Irish Houses of Parliament - The Continuing Symbolism of The Old Irish Houses of Parliament

The Continuing Symbolism of The Old Irish Houses of Parliament

From the 1830s under Daniel O'Connell, generations of leaders campaigned for the creation of a new Irish parliament, convinced that the Act of Union had been a great mistake. While O'Connell campaigned for full scale Repeal of the Act, leaders like Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell sought a more modest form of Home Rule within the United Kingdom, rather than the full recreation of an independent Irish state. However, even if the proposal got through the British House of Commons (and the first two attempts, in 1886 and 1893 did not), the British House of Lords, with its massive unionist majority, was guaranteed to veto it. Finally, the passage of the Parliament Act in 1911, which restricted the veto powers of the House of Lords, opened up the prospect that an Irish Home Rule Bill might indeed pass through both Houses, receive the Royal Assent and become law.

Leaders from O'Connell to Parnell and later John Redmond spoke of the proud day when an Irish parliament might once again meet in what they called Grattan's Parliament in College Green. When, in 1911, King George V and his consort Queen Mary visited Dublin (where they attracted mass crowds), street sellers sold drawings of the King and Queen arriving in the not too distant future at the Old Houses of Parliament in College Green to open the newly re-established Irish parliament. In 1914, the Third Home Rule Act did indeed complete all parliamentary stages and receive the Royal Assent. The day when the old Parliament House would one day become the seat of parliament once again seemed around the corner. However, the intervening First World War provided what proved to be a fatal delay for Home Rule. In late April 1916, a small band of radical Republicans under Patrick Pearse staged the Easter Rising, in which they seized a number of prominent Irish buildings, mainly in Dublin, and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Surprisingly, one building they did not take over was the old Parliament House. Perhaps they feared that, as a bank, it would be heavily protected. Perhaps, already expecting that the Rising would ultimately fail and that the reaction to the Rising and what Pearse called their "blood sacrifice", rather than the Rising itself, would reawaken Irish nationalism and produce independence, they did not seek to use the building for fear that it, like the GPO, would be destroyed in the British counter-attack. Or perhaps, because of its association with a former Ascendancy parliament, it carried little symbolism for their new republic.

Interestingly, there are two tapestries designed by Dutch landscape painter William Van der Hagen, and woven by John Van Beaver, dating from circa 1733 in the hall. The tapestries are unique. One represents the "Battle of the Boyne" and the other the "Defence of Londonderry". Each of the tapestries has five portrait and narrative medallions around the central scene which depict, narrate and name central characters and events in each of the battles. Both also have "trophies of arms and figures of Fame below enclosed by fringed curtains."