Refused to be Members of the First Dáil - Joseph Devlin

Joseph Devlin

Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, (13 February 1871 – 18 January 1934) was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and later a Nationalist Party MP in the Parliament of Northern Ireland.

He showed an early gift for public speaking when he became chairman of a debating society founded in 1886 to commemorate the first nationalist election victory in West Belfast. From 1891-1893 he was journalist on the Irish News than on the Freeman’s Journal when he became associated with the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) which he helped to re-establish in 1890s becoming spokesman for the Catholic population and a lifelong opponent of its counterpart, the Orange Order. He then worked at Samuel Young MP.'s brewery for whom he managed a Belfast pub, which sustained him until 1902.

During the 1890s he was active as organizer in the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation in eastern Ulster. When William O’Brien founded the United Irish League (UIL) in County Mayo in 1898, Devlin founded the UIL section in Belfast which became his political machine in Ulster. He was elected unopposed as Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) Member of Parliament for Kilkenny North in the February 1902 by-election. His first political assignment came that year when the Party sent him to Irish Americas on the first of several successful fund-raising missions.
It was there that he encountered the power of the Hibernian Orders and on his return set about claiming it for constitutional nationalism, when in 1904 he became lifelong Grandmaster of the AOH in Ireland. Members of his Order, largely composed of earlier members of the Molly Maguires, a militant secret society also known as the Mollies, also became members of the Irish Party, deeply infiltrating it.

Already secretary of the London based UIL of Great Britain Devlin became General Secretary of O’Brien’s UIL, replacing John O'Donnell, through the initiative of deputy IPP leader John Dillon MP, with whom he held a close alliance and who had fallen under his influence. This "coup" gave them nation-wide control of the 1200 UIL branches, the organisational base of the IPP, depriving O’Brien of all influence.

For some years Devlin had been in bitter conflict with the bishop’s Catholic Association who wanted politics based on Catholic rights rather than on nationalism. Now in control of the three nationalist political organisations all sides succumbed to Devlin’s influence. The AOH continued the O’Connellite link between Catholicism and nationalism but under a lay controlled organisations. To the Irish party’s opponents the AOH was symptomatic with Catholic sectarianism, jobbery and patronage. Devlin represented in the main urban and national business interests, which contrasted with his advocacy of social reforms when he took up labour issues especially working conditions in the linen mills and textile trades.

In the 1906 general election, Devlin was re-elected to Kilkenny North, and also to Belfast West which he regained from the Unionists by 16 votes. Choosing to retain the Belfast seat, he served as its MP beyond 1918, when his popularity in Belfast and east Ulster survived the downfall of the IPP. He became a distinguished parliamentarian and gifted organiser, boasting to John Redmond leader of the IPP, that at Redmond's bid, his organisation could provide full attendance of suitable "supporters" at any meeting, demonstration or convention throughout Ireland, something Redmond and his Party often availed of.

Devlin became governor of the nationalist hinterland after his AOH political machinery rapidly saturated the country, acting through the UIL as the militant support organisation of the Irish Party. They were vehemently opposed by one nationalist organisation, the Munster based All-for-Ireland League (AFIL), an independent party founded by William O’Brien after he and his followers were attacked in December 1908 by 400 militant "Mollies" organised by Devlin to silence him and his followers at what became known as the "Baton Convention". O’Brien and the AFIL held Devlin’s AOH as being at the root of widespread religious intimidation and sectarianism. This ultimately displaced the parliamentary constitutional movement with physical-force violence, culminating in the partition of Ireland.

During 1919-1921 his leadership was reduced to six Nationalist MPs. He avoided any involvement in All-Ireland politics having accepted that the mandate had passed to Sinn Féin. Although, when he tried to bring up the Croke Park killings that occurred on Bloody Sunday at Westminster, he was shouted down and a scuffle broke out in the parliament. In the first election in 1921 for the Northern Ireland House of Commons after the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was enacted, so as not to allow the Ulster Unionists a “walk-over” he agreed a pact with de Valera that Nationalists would not stand against Sinn Féiners; both parties co-operated during the election and won 6 seats each, the Unionists 40. Devlin, who represented a more moderate nationalist view, was elected for both Antrim and Belfast West. He chose to sit for Belfast West although his seat in the seven member Antrim constituency was left vacant for the rest of the Parliament. He continued to sit at Westminster as leader of the Nationalist Party of Northern Ireland, as both small parties did not recognise the Stormont parliament.

Devlin was re-elected in Belfast West in 1925 when he decided to lead his small party out of abstentionism and sat for the first time in the Parliament of Northern Ireland as head of a powerless opposition, but so as to highlight Catholic grievances, especially in relation to education. He was returned for the four member constituency until Proportional Representation by the Single Transferable Vote was abolished for territorial constituencies and single member seats were introduced for the 1929 election.

From 1929 until his death, Joe Devlin was the Northern Ireland MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone. He won amendment to the Northern Ireland Education Act of 1930 which improved the funding of Catholic schools. Otherwise they were years of demoralisation for northern Catholics, and the party abstained after 1932 due to the abolishment of proportional representation, when frustration finally drove him and his followers out of the Belfast parliament again.

“Wee Joe” as he was popularly known, was held in high affection by his constituents for his charming and effervescent personality. He was a fluent and powerful orator. In later years he was comfortably off as director of the Distillery Company and chairman of the Irish News and enjoyed organising summer fêtes – “days of delight” - for Belfast children. His approach in life was ‘getting things done’. He lived most of his life in Belfast, though he spent some earlier years in London. He never married. An acknowledged spokesman and leader of Catholic nationalists in Ulster for decades, Devlin died in Belfast on 18 January 1934. He was buried at Milltown Cemetery. His funeral at St. Peter’s Pro-Cathedral, Belfast, was attended by leading members of both governments. The AOH hall in Ardboe, County Tyrone, is named after him.