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WHO RULED IRELAND? THE IRISH ADMINISTRATION, 1879–1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2007

FERGUS CAMPBELL
FERGUS CAMPBELL*
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
*
School of Historical Studies, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RUf.j.m.campbell@newcastle.ac.uk
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Abstract

In an influential monograph, The greening of Dublin Castle (1991), Lawrence McBride argued that the Irish administration was in a rapid state of transformation between 1892 and 1922. Broadly speaking, he argued that the Protestant and unionist senior administrators were gradually replaced by Catholic and nationalist civil servants during this period. However, a significant body of evidence suggests that McBride may have overstated the changes taking place in the Irish civil service. Using a prosopographical study of the senior civil servants in Ireland in 1891 and 1911, this article suggests that there was significantly less ‘greening’ than McBride claimed. The British state appears to have regarded Irish-born Catholics as potentially disloyal, and to have implemented a subtle system of ethnic discrimination at the upper levels of the Irish civil service. It is argued that the existence of this glass ceiling provided young educated Catholic professionals with a powerful motive for participation in the Irish revolution (1916–23).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 623 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 R. Barry O'Brien, Dublin Castle and the Irish people (London, 1912), p. 1.

2 Lawrence McBride, The greening of Dublin Castle: the transformation of bureaucratic and judicial personnel in Ireland, 1892–1922 (Washington, 1991), p. ix.

3 Anthony MacDonnell to his wife, 18 Nov. 1902, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Bodl.) MS Eng. Hist. e. 216 fos. 16r–16v.

4 Anthony MacDonnell to his wife, 16 Nov. 1902, Bodl. MS Eng. Hist. e. 216 fos. 13v–14r.

5 Anthony MacDonnell to his wife, 21 Nov. 1902, Bodl. MS Eng. Hist. e. 216 fo. 22r.

6 Anthony MacDonnell to his wife, 18 Nov. 1902, Bodl. MS Eng. Hist. e. 216 fo. 20r.

7 Leader, 16 May 1903 quoted in McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 108.

8 See, for example, ‘Light on the Local Government Board’, Leader, 12 Jan. 1907.

9 The names of the individuals who held the top jobs in the Irish civil service were first identified in Thom's Official Directory (1891 and 1911). Biographical information about each of these individuals was then compiled from various directories including Who's who, Who was who, Walford's county families (1879 and 1918 editions), Bateman's Great landowners, the Dictionary of national biography, and so on. The age at death was identified from these sources and from the Wills and admonitions books held in the National Archives, Dublin. This facilitated the finding of obituaries of the top civil servants in the Irish Times, Belfast Newsletter, and The Times, which contained invaluable information on the top civil servants. The late Lawrence McBride very kindly shared his notes on obituaries of senior civil servants with me.

10 Gerald McElroy, ‘Employment of Catholics in the public service in Ireland, 1859–1921: a broad overview’, in Alan O'Day, ed., Government and institutions in the post-1832 United Kingdom (Lampeter, 1995), pp. 305–56.

11 Ibid., p. 311.

12 Ibid., p. 306.

13 Ibid., p. 350; Royal Irish Constabulary officers' register, The National Archives (TNA) HO 184.

14 R. B. McDowell, The Irish administration, 1801–1914 (London, 1964), p. 35.

15 Royal commission on the civil service, fourth report, evidence HC (1914) [Cd. 7340], xvi, pp. 189, 206.

16 Data is available on the birthplace of 94 of the 165 civil servants under review: 74 were born in Ireland; 14 in England; 4 in Scotland; and 1 each in Australia and Canada.

17 The Protestant public schools included Eton, Harrow, Haileybury, St Paul's, Repton, and Radley, while the Catholic public schools included Downside, Oscott, and Stoneyhurst.

18 In 1891 (out of a total of 46), 9 per cent were aged between 30 and 39; 45 per cent were aged between 40 and 49; 33 per cent were aged between 50 and 59; 11 per cent were aged between 60 and 69; and 2 per cent were aged between 70 and 79.

19 Data on the father's position or occupation was available for 78 of the 165 civil servants under review, and it is likely that many more had also been born into privilege.

20 Seven married the daughters of peers, and five married the daughters of Church of Ireland clergymen (one of whom was the archbishop of Dublin).

21 Of 70 civil servants, 40 per cent married when they were aged between 20 and 29; 41·5 per cent when they were aged between 30 and 39; 14 per cent when they were aged between 40 and 49; 1·5 per cent when they were aged between 50 and 59; and 3 per cent when they were aged between 60 and 69. In the generation born between 1896 and 1905, the mean age at marriage in Ireland was 33 for men and 27 for women. See Frank Litton, ed., Unequal achievement: the Irish experience, 1957–1982 (Dublin, 1982), p. 77.

22 Of 47, 2 per cent had 0 children; 17 per cent had 1 child; 17 per cent had 2 children; 21 per cent had 3 children; 17 per cent had 4 children; 9 per cent had 5 children; 6·5 per cent had 6 children; 6·5 per cent had 7 children; and 4 per cent had 8 children.

23 Of 105, 1 per cent died when aged between 40 and 49; 6 per cent between 50 and 59; 26·5 per cent between 60 and 69; 34 per cent between 70 and 79; 26 per cent between 80 and 89; and 6·5 per cent between 90 and 99.

24 McDowell, Irish administration, pp. 11–12.

25 Fergus Campbell, Land and revolution: nationalist politics in the west of Ireland, 1891–1921 (Oxford, 2005), p. 10.

26 Sir Matthew Nathan to Augustine Birrell, 26 Nov. 1914, Bodl. MS Nathan 462 fo. 165r; McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 184; Irish Times, 17 Apr. 1917. Bailey was reported by his obituarist to have known nearly everybody of distinction in politics, art and letters.

27 Matheson's daughter, Cherrie, was responsible for breaking John Millington Synge's heart in the 1890s.

28 McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 16. McBride is incorrect to characterize the members of the St Stephen's Green Club in Dublin as Home Rulers.

29 Ibid., p. 190.

30 Admittedly, Birrell's chief secretaryship had five years still to run in 1911, but the 1907–11 period was his most active, and once the Great War had begun, opportunities for transforming the Irish administration were limited.

31 John Hutchinson, The dynamics of cultural nationalism: the Gaelic revival and the creation of the Irish nation state (London, 1987), p. 263.

32 McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 84.

33 Senia Paseta, Before the revolution: nationalism, social change and Ireland's Catholic elite, 1879–1922 (Cork, 1999), p. 29.

34 Hutchinson, Dynamics of cultural nationalism, p. 260.

35 Paseta, Before the revolution, p. 12.

36 For a brilliant discussion of the provision of secondary and tertiary education in nineteenth-century Ireland, see Kieran Flanagan, ‘The rise and fall of the Celtic ineligible: competitive examinations for the Irish and Indian civil services in relation to the educational and occupational structure of Ireland, 1853–1921’ (D.Phil. thesis, Sussex, 1978).

37 Arthur Clery, Dublin essays (Dublin and London, 1919), p. 59.

38 Leader, 11 Mar. 1905. Quoted in McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 19.

39 McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 57.

40 Ibid., p. 137.

41 Andrew Carpenter, ed., My uncle John: Edward Stephens's life of J. M. Synge (Oxford, 1974), p. 18.

42 Ibid., pp. 63–4.

43 McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, p. 104.

44 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

45 See R. K. Kelsall, Higher civil servants in Britain: from 1870 to the present day (London, 1955; reprinted 1998).

46 Ibid., p. 107.

47 Ibid., pp. 13, 20.

48 Of the 165 civil servants under review, we know the religion of 113, and 39 of these (34·5 per cent) were Catholic.

49 It is significant that the proportion of landed Catholic civil servants is higher (41 per cent) than the proportion of civil servants generally who were landed (31 per cent).

50 Thomas Ivor's uncle (on the mother's side) was Thomas MacMahon, a TCD-educated barrister from county Clare; and Heffernan's father in law was John Hyacinth Talbot of Castle Talbot, county Wexford, a former MP for New Ross.

51 Times, 8 Sept. 1914.

52 The crown could ask an unlimited number of jurors to stand down if they were suspected of sympathizing with those they were empowered to try, while the defence lawyers could ask only twenty jurors to stand down, if they were suspected of being biased against the defendants.

53 Jarlath Waldron, Maamtrasna: the murders and the mystery (Dublin, 1992), p. 179.

54 Clery, Dublin essays, pp. 59–60.

55 J. Meenan, Centenary history of the literary and historical society of University College, Dublin, 1855–1955 (Tralee, 1955), p. 92.

56 T. J. McElligot, Secondary education in Ireland, 1870–1921 (Dublin, 1981), p. 93.

57 Paseta, Before the revolution, p. 103.

58 Tom Garvin, Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858–1928 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 48–56.

59 Hutchinson, Dynamics of cultural nationalism, pp. 266–76.

60 Sir Matthew Nathan to Charlie Hobhouse, 6 Dec. 1914, Bodl. MS Nathan 462 fo. 214r.

61 About 400 officials in the Irish civil service (about 1·5 per cent of the total of 26,000 officials) were dismissed for disloyal political activities between 1916 and 1921, the highest-ranking of whom was J. J. MacElligott, a first-division clerk in the chief secretary's office. See M. F. Gallagher, ‘The fateful week’, Administration, 14/2 (Summer 1966); McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, pp. 218–19.

62 Quoted in Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann, 1919–1922 (Dublin, 1995), p. 68.

63 Kelsall, Higher civil servants in Britain, pp. 13, 20.

64 See Kelsall's analysis of the social background of the fathers of first- and second-division clerks in 1911. Ibid., p. 25.

65 Sir Albert Flynn quoted in Ibid., p. 45. According to Kelsall's figures, ‘the annual promotion prospect proportion [from second- to first-class clerkships] in the ten-year period 1902–11 was about 0·12 per cent’. Ibid., p. 40.