Take Home Exam: the Fenian Dynamite Campaign: Terror
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Take Home Exam: The Fenian Dynamite Campaign: Terror, Religion, and Redemption in the Victorian Age Lennard Pater 4160959 Prof. dr. B. de Graaf Course Terrorism 16 – 12 – 2018 1999 Words 1 Introduction During the first years of the 1880s the city of London was, in the words of Shane Kenna, ‘under siege by an invisible opponent’1. London had been confronted with a bombing campaign, launched from the United States by the Irish nationalist – or ‘Fenian’ – Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.2 These bombings were not limited to London: the dynamite campaign also struck Glasgow and other cities in England and Schotland.3 What all these bombings had in common was that they targeted strategic goals. Therefore ‘the Fenian dynamite campaign was strategic terrorism. For four years targets included institutions of symbolic and public importance, public areas and transport infrastructure’4. The Fenians bombed those places which were of significance for England, including the Palace of Westminster and the government buildings at Whitehall, which were bombed in 18835 and 18856. These bombings, spurred by the invention of dynamite in 1867, are seen by some, for instance Bruce Hoffman7, as belonging to the first acts of modern terrorism, given that ‘it was at this time that patterns and modus operandi first appeared that would become standard terrorist operating procedures decades later’8. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa did indeed consider himself a terrorist and saw his method of attempting to blow up important places as a form of innovative terrorism.9 This essay will try to discover the role of religion within this innovative form of terrorism and aims at learning whether any striving for redemption was involved in the dynamite campaign. In order to fulfil this purpose it endeavours to answer the following question: to what extent was the Fenian dynamite campaign of 1881 – 1885 religiously inspired and was there any role for redemption in that campaign? Whilst trying to answer this question, the essay uses, apart from the concept of redemption, Louise Richardson’s three motives for terrorism, i.e. revenge, renown and reaction10, and David Rapoport’s four waves of terrorism.11 1 Shane Kenna, War in the Shadows: The Irish-American Fenians Who Bombed Victorian Britain (Newbridge: Merion Press, 2013), 86. 2 Niall Whelehan, The Dynamiters: Irish Nationalism and Political Violence in the Wider World, 1867 – 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 61. 3 Kenna, War in the Shadows, 125 – 126. 4 Kenna, War in the Shadows, 24. 5 The New York Times, “The Dispensation of Dynamite: 16 March 1883”, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1883/03/16/102805192.pdf, 15 – 12 - 2018. 6 Whelehan, The Dynamiters, 2. 7 Bruce Hoffman, “Chapter 1: Defining Terrorism,” in Inside Terrorism, revised and expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 10. 8 Ibidem. 9 Patrick Freyne, “‘O’Dynamite’ Rossa: Was Fenian leader the first terrorist?”, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/o-dynamite-rossa-was-fenian-leader-the- first-terrorist-1.2303447, 14 – 12 – 2018. 10 Louise Richardson, “What Terrorists Want”, (Vienna: Renner Institut, 2007), 1 – 5. 11 David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism,” in Attacking Terrorism. Elements of a Grand Strategy, edited by A.K. Cronin and J.M. Ludes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 46 – 73. 2 Macro-level: Ireland, the Great Famine, and Desire for Independence We will start our enquiry into the Fenian dynamite campaign by looking at it from the macro-level, analysing the root causes. Here the position of Ireland is relevant. Ireland had become united with England and Scotland in the Act of Union of 1801.12 This Act of Union did not grant the Irish political independence from London. Quite the reverse: “The Irish were regarded as one section of the nation’s citizenry who could ill-afford to do without government intervention and control.”13 And when they did require the intervention of the British government, e.g. during the Great Famine of 1845 until 1850, the government let them down.14 This caused much ill-feeling among the Irish and increased their desire for independence from England. Further Irish anger occurred when Lord Russell, the British Prime Minister, proposed a bill in 1851 which was to prevent the pope from creating Catholic bishops in the United Kingdom.15 Given that ‘the United Kingdom’s Catholics were overwhelmingly located in Ireland’16, this led to opposition between Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Russell attacked the pope – and thus the Catholic Irish – in the House of Commons and said that ‘there is no country in Europe, however great or however small—no country which values its own independence—upon which the Pope would have attempted to pass this insult which he has offered to the kingdom of England’17. Note that the British Prime Minister here speaks of the kingdom of England. This illustrates the position of the Irish: they were excluded from the kingdom, despite the Act of Union of 1801. The Irish were not only grieved by this attack of Lord Russell on the Pope and their Catholic Church, but also by the inequality between the Anglican and Catholic Churches: the Anglican Church was wealthy, whereas the Catholic Church was ‘subsisting on the offerings of the poor’18. The Irish hence felt both politically and religiously maltreated by the English. These feelings of discontent strengthened opposition to the British rule in Ireland, leading eventually to O’Donovan Rossa’s dynamite campaign of the 1880s. 12 Encyclopedia Britannica, “Act of Union”, https://www.britannica.com/event/Act-of- Union-United-Kingdom-1801, 15 – 12 – 2018. 13 Brian Jenkins, The Fenian Problem Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858-1874 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), 7. 14 Peter Gray, “The Great Famine: 1845 – 1850,” in The Cambridge History of Ireland, edited by James Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 650 – 658. 15 Paul Bew, “The Fenian Impulse,” in Ireland: The Politics of Enmity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 236. 16 Colin Barr, “The Re-Energising of Catholicism: 1790 - 1880,” in The Cambridge History of Ireland, edited by James Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 298. 17 Lord John Russell, “Papal Aggression,” in Hansard: 7 February 1851, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1851/feb/07/papal-aggression- ecclesiastical-titles#S3V0114P0_18510207_HOC_9, 15 – 12 – 2018. 18 Philip Magnus, Gladstone: A Biography (London: Penguin, 2001), 67. 3 Micro-level: O’Donovan Rossa’s Prison Life Who was this Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and what made him launch a dynamite campaign? The Irishman O’Donovan Rossa had been involved in rebellious activities in the 1860s and had been imprisoned in 1865.19 After receiving amnesty as a result of being badly treated in an English prison, he decided to move to New York in 1871, not being allowed to live in Ireland.20 It was from there that he started the bombing campaign, the agents of which were called ‘skirmishers’.21 He explained his motives by arguing that ‘it is no use appealing to the English government for justice for an Irishman in any way but dynamite, or other scientific means’22. Violence was considered necessary in order to achieve Irish independence from England. That was a view O’Donovan Rossa held for a long time: he held it whilst composing his Prison Life in the 1860s and during the decades thereafter. According to him, ‘all tactics were permissible in the war against England’23. Here we perceive the desire for revenge, which Richardson deems the most common motive for a terrorist deed and which is often associated with ‘a wrong inflicted on the community with which they identify’24. Ireland had been wronged and O’Donovan Rossa wanted revenge. It is in his case, however, not solely revenge: he also considers the British rule over Ireland to be without legitimacy. He wrote in his prison diaries: “If the British flag floats in Ireland, and if the impress of British dominion is on the land, nevertheless it is not England nor England’s by right; it is Irish and belongs to the Irish.”25 That it belonged to the Irish should be established by violence. The desire for national self-determination was thus the dominant desire in O’Donovan Rossa’s breast. That desire is, in Rapoport’s waves theory, especially a feature of the second wave of terrorism, whereas the first wave, to which O’Donovan Rossa belongs historically, consists of anarchist targeting eminent people.26 However, Rapoport does claim that ‘nationalist organizations in various numbers appear in all waves’27. Nonetheless, O’Donovan Rossa already acted as a terrorist from the second wave: in the method of bombing symbolic places, rather than assassinating individuals.28 19 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Prison Life: Six Years in Six English Prisons (New York: P.J. Kenedy, 1874), 72, https://archive.org/details/odonovanrossaspr00odon, 14 – 12 – 2018 20 Jonathan W. Gantt, “Irish-American Terrorism and Anglo-American Relations, 1881- 1885,” in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2006), 330. 21 Shane Kenna, “The Revolutionary Life and Afterlife of Jeremiah O’ Donovan Rossa,” in History Ireland, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2015), 26 – 30. 22 Kenna, War in the Shadows, 93. 23 Whelehan, The Dynamiters, 154. 24 Richardson, “What Terrorists Want”, 4. 25 O’Donovan Rossa, Prison Life, 14. 26 Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism”, 52 – 54. 27 Ibidem, 47. 28 Ibidem, 54. 4 Are there now also elements of the fourth wave to be perceived here, especially the religious component, being at the core of that fourth wave?29 That seems likely because of the religious differences between Ireland and England.