian and Protestant fellow countrymen', but, rather ominously, concluded that 'if they refused the invitation, then he could only say God forgive them'.112 Kettle's speech would have resonated with the Catholic communal sense of grievance and oppression. In this instance, the clarion call of past outrage con tributed towards widespread electoral violence. There was sustained rioting with a police bayonet charge at the Moy.113 Coalisland and Clonoe witnessed serious violence in the wake of Kettle's victory.114 A local nationalist was shot and killed in Stewartstown during early electioneering, and at a Coagh riot that August, numerous revolver shots were fired and 'steel knuckles' were in open usage.115 This tension permeated every aspect of communal life: Protestant workers threatened to strike because a Catholic employee carried Kettle's portrait into a Cookstown

109 Irish News, 4 Feb. 1907; MacAtasney, Sean Mac Diarmada, pp 33-40. noDungannon News, 13 Aug. 1908. The police reported that 'the I.R.B, society is active in a few places in Cookstown district [i.e. Kildress] and appear to be working in conjunc tion with the Sinn Fein party but speaking generally the Sinn Fein movement has little or no influence in the county': see report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C, Sept. 1908 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 14). 111 Dungannon News, 23 July 1914. 112 Ulster Herald, 14 July 1906. 113 The police reported that: 'The East Tyrone election has caused a very bitter feeling between the Orange and Nationalist parties', citing 'a rather serious disturbance at Moy on 26th inst.' where 'police on duty were also badly stoned and were compelled to charge dispersing the mobs'. See report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C, July 1906 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 10). 114 Ulster Herald, 4 Aug. 1906. 115 Dungannon News, 7 June, 20 Sept. 1906.

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factory.116 Local nationalism was a combination of various elements of which an ingrained nativist identity was arguably the lynchpin. The Ulster Herald ran a series of articles that included the suggestively titled The plantation, an Ulster record three centuries old'.117 Kettle was not a bigot, nor was constitutionalism exclusively Catholic. However, on this point, the Devlinite leadership's willing ness to turn a blind eye to Hibernian intransigence, or even to stimulate prejudice for political advantage, undoubtedly placed them in a position more favourable than that of the pure hearts in the republican movement.

In 1906 the Dungannon Clubs were armed with little more than the strength of their Sinn Fein gospel. The contest was an unequal one. By 1909 McCartan informed Joe McGarrity that 'of course the Dungannon Club is burst up as they could not stand out against the Hibernians. Of course they were all "set"'.118 McCartan continued: 'The Ribbonmen [Hibernians] are death against us and they would swear that I'm getting paid by the government. I'm getting ?300 a year ... One of the charges against me was that I was seen speaking to John Ellison who is an Orangeman and freemason'.119 The Irish Party spread deliberate lies, stimulated communal violence and played on local sectarianism. In effect, the leadership connived in a Hibernian campaign of violence against republicans.120 In a form of mobilisation that would reach its zenith at the February 1909 'baton convention', the Hibernians were the shock troops of political conformity.121 Although this helps to explain the physical reason for the Dungannon Clubs' defeat, it does little to illuminate the Hibernians' reluctance to accept the republican alternative or to explain continued Irish Party hegemony. This article suggests that in relation to each of the central elements of popular ideology, the Irish Party was able at least to match its republican counterpart. One obvious explanation was that the Devlinite consensus had already been

116 Ulster Herald, 18 Aug. 1906. 117 Ibid., 4 Aug. 1906. 118 This was shorthand for the fact that the 'set' individual was to be physically attacked by a group of Hibernians. 119McCartan to McGarrity, 18 Apr. 1909 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8186). 120 For a detailed account of Hibernian violence against the Dungannon Clubs, see, Fergal McCluskey, 'The development of republican polities', pp 95-101. 121 The U.I.L. called a national convention on 9 February 1909 to consider Birrell's land bill. This became known as the 'baton convention' because of Hibernian violence against William O'Brien M.P. and his supporters due to the latter's toleration of unionism. Although coloured by his own treatment, O'Brien stressed that Devlin's Board of Erin 'was soon enabled to spread its network of lodges all over Ulster and over the greater part of Connaught, as well as to meet the branches of the United Irish League on at least equal terms at the conventions for the selection of Parliamentary candidates, and eventually acquired an actual majority of the Standing Committee who controlled the organisation and funds of the United Irish League'. O'Brien - politically and physically bruised - left the party after the convention, and established the Cork-based All-for-Ireland League, an independent parliamentary rival to the now supposedly Hibernian Irish Party (William O'Brien, An olive branch in Ireland (London, 1910), p. 420).

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firmly established by the time Sean Mac Diarmada's mission to convert Tyrone Hibernians had begun.122 In the race for popular support, the Sinn Fein policy was the republican vehicle. The problem was that Devlinite Hibernianism had an established momentum, and the I.R.B, was pla ying catch-up in a contest that had begun half a decade earlier. However, there is a more fundamental reason for the I.R.B.'s inability to establish its supremacy. The Irish Party's position was maintained due to what E. P. Thompson termed the 'sharp jostle of experience'.123 Popular ideology's development relied not only on the fusion of 'inherent' and 'derived' elements but equally 'on the circumstances and experience which, in the final analysis, determined the nature of the final mixture'.124 In short, the political crisis necessary for the majority rejection of established forms of mobilisation in favour of mass participatory separatism did not exist, and would not materi alise. Although the Irish Party could not ultimately co-opt Sinn Fein, as Fergus Campbell suggests, Redmond's reaction was to adopt its policies wholesale - with the single exception of abstention - and to illustrate the efficacy of attendance by pointing to sympathetic Liberal legislation.125 It would take a series of national and international crises to facilitate a success ful separatist challenge to constitutional hegemony. At the first official Sinn Fein meeting in Coalisland, in September 1917, Denis McCullough claimed that when 'ten or twelve years earlier' he had 'visited this town', only 'a very small minority were able to grapple with the ideals for which they stood'.126 Arguably, the weak resonance of republican separatism in the first decade of the new century had little to do with locals' inability to comprehend the meaning of its programme. Rather, conditions in 1906 were not yet ripe for propelling the local nationalist majority to abandon constitutionalism in favour of the marginal republican alternative. It was the onset of an organic crisis - with the events of Easter Week and constitutionalism's acceptance of six counties exclusion as its main features - that would both stimulate and facilitate constitutionalism's rejection within Irish civil society. When repub licans again sought to challenge constitutional hegemony in 1917, the 'inherent' political landscape promised a more bountiful harvest for their 'derived' message.

Fergal McCluskey Department of history. National University of Ireland Galway

122 Arguably, the northern I.R.B.'s policy of a 'characteristically ill-co-ordinated complex of infiltration, subversion, resistance and association' had actually facilitated the construc tion and consolidation of the Devlinite consensus in the first place. For the description of Fenian policy in the wake of the '98 centenary movement and emergence of the U.I.L., see Kelly, Fenian ideal, p. 134. 123 E. R Thompson, 'Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class?' in Social History, iii, 2 (May 1978), p. 164, cited in Rude, Ideology, p. 35. 124 Rude, Ideology, p. 35. 125 Campbell, Land & revolution, pp 118-22. Enda Staunton persuasively argues that Joe Devlin at least sought to vampirise Sinn Fein: see Joe Devlin to John Dillon, 20 Dec. 1907 (T.C.D., John Dillon papers, MS 6729/120), cited in Staunton, Nationalists of Northern Ireland, pp 11-12. 126 Ulster Herald, 16 Sept. 1917.

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