Assassination in the Phoenix Park

Back in 1847 the Tenant Right League summarised its demands as the ‘three Fs’ – Fair Rent, Free Sale and Fixity of Tenure. In 1881 W E Gladstone, the Prime Minister, seeing the great power of the Land League, decided to grant these three demands in a new Land Act.

From now on land courts, and not the landlords, would decide what a fair rent would be – the first rent control in United Kingdom history. ‘Free sale’ now gave the tenant a clear right to sell the interest in his holding to an incoming tenant without landlord interference. Finally, the Act ensured ‘fixity of tenure’: tenants could not be evicted provided they had paid the rent.

Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, cautiously welcomed the Act. The problem was that many tenants, their crops ruined by bad weather, were quite unable to pay their rents. In any case, the aim of the Land League was to get rid of the landlords altogether.

While Parnell advised farmers to ‘test the Act’, the Irish countryside remained turbulent. There were so many violent incidents that the Irish Chief Secretary, W E Forster, pushed through a Coercion Act, giving special powers to the police and military. In reaction, the speeches of Irish MPs and Land League members were so ferocious that in October Parnell and other prominent leaders were imprisoned in Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol.

This only made the situation worse. Parnell’s sisters, Anna and Fanny, formed the Ladies Land League which openly organised extreme action. The high-profile prisoners meanwhile issued a ‘no rent’ manifesto from their prison cells. The island slid more and more out of Government control.

Finally, on 2nd May 1882, in what became known as the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’, the leaders were released on condition that they called a halt to the turbulence in the countryside. In return, Gladstone promised an Arrears Bill which by the end of the year would give protection from eviction to more than 100,000 tenants who were behind with their rent. This was too much for Forster: he resigned.

On 6th May, four days after the release of Parnell and his associates, Lord Frederick Cavendish took his first walk as the new Irish Chief Secretary in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, in the company of Under-Secretary Thomas Burke. It was a fine evening, the park was full of people, and the two gentlemen stopped to watch a game of polo. Suddenly men came up from behind, stabbed the Chief Secretary and Under-Secretary to death with 12-inch surgical knives, and then made their escape in a waiting cab.

The assassins called themselves the ‘Invincibles’. Eventually, they were caught and brought to justice. This appalling act shook Parnell and caused him to distance himself from the more extreme agitators. He now set about concentrating on constitutional politics to obtain Home Rule for Ireland. For that he needed the cooperation of the Liberals. Many Liberals, however, were convinced that Parnell was up to his neck in conspiracy with murderers.

On 22nd February 1883 Foster made a blistering attack on Parnell in the House of Commons. He accused him of conniving at the assassinations. ‘It’s a lie’, Parnell cried out but it was years before Liberals felt they could work with him.

Rather later than some other European states, the United Kingdom was, in gentle stages, becoming more representative, more democratic. In December 1884 Gladstone gave the vote to all male heads of households.

The Irish electorate leaped from under a quarter of a million to nearly three quarters of a million. The following year it was decided that, in spite of a steady fall in population, due mainly to emigration, Ireland would be allowed to keep all its 103 seats at Westminster. Ireland had been severely underrepresented at the time of the Union. Now it was over represented. Very soon Ireland would be deciding what government would be in power in London.

On 8th June 1885 there was to be a division in the Commons on an additional tax on wines and spirits. Parnell summoned all absent Nationalists to Westminster by telegram and all 39 Irish Parliamentary Party MPs trooped through the lobby to vote against the Liberal government. Gladstone’s administration lost by 263 votes to 252.

As one MP remembered: '…a collection of bores and the bored became a mass of screaming, waving, gesticulating lunatics…and Lord Randolph Churchill emitted hysterical yells……like a wild animal fastening its teeth on the prey.'

Lord Salisbury, with Parnell’s help, now formed a Conservative government. His majority was too slim for comfort, however, and in November he called an election.

For Ireland that general election of 1885 – the first on the new franchise – was certainly the most momentous of the century.