There could not be a more striking condemnation of Westminsterism from the lips of Ireland’s greatest parliamentary leader. What would he not have said could he have foreseen the Liberal alliance, the pledge-breaking, the jobbing, the £400 a year! “If the young men of Ireland have trusted me,” said Parnell at Kilkenny, December, 1890, “it is because they know that I am not a mere Parliamentarian.” Ireland, young and old, has since then had good cause to distrust mere Parliamentarianism.
The test of any policy is its practical result. What has Westminsterism got for us? For 47 years we have had an Irish Party, for 118 years Ireland has been represented in the English Parliament. We have given the experiment a fair trial; it is high time to take stock. When the Party started in 1871 our population was 5½ millions; since then over 2¼ millions have emigrated; there are now only 4⅓ millions in the country. In 1871 there were 5,620,000 acres in tillage; now there are less than 4,900,000. In 1871 the poor rate was 2s. 6d. per head, now it is over 5s. In 1871 the taxation of Ireland was £1 5s. 7d. per head; to-day it is about £7. Apply any rational test you like, and find if you can any single good we have got by sending Irish talkers to Westminster. The Irish Party, of course, attribute everything to themselves. But this electioneering dodge—never used by Parnell—is getting a trifle thin. Even Mr. Redmond wrote in 1902: “Despite the efforts made by Isaac Butt and other Irish members between 1871 and 1876, nothing was done in the direction of land reform until the Land League came.” The Local Government Act of 1898 was drafted secretly by the Government and came as a surprise to the Party; it was even opposed by John Redmond. The Party never asked for Old Age Pensions, and when these were proposed they confined themselves to the remark that if extended to Ireland half-a-crown a week would be enough. Parliament has spent thirty-three years drafting Home Rule Bills; they have all come to nothing. In three weeks Irish Conscription was passed in spite of the Party. Where was Conscription defeated—in Ireland or in Westminster? And if the organised opposition and resistance of the Nation, especially of Labour, made Conscription impossible, does it not teach us that our real power is here at home in Ireland? The Party made vain efforts to secure justice for the Irish teachers. The teachers took the matter into their own hands and won at once; had they been more determined, they would have done better still. In 1847-’48, while Irishmen talked in Parliament, Mitchel proposed to do something here in Ireland, to keep our own food here for our own people. Ireland did not realise her true salvation then, and the consequences were terrible. Seventy years later the same gospel is being preached under a new name. Are we going to listen to-day?
Why, indeed, argue against Parliamentarianism at all? Its very adherents have abandoned all defence of it. On 3rd December, 1917, Mr. Dillon said in the English House of Commons: “Our position in this House is made futile, we are never listened to.” Next day Mr. Devlin declared: “I do not often come to this House, because I do not believe it is worth coming to.” These men are merely re-echoing from their own experience the parting words of Michael Davitt as he left the English Parliament (Oct., 1899):—
“I have for four years tried to appeal to the sense of justice in this House of Commons on behalf of Ireland. I leave, convinced that no just cause, no cause of right, will ever find support from this House of Commons unless it is backed up by force.”
THE FUTILITY OF TALK.
Let us consider the whole policy in a sane, business-like way. John Bull runs his Other Island purely as a lucrative investment; he makes a good profit by the concern. Ireland is simply an Area for supplying beef and mutton, oats and butter, timber and men. We, Irish men and women, exist merely to be exploited. Well, we know it; what have we done? How have we striven to oust this big profiteer who sweats and coerces us? We were once an independent concern, we managed our own affairs. Then John Bull annexed us; by means of bribes and promises and threats he turned out the Irish directors. Arrangements were made by which 100 Irishmen were admitted to the English Employers’ Federation 600 strong. And for 118 years these Irishmen have been talking there, making speeches and petitions and harangues. And we? What have we been doing? Oh, yes, now and then the Irish—that is, John Bull’s workingmen—got restive and made things unpleasant. So they got some concessions: Emancipation, Land Acts, etc. But still they always turned again to talk; with 80 Irishmen talking to 600 Englishmen they were told that they would be quite safe. Weren’t we “represented” at Westminster? Whenever these, our representatives, definitely proposed anything, they were, of course, beaten; but if the majority against them was less than 200, they always raised a deafening cheer. It is so nice to be beaten by only 150, whereas if we were not “represented” we should be beaten by 230—which would be dreadful. Then we were told that what was said in Parliament reached the world—as if Mr. King had not told more truth about us in Parliament than the whole Irish Party, as if Hansard is not censored, as if Dr. McCartan, Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington and others have not said more in America than twenty Westminsters could convey—not to mention T. P. O’Connor’s performances! To what depths are we reduced, when Westminsterism is excused only as a means of getting into Hansard!
Do we really think that a handful of Irishmen by merely talking can persuade eight times their number of Englishmen to take their grip off this country, to cease exploiting us, to give up their fat profits? Is it not, to say the least, more likely that the English majority, far cleverer and more powerful, will succeed in cajoling, bribing and fooling the few Irish flies who walk into the spiders’ parlour? In fact, was not the Act of Union specially designed for this very purpose? To swallow a powerless Irish minority in an English Parliament, to give them facilities for talking and letting off steam that thereby the Irish people might be beguiled into doing nothing else. By providing a sham outlet for our energies, by diverting our attention into wordy warfare, the English Parliament has succeeded for 118 years in preventing us from seeing the obvious truth that the English Government can only be made unworkable in Ireland.
The very genius of Parnell has done us harm by intensifying the illusion. He succeeded for a while, where Butt failed, because he adopted unparliamentary methods in Parliament. For a time, by persistent obstruction, Parnell made Government unworkable, even in England. He was beaten in the end; obstruction is no longer possible; we have reverted to the mock debates of Isaac Butt. Things are even much worse; for the whole Party system has made Parliament a fraud and a farce. The House of Commons has lost its independence to a caucus which controls the jobs and the party funds. The latest development, whereby Messrs. Lloyd George and Bonar Law have arranged to wipe out the Opposition, makes the further presence of a few Irish Nationalists a jocose anachronism.
The English Coalition would, however, still like the eighty Irishmen to come and hobnob with them. England is far keener on their attendance than Ireland ever was. Those who oppose the Westminster policy are mostly in English prisons; absenteeism is treason felony. English aeroplanes drop leaflets printed (at our expense) by the English Government to denounce the policy of abstention, to show that it is folly. The English foreign propaganda tirelessly advertises the presence of Mr. Dillon and Co. in Westminster as the surest proof of England’s kindness to us, and of Irish loyalty to the Empire. The Irish Party think that their attendance is good for Ireland, the English Government is quite certain that it is good for England, everyone agrees that it cannot be good for both. Which, do you think, knows the situation best: the English Government, whose policy of exploiting us has been hitherto so eminently successful, or the Irish Party which has been so often taken in, outwitted, bribed and duped? It is worth pondering over.
THE ALTERNATIVE.