Tim Healy (politician)

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Tim Healy
Healy, c. 1915
1st Governor-General of the Irish Free State
In office
6 December 1922 – 31 January 1928
MonarchGeorge V
Preceded byNew office
Succeeded byJames McNeill
Member of Parliament
In office
1880–1918
Personal details
Born(1855-05-17)17 May 1855
Bantry, County Cork, Ireland
Died26 March 1931(1931-03-26) (aged 75)
Chapelizod, County Dublin, Ireland
SpouseErina Sullivan (m. 1882, d. 1927)
ProfessionPolitician

Timothy Michael Healy,

governor-general of the Irish Free State
.

Family background

Plaque on Bantry's Wolfe Tone Square commemorating Tim Healy's birth.

He was born in

Poor Law Union, and Eliza (née Sullivan) Healy. His elder brother, Thomas Healy (1854–1924), was a solicitor and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Wexford and his younger brother, Maurice Healy (1859–1923), with whom he held a lifelong close relationship, was a solicitor and MP for Cork City.[1]

His father was descended from a family line which in holding to their

Catholic faith, lost their lands,[2][when?] which he compensated by being a scholarly gentleman. His father was transferred in 1862 to a similar position in Lismore, County Waterford, holding the post until his death in 1906.[citation needed
]

Timothy Michael Healy was educated at the Christian Brothers school in Fermoy, and was otherwise largely self-educated, in 1869 at the age of fourteen going to live with his uncle, Timothy Daniel Sullivan MP, in Dublin.[citation needed]

Early life

He then moved to England finding employment in 1871 with the

Irish Home Rule politics of the local Irish community. After leaving for London in 1878 Healy worked as a confidential clerk in a factory owned by his relative, then worked as a parliamentary correspondent for The Nation newspaper owned by his uncle, writing numerous articles in support of Parnell, the newly emergent and more militant home rule leader, and his policy of parliamentary obstructionism.[1]

Parnell admired Healy's intelligence and energy after Healy had established himself as part of Parnell's broader political circle. He became Parnell's secretary but was denied contact to Parnell's small inner circle of political colleagues.[citation needed]

Parnell, however, brought Healy into the

William Archer Redmond, against John Redmond, the son of the deceased MP. After John Redmond stood aside, Healy was returned unopposed to parliament.[citation needed
]

Political career

In parliament, Healy did not physically cut an imposing figure but impressed by the application of sheer intelligence, diligence and volatile use of speech when he achieved the Healy Clause in the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 which provided that no further rent should in future be charged on tenant's improvements. By the mid-1880s Healy had already acquired a reputation for a scurrilousness of tone. He married his cousin Eliza Sullivan in 1882, they had three daughters and three sons and he enjoyed a happy and intense family life, closely interlinked both by friendship and intermarriage with the Sullivans of west Cork.[1]

Through his reputation as a friend of the farmers, after having been imprisoned for four months following an agrarian case, and backed by Parnell, he was elected in a

Liberal Unionist in 1886. In the 1887 North Longford by-election
, he was returned unopposed.

Prompted by the depression in the prices of dairy products and cattle in the mid-1880 as well as bad weather for a number of years, many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents were left under the threat of eviction. Healy devised a strategy to secure a reduction in rent from the landlords which became known as the Plan of Campaign, organised in 1886 amongst others by Timothy Harrington.

Invective rift

Healy caricatured by Spy in Vanity Fair, 1886

Initially a passionate supporter of Parnell, he became disenchanted with his leader after Healy opposed Parnell's nomination of Captain William O'Shea to stand for a by-election in Galway city. At the time O'Shea was separated from his wife, Katharine O'Shea, with whom Parnell was secretly living. Healy objected to this, as the party had not been consulted and he believed Parnell was putting his personal relationship before the national interest. When Parnell travelled to Galway to support O’Shea, Healy was forced to back down.

In 1890, O'Shea sued his wife for divorce, citing Parnell as co-respondent. Healy and most of Parnell's associates rejected Parnell's continuing leadership of the party, believing it was recklessly endangering the party's alliance with Gladstonian Liberalism. Healy became Parnell's most outspoken critic. When Parnell asked his colleagues at one party meeting "Who is the master of the party?", Healy famously retorted with another question "Aye, but who is the mistress of the party?" – a comment that almost led to the men coming to blows. His savage onslaught in public reflected his conservative Catholic origin. A substantial minority of the Irish people never forgave him for his role during the divorce crisis, permanently damaging his own standing in public life. The rift prompted nine-year-old Dublin schoolboy James Joyce to write a poem called Et Tu, Healy?, which Joyce's father had printed and circulated.[3] Only three lines remain:[4]

His quaint-perched aerie on the crags of Time
Where the rude din of this century
Can trouble him no more.

Estrangement

Healy, c. 1900

Following Parnell's death in 1891, the IPP's anti-Parnellite majority group broke away forming the Irish National Federation (INF) under John Dillon. Healy was at first its most outspoken member, when in 1892 he won North Louth as an anti-Parnellites, who in all won seventy-one seats. But finding it impossible to work with or under any post-Parnell leadership, especially Dillon's, he was expelled in 1895 from the INF executive committee, having previously been expelled from the Irish party's minor nine-member pro-Parnellite Irish National League (INL) under John Redmond.[1]

In the following decades, largely due to his expanding legal practice, he became a part-time politician and estranged from the national movement, setting up his own personal 'Healyite' organisation, called the "People's Rights Association", based on his position as MP for North Louth (a seat he held until the December 1910 election when defeated by Richard Hazleton).[citation needed] He waged war during the 1890s with Dillon and his National Federation (INF) and then intrigued with Redmond's smaller Parnellite group to play a substantial role behind the scenes in helping the rival party factions to reunite under Redmond in 1900.[citation needed]

Healy was extremely embittered by the fact that both his brothers and his followers were purged from the IPP list in the 1900 general election, and that his support for Redmond in the re-united party went unrewarded; on the contrary, Redmond soon found it wiser to conciliate Dillon.[

Archbishop of Armagh.[5] Healy remained rooted in the extended 'Bantry Gang', a highly influential political and commercial nexus based originally in West Cork, which included his key patron, the Catholic business magnate and owner of the Irish Independent, William Martin Murphy
, who provided a platform for Healy and other critics of the IPP.

Coalition of a kind

South-east Cork).
The other MPs elected in January 1910 were: William O'Brien (Cork city), John O'Donnell (South Mayo) and Timothy Michael Healy (North Louth
).
Maurice and Timothy Healy were brothers.

However, at least after 1903, Healy was joined in his estrangement from the party leadership by

Ulster King of Arms, in connection with the 1908 investigation of the previous year's theft of the Irish Crown Jewels
.

By the 1910s, it looked as though Healy was to remain a maverick on the fringes of Irish nationalism. However, he came into notoriety once more when returned in the

Lord Beaverbrook, and once they were introduced at Cherkley, was great friends with Janet Aitken for the remainder of his life.[6]

Realignment

Redmond's and the IPP's powerful position of holding the balance of power at

Third Home Rule Bill assured—left Healy and the AFIL critics in a weakened position. They condemned the bill as a 'partition deal', abstaining from its final vote in the Commons. With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Healy brothers supported the Allied and the British war effort.[7] Two had a son enlist in one of the Irish divisions, Timothy's eldest son, Joe, fought with distinction at Gallipoli
.

Having done much to damage the popular image and authority of constitutional nationalism, Healy after the

Francis Sheehy Skeffington
as an observer at the court martial of Captain Bowen-Colthurst, and he participated in the subsequent Royal Commission of Inquiry into the murders at Portobello Barracks.

During this time, Healy also represented

Bar Council of Ireland passed an initial resolution that any barrister appearing before the Dáil Courts would be guilty of professional misconduct. This was challenged by Tim Healy and no final decision was made on the matter. Before the December 1918 general election, he was the first of the AFIL members to resign his seat in favour of the Sinn Féin party's candidate, and spoke in support of P. J. Little, the Sinn Féin candidate for Rathmines
in Dublin.

Governor-General

Healy, on the first day of the Dublin Horse Show, meeting women from the Industry Workers of County Longford, 14 August 1923

He returned to considerable prominence in 1922 when, on the urging of the soon-to-be

British government recommended to King George V that Healy be appointed the first 'Governor-General of the Irish Free State', a new office representative of the Crown created in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and introduced by a combination of the Constitution of the Irish Free State and Letters Patent from the King. The constitution was enacted in December 1922. Healy was the uncle of Kevin O'Higgins, the Vice-President of the Executive Council and Minister for Justice
in the new Free State.

Statement on Irish Free State passport (1927): We Timothy Healy, Esquire, one of His Majesty's Counsel, Governor-General of the Irish Free State, Request and require, in the Name of His Britannic Majesty, all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely … etc.

Initially, the

Government of the Irish Free State under Cosgrave wished for Healy to reside in a new small residence, but, facing death threats from the IRA, he was moved as a temporary measure into the Viceregal Lodge, the former 'out of season' residence of the Lord Lieutenant
, the former representative of the Crown until 1922.

Healy officially entered office as Governor-General on 6 December 1922. He never wore, certainly not in public in Ireland, the official ceremonial uniform of a

PC
'.

Healy proved an able Governor-General, possessing a degree of political skill, deep political insight and contacts in Britain that the new

The Duke of York (the future King George VI) that led to public criticism. However, the waspish Healy still could not help courting further controversy, most notably in a public attack on the new Fianna Fáil and its leader, Éamon de Valera, which led to republican calls for his resignation.[9]

Much of the contact between governments in London and Dublin went through Healy. He had access to all sensitive state papers, and received instructions from the British Government on the use of his powers to grant, withhold or refuse the

Oireachtas. For instance, Healy was instructed to reject any bill that abolished the Oath of Allegiance.[citation needed] However, neither this nor any other bill that he was secretly instructed to block were introduced during his time as Governor-General. That role of being the UK government's representative, and acting on its advice, was abandoned throughout the British Commonwealth in the mid-1920s as a result of an Imperial Conference decision, leaving him and his successors exclusively as the King's representative and nominal head of the Irish executive.[unreliable source?
]

Healy seemed to believe that he had been awarded the Governor-Generalship for life. However, the Executive Council of the Irish Free State decided in 1927 that the term of office of Governors-General would be five years. As a result, he retired from the office and public life in January 1928. His wife had died the previous year. He published his extensive two-volume memoirs in 1928. Throughout his life he was formidable because he was ferociously quick-witted, because he was unworried by social or political convention, and because he knew no party discipline. Towards the end of his life he mellowed and became otherwise more diplomatic.

He died on 26 March 1931, aged 75, in Chapelizod, County Dublin, where he lived at his home in Glenaulin, and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Cultural depictions

In his novel

G.K. Chesterton describes one of his characters as a "... little man, with a black beard and glasses – a man somewhat of the type of Mr Tim Healy ...".[citation needed
]

References

Sources

  • Bew, Paul: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
  • Cadogan, Tim & Falvey, Jeremiah: A Biographical Dictionary of Cork (2006)
  • George Abbott Colburn, "T.M. Healy and the Irish Home Rule Movement, 1877–1886" (PhD Dissertation, 2 vols., Michigan State University, 1971).
  • Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton, P.C., Timothy Healy: Memories and Anecdotes. (Dublin: Talbot Press Limited, and London: Faber & Faber, Limited, 1933).
  • .
  • Callanan, Frank (1996). T. M. Healy. Cork University Press. .
  • Chesterton, GK: "The Man Who Was Thursday" (1908)
  • Foxton, David (2008). Revolutionary Lawyers, Sinn Féin and Crown Courts. Four Courts Press. .
  • Jackson, Alvin (2003). Home Rule 1800–2000. pp. 100–103.
  • Kidd, Janet Aitken (1988). The Beaverbrook Girl: An Autobiography. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Maume, Patrick: The long Gestation, Irish Nationalist life 1881–1918 (1999)

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e Callanan 1996.
  2. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
    , Oxford University Press (2004–05) Vl.27 p.142: quote:
    His daughter wrote: One branch of the Healy’s, who turned protestant, [claimed] the land of a Catholic cousin ... From the Catholic cousin who kept his faith and lost his lands was descended the family of whom Timothy Michael Healy was the second son. (Source: M. Sullivan No man’s man pg. 3 (1943)
  3. ^ Lyons, F. S. L. (1977). Charles Stewart Parnell.
  4. ^ Gekoski, Rick. "A Ghost Story". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 2 February 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
  5. .
  6. ^ Kidd 1988
  7. ^ "Healy speech in the Commons §919, endorses war efforts". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 15 September 1914. Archived from the original on 9 March 2017. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  8. required.)
  9. .

Works

External links

Political offices
New office Governor-General of the Irish Free State
1922–1928
Succeeded by
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Wexford Borough
18801883
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Monaghan
18831885
With: Willian Findlater 1883–85
Constituency divided
New constituency Member of Parliament for North Monaghan
18851885
Succeeded by
New constituency Member of Parliament for South Londonderry
18851886
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for North Longford
18871892
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for North Louth
1892December 1910
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for North East Cork
19111918
Succeeded by