ABSTRACT
The Irish Convention In the middle of 1917, the British Government proposed a convention of Irishmen with terms of reference to produce a form of Irish self-government ‘within the Empire’. This proposal gave the Irish Party a chance to escape from its post-rising position of political impotence. In January 1917, T.P.O’Connor had come to the conclusion that the proposed post-war Imperial Conference might be the Irish Party’s only hope of salvation.1 Stephen Gwynn feared that if the chance of utilising the Conference were lost there was ‘nothing ahead but sheer disaster!’2 O’Connor attempted to revive interest in an old idea put forward by H.E.Duke, the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, of referring the Irish Question to some external body such as a Statutory Commission. O’Connor hoped that if the idea was put forward by the Government it would allow the Irish Party to be free from all responsibility for it, enabling them to criticise it freely. O’Connor had come to the conclusion that the Irish Question could no longer be settled on the floor of the House of Commons, and he accepted that it was impossible for Lloyd George to bully Carson and the Ulster Unionists into accepting a unitary Irish parliament, first because he did not think Lloyd George would do it, and second because it was more than doubtful that the Prime Minister could do it even if he tried, for this would almost certainly mean the breakup of the Coalition Government. O’Connor believed that any attempt at a settlement on the basis of the 1916 negotiations was also out of the question, and he refused to be party to any Ulster county’s exclusion from home rule without a plebiscite, although he thought it would be foolish, perhaps even disastrous, to propose a county plebiscite in Ireland’s present temper. However, if there were county plebiscites, with Nationalists getting Fermanagh and Tyrone, O’Connor speculated that ‘startling’ results might follow
and ‘even the sparky fabric [of Ulster Unionist opposition to home rule] might come to the ground’. Despite his optimism, O’Connor remained strongly of the opinion that Ulster Unionists could not be coerced into home rule, or that Carson and his supporters would agree to Ulster’s inclusion in an Irish parliament unless it came indirectly from an extra-parliamentary body.3
