Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 33, 23 August 1923, Page 9

Evening Memories

(By William O'Brien.)

CHAPTER -XXVl.—(Continued.) Parnell was. 1 thought, relieved to find how moderate a call was made for his own intervention. He-agreed that ihe proposal would establish the struggle in Ireland upon ■ Anew basis of legality, and would probably frighten the Landlords' Syndicate into abandoning their estate-clear-ances altogether. He only doubted whether the tenantry of Tipperary were to be moved out of their fat prosperity to take romantic risks for distant strangers. Until he was reassured on that head, he could not engage his own responsibility for an adventure which might prove to be a fiasco. But he had no objection that'l should go to Tipperary to put my own sanguine anticipations cautiously to the test, and if my experiences were satisfactory, and if Archbishop Croke should be found willing to co-operate. he promised to go over to preside at the first of a series of County Conventions in the Archbishop's Cathedral town of Thurles, and lay the foundations of a great national combination against the vindictive barbarities planned by the Evictors' Syndicate. Upon this undertaking I repaired to Tipperary to make proof of the practicability of the proposal, at my own individual peril, and without any public mention of Parnell's name or promise. The results surpassed my wildest expectations. The men of Tipperary had been long chafing under their inactivity, while the rest of the country was in death-grips with Coercion, and sprang to arms at the first call to action with all the sternness of passion without words which was their tradition. The Archbishop was enraptured with the news, and did not hesitate long to accept the full responsibility of publicly saying so. The tenants proceeded with as much prudence as determination. They appointed a deputation, headed by Canon Cahill, their parish priest,, to wait upon Mr. Smith-Barry in London with a memorial remonstrating with him in respectful terms upon his interference between the Ponsonby tenants and their landlord when their differ-

fences were on the point of an amicable settlement, and ,7~{'earnestly urging him, in the interest of tranquillity upon this hitherto (peaceful estate, to relinquish a work of extermination which was calculated to inflame the worst antagonism between landlord and tenants, and to produce a counter-combination for the tenants' protection, to which we would feel ourselves forced by every feeling of humanity and self-protection to adhere." Mistaking the visit to London of the deputation for irresolution, Mr. Smith-Barry repulsed them with words of pitiless hauteur, thirty families on the Ponsonby estate were expelled from their homes by way of a first dose of terrorism, and two prosecutions were instantly levelled against myself. One was for conspiracy "to prevent Mr. Smith-Barry from doing what ho had a legal right to do," the prosecution being itself an audacious conspiracy to prevent his tenants from doing what they had an equally good legal right to do. The other was a charge of carrying on the Plan of Campaign on the Smith-Barry estate, the truth notoriously being that what was really dreaded in the new movement in Tipperary, was that it avoided all controversial relations with the Plan of Campaign, and raised the entirely separate and unassailable- issue of the tenants' right to exercise the ; same power, of combination for the protection of their brother-tenants which Mr. Smith-Barry had exercised with his brother landlords for their destruction. All which was a reassuring sign that the Government had recognised the formidableness of the new Trade Unionism, and were driven to their most desperate resources to stifle it at its birth. To make quite sure of my removal from the scene, before the Tenants' Defence Organisation could be placed on its legs ... on the lines concerted with Parnell, two additional prosecutions were instituted against me for speeches on the Kenlmare estate in Kerry, the hearing being timed for a. wees ~ after the date-fixed for the prosecutions in Tipperary. • V~V. Barely two weeks were available before my disappear- ; . ance. I utilised the interval for an appeal to Mr. Smithi tenantry in the County of Cork to make common ✓cause with their brethren in Tipperary. Our meeting in ; the City , oi, Cork for the. purpose was proclaimed, and

the city occupied by a small army of infantry and hussars, under the command of Captain Plunkett, to trample down any attempt to defy the proclamation. While Captain Plunkett was marching his squadrons about the city streets in search of any eligible pretext to charge or shoot, I transferred myself during the night to the midst of Mr. Smith-Barry's estate at Clonakilty, and addressed an enthusiastic meeting of the tenantry without interruption, the district having been thoughtfully denuded of policemen to supply Captain Plunkett with his battalions for city .service. That brutal swashbuckler had his revenge for his defeat by scenes of blood-fury more disgraceful than any other I can recall even in a time when the Castle officials' want of wit was habitually avenged by cowardly onslaughts on a. disarmed people. When I arrived in Cork that night upon my return from Clonakilty, the railway platform was in the possession of a perfectly savage mob of armed men, for whom the best excuse that can be imagined was that they were the victims of some grotesque panic, as to what impossible thing might happen in the way of a- rescue or insurrection. Their blazing eyes and hideous animal yells suggested even to one who has never been too harsh a critic of the Irish police in the mass, men maddened with drink and with rage after a day of disappointment and popular derision. Their commander, with bis sword raised aloft, rushed at mo as I left the railway carriage with the despiration of a tipsy man dreaming he was charging a battery of cannon, and shouted that I was his prisoner; the most representative citizens and clergymen who attempted to approach to shake hands with, me, were felled to the earth with clubbed rifles or batons; one of my Parliamentary colleagues, "Paddy" O'Brien, was. without a shadow of justification, stretched on the platform in a pool of blood from a terrific blow upon the head, which went within an ace of costing him his life; and this was but the overture to a series of savage excesses by my drunken captors lasting all through my transfer by the night mail train to Tipperary. The officer in command thrust his naked sword at the breast of a young girl in Mallow for approaching to shake my hand; and three of my escort discharged their revolvers past my ear into the midst of an unoffending crowd on the Charlevillc platform for the same offence. The absurdity, as, well as brutality, of their panic was heightened by the fact that I was no sooner transferred to the charge of another and a sober police officer a couple of hours afterwards in Tipperary, than F was immediately released from custody on bail. Nay, the charge which 'was made the pretext for my arrest, and ior the bloody scenes attending it, was a few days afterwards abandoned altogether by the Crown on the discovery that in order to substantiate it, .Mr. Smith-Barry would have to appear in the witness-box, and reveal the whole story of his Eviction Syndicate. (To be continued.)

Death of Popular Irish Girl

Letters from Ireland (writes a correspondent) announce the death of Miss Elbe Fogarty, ninth daughter of the late •John Fogarty, which occurred in April at the residence of her mother, Aglish, Corofin, Co. Clare. The deceased, who was a most fervent Catholic, was beloved by old and young, and her sadden death came as a severe blow toiler mother, to whom she was deeply devoted. The funeral, which was the largest seen in the district since that of her bite father, took place at the family burial ground at Good. Those in attendance included the clergy who officiated at the Solemn Requiem Mass and those who were present thereat.. Besides her bereaved mother, three sisters and two brothers in Ireland and throe sisters,in New Zealand—Airs. R. J. Burke (Palmerston North), . Mrs. T. M. Prendergast (Hukanni), and Mrs. R. A. Burke (Alangatainoka) are left to mourn their loss, and to whom much sympathy is extended. —R.T P. ~