Charles Stewart Parnell - Personal Politics

Personal Politics

Parnell's personal political views remained an enigma. An effective communicator he was skilfully ambivalent and matched his words depending on circumstances and audience though he would always first defend constitutionalism on which basis he sought to bring about change. But he was hampered by the crimes that hung around the Land League, and by the opposition of landlords aggravated by attacks on their property.

Yet he condoned radical republican and atheist Charles Bradlaugh and associated with the Roman Catholic Church, was linked both with the landed aristocracy class and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, with speculation in the 1890s that he may have even joined the latter organisation. The historian Andrew Roberts argues that he was sworn into the IRB in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin in May 1882 and that this was concealed for 40 years. He was conservative by nature, leading some historians to suggest that personally he would have been closer to the Conservative rather than to the Liberal Party, but for political needs. Andrew Kettle, Parnell's right hand man, who shared a lot of his opinions, wrote of his own views, "I confess that I felt, and still feel, a greater leaning towards the British Tory party than I ever could have towards the so-called Liberals." Some significance can be given to Parnell's penultimate words when lying on his deathbed, he invoked not Mother Ireland, but rather 'the Conservative party'. In later years, the double effect of the Phoenix Park trauma and the O’Shea affair reinforced the conservative side of his nature.