In 1880 O’Connor Power’s article on the Irish in England appeared in the Fortnightly Review.
He believed ‘the battle for Irish rights must be fought in England’. An organised Irish vote brought the Liberals back into Government. Disraeli, the outgoing Premier, put the blame for his defeat on his party’s hardline stance on Home Rule.
O’Connor Power praised the Irish electorate in England:
They are the most active workers in the national cause and have taken part in every national struggle since the days of O’Connell … The [Fenian] spirit which animated them in those trying times, when all that was chivalrous, brave and unselfish in the national ranks seemed determined to sacrifice itself in one desperate struggle for liberty, has survived among the Irish in England down to the present day, and although it works now in the more peaceful courses of constitutional action it is not the less earnest, determined, courageous and self-sacrificing.
‘The Irish in England’ is available to download at Post Selected Writings, pp.107-114.