Killing Home Rule with Kindness

“Are ye right there, Michael are ye right,
Do you think we’ll be home before the night?”
“We’ve been so long in startin’, that ye couldn’t say for sartin”,
“Still, ye might now, Michael, so ye might”.

At Lahinch the sea shines like a jewel,
With joy you are ready to shout,
When the stoker cries out:
“There’s no fuel,
And the fire’s taytotally out”…

Percy French, a Board of Works employee from Roscommon who became a hugely popular ‘parlour’ songwriter, poked fun at the shortcomings of the West Clare Railway. There is no doubt, however, that the extension of the railway network brought about a vast improvement in the quality of life of the Irish people. By 1880 2,370 miles had been opened. The 1890s and early 20th century saw another surge in railway construction.

The Conservative government, in power for most of these years, did something which then would have been unthinkable in other parts of the United Kingdom: it subsidised public transport. The construction of light railways provided much-needed employment and, extending to towns like Clifden in Connemara and Cahirciveen in Co Kerry, reached out to remote communities. Local people looked in awe at, for example, the erection of a great viaduct over the estuary at Ballydehob for the Skibbereen to Scull Railway in west Cork.

It was now possible to introduce standard time, Dublin Mean Time (which was 25 minutes behind Greenwich Mean Time until 1916). Connected by light rail, places such as Bundoran in Co Donegal and Mulranny in Co Mayo became popular seaside resorts. Desolate rivers and loughs became accessible to English fishermen alighting from the station at Ballynahinch, Co Galway, for example, where, in 1892, 86 men found employment as bailiffs, watchers and gillies.

In the far west, lobsters, brought in by currachs and sailing boats known as hookers, glothogues and pookhauns, arrived in creels at railways stations ready to be rushed to the London market.

Railways greatly stimulated the production of eggs. In 1892, 17 tons of eggs, or 244,800 a week, were loaded onto the Leitrim Railway at Manorhamilton, Dromahair, Glenfarne and Belcoo – a total of some 13 millions eggs a year from these four small towns alone.

This was all part of a Conservative policy which has been described as ‘constructive unionism’. It was begun by Chief Secretary Arthur Balfour who set up the Congested Districts Board in 1891 to provide regeneration in the west.

His brother, Gerald, replaced him as Chief Secretary in 1895. In that year he explained to his constituents in Leeds: 'The government would, of course, be very glad if they were able by kindness to kill Home Rule…'

The Congested Districts Board, extended by Gerald Balfour, subsidised local craft industries, such as handloom weaving and knitting, improved roads and built new harbours – the pier at Killybegs in Co Donegal, for example, still bears the inscription ‘CDB’, the Congested District Board.

The eccentric Irish Unionist, Sir Horace Plunkett, enthusiastically backed Gerald Balfour’s schemes. Plunkett had set up cooperative dairies or ‘creameries’ which greatly improved the collection, quality and marketing of Irish dairy produce – indeed, many are still operating today. Gerald Balfour appointed him head of a new Department of Agricultural and Technical Instruction which, incidentally, led directly to the construction of major technical colleges in Belfast and Dublin.

Was good money thrown after bad? Some economists think so. And, since the nationalists were still deeply divided between Parnellites and anti-Parnellites, kindness could be strictly limited since there wasn’t much Home Rule to kill. In any case the Irish had to pay themselves for these improvements. Indeed, in 1896, a government commission reported that Ireland had been overtaxed since the Act of Union had been implemented in 1801.

Gerald Balfour’s most lasting achievement was the introduction of democracy into the Irish countryside. Until his Local Government Act of 1898, rural Ireland had been ruled by Grand Juries, unelected self-perpetuating bodies composed mainly of local landlords and their relatives.

On the eve of their abolition, Nationalists held only 47 out of a total of 704 positions on Grand Juries. Now they were replaced by County Councils and urban and rural district councils. The electorate was so wide that it included some women. Nothing did more to familiarise the Irish people with the working of representative institutions and to strengthen support for democracy in the years to come.

At one stroke Gerald Balfour destroyed the political power of the Protestant Ascendancy in the Irish countryside. Nationalists won huge majorities in local elections and Unionists only just managed to achieve a majority in the province of Ulster. However, it was left to Balfour’s successor, George Wyndham, to knock aside the last pillars of the Ascendancy.