John O'Connor Power (13 February 1846 – 21 February 1919) was an Irish Fenian and a Home Rule League and Irish Parliamentary Party politician and as MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland represented Mayo from June 1874 to 1885. From 1881, he practised as a barrister specialising in criminal law and campaigning for penal reform.
Early radical years He was born in Clashaganny, County RoscommonEntry UK Census 1911. and was the third son of Patrick Power from Ballinasloe and his wife Mary O'Connor of County Roscommon,"Biographies of Candidates", The Times, 25 November 1885; Register ... Middle Temple, ii, 609. during the Great Famine years. He contracted smallpox and spent some time in the Ballinasloe Fever hospital, which was housed in the workhouse.Barry Lally, Ballinasloe Life, Vol. 3 Issue 2, June/July 2013, p.31 On the death of his parents he was raised by his aunt, Catherine O'Connor Duffield, in her home over her shop and bakery in Society Street. In his biography of Father Patrick Lavelle, Gerard Moran, in an endnote, describes O’Connor Power as ‘middle class’.http://www.thatirishman.com Post: The Childhood Years. At fifteen years of age, he went to live with relatives in Lancashire where he recruited for the Irish Republican Brotherhood and took up a trade in house painting. It was here that he first met Michael Davitt.
He became known to the police under alias names 'John Fleming', 'John Webster', 'Charles Ferguson'. An organiser on the abortive raid on Chester Castle in February 1867, he evaded capture and was sent to the United States later that year at the age of 21 to discuss reorganisation of the Fenians. After his return he was arrested in Dublin on 17 February 1868 and spent five months in Kilmainham and Mountjoy jails. The County of Dublin Gaol, Kilmainham file holds a 'photograph and description of a prisoner who was formerly in custody under the Lord Lieutenant's warrant, charged with treasonable practices and discharged on bail on 29 July 1868.' John Power, alias John Webster, alias Charles Fleming was a Roman Catholic who was born in County Roscommon. He was 5 ft 9in, 'stout', with a long face, dark brown hair, grey eyes, a large nose and a large mouth. His whiskers were dark and he had no beard. His fresh complexion was pitted and he had a large wart on the small finger of his left hand. His make was 'ordinary'. He was a newspaper reporter and lived in Lancashire, in Bolton or in Rochdale.National Archives of Ireland
He was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) Supreme Council and was believed to be involved in gun-running (a matter on which in later life he threatened legal action). While he remained an active member during his early years in Parliament, as early as 1868–69 he had promoted co-operation with constitutional politicians such as George Henry Moore.Alvin Jackson, Home Rule. An Irish History 1800–2000, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. It was the beginning of the New Departure.
From January 1871 to 1874 he was a student and teacher at St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, with his fees and expenses paid by a combination of teaching and lectures in Britain and America. In his final year he was Professor of Humanities in the college.The Tablet, 6 June 1874.
Early parliamentary years
While still at St. Jarlath's, Power signalled his intention in January 1874 to stand for election to the British House of Commons; and to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen and his seat if elected. Although there was clerical opposition, he was supported by John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam and Fr Ulick Burke, President of St Jarlath's,Moran, Gerard, A Radical Priest in Mayo, The Rise and Fall of an Irish Nationalist, 1825–86, 1994 p.146. See also Stanford, That Irishman, Part One, Utterly Changed, pp.46–51 and was successful at the 1874 County Mayo by-election.
In the 1874 Parliament, dominated by Disraeli's Conservatives, Isaac Butt's policy of attempting to achieve Irish nationalist objectives by working with the Liberals and Conservatives and respecting House traditions, failed; the Irish minority was simply ignored.
O'Connor Power and J.G. Biggar therefore pioneeredT. W. Moody, "Fenianism, Home Rule and the Land War" in The Course of Irish History, Lanham, MD: Roberts Rinehart, 2001. the new policy of obstructionism, whereby they obstructed House of Commons business by making long speeches and manipulating its procedures. They were joined in this more successful policy by Charles Stewart Parnell on his election in April 1875. The O'Donoghue, M.P. for County Kerry, in a letter to Cardinal Cullen, 6 August 1877, denounced the strategy: 'It is Fenianism in a new form.'The O'Donoghue to Cardinal Cullen, 6 August 1877, Cardinal Cullen Papers, 329/3
In August 1875 O'Connor Power was interviewed by his close associate James Joseph O'Kelly for an article in the New York Herald prior to his six-month tour of North America to promote Home Rule. The Herald'''s editorial suggested that Power was 'the most able, eloquent and competent available man' to encourage the constitutional approach.Ireland in an Imperial World 'A Cosmopolitan Nationalist: James Joseph O'Kelly', Paul Townend, 2017, p. 229. See also That Irishman, pp. 67-65.
O'Connor Power spoke strongly and repeatedly in Parliament from 1874 to 1877 for amnesty for Michael Davitt, imprisoned in Dartmoor, and other Fenian prisoners, and brought to notice perceived unfairness of their treatment as common criminals rather than as political prisoners.Such as on 13 July 1874, March 1875, 1 August 1876, June 1877, and 20 July 1877. This led to Gladstone lending his support to Fenian amnesty and he spent three weeks in Killruddery House, County Wicklow, from mid-October to 11 November. Davitt was released early on 19 December 1877, and Fenians Thomas Chambers, Charles McCarthy and John Patrick O'Brien followed in January 1878. Charles McCarthy collapsed and died in Dublin shortly after his release. The ex-prisoners travelled back to London and, 13 February, visited O'Connor Power in 'a private room in Parliament House, where they wrote out their statements giving the details of sufferings endured and the treatment to which they had been subjected ... He [O'Connor Power] and Davitt therefore had them printed in pamphlet form and circulated.'D.B.Cashman, 'The Life of Michael Davitt and the Rise and Development of the Irish National Land League' (1881) pp.62–63. This was published, with a selection of O'Connor Power's speeches on amnesty in the House of Commons, in March 1878.Jane Stanford, 'That Irishman', pp 64–65
In 1876, O'Connor Power and Parnell were sent to the United States by the Home Rule League to congratulate the President Ulysses S. Grant on the American Centennial. At an informal meeting with the President, they asked that Ireland's bid for independence be given recognition. Power presented an address to the House of Representatives and on 4 March 1877 the House passed a unanimous resolution recognising the services rendered by Irishmen to the United States and concluded that the principles of self-government be established as a sacred heritage to all future generations. He also used the American visit to resume contact with nationalist supporters, and is almost certainly the IRB agent referred to as 'Shields'.Devoy's Post Bag, 1871–1928, eds William O'Brien and Desmond Ryan, vol. I, 1871–1880, Dublin: C. J. Fallon, 1948, pp. 192-93ff. Shields is mentioned on p. 198, the final reference to him on p. 329. A letter dated 16 May 1878 states: "Mr Shields is not now in business, having entirely given up the trade."
In 1876, Power was a guest speaker at the Durham Miners' Gala.
O'Connor Power was best known for his work in the radical wing of the Home Rule League and support for tenant farmers' rights, on which he spoke forcefully in Parliament,David Thornley, Isaac Butt and Home Rule, London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964, p. 280.
He was generally considered by the Fenians to have sold out to constitutionalism during his career. Along with J. G. Biggar, he was expelled from the IRB Supreme Council in 1876. The Fenians of the "New Departure" refused to work with him and it was Parnell who become the man to bridge the gap between the Fenians and constitutionalists. The IRB expelled Parliamentarians. Under no circumstances should the Fenians co-operate with the constitutional policy. O'Connor Power resigned, 'Our great idea was to keep the spirit of nationality alive.' The North of England seceded, withdrawing allegiance to the Supreme Council. The move cost the IRB a significant loss of membership.Barry O'Brien, Parnell, p.125. In July 1906 Dr William Carroll wrote to John Devoy that at that time the original Home Rulers lost much of the Fenian support when the IRB expelled them, 'although at a meeting near Manchester, England, at which Davitt, Chambers and other Fenians met the IRB men, a modus vivendi was agreed upon which enabled both to go on with their work without clashing.'Michael Davitt, John Devoy, From the Gaelic American, p.89, eds Carla King, W J McCormack, UCD Press, 2008.
T. D. Sullivan presents an anecdote from 1876 that illustrates the distance that grew between O'Connor Power in his Home Rule days and some of his former radical nationalist colleagues:An immense mass of people assembled in the Free Trade Hall [Manchester] on the 16 September 1876, to hear a lecture from Mr. John O'Connor Power, MP, on a non-political subject. The chair was taken by Mr. J. G. Biggar, MP. On rising to introduce the lecturer, he soon discerned that trouble was impending, that there was, so to say, "a storm in the offing." An "Advanced" person, a Mr. Flesh of Ramsbottom, came on the Platform and informed him that at a meeting of Nationalists held on the previous evening, it was decided that the lecture might be allowed to proceed only on the condition that the lecturer should first answer satisfactorily a series of questions which had been drawn up for him. The main purpose of those interrogatories was to ascertain whether he held and was prepared to support the principles of Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Robert Emmet. The chairman said those questions were not in order, as the lecture was to be on a non-political subject; however, he would leave it to the lecturer to deal with the queries as he thought fit, Mr. O'Connor Power then came to the front and said, amidst much noise, that with regard to the questions that had been read, his view was identical with that of the chairman. He begged leave to point out – He could say no more: the platform was rushed; there was a smashing of chairs and tables, a noise of heavy blows, and of fierce exclamations from men engaged in close combat, mingled with the shouts and screams of women, while blood flowed freely from many wounded persons ... The subject of Mr. O'Connor Power's intended lecture was "Irish Wit and Humour". T. D. Sullivan, Recollections of Troubled Times in Irish Politics , Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker/M. H. Gill & Son, 1905, p. 134.
O'Connor Power delivered the lecture, within a fortnight, in the same hall, and Biggar again presided. This time, "the Irish of Manchester and Liverpool, revolutionaries and constitutionalists, banded together to put down any rowdyism should it again arise; but instead of that, O'Connor Power was received with 'deafening cheers, again and again repeated' according to a newspaper report".Michael MacDonagh, The Home Rule Movement, Dublin: Talbot Press; London: T. F. Unwin, 1920. p. 119.
O'Connor Power had an uneasy working relationship with Parnell, who he thought was "a respectable mediocrity". T. M. Healy narrates an incident from 1878:... I wrote Maurice: London, October, '78.