Thomas Power O'Connor

Irish member of Parliament and journalist

• Born: October 5, 1848
• Birthplace: Athlone, Ireland
• Died: November 18, 1929
• Place of death: London, England

As a member of Parliament and as a journalist, O’Connor was able to advance the Irish cause and effect change without violence.

Early Life

Thomas Power O’Connor was born of poor but educated parents. His mother was the daughter of an officer in the duke of Wellington’s army in Spain. A few years after O’Connor’s birth, the family moved to Galway, where O’Connor spent his early life. His parents, who were determined to give their son a good education, enrolled him at the Immaculate Conception College in Athlone. A few years later, he transferred to Queens University in Galway, where he excelled as a classical scholar, mastered French and German, and gained recognition as a formidable member of the debating society. He was only eighteen when he earned his bachelor of arts degree.

During his lifetime, O’Connor was subject to bouts of melancholy. He was also troubled by chronic digestive problems that would come on with regularity two or three hours after each meal. He did not take regular exercise and drank very little. He spent money as he received it and was extremely generous, especially toward members of his family.

His first employment was as a reporter for Saunders Newsletter in Dublin. The newsletter had a strong Tory and Orange bias, which ran contrary to O’Connor’s Roman Catholicism and Irish nationalist convictions. Later in life he related his feelings and experiences while attending ultra-Tory meetings and listening almost nightly to denunciation, in no sparing terms, of the Roman Catholic Church in which he had been raised. He succeeded in listening with equanimity and recording them with accuracy.

After three years, he quit this job and went to London in an attempt to advance himself in his career. He was never to reside in Ireland again. He had no friends or contacts in London and spent weeks seeking employment while his meager funds were diminishing. Near destitution, he obtained a position as a reporter for the Daily Telegraph. This was at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, and O’Connor’s assignment was to read through the French, German, and Austrian newspapers and supplement the brief reports from correspondents of the newspaper.

O’Connor left the Daily Telegraph when he failed to get the increase in salary that he requested. He was soon hired by the New York Herald Tribune at the salary he had requested at the Daily Telegraph. After a year and a half at this position, he was laid off as part of a cost reduction effort at the London office. At the time, he had two sisters and a brother who resided with him and depended on him for support. Lacking salaried employment, he tried to earn a living by freelance reporting, feature writing, and just about any type of literary work. During this time, he often found himself in dire need of food and other necessities. However, he often attended sessions of the House of Commons, where the picturesque figure of the Tory prime ministerBenjamin Disraeli captured his interest.

Life’s Work

Disraeli became the subject of O’Connor’s first book, Life of Lord Beaconsfield (1876). This unflattering biography was assailed with special virulence by the Tory press but was extolled by the opposition Whigs. The controversy surrounding the book gave the heretofore obscure and impoverished O’Connor name recognition. Disraeli admitted to having read the book and surprisingly said it was not scurrilous, as his sycophants had claimed, since it was all true. This established O’Connor as a writer whose pen possessed a power worthy of respect.

In 1880 O’Connor was asked to stand for election to the House of Commons for the Galway district in Ireland. O’Connor was an Irish nationalist and identified himself with the Parnell faction of the Irish party. This group, led by Charles Stewart Parnell, was an uncompromising advocate of home rule for Ireland and land reform that would enable the tenant farmers to become proprietors. To accomplish these objectives, the group resorted to militant and obstructionist tactics in Parliament. They were determined to destroy that section of the Irish party that sided with the governing William Gladstone ministry. Their objective was to form a bloc of votes that would be delivered only in exchange for legislation favorable to Ireland.

In a close election, O’Connor was victorious. This was the beginning of a career in Parliament that was to last for almost a half century and eventually earned O’Connor the name “father of the House of Commons.” Despite his initial fears, O’Connor was able to obtain employment as a journalist when he returned to London as a member of Parliament. He got a job as a parliamentary reporter for the Pall Mall Gazette. After parliamentary sessions were concluded for the day, he would begin writing around midnight and have his copy ready for delivery to the newspaper before 7:00 a.m.

O’Connor put his English connections to good use. In 1883 he was elected president of the Irish National League of Great Britain. This was the vehicle used to mobilize the vote of the immigrant Irish in Great Britain for the Irish cause. In 1885 he stood for election in Liverpool in the so-called Scotland division. This district had a heavy concentration of Irish immigrants and their descendants. He was also a candidate for reelection for his Galway seat. He won in both districts, and he decided to take the Liverpool seat. This left a vacancy in Galway. Parnell, fearing a disclosure of his love affair with Katie O’Shea, insisted that this seat be filled by his lover’s estranged husband, Captain William O’Shea, much to the consternation of party supporters. O’Connor, however, chaired the meeting that managed to impose this unpopular choice.

In June of 1885, O’Connor impetuously married Elizabeth Pascal Howard, an American who had been twice divorced. She was a gracious host, but O’Connor sought to avoid London social life as an embarrassment to his political image. It became clear by the end of the 1890’s that they were not suited for each other. A formal separation did not occur until about 1905.

Throughout his lengthy parliamentary career, O’Connor remained a journalist. He could utilize this talent to market his ideas and, as a skilled politician, carry them into execution. In 1888 he founded the Star, an impressive radical newspaper. This newspaper was quite successful, but O’Connor had differences with the board of directors that caused him to sell his interest at a substantial profit. He later founded the Sunday Sun (1891), which was changed to the Weekly Sun in 1893. The publication, however, was not a financial success. Another O’Connor publishing venture was T. P.’s Weekly, first issued in November, 1902. This literary magazine included contributions from such noted authors as H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, and G. K. Chesterton. O’Connor remained nominal editor of this magazine until his death in 1929.

Along with his journalistic career, O’Connor continued to be reelected to his Liverpool seat in the House of Commons, usually by a substantial margin. He made numerous trips to the United States to raise funds for the Irish cause. After two previous defeats, passage of a home-rule bill appeared to be secured in 1914. However, the start of World War I and the Ulster question delayed its implementation. The Ulster unionists insisted that all of Ulster be excluded, while the extreme Irish nationalists would not agree to any exclusion. O’Connor, the practical politician, believed that each county in Ulster should to be given the option to be included.

The Easter Rising of 1916 came as a surprise to O’Connor, who viewed the Dublin rebellion as irrational since it was without any chance of success. Irish public opinion was indifferent at first but turned strongly in favor of the Sinn Féin rebels following the executions of the leaders of the uprising. The election of 1918 proved to be a disaster for O’Connor’s nationalist party. Sinn Féin won seventy-three seats in the south of Ireland, while O’Connor’s party won only one seat. O’Connor held his seat in Liverpool by an overwhelming margin but could no longer be regarded as a spokesman for the Irish since he no longer had a political base. The newly elected Sinn Féin members would not attend Parliament.

Politically isolated, O’Connor continued to serve in Parliament. His last years were interrupted by disabling bouts of rheumatism and diabetes. He died in London on November 18, 1929.

Significance

For centuries the plight of the Irish was excoriated by the activities of violent groups that merely reacted to grievances. Their uprisings and terrorist acts lacked direction and any reasonable chance of success. Likewise, the large number of Irish elected to Parliament in the early and mid-nineteenth century were ineffective as they failed to unite into a formidable bloc. They were content, for the most part, to be good members of the Whig or Liberal party with the hope or assurance that they would later be awarded a lucrative public office.

This all changed with the election of men like Thomas Power O’Connor. Initially led by Charles Stewart Parnell, they devised a strategy to obtain home rule and land reform for Ireland. This strategy included obstructing all proceedings in Parliament, if need be. There was to be tight party discipline among the Irish members and a strict policy against accepting any office or favor from the government. This solidarity meant that the Irish bloc had a strong negotiating position. At times they held the balance of power in Parliament and were able to bring down the ruling ministry.

As a respected journalist and publisher, O’Connor was able to articulate the Irish position to the British public. This intellectual force expressed itself through the political clout of the Irish parliamentary party to effect peaceful social and political change. Unlike other members of his party who remained part of an Irish ghetto, O’Connor was regarded as a leading member of Parliament from an English constituency. Of the Irish members of Parliament, he was the only one who figured in the intellectual and social life of London and who gave attention to matters outside the House of Commons.

Bibliography

Brady, L. W. T. P. O’Connor and the Liverpool Irish. London: Royal Historical Society, 1983. This is the most readily available book written about O’Connor. While worthwhile to the researcher, it is not written in an interesting or popular style.

Fyfe, Hamilton. T. P. O’Connor. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1934. This interesting and easily read biography of O’Connor was written shortly after his death in 1929. It captures a contemporary perception of O’Connor but unfortunately is not too readily available.

Kee, Robert. The Green Flag: The Turbulent History of the Irish National Movement. New York: Delacorte Press, 1972. Kee provides a thorough account of the Irish struggle for home rule and land reform. A must-read to obtain the historical background to understand the Irish cause as advanced by O’Connor.

O’Connor, T. P. Life of Lord Beaconsfield. 8th ed. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905. First published in 1876, this unauthorized biography of Benjamin Disraeli, the famous Tory prime minister not much admired by O’Connor, launched O’Connor on a political as well as literary career.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929. Although it is not an autobiography, this two-volume work sets forth O’Connor’s analysis of events that occurred during his long parliamentary career. An excellent source for up-close and candid observations of the leading personalities O’Connor knew both in and out of Parliament.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Parnell Movement. New York: Cassell, 1891. O’Connor relates his early years in Parliament under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. Also contains a short biography of the early life of the author by Thomas Nelson Page.