His father was descended from a family line which in holding to their Catholic faith,lost their lands,[2][when?] which he compensated by being a scholarly gentleman. His father was transferred in 1862 to a similar position in Lismore,County Waterford,holding the post until his death in 1906.[citation needed]
He then moved to England finding employment in 1871 with the North Eastern Railway Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There he became deeply involved in the Irish Home Rule politics of the local Irish community. After leaving for London in 1878 Healy worked as a confidential clerk in a factory owned by his relative,then worked as a parliamentary correspondent for The Nation newspaper owned by his uncle,writing numerous articles in support of Parnell,the newly emergent and more militant home rule leader,and his policy of parliamentary obstructionism.[1]
Parnell admired Healy's intelligence and energy after Healy had established himself as part of Parnell's broader political circle. He became Parnell's secretary but was denied contact to Parnell's small inner circle of political colleagues.[citation needed]
Parnell,however,brought Healy into the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and supported him as a nationalist candidate for a by-election to Wexford in 1880 following the death of William Archer Redmond,against the John Redmond,the son of the deceased MP. After John Redmond stood aside,Healy was returned unopposed to parliament.[citation needed]
Political career
In parliament,Healy did not physically cut an imposing figure but impressed by the application of sheer intelligence,diligence and volatile use of speech when he achieved the Healy Clause in the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 which provided that no further rent should in future be charged on tenant's improvements. By the mid-1880s Healy had already acquired a reputation for a scurrilousness of tone. He married his cousin Eliza Sullivan in 1882,they had three daughters and three sons and he enjoyed a happy and intense family life,closely interlinked both by friendship and intermarriage with the Sullivans of west Cork.[1]
Through his reputation as a friend of the farmers,after having been imprisoned for four months following an agrarian case,and backed by Parnell,he was elected in a Monaghan by-election in June 1883,deemed to be the climax in the Healy–Parnell relationship. In 1884 he was called to the Irish bar as a barrister (in 1889 to the inner bar as King's Counsel,in London in 1910). His reputation allowed him to build an extensive legal practice,particularly in land cases. He was elected for South Londonderry in 1885,but lost to a Liberal Unionist in 1886. In the 1887 North Longford by-election,he was returned unopposed.
Prompted by the depression in the prices of dairy products and cattle in the mid-1880 as well as bad weather for a number of years,many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents were left under the threat of eviction. Healy devised a strategy to secure a reduction in rent from the landlords which became known as the Plan of Campaign,organised in 1886 amongst others by Timothy Harrington.
Initially a passionate supporter of Parnell,he became disenchanted with his leader after Healy opposed Parnell's nomination of Captain William O'Shea to stand for a by-election in Galway city. At the time O'Shea was separated from his wife,Katharine O'Shea,with whom Parnell was secretly living. Healy objected to this,as the party had not been consulted and he believed Parnell was putting his personal relationship before the national interest. When Parnell travelled to Galway to support O’Shea,Healy was forced to back down.
In 1890,O'Shea sued his wife for divorce,citing Parnell as co-respondent. Healy and most of Parnell's associates rejected Parnell's continuing leadership of the party,believing it was recklessly endangering the party's alliance with GladstonianLiberalism. Healy became Parnell's most outspoken critic. When Parnell asked his colleagues at one party meeting "Who is the master of the party?",Healy famously retorted with another question "Aye,but who is the mistress of the party?" –a comment that almost led to the men coming to blows. His savage onslaught in public reflected his conservative Catholic origin. A substantial minority of the Irish people never forgave him for his role during the divorce crisis,permanently damaging his own standing in public life. The rift prompted nine-year-old Dublin schoolboy James Joyce to write a poem called Et Tu,Healy?,which Joyce's father had printed and circulated.[3] Only three lines remain:[4]
His quaint-perched aerie on the crags of Time Where the rude din of this century Can trouble him no more.
Estrangement
Healy,c. 1900
Following Parnell's death in 1891,the IPP's anti-Parnellite majority group broke away forming the Irish National Federation (INF) under John Dillon. Healy was at first its most outspoken member,when in 1892 he won North Louth as an anti-Parnellites,who in all won seventy-one seats. But finding it impossible to work with or under any post-Parnell leadership,especially Dillon's,he was expelled in 1895 from the INF executive committee,having previously been expelled from the Irish party's minor nine-member pro-Parnellite Irish National League (INL) under John Redmond.[1]
In the following decades,largely due to his expanding legal practice,he became a part-time politician and estranged from the national movement,setting up his own personal 'Healyite' organisation,called the "People's Rights Association",based on his position as MP for North Louth (a seat he held until the December 1910 election when defeated by Richard Hazleton).[citation needed] He waged war during the 1890s with Dillon and his National Federation (INF) and then intrigued with Redmond's smaller Parnellite group to play a substantial role behind the scenes in helping the rival party factions to reunite under Redmond in 1900.[citation needed]
Healy was extremely embittered by the fact that both his brothers and his followers were purged from the IPP list in the 1900 general election,and that his support for Redmond in the re-united party went unrewarded;on the contrary,Redmond soon found it wiser to conciliate Dillon.[citation needed] But two years later Healy was again expelled. He remained "the enemy within",recruiting malcontent MPs to harass the party and survived politically by dint of his assiduous constituency work,as well as through the influence of his clerical ally Dr. Michael Cardinal Logue,Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh.[5] Healy remained rooted in the extended 'Bantry Gang',a highly influential political and commercial nexus based originally in West Cork,which included his key patron,the Catholic business magnate and owner of the Irish Independent,William Martin Murphy,who provided a platform for Healy and other critics of the IPP.
However,at least after 1903,Healy was joined in his estrangement from the party leadership by William O'Brien. O’Brien had been for years one of Healy's strongest critics,but now he too felt annoyed both by his own alienation from the party and by Redmond's subservience to Dillon. Involved with the Irish Reform Association 1904–5,they entered a loose coalition,which lasted throughout the life of the IPP. They were in agreement that agrarian radicalism brought little return,and with Healy practically becoming a Parnellite,they preferred to pursue a policy of conciliation with the Protestant class in order to further the acceptance of Home Rule. Redmond was sympathetic to this policy but was inhibited by Dillon. Redmond,in an act of rapprochement,briefly re-united them with the party in 1908. Fiercely independent,both split off again in 1909,responding to real changes in the social basis of Irish politics. In 1908 Healy acted as counsel for Sir Arthur Vicars,former Ulster King of Arms,in connection with the 1908 investigation of the previous year's theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.
By the 1910s,it looked as though Healy was to remain a maverick on the fringes of Irish nationalism. However,he came into notoriety once more when returned in the January 1910 general election in alliance with William O'Brien's newly founded All-for-Ireland Party (AFIL),their alliance based largely on common opposition to the Irish party. He lost his seat in the following December 1910 election,but soon afterwards rejoined the O'Brienites,O’Brien providing the 1911 north-east Cork by-election vacancy created by the retirement of Moreton Frewen. Healy's reputation was not enhanced when he represented as counsel his associate William Martin Murphy,the industrialist who sparked the 1913 Dublin Lockout.[1] Healy assiduously cultivated relationships with power brokers in Westminster such as Lord Beaverbrook,and once they were introduced at Cherkley,was great friends with Janet Aitken for the remainder of his life.[6]
Realignment
Redmond's and the IPP's powerful position of holding the balance of power at Westminster—and with the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill assured—left Healy and the AFIL critics in a weakened position. They condemned the bill as a 'partition deal',abstaining from its final vote in the Commons. With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914,the Healy brothers supported the Allied and the British war effort.[7] Two had a son enlist in one of the Irish divisions,Timothy's eldest son,Joe,fought with distinction at Gallipoli.
Having done much to damage the popular image and authority of constitutional nationalism,Healy after the Easter Rising was convinced that the IPP and Redmond were doomed and slowly withdrew from the forefront of politics,making it clear in 1917 that he was in general sympathy with Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin movement,but not with physical force methods. In September that year he acted as counsel for the family of the dead Sinn Féin hunger striker Thomas Ashe. He was one of the few King's Counsel to provide legal services to members of Sinn Féin in various legal proceedings in both Ireland and England post the 1916 Rising. This included acting for those interned in 1916 in Frongoch internment camp in North Wales. During this time,Healy also represented Georgina Frost,in her attempts to be appointed a Petty Sessions clerk in her native County Clare.[8] In 1920 the Bar Council of Ireland passed an initial resolution that any barrister appearing before the Dáil Courts would be guilty of professional misconduct. This was challenged by Tim Healy and no final decision was made on the matter. Before the December 1918 general election,he was the first of the AFIL members to resign his seat in favour of the Sinn Féin party's candidate,and spoke in support of P. J. Little,the Sinn Féin candidate for Rathmines in Dublin.
Governor-General
Healy,on the first day of the Dublin Horse Show,meeting women from the Industry Workers of County Longford,14 August 1923
Statement on Irish Free State passport (1927):We Timothy Healy,Esquire,one of His Majesty's Counsel,Governor-General of the Irish Free State,Request and require,in the Name of His Britannic Majesty,all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely …etc.
Initially,the Government of the Irish Free State under Cosgrave wished for Healy to reside in a new small residence,but,facing death threats from the IRA,he was moved as a temporary measure into the Viceregal Lodge,the former 'out of season' residence of the Lord Lieutenant,the former representative of the Crown until 1922.
Healy officially entered office as Governor-General on 6 December 1922. He never wore,certainly not in public in Ireland,the official ceremonial uniform of a Governor-General in the British Empire. At that time,in the 1920s,Healy was unique amongst viceregal representatives in the British Empire in this regard. Healy was also unique (along with his successor,James McNeill) amongst all the Governors-General in the British Empire in the 1920s in that he was never sworn in as a member of the Imperial Privy Council. Nor was he ever sworn into the Privy Council of Ireland,a body that ceased to exist in early December 1922. Thus,unusually for a Governor-General within the Empire,he never gained the prefix 'The Right Honourable' nor the post-nominals 'PC'.
Healy proved an able Governor-General,possessing a degree of political skill,deep political insight and contacts in Britain that the new Irish Government initially lacked,and had long recommended himself to the Catholic Hierarchy:all-round good credentials for this key symbolic and reconciling position at the centre of public life. He joked once that the government didn't advise him,he advised the government:a comment at a dinner for The Duke of York (the future King George VI) that led to public criticism. However,the waspish Healy still could not help courting further controversy,most notably in a public attack on the new Fianna Fáil and its leader,Éamon de Valera,which led to republican calls for his resignation.[9]
Much of the contact between governments in London and Dublin went through Healy. He had access to all sensitive state papers,and received instructions from the British Government on the use of his powers to grant,withhold or refuse the Royal Assent to legislation enacted by the Oireachtas. For instance,Healy was instructed to reject any bill that abolished the Oath of Allegiance.[citation needed] However,neither this nor any other bill that he was secretly instructed to block were introduced during his time as Governor-General. That role of being the UK government's representative,and acting on its advice,was abandoned throughout the British Commonwealth in the mid-1920s as a result of an Imperial Conference decision,leaving him and his successors exclusively as the King's representative and nominal head of the Irish executive.[unreliable source?]
Healy seemed to believe that he had been awarded the Governor-Generalship for life. However,the Executive Council of the Irish Free State decided in 1927 that the term of office of Governors-General would be five years. As a result,he retired from the office and public life in January 1928. His wife had died the previous year. He published his extensive two-volume memoirs in 1928. Throughout his life he was formidable because he was ferociously quick-witted,because he was unworried by social or political convention,and because he knew no party discipline. Towards the end of his life he mellowed and became otherwise more diplomatic.
John Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician,barrister,and MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. He was best known as leader of the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) from 1900 until his death in 1918. He was also leader of the paramilitary organisation the Irish National Volunteers (INV).
The 1918 Irish general election was the part of the 1918 United Kingdom general election which took place in Ireland. It is a key moment in modern Irish history because it saw the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP),which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s,and a landslide victory for the radical Sinn Féin party. Sinn Féin had never previously stood in a general election,but had won six seats in by-elections in 1917–18. The party had vowed in its manifesto to establish an independent Irish Republic. In Ulster,however,the Unionist Party was the most successful party.
The Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1874 by Isaac Butt,the leader of the Nationalist Party,replacing the Home Rule League,as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the House of Commons at Westminster within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland up until 1918. Its central objectives were legislative independence for Ireland and land reform. Its constitutional movement was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Irish self-government through three Irish Home Rule bills.
William O'Brien was an Irish nationalist,journalist,agrarian agitator,social revolutionary,politician,party leader,newspaper publisher,author and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was particularly associated with the campaigns for land reform in Ireland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as his conciliatory approach to attaining Irish Home Rule.
John Dillon was an Irish politician from Dublin,who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for over 35 years and was the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. By political disposition Dillon was an advocate of Irish nationalism,originally a follower of Charles Stewart Parnell,supporting land reform and Irish Home Rule.
Events from the year 1891 in Ireland.
Daniel Desmond Sheehan,usually known as D. D. Sheehan was an Irish nationalist,politician,labour leader,journalist,barrister and author. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland representing Mid-Cork from 1901 to 1918,a constituency comprising the districts of Ahadallane,Ballincollig,Ballyvourney,Blarney,Coachford,Farran,Inchigeelagh,Macroom,Millstreet and Shandangan. As co-founder and President of the Irish Land and Labour Association,he was credited with considerable success in land reform,labour reforms and in rural state housing. From 1909,he was General Secretary of the Central Executive of the All-for-Ireland League,favouring a policy of National reconciliation between all creeds and classes in Ireland. During World War I he served as Irish regiments officer with the 16th (Irish) Division in France,1915–16. He resigned his parliamentary seat in 1918 and lived in England for several years,returning to Dublin following the ending of the civil war,when he was appointed editor of the Dublin Chronicle.
Joseph Devlin 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. Later Devlin was an MP and leader of the Nationalist Party in the Parliament of Northern Ireland. He was referred to as "the duodecimo Demosthenes" by the Irish politician Tim Healy which Devlin took as a compliment.
The All-for-Ireland League (AFIL) was an Irish,Munster-based political party (1909–1918). Founded by William O'Brien MP,it generated a new national movement to achieve agreement between the different parties concerned on the historically difficult aim of Home Rule for the whole of Ireland. The AFIL established itself as a separate non-sectarian party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,binding a group of independent nationalists MPs to pursue a broader concept of Irish nationalism,a consensus of political brotherhood and reconciliation among all Irishmen,primarily to win Unionist consent to an All-Ireland parliamentary settlement.
Cork City was a parliamentary constituency in Ireland,represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. From 1880 to 1922 it returned two members of parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. From 1922 it was not represented in the UK Parliament,as it was no longer in the UK.
The Irish National League (INL) was a nationalist political party in Ireland. It was founded on 17 October 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell as the successor to the Irish National Land League after this was suppressed. Whereas the Land League had agitated for land reform,the National League also campaigned for self-government or Irish Home Rule,further enfranchisement and economic reforms.
The Irish National Federation (INF) was a nationalist political party in Ireland. It was founded in 1891 by former members of the Irish National League (INL),after a split in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) on the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell had refused to resign his leadership of the party after being named in divorce proceedings against Katharine O'Shea by the former MP William O'Shea. In the aftermath of the divorce,William Ewart Gladstone,leader of the Liberal Party,had declared that he would not work with Parnell,damaging the parliamentary alliance between the IPP and the Liberals.
The United Irish League (UIL) was a nationalist political party in Ireland,launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People". Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform,compelling larger grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution among the small tenant farmers. Founded and initiated at Westport,County Mayo by William O'Brien,it was supported by Michael Davitt MP,John Dillon MP,who worded its constitution,Timothy Harrington MP,John O'Connor Power MP and the Catholic clergy of the district. By 1900 it had expanded to be represented by 462 branches in twenty-five counties.
William Martin Murphy was an Irish businessman,newspaper publisher and politician. A member of parliament (MP) representing Dublin from 1885 to 1892,he was dubbed "William Murder Murphy" among the Irish press and the striking members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union during the Dublin Lockout of 1913. He was arguably both Ireland's first "press baron" and the leading promoter of tram development.
John Joseph Clancy,usually known as J. J. Clancy,was an Irish nationalist politician and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons for North Dublin from 1885 to 1918. He was one of the leaders of the later Irish Home Rule movement and promoter of the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Act 1908,known as the Clancy Act. Called to the Irish Bar in 1887,he became a King's Counsel in 1906.
James Gilhooly (1847–1916) was an Irish nationalist politician and MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party,from 1910 the All-for Ireland Party,who represented his constituency from 1885 for 30 years until his death,retaining his seat in eight elections.
John O'Connor was an Irish Nationalist revolutionary-turned Irish Parliamentary Party parliamentarian MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party represented Tipperary in 1885,and South Tipperary from 1885 to 1892,and North Kildare from 1905 to 1918. He was also member of the English Bar.
Sir Henry Campbell was an Irish nationalist politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for South Fermanagh from 1885 to 1892,private secretary to the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880 to 1891,and Town Clerk of Dublin from 1893 to 1920.
Thomas Sexton (1848–1932) was an Irish journalist,financial expert,nationalist politician and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1880 to 1896,representing four different constituencies. He was High Sheriff of County Dublin in 1887 and Lord Mayor of Dublin 1888–1889. Sexton was a high ranking member of the Irish Parliamentary Party,raised up by Charles Stewart Parnell himself. However,Sexton broke with Parnell and joined the Anti-Parnellites in 1891 following Parnell's marriage scandal. Sexton was disheartened by the subsequent infighting amongst the Anti-Parnellites and pulled back from politics. He thereafter became the chairman of the Freeman's Journal,one of the largest newspaper in Ireland.
James John O'Shee or Shee usually known as J. J. O'Shee,was an Irish nationalist politician,solicitor,labour activist and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland representing the constituency of West Waterford from 1895 until 1918. Elected as an Anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation member of the Irish Parliamentary Party he was one of the more socially radical members of the party. He co-founded and was secretary from 1894 of the Irish Land and Labour Association
↑ Bew, Paul, Timothy Michael Healy, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004–05) Vl.27 p.142: quote: His daughter wrote: One branch of the Healy’s, who turned protestant, [claimed] the land of a Catholic cousin ... From the Catholic cousin who kept his faith and lost his lands was descended the family of whom Timothy Michael Healy was the second son. (Source: M. Sullivan No man’s man pg. 3 (1943)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
