REMINISCENCES OF MR T. P. O’CONNOR, M.P.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20709, 6 May 1929, Page 5

REMINISCENCES OF MR T. P. O’CONNOR, M.P.

[Copyright.]

MEMORIES OF " THE FATHER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.” Rights of Publication Secured by the Otago Dally Times. VOLUME I. CHAPTER IX (Continued). Like all the members of my party, I came for a while positively to detest Mr Gladstone, and I am still of opinion that his policy towards Ireland at this period wps profoundly mistaken. Indeed, I have the strongest confirmation of this opinion in the revolt against it to which he was driven about a year afterwards, and which involved the sacrifice of Mr Forster and the transformation of that gentleman from a friend and follower into a deadly enemy. But when I was most indignant with Mr Gladstone, I could not help feeling in my heart of hearts a certain sympathy with the splendid old warrior. I still remember how, passing in the early ■hours of one morning through Old Palace Yard, I caught sight of the figure (it was about 8 o’clock at the time) of the old man striding down to the House of Commons from his house in Downing street. He was a picturesque and appealing figure, with his white locks shaken by the wind, with a look of iron determination on his face, and with his brusque, youthful, and quick stride. But fierce political strife can permit no man any bowels of compassion for his opponents; and if there were any such weakening of my ferocious opposition and often ferocious personal criticism of Mr Gladstone, it would have been destroyed by an event which soon followed the 41 hours’ sitting. The rules for putting down obstruction _ were soon frustrated by the ingenuity of the Irishmen. They managed by various devices to keep the debate going, and the second reading of the Coercion Bill occupied four days. This was sufficient to force new rules against obstruction, and these were brought in by the Speaker. One of the rules was indeed very drastic; it enabled a certain hour and a certain day to be fixed as that which would terminate any debate, and allow the Speaker to put the question at issue to an immediate division. At last the Coercion Bill got into committee, and Mr Gladstone at once showed the determination of the Government to take advantage of the powers that, the new rules conferred upon them. He announced at the very beginning of the discussion that unless the committee stage of the Bill came to a close that night he should move that it be concluded at 12 o’clock on the evening following. This proposition rather staggered the House generally, but especially the Conservative Party, and some of the Radicals expressed their dislike There was one scene in the discussion of the amendments on the Coercion Bill Hiat is worth introducing as supplying c ° mlc relief to a somewhat traffic situation. We had among the Irish members of the time a gentleman named Dawson. He had held every position the .Corporation of Dublin could bestow, including the Lord Mayoralty. He had an abundant supply of resonant, rhetoric, but he. was a small, insignificant-looking man, given much to heroic gesticulation. On an amendment of ours that women of The BnTn T ed i rom ihe aeration of the Bill, he found occasion—striking an heroic attitude—to say that if they came to seize his wife, they would have to do it over his dead body n *V ae of the bon mote of Bobbie Spencer. I saw “ Bobbie ” l p “ c , er on - L °rd Spencer) on the first day of he meeting of the new Parliament He was 22 at the time, but he might have passed for 16, the face was so extraordinarily youthful. Its youthfulness and its conspicuousness were marked by perhaps the most dandiaeal dress that ever the House of Commons in its modern day had seen. The especially notable point of his dress was a high collar, which almost went up to the ton of his ears, and the rest of his clothes were according to this ultra-dandical fashion.

Though he was a manly fellow and really quite clever, there was something essentially childlike about his expression, manner, and dress, and people would never take him seriously. Now and then, rising amid an expectation of jeers, he suddenly was able to make the House laugh with him instead of at him. When, later on, the proposition was made to give the agricultural labourer the vote, he gravely began his speech with the words; •■I am not agricultural labourer"; and the contrast between poor, hobnailed Hodge and this exquisite dandy immediately jumped to the eyes; there was round after round of laughter, and the joke became historic. His bon mot at the expense of Mr Dawson was this: Speaking of the lack of serious importance and, above all, of serious information in the barren conflict between the Government and the Irish obstructors, ‘‘Bobbie” complained pathetically that “ thcrc_ was only one piece ■ of solid information he had received ’ through all the stormy proceedings, and that was that Mr Dawson was a married man. At last the Coercion Bill was through the House. At a later period some of the substantial reasons which justified the Irish members in resisting it with such force and such unprecedented and brutalmethods came to be realised. Their main point was that this attempt to cripple the Land Longim. with its comparatively open methods, led, when its leaders were removed, to the rise of other men and other methods. The secret society would take the place of Ibe open; the deliberate and systematic assassin would replace the occasional and, on the whole, not very serious outbreak of crime, beyond that, of course, of intimidation by the employment of the boycott. In a few months these prophecies began to be realised, and they bad a bloody and terrible harvest finally in the two hideous and disastrous assassinations of Phoenix Park. In the midst of these wild scenes in the House of Commons, there came one of those episodes, half farcical half tragic, which always seemed destined to play their parts in Irish history. For some reason or other the idea got abroad in the Irish Party that the Government intended to arrest and imprison Parnell again. At that epoch of the movement the removal—especially in such a way—of its great leader seemed to some of his colleagues fraught with incalculable danger. Temporary flight was recommended by them to Parnell, and Parnell accepted the advice for reasons of his own. Mr Hcaly was entirely hostile to this course; he said himself, in his own picturesque way, that when he heard the footsteps of Parnell descending the staircase in the house in Doughty street, where for the moment both were he imagined he heard the death-knell of the Irish cause. Be that as it may, Parnell disappeared —it was supposed to Paris. For some days no word was heard of iiim. And here I must repeat that there was always in the minds of Ills followers, and even when he was apparently most triumphant, an under-current of apprehension. He was incalculable; he was mysterious—he came from a family with a bad history of both insanity and suicide. This suspense could not be borne any v longer, and several members of the party (including Mr Dillon and Mr T. D. Sullivan) were sent across to Paris to try and trace the vanished chief. They went to the hotel where it was likely

he would stop; they found there bundles of letters awaiting him and unopened. After a solemn consultation it was agreed that Mr Dillon should be authorised to open the letters. It was not long after this process had been gone through that Parnell himself walked calmly in. A well-known chief in Scotland Yard was reported to have declared that if only he were required he could find our mysterious leader within a few hours—which meant, of course, that all Parnell's elaborate precautions for hiding his visits to Mrs O’Shea at Eltham had failed before the watching of his movements by the detective department. It was while these rumours of flight and the disappearances of Parnell were at their height that Sir William Harcourt brought about one of the most curious and really amusing episodes of Parnell’s life. Sir William, in defending some portions of 'the new Coercion Bill, let himself go and was in one of those boisterous moods widely were familiar to the House. Alluding to the disappearance of Parnell, he quoted with great effect some lines from the “ Ingoldsby Legends ” which aroused the anger of O’Gorman Mahon—the “ Chieftain,” as he was usually called. He belonged, as I have said already, to that generation of Irishmen in which the duel was a common episode of political difference, and such an affront in the gospel of his day— to which he still adhered—could only be met by a duel to the death.

Parnell had returned, and the first thing that happened was that a meeting was arranged between him and the O Gorman Mahon, Mr Dillon, and myself. The meeting took place at a table in the tea room of the House of Commons. The discussion was opened by the O’Gorman Mahon, who passed by any preliminary discussion whether a duel was necessary or not, and entered at once on those preliminaries for such an encounter with which his experience had made him familiar—as, for instance, where the duel was to take,place, who were to be Parnell’s seconds, etc. We all listened silently until Parnell spoke; and then he announced that he did not intend to issue a challenge, he did not believe in the duel. I will never forget the look of dismay and astonishment that passed over the leonine face of the old duellist; he was simply dumb with surprise, and even disgust. And so no challenge was issued. Parnell had one great quality as a leader—and especially as a leader of a party thrown open to attack us that of which he was the chief—namely, that attacks upon him left him quite cold.