TW Russell, who had lost his South Tyrone seat in 1910, was re-elected for North Tyrone in 1911 with nationalist support, presumably from the mountainy men of the Sperrins, who would have had an interest in the land question. (p43)

Russell replaced Redmond Barry, who had become Attorney General. Redmond and the Irish Party supported Russell, who was it seems seen by both Unionists and Nationalists as a turncoat. The Unionist candidate was EC Herdman of Sion Mills. Priests were said to be threatening damnation for Catholics who voted for Herdman, a gift to Unionist propaganda. It is difficult to summarise the complexities of Tyrone politics, but Russell seems to have had much to commend him.(p126)

The period 1911-14 saw the extensive arming of the Ulster Volunteers, culminating with the Larne landings of April 1914. The separatists' welcome for this process ('...martial virtues as antidotes to the beggarly whine of constitutionalism...' p139), while it had deep roots in Irish history, was a disastrous misunderstanding of the role of the Ulster guns. The 19th century prohibition of importing arms was dropped by the Liberals at the request of Redmond. Arms were extensively used in elections between 1910 and 1914, according to Maume, who goes on to state that '..these ideas also echoed contemporary European glorification of the warrior...symbiosis between Irish and British versions of this cult is reflected in the use by some separatists of rifle clubs affiliated to the right-wing pro-conscription British National Service League'.(p139)

The extent of the misunderstanding of the role of the Larne gun-running is illustrated by the fact that Dr Pat McCartan, who with Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough had been associated with the Dungannon Clubs in 1906 as an IRB alternative to Sinn Fein, lent his car to help transport the arms.(p145)

By now Partition was explicitly on the agenda; Carson toyed with the idea of a nine-county Ulster as a step towards eventual unification. The other extreme of a four-county segment was also considered. This was in July 1914, on the eve of the war. Then on July 26 we had the Howth gun-running, which the police attempted to prevent. Pearse complained that Redmond wanted to arm the Ulster AOH. Religious-based civil war seemed imminent. Then the 1914 war broke out, and the scene changed.(p145-6)

PS O'Hegarty: '...most nationalist support for Britain extended to selling cattle and cheering from a safe distance..'. Moran took the view that Carson's threat of civil war had led Germany to expect British non-intervention(p151). The latter view was held by Joe Johnston, to his dying day.

Redmond attempted to use recruiting to the British Army as a means of forming Irish regiments which would subsequently be part of a national army, but the British top brass were unco-operative, keeping the Irish dispersed as much as possible, except the Ulster Division.(p154)

Maume devotes a few pages (176-8) to the motivations of the 1916 leaders. There was more to it than a 'blood-sacrifice' dedicated to keeping the separatist tradition alive. Some aspired to enable Ireland to withdraw from the war, with US-based political support; this was the motivation behind the pioneering use of radio communications, which they hoped would be picked up by transatlantic shipping and defeat the British censorship, getting US public opinion onside. The situation on the Western front, and the Dardanelles debacle, had made a negotiated peace on German terms seem credible, with an Irish seat at the conference table. These aspiration Maume dismisses as naive. I am far from satisfied that we yet have the full story, despite the attention of many historians to the 1916 Rising as the seminal event of Irish statehood.

According the Maume (p181) in some places Redmond's National Volunteers were used to suppress the rising; Redmond in the Commons denounced the insurgents as 'tools of Germany'. Initial reaction in the provincial press, according to Joe Lee, attributed the rising to 'socialists'.

The North Roscommon by-election was contested and won by GN (Count) Plunkett, supported by a broad-spectrum catholic-nationalist grouping which included the AOH and the Catholic Bulletin; the execution of his son Joseph Mary Plunkett helped his credentials. He had a somewhat lukewarm nationalist background, having served as secretary of the Royal reception committee in 1911. He had denounced the Rising as the work of 'socialists and suffragist cranks'. Yet subsequent to the election he supported the loose grouping which later consolidated into the 1918 Sinn Fein. His expulsion from the RDS, and as Director of the National Museum, was opposed by Charles Oldham, the economist and Liberal Home Rule supporter (p192). Oldham at the time and subsequently was one of Joe Johnston's role models.

Maume on p197ff gives some insights into the 1917 Convention, where Sinn Fein were allocated five seats but refused to take them up, depending on unofficial representation via George Russell and Edward McLysaght. William O'Brien refused to take up the two AFIL seats. Dunraven participated as an independent southern unionist. Plunkett as Chairman did his best to avoid Partition. Redmond offered the Prime Ministership to Carson, suggesting some decoupling from reality. (There is scope here for a comparative study of the Convention and the current Good Friday Agreement process.) Partition had advocates on the nationalist side, such as Father Michael O'Flanagan.

The threat of conscription became acute at the time of the second Marne offensive in 1918. This generated a national anti-conscription movement, and helped Sinn Fein in the run-up to the election later that year. Protestant nationalists who attempted to get support for an anti-conscription petition at St Patrick's were driven away, giving fuel to Moran's 'Catholic = Irish' campaign. Three Redmondite MPs led a recruiting campaign for volunteers as an alternative to conscription.(p206)

The war situation gave rise to millenarian rumours about the end of the Empire, and threats of a new Plantation by ex-servicemen(p209). The war ended and the election took place, with the Sinn Fein landslide. Redmondites and southern unionists tried to broker a deal based on Dominion Status(p215); this would not have been far removed from what eventually emerged as the Free State after the Treaty(RJ). This centred round Horace Plunkett's Irish Dominion League, and included Henry Harrison the former Parnellite MP and Stephen Gwynn, the founder of the Maunsel publishing-house(p216). The Irish Statesman was their publication.

On the whole the Maume book gives a fascinating glimpse of the complexities of Irish politics prior to independence, and opens up many avenues for future research. It constitutes additional background to the story of Joe Johnston's attempt to keep alive the Protestant thread in Irish nationhood, largely via his association during this period with Plunkett and the co-operative movement, and his attempt to use this as a counterforce to liberal utilitarian economics.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999