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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2015
Irish nationalist politics between 1906 and 1909 revolved around the twin demands of self-government and a resolution of the land issue; as such, the period was demarcated by two pieces of Liberal government legislation: the May 1907 Irish Council Bill and Birrell’s December 1909 land act. 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 Féin movement’s ability to ‘outfank’ the Irish Parliamentary Party (I.P.P.) on the issue, which effectively forced Irish Party leader John Redmond ‘to adopt a radical agrarian policy in June 1907’. However, outside Connacht, the U.I.L. could not be regarded as ‘the Land League reborn’. In east Tyrone, the demand for self-government dominated the nationalist agenda, a situation reinforced by the fact that local politics had been ‘cast in the denominational mould which has characterised them ever since’. 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.
1 Broin, Leon Ó, The chief secretary: Augustine Birrell in Ireland (London, 1969), pp 11–15, 20–4Google Scholar.
2 For evidence of radical agrarianism and Fenian involvement in it, particularly in Galway, see Campbell, Fergus, Land and revolution: nationalist politics in the west of Ireland (Oxford, 2005), p. 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 For the argument that the U.I.L. was not ‘a semi revolutionary challenge to [the] British state in Ireland’, see Bew, Paul, Confict and conciliation in Ireland, 1890–1910: Parnellites and radical agrarians (Oxford, 1987), p. 79Google Scholar.
4 Staunton, Enda, The nationalists of Northern Ireland, 1918–1973 (Dublin, 2001), p. 8Google Scholar.
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 précis 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 farmer and one ‘scutcher’: R.I.C. Crime Branch Special précis 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., 1903–4 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., boxes 3–6); see also McCluskey, Fergal, ‘The development of republican politics in east Tyrone, 1898–1918’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2007Google Scholar).
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 MacAtasney, Gerard, Seán Mac Diarmada: the mind of the revolution (Leitrim, 2004), p. 14Google Scholar. The constitution of the Dungannon Clubs was published in their own newspaper, Republic, 17 Jan. 1907.
9 Kelly, Matthew, The Fenian idea and Irish nationalism, 1882–1916 (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 134Google Scholar.
10 Fitzpatrick, David, The two Irelands, 1912–1939 (Oxford, 1998), p. 8Google Scholar.
11 Wheatley, Michael, Nationalism and the Irish Party: provincial Ireland, 1910–1916 (Oxford, 2005), pp 75–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. Nowell (eds), Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London, 1971Google Scholar) (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).
13 Ibid., pp 376–7.
14 Maume, Patrick, Long gestation: Irish nationalist life, 1891–1918 (Dublin, 1999), p. 153Google Scholar. Maume borrowed the phrase from David Fitzpatrick; for ‘vampiric’ Irish Party policy towards the County Clare Volunteers, see Fitzpatrick, David, Politics and Irish life: provincial experiences of war and revolution (Cork, 1988), p. 88Google Scholar.
15 For Irish Party absorption of the ‘98 movement, see McGee, Owen, The I.R.B.: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Féin (Dublin, 2005), p. 265Google Scholar. For a similar process taking place in regard to the U.I.L., see Bull, Philip, ‘The reconstruction of the Irish parliamentary movement, 1895–1903’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1972), p. 2Google Scholar. For the A.O.H., see Garvin, Tom, Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland, 1891–1922 (Oxford, 1987), p. 92Google Scholar. For the National Volunteer movement, see Kelly, Matthew, ‘The Irish Volunteers: a Machiavellian moment?’ in Boyce, D. George and O’Day, Alan (eds), The Ulster crisis (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 83Google Scholar. Kelly compares the Volunteers to the ‘98 movement, which also ‘ended a period of political quiet’ (Kelly, , Fenian ideal, p. 224Google Scholar).
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 Rudé, George, Ideology and popular protest (London, 1980), p. 24Google Scholar.
20 For a critique of reductionist class models, see Therborn, Göran, The ideology of power and the power of ideology (Verso, 1999), pp 2–5Google Scholar.
21 For the modernity thesis, see Garvin, Tom, ‘The anatomy of a nationalist revolution: Ireland, 1858–1918’in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28, no. 3 (July 1986), p. 501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a refutation of the modernity thesis and a defence of the colonial model, see Cleary, Joe, ‘“Misplaced ideas”‘? Colonialism, location and dislocation in Irish studies’ in Carroll, Clare and King, Patricia (eds), Ireland and postcolonial theory (Cork & Notre Dame, I.N., 2003), pp 16–45Google Scholar.
22 Rudé, , Ideology, p. 28Google Scholar, original emphasis.
23 Ibid., p. 29.
24 Bew, , Conflict & conciliation, p. 131Google Scholar.
25 Rudé, , Ideology, p. 36Google Scholar.
26 One would be tempted to look to Daniel Corkery’s Hidden Ireland for evidence of a nativist consciousness (Corkery, Daniel, The hidden Ireland: a study of Gaelic Munster in the 18th century, 1760–1830 (Dublin, 1925)Google Scholar). Certainly, by 1798 derived republican ideas had been grafted, in a rather confused manner, onto elements of the inherent defender mentalité (Smyth, Jim, ‘The men of no property’: Irish radicals and popular politics in the late eighteenth century (London, 1992), pp 4–6)Google Scholar).
27 Rudé, , Ideology, p. 28Google Scholar.
28 Ibid., p. 33, original emphasis.
29 Kelly, , Fenian ideal, p. 238Google Scholar.
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 Grada, Cormac Ó, Ireland: a new economic history (Oxford, 1996), pp 187, 220Google Scholar.
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 Teevan. See Dungannon News, 5, 19 Jan. 1899.
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 Lee, Joseph, ‘The dual economy in Ireland, 1800–50’ in Historical Studies, viii (Dublin, 1971), pp 191–201Google Scholar.
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. 11Google Scholar).
41 Staunton, , Nationalists of Northern Ireland, p. 9Google Scholar.
42 ‘Reminiscences on people I knew’, undated (P.R.O.N.I., 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 politics’.
44 Report of the Tyrone county inspector R.I.C., Mar. 1905 (N.A.I., C.B.S., I.G.C.I., box 7); for an analysis of Hibernian processions in Protestant areas, see McCluskey, , ‘The development of republican politics’, p. 46Google Scholar.
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 Rudé, , Ideology, p. 36Google Scholar.
46 Ibid., p. 30.
47 McGee, , I.R.B., p. 313Google Scholar.
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 McGee, Owen, ‘“God Save Ireland”: Manchester Martyrs demonstrations in Dublin, 1867–1916’ in Éire-Ireland, 26, 3/4(autumn/winter, 2001), pp 39–66Google Scholar. 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’: précis report, Crime Branch Special, R.I.C., 29 June 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118).
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.
59 Ardboe, and Clonoe, (Republic, 10 Jan. 1907)Google Scholar; 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 (McElvogue, Arthur, N.A.I., BMH WS 221); Coalisland (Republic, 28 Mar. 1907)Google Scholar; Dungannon, (Republic, 4 Apr. 1907)Google Scholar; 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, microflm P8186); for a good overview of opposition to Mac Diarmada’s mission, see MacAtasney, , Seán Mac Diarmada, p. 24.Google Scholar
61 Seán Mac Diarmada to Joseph McGarrity, 22 July 1907 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, MS 17), quoted in MacAtasney, , Seán Mac Diarmada, p. 27.Google Scholar
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 Derry, 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 fgures are the Fr Louis O’Kane papers in Armagh (Cardinal Ó Fiaich Library Armagh, Fr O’Kane papers, LOK) and guestimates by the R.I.C. Crime Branch Special: see précis report, Crime Branch Special R.I.C., 29 June 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118). 72 Irish Historical Studies 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 Seán Mac Diarmada) concentrated on fve interrelated areas of propaganda, of which the contested Fenian legacy was the most prominent. They argued that attendance at Westminster was neither practical nor moral for a professed nationalist, and that Sinn Féin 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 uncomfortably with ‘inherent’ Catholic attitudes to Protestants. An examination of the republican initiative and, more particularly, the constitutional counter-attack on these fve ideological points helps explain the Dungannon Clubs’ ultimate failure to gain majority nationalist support for an open separatist programme. V 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 Féin did not solely mean recourse to physical force. Sinn Féin was a practical alternative to parliamentary attendance and the potential seedbed of a future rebellion. Patrick McCartan claimed that Sinn Féin’s aim was not ‘to take to the hillside and fght England, but although this may be deemed necessary at some future date, it is not necessary for the present.’ Rather, republicans should buy only ‘Irish manufactured goods’, abstain ‘from intoxicating liquors’, and boycott the army and police.64 According to Seán Mac Diarmada, the novelty of the Sinn Féin position was that it entailed conscionable opposition to imperialism without an impractical rebellion or the anathema of political compromise: Other countries fnding themselves in a position similar to what Ireland is today – dissatis-fed with foreign government … desirous for freedom, and unable to assert it by recourse to arms, have adopted Sinn Féin … 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 Bulmer 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 McConnel, James, ‘“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.Google Scholar
67 Freeman’s Journal, 6 Sept. 1909.
68 For an analysis of Kettle’s position within the Young Ireland Branch of the U.I.L., see Maume, , Long gestation, pp 63–7Google Scholar. 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 politics’, p. 50.Google Scholar
69 Freeman’s Journal, 30 Dec. 1909.
70 Sinn Féin, 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.Google Scholar
75 Dungannon News, 4 Oct. 1906. The meeting was also mentioned in Sinn Féin, 29 Sept. 1906.
76 C.B.S. précis report, 13 Jan. 1910 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/119).
77 C.B.S. précis 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, 7 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 Rudé, Ideology, p. 29.
80 Walker, Parliamentary election results in Ireland, p. 377.
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.P. held meetings at Dungannon and Cookstown and publicly condemned the attitude of the Sinn Féin 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 Féin, 13 Oct. 1906.
84 Gaelic American, 8 Dec. 1906.
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 Éirinn 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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
93 In an early issue, Republic claimed that ‘Sinn Féin policy is Fenianism in practice,’ linking the campaign with oppressed peoples across the British Empire, most notably India (Republic, 7 Mar. 1907).
94 C.B.S. précis 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. précis report, 22 Aug. 1909 (T.N.A. P.R.O., CO904/118). Madar Lal 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 fghting’: McCartan to McGarrity, 11 Apr. 1906 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8186); Carrickmore is an overwhelming Catholic rural 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 Féin, 13 Oct. 1906.
99 Gaelic American, 8 Dec. 1906.
100 Hobson 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 Féin, 13 Oct. 1906.
101 C.B.S. précis 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.
102 Freeman’s Journal, 17 July 1908. Kettle’s quotation was an allusion to the imperial apologist and Cambridge history professor Seeley’s, John claim, in The expansion of England (1883)Google Scholar, that the English ‘seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a ft of absence of mind’.
103 Tom Kettle’s postcard from Egypt [n.d.] (U.C.D.A., Kettle papers, LA34/195).
104 C.B.S. précis 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).
106 Dungannon 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.
108 Dungannon News, 13 Aug. 1908.
109 Irish News, 4 Feb. 1907; MacAtasney, , Seán Mac Diarmada, pp 33–40.Google Scholar
110 Dungannon 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 Féin party but speaking generally the Sinn Féin movement has little or no infuence 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.
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.
119 McCartan to McGarrity, 18 Apr. 1909 (N.L.I., McGarrity papers, P8186).
120 For a detailed account of Hibernian violence against the Dungannon Clubs, see, McCluskey, Fergal, ‘The development of republican politics’, pp 95–101.Google Scholar
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 (O’Brien, William, An olive branch in Ireland (London, 1910), p. 420).Google Scholar
122 Arguably, the northern I.R.B.’s policy of a ‘characteristically ill-co-ordinated complex of infltration, subversion, resistance and association’ had actually facilitated the construc tion and consolidation of the Devlinite consensus in the frst 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.Google Scholar
123 Thompson, E. P., ‘Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class?’ in Social History, iii, 2 (May 1978), p. 164Google Scholar, cited in Rudé, , Ideology, p. 35.Google Scholar
124 Rudé, , Ideology, p. 35.Google Scholar
125 Campbell, , Land & revolution, pp 118–22Google Scholar. Enda Staunton persuasively argues that Joe Devlin at least sought to vampirise Sinn Féin: 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.Google Scholar
126 Ulster Herald, 16 Sept. 1917.