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John Redmond's Last Years. Stephen Lucius Gwynn
Читать онлайн.Название John Redmond's Last Years
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isbn 4064066212797
Автор произведения Stephen Lucius Gwynn
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
The tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to delay a division were pushed further in the Irish party than elsewhere. We were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood the position. We recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for Redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. But the net result was that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was worse, that Ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. It followed, not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could have been of service in debate. They did not any longer see their members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack on the Government; they heard very little of them at all. They knew little and cared less about the work of education in British constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of Irish members.
Redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to attract men of talent into his ranks. Parnell had that power. He had, and used, the right of suggesting names. But under the constitution of the United Irish League (originally the work of Mr. William O'Brien when reunion was accomplished in 1900) the machinery of local conventions was set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the central directorate—which could only insist that a man properly selected must take the party pledge. Whether this machinery was inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but Redmond himself complained repeatedly in public that it worked badly. Candidates were often chosen purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any real thought of finding the man best fitted to do Ireland's work at Westminster.
This evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others. There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of constituencies, any contest was deprecated—and from some points of view rightly—as leading to possible faction between Nationalists. The choice of a member really fell into too few hands; the electorate as a whole was not sufficiently interested. Nevertheless, several able men came into our ranks, and under the conditions it was not possible to utilize their talents fully, as they would have been utilized had we been in opposition, not in support of the Government. More could have been done, however, to give them their opportunity, and the responsibility for not varying the list of speakers rests on Redmond. It was his policy to avoid personal intervention, and to leave such choices to be settled by proposals from the party itself. This was a real limitation to his excellence as leader—for leader he was.
There was, however, an even more important limitation arising out of his personal temperament. As chairman, I never expect to see his equal. He had the most perfect public manners of any man I have known, whether in dealing with some vast assembly or small confidential gathering. The latter type of meeting is the more difficult to handle, and nothing could exceed his gift for presiding over and guiding debate. He could set out a political situation to his party with extraordinary force and lucidity. He could also, when he chose, so present an issue as to suggest almost irresistibly the conclusion which he desired—and this was how he led. Where he came short in the quality of leadership was in the personal contact.
His relations with all his followers in the party were courteous and cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always aloof. He did not invite discussion. It needed some courage to go to him with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a "Yes" or "No." He lacked what Lord Morley attributed to Gladstone, "the priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock." No one thought more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. Men like being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, I have reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked discussion for discussion's sake.
Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the new Young Ireland.
But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook—and they were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party—Redmond's essential limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. What his followers gave him was admiration, liking and profound respect. No less than this was strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal pettiness, his control of temper. In twelve years I heard many complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: I scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. He was always spoken of as "The Chairman"; no one attributed to him sole responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a fault.
Yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. He had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled.
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