The Life and Times of John O'Connor Power
Formed in 1869, the Miners Union established the annual Durham Miners’ Gala*or ‘Big Meeting’.
‘…almost everyone who was anyone in the trade union and wider political movement’ spoke on the Gala platform.
John O’Connor Power, ‘the Fenian Parliamentarian’, was a regular guest at the event and guest speaker in 1876 and 1888.
See David Hopper, ‘Durham Miners’ Gala – how communities rallied for our history and heritage’. Union-News.co.uk, 11 July 2013
*Pronounced gay-la.
‘[Parliamentary representative] his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.’ Edmund Burke, cited in ‘Edmund Burke and his Abiding Influence’, J O’Connor Power.
Article available to download at Post Selected Writings, p.170
Edmund Burke was the giant at O’Connor Power’s shoulder and he wrote a tribute article to mark the centenary of Edmund Burke’s death. ‘Edmund Burke and His Abiding Influence’ appeared in the North American Review, December 1897.
Prime Minister, William Gladstone, also admired Edmund Burke and, during the preparations for the second Home Rule Bill, read his works daily.
The statue of Edmund Burke in Bristol bears the inscription, ‘I want to be a Member of Parliament in order to take my share in doing good and resisting evil.’
That Irishman, ‘The Forgotten Irish Leader’, features in the Irish Post this week.
The Fenian flag had four horizontal green stripes, representing the four provinces, and thirty-two gold stars, top left, marking the thirty-two counties.
O’Connor Power’s uncle, John Power, a tenant farmer, had a keen interest in politics* and the Power family was close to Nationalist leader, Matt Harris. Patrick Power, O’Connor Power’s father, worked in Ballinasloe, and the family has been described as ‘middle class’. Did Harris swear O’Connor Power into the Irish Republican Brotherhood before he left for Lancashire in 1860?
In February 2008, I gave a talk in Ballinasloe library. The retired National School teacher, Mattie Ganly, RIP, approached me, saying, ‘I always told my students about O’Connor Power.’
*See Post Property Valuation, 7 December 2012.
Ballinasloe Workhouse, built in 1841, housed the Fever Hospital, and it was here O’Connor Power spent time recuperating from smallpox.
Barry Lally, Ballinasloe Life, vol.3 issue 2, June/July 2013, p.31
In 1877, O’Connor Power spoke in the House of Commons in a debate on Sunday Closing, ‘In the proportion in which the people were addicted to this vice, the arm of popular freedom was paralysed; and if they were to have a free Irish people they must have a sober Irish people – and if they could not have them sober by suasion, he was prepared to remove the drink from them.’
Hansard, 27 June 1877.
Last week I visited Tony Murray, Director of Irish Studies and curator of the Archive of the Irish in Britain at the London Metropolitan University. I gave him family mementos of the visit of Eamon de Valera to Lincoln in early October 1950. De Valera escaped from Lincoln prison in February 1919 and, over thirty years later, visited the gaol and inspected his old cell. He was the guest of honour at a dinner hosted by the Anti-Partition of Ireland League of Great Britain. Frank Aiken, close friend and comrade and a committed anti-Partitionist accompanied him.
The hugely popular Archive of the Irish in Britain has been digitised. The launch of the Digitised Archive of the Irish in Britain will be in the Wash Houses, Aldgate, March 9, 2020. A range of material will be on display at the event.
I have just added a blogroll link to my interview on Talking History, December 2011.