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

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20743, 14 June 1929, Page 3

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

[ComilGHT.]

MEMORIES OF “ THE FATHER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.”

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Otago Daily Times,

VOLUME 11. CHAPTER VII (Continued)

The ignominy of the Government over the failure of this terrible attack on Parnell was increased by their attitude during the trial and afterwards. So as they dared, they hud placed ill their resources at the back of the Times. It was regarded as a scandal that the attack on Parnell and the defence of the Times was given to Sir Richard Webster—then the Attorney-general and. as such, an important member of the Government. Scotland Yard and all its resources were also placed at the service of the Times.

There'was among the officials of the period an Irishman named Sir Robert Anderson. Ho belonged to one of those Irish Protestant families who had the fiercest hatred and dread of the purposes of the majority of their countrymen, and for at least two generations had given their zealous and effective support to the open and secret forces that were arrayed against the Nationalist demand and the Nationalist Party'. There was one member of the family in Dublin when I was a young reporter there. He was in the Crown Prosecutor’s Department. It was at the time when the leaders of the Fenian .conspiracy—many of them Americans—were being tried at the Green Street Courthouse {the Old Bailey of Dublin) and were being sent to long terms of penal servitude. I had to see this Mr Anderson as a matter of business, and ouec I slipped into the observation that those were sad times. I still sec the smiling face and hear the chuckle and sec the joyful rubbing of his hands as ho replied that he did not find the times sad at all; they were giving him plenty of work.

Sir Robert Anderson was a brother of this worthy. He was < ployed and trusted by the Government, as indeed he deserved to be, for he had many of the gifts and all the zeal, both on professional and political grounds, of the political sleuth-hound. He was the man with whom Lc Caron, the spy, had been in communication for years/ When Lo Caron came to be examined, the spy was furnished by Anderson with the secret letters he had been sending to him all this time; and thus documents that were supposed to be secret were placed by Anderson at the disposal of the Times—one of the facts that were, urged in proof of the corroboration of the charge that the Government were in every way privy to the attack of the Times upon Parnell and his associates. Of course, in addition to all tins, there was the long procession' of resident magistrates and chiefs of the police in Ireland, who came to give ’ evidence against Parnell. I ought to give a few words _to one of the most picturesque and sinister figures among this great army of agents provocateurs—shorthand reporters, who testified to speeches by one or other of the Irish defendants, resident magistrates, the dependents of the Government who, under the Balfour regime, were employed in what was supposed to be the impartial administration of justice—rmon, as has been said already, who were the bond slaves of the Government, etc. Even among this dreadful army Captain Plunkett stood out. In the course of some investigations a telegram from him was produced in which were the fateful words: “Do not hesitate to shoot. 5 -’ One day in the corridors of the court Captain Plunkett was pointed out to me. He glared at me; I looked attentively and with sonic surprise at him. He not only looked the part, but he looked it as though he were a figure exaggerated by the hand of a brilliant but cruel caricaturist, I saw the chance of a real journalistic and political coup, for I sought and found F. C. Gould—as a caricaturist the greatest man of his time; and Gould produced a perfect portrait of the man, with his bloated face, rubicutd with good living, his ferocious ugliness of feature ami of look. He was watched by those whom he was watching, and it used to be whispered that, in addition to his enjoyment of good living, he was n middle-aged Romeo, and his balcony scenes were observed by his political enemies. He did not long survive the great trial.

All these figures, and especially the utter breakdown of Pigott, had brought upon the Government a great deal of discredit, and for a while their political stock was very low, as was evidenced by a series of disasters at the by-elections. “ The flowing tide is with us,” said Gladstone; and the w-orda passed into a slogan, and appeared on large placards in all the great halls where crowded and enthusiastic Liberals met to support Gladstone and Home Rule. There were sinking hearts even among the supporters of the Government, and their view of the folly of their leaders received additional strength from the obstinacy with which they remained faithful to their lost cause.

Of all the marks of obstinacy none was greater than the character of the apology which Sir Richard Webster gave after the exposure and suicide of Pigott had revealed the foulness of the attack on Parnell. The hesitating Tories wore fortunate to find in Lord Randolph Churchill a spokesman, which led to one of the- most tragic moments in his chequered career. Ho was in a strong position and face to face with the Government; he had for a long time been doubtful about the ultimate effect of the policy of unredeemed and violent coercion which had been adopted in Ireland by the Government, and lie foresaw its evil consequences on the fortunes of his party as well as on the future relations of the two countries.

Rut what had shocked him most was the conduct of his former colleagues in taking up-the case of Pigott and The Times. He had written a long memorandum on the subject uttering the most solemn warnings against this course. It was an unanswerable indictment of the whole conduct of the Government in reference to the Parnell Commission.

The memorandum had no elfcct upon the action of the Government; they drove through the House of Commons hy guillotine closure a Bill for the establishment of the commission; and when the report of the commission came before the House of Commons, the Government confined themselves in their resolu-

tion to an adoption of the report of the' judges in the following terms:— Tliis House deems it to he u duty to record its reprobation of the true charges of the gravest description, based on private and public documentary evidence, which have been proved against members of this House and other persons; and, while declaring its satisfaction at the exposure of twin conspiracies, the one treasonable and the other criminal, to which 52 members of tliis House have been parties, this House expresses it’s profound sorrow for the wrong inflicted ami the suffering'and loss endured by the loyal minority in Ireland, through a protracted period, by reason of these acts of flagrant iniquity. “The feeling,” writes Mr Winston Churchill in the biography of his father, ** that some reparation was duo to men against whom a charge of complicity in murder had been falsely preferred, and who had been pursued by such unwonted means, was by no means confined to the Opposition.” But the Government wore resolved to brazen it out. and the party machinery, local and national, held firm.