Dangerous Seats by Wolfe Eugene L

Author:Wolfe, Eugene L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2019-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

Fenian Terrorism

At the same time that Irish MPs were moving to the brink of physical resistance within parliament, some of their compatriots were pioneering equally innovative but far more violent means to the same end outside of it. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, formed in 1858, initially sought to foment insurrection. When this proved impossible despite the substantial agrarian distress in the late 1870s, they switched to spectacular acts of violence (typically in England) to sow panic and sap the government’s will to continue to rule Ireland, becoming in the process the progenitors of modern terrorism.41

The Fenian threat prompted extraordinary security arrangements for debate on the Irish Coercion Bill in early 1881, with 400 additional police stationed around parliament and another 50 constables posted within the Palace of Westminster. ‘The members’ lobby was cleared from an early hour, and strangers were not allowed to enter for several hours.’42 In the wake of the suspension of three dozen Home Rule MPs, Prime Minister Gladstone reportedly was ‘inundated’ with correspondence threatening his life and a number of bombs were sent to him through the post.43

A year later, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary, were assassinated in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The leader of the Home Rulers, who days earlier had struck a deal with the government to use his influence to reduce disorder in Ireland in return for public money to wipe out arrears in rent owed by Irish tenants, worried he could be next. ‘At Westminster Parnell habitually carried a revolver in his overcoat.’44 Moreover, acutely embarrassed by the killings, Parnell felt compelled to embrace moderation even more strongly.45 As a consequence, the ‘threats of the ultras of the knife became so violent’ that the government gave him police protection.46

Although Fenians were not responsible for the Phoenix Park murders, they bore responsibility for numerous bombings in England and Scotland in the early 1880s.47 Two of their attacks were parliamentary. In mid-1884, John Daly was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in a plot to throw bombs from the Strangers’ Gallery into the House of Commons. Early the following year, Fenian dynamiters planted two explosives in Westminster Palace (and another in the Tower of London’s White Tower). One of these detonated as police were carrying it up the stairs from the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. The second bomb tore through the House of Commons itself. It was a Saturday, so the Commons was not sitting. However, had the many visitors not vacated the chamber following the earlier explosion, the number of casualties could have been considerable.48

If the Fenians expected their handiwork to further the Irish cause, they soon were given reason to reconsider. Yes, the bombings generated terror, but they also evoked outrage. Politicians in the United States, who hitherto had shown little inclination to curb the activities of the Fenians, immediately announced measures to do so.49 In Britain, fairly or not, the Fenian campaign weakened growing political momentum for greater Irish autonomy, a bill for which was defeated in the Commons in 1886.

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