Publications

Political History

The Constitution Series

Professor Murphy's work in political history has been about restoring nineteenth-century Ireland to itself in a different way. In terms of political history nineteenth-century Ireland has been far from neglected. Traditionally, the political history of Ireland was read in teleological terms as the story of the struggle of 'the nation' towards independence. In the mid twentieth century a movement, later derided as revisionist, sought to correct this tendency and to develop a more neutral and impartial account of political developments. In turn this trend was accused of being anti-nationalist and indeed of being pro-British. Yet revisionism was merely the flipside to nationalism. It offered the counter viewpoint to the traditional nationalist view which was based not in the inner dynamic of the nineteenth century itself but in the triumph of Irish nationalism in the early twentieth century. But both were focusing essentially on opposition groupings. Murphy's work has been about seeing the century in its own terms, particularly by looking at the functioning of the government, which in fact is the usual way of beginning political history, though hitherto not in the case of nineteenth-century Ireland.

James H Murphy's work in this area has resulted in two books so far, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland, during the reign of Queen Victoria (2001) and Ireland's Czar: Gladstonian Government and the Lord Lieutenancies of the Red Earl Spencer, 1868-86 (2014). At the beginning of the latter he writes the following in explanation of the series.

This is the second book in a series that explores the interaction between political culture, at both the popular and professional politician levels, the malleable structures of the British constitution, and the development of national, specifically nationalist, identity in nineteenth-century Ireland. Both this book and the first in the series, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria, share a further similarity inasmuch as they both take as their starting points institutions of constitutional rule, the monarchy and, in this case, the lord lieutenancy, and those who inhabited those institutions, Queen Victoria and, here, the fifth Earl Spencer (1835-1910).

Abject Loyalty by J. Murphy

Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland, during the reign of Queen Victoria (2001) explores one of the nostrums of Irish nationalism, that there was an enduring hostility among Irish nationalists towards the British monarchy, and discovers that such hostility had really only been created in the 1880s. Royal visits to Ireland were met with enormous popular enthusiasm. The hostility to monarchy came from nationalist leaders who saw dangers in the enthusiasm. They were concerned, wrongly for the most part, that this enthusiasm might reconcile Irish people to Ireland's place in the United Kingdom. They also feared, with more justification, that popular Irish enthusiasm for monarchy was being used by the British political establishment as a justification for ignoring their demands, on the grounds that they did not express the real feeling of the people of Ireland, which was one of loyalty.

Ireland's Czar: Gladstonian Government and the Lord Lieutenancies of the Red Earl Spencer, 1868-86 (2014) offers a new interpretation of the politics of late nineteenth-century Ireland and, in particular, of Gladstone's attempts first to mollify and then to concede the demands of Irish nationalists, under Parnell, for home rule. It shows how Gladstone tolerated the bifurcation of government in the mid-1880s, building bridges with Irish nationalism in London while allowing the lord lieutenant, Earl Spencer, to become the object of vituperation in Dublin.

Ireland's Czar has been described as a work

which breaks new ground in our understanding of nineteenth-century Irish politics. The Gladstone-Parnell era is one of the most-discussed periods of nineteenth-century Irish history, but the author has found a whole new angle on it by narrating it from the point of view of Earl Spencer . . . The book thus fills a very important gap, drawing on a very great depth of archival and newspaper research.

The fifth Earl Spencer was lord lieutenant of Ireland twice (1868-74, 1882-5). It was a problematic office, combining both symbolic and constitutional aspects with an administrative role that could embroil it in politics. On the first occasion Spencer managed to save the office from political controversy. On the second, during the politically turbulent 1880s, he was given an explicit mandate to act as a governing lord lieutenant. This effectively produced the appearance of a bifurcated government with the Liberal government at Westminster able psychologically to distance itself from the Irish Executive under Spencer. Equally, the Irish Parliamentary Party, effected a bifurcated opposition. In London they presented themselves relatively moderately to a Gladstone who was gradually warming to the idea of home rule for Ireland. In Ireland they tried to recreate the turbulence of the land war by attacking Spencer's supposed tyranny, particularly over law and order, portraying him as a Czar, an unaccountable autocrat. The campaign had a strong effect on public opinion and contributed to a growing Irish alienation from Britain.

Ireland's Czar thus continues the argument made in Abject Loyalty that British politicians damaged Ireland's links with Britain by sacrificing the standing of offices of constitutional affinity between the two countries, such as the monarchy and lord lieutenancy, for short-term political ends.

 

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