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 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Historical Studies 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 61 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. I 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.