John Martin (Ireland)

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John Martin (born in Newry, County Down on September 8, 1812; died in Newry, County Down on March 29, 1875) was an Irish nationalist activist who progressed from early militant support for Young Ireland and Repeal, to non-violent alternatives such as support for tenants' rights and eventually as the first Home Rule MP.

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Van Diemen's Land and exile 3 Later Life and Parliament 4 Quotes 5 Footnotes 6 Further Reading 7 External Links

[edit] Early Life

John Martin was born into a landed Presbyterian family, the son of Samuel and Jane (ne Harshaw) Martin. He first met John Mitchel while attending Dr Henderson's private school in Newry. He received an Arts degree at Trinity College, Dublin in 1832 and proceeded to study medicine, but had to abandon this in 1835 when his uncle died and he had to return to manage the family landholding.

In 1847 he was moved by the Famine to join Mitchel in the Repeal Association but subsequently left it with Mitchel. He contributed to Mitchel's journal "The United Irishman", and then following Mitchel's arrest on May 27 1848, Martin continued with his own anti-British journal, "The Irish Felon" and established "The Felon Club". This led to a warrant for his arrest, and he turned himself in on July 8, 1848. Martin was sentenced on August 18, 1848 to 10 years transportation to Van Diemen's Land.

[edit] Van Diemen's Land and exile

Martin arrived on the Elphinstone with Kevin Izod O'Doherty in Hobart, Tasmania in Novemeber 1849. He accepted a "ticket of leave" which allowed him to live in relative freedom at Bothwell provided he promised not to escape.

While in Tasmania Martin continued to meet in secret with his fellow exiles Kevin Izod O'Doherty, Thomas Francis Meagher and John Mitchel. He chose not to join Mitchel when Mitchel revoked his ticket of leave and escaped. Instead he remained in Tasmania until he was granted a "conditional pardon" in 1854. This allowed him to leave for Paris, and he returned to Ireland on being granted a full pardon in 1856.

[edit] Later Life and Parliament

On return to Ireland Martin became a national organizer for the Tenant Right League. He began to write for The Nation in 1860. He formed the National League with others in January 1864 - it was mainly an educational organizaion but Fenians disrupted its meetings. He remained in contact with Mitchel in Paris through 1866. Martin opposed the Fenians support of armed violence yet together with A M Sullivan, in November 1867 he headed the symbolic funeral march honouring the Manchester Martyrs, as it followed the MacManus route to Glasnevin Cemetry Dublin. He was briefly arrested for these activities but the charges were dropped.

Martin was in the United States in December 1869 when he was nominated by Isaac Butt and his nationalists as the Irish nationalist Home Rule candidate to oppose Greville-Nugent, who was supported by the Catholic clergy, in the Longford bye-election. Greville-Nugent initially won the vote but the result was nullified by Judge Fitzgerald on the grounds that voters had been illegally influenced (i.e. bribed and/or coerced) in the non-secret voting process. In the May 1870 rerun Butt's second candidate, Edward Robert King-Harman, like Martin a Protestant landlord, was also defeated but this time legally.

These contradictions and factionalism were symptomatic of the struggle for influence and leadership at the time between the waning Church of Ireland and the rising Irish Catholic Church; secular Protestant and Catholic organizations with differing social bases and attitudes to violence; between those who wished to challenge and maintain the sociopolitical status quo; constitutional reform versus revolution; elite versus grassroots movements; landowners versus tenants; Home Rule versus Repeal. Hence a secular Protestant land-owning non-violent elite reformist nationalist who desired Home Rule like Martin, could find himself both sympathetic to and at odds with a militant organization like the Fenians with their Jacobin and American influenced ideas of revolutionary republicanism and different social roots. Until Parnell, the Isaac Butt-originated Home Rule forces could not obtain the support of the Catholic Church under the anti-Fenian Paul Cardinal Cullen or manage to achieve more than short-term tactical alliances with Fenians, leading to a split and uncoordinated opposition to British rule. Protestants like Martin and John Mitchel, with their early political roots in Young Ireland, were, whatever their political ideals, not part of the majority Catholic mainstream, which were largely tenants rather than landlords.

In the January 1871 bye-election Martin was elected by a margin of 2–1 to the seat of County Meath in the British parliament as the first Home Rule MP, representing first Isaac Butt's Home Government Association and from November 1873 the Home Rule League. This was unusual for a Protestant in a Catholic constituency, and is a measure of the popular esteem Martin was held in. He retained his seat in the February 1874 General Election as one of 60 Home Rule members. He was commonly known as "Honest John Martin". In parliament Martin spoke strongly for Home Rule for Ireland and opposed Coercion Bills. He died in March 1875 homeless and in relative poverty, having forgiven tenant fees during preceding years of inflation and low farm prices.

Martin's parliamentary seat of County Meath was taken up by Charles Stewart Parnell.

[edit] Quotes

"Then, my lords, permit me to say, that admitting the narrow and confined constitutional doctrines, which I have heard preached in this court, to be right, I am not guilty of the charge according to this Act! In the article of mine, on which the jury framed their verdict, which was written in prison, and published in the last number of my paper, what I desired to do was this, to advise and encourage my countrymen to keep their arms; because that is their inalienable right, which no Act of Parliament, no proclamation can take away from them. It is, I repeat, their inalienable right. I advised them to keep their arms; and further, I advised them to use their arms in their own defence against all assailants—even assailants that might come to attack them unconstitutionally and improperly, using the Queen's name as their sanction.

"My object in all my proceeding has been simply to establish the independence of Ireland for the benefit of all the people of Ireland—noblemen, clergymen, judges, professional men—in fact, all Irishmen. I sought that object first, because I thought it was our right; because I thought, and think still, national independence was the right of the people of this country. And secondly, I admit, that being a man who loves retirement, I never would have engaged in politics did I not think it necessary to do all in my power to make an end of the horrible scenes the country presents—the pauperism, and starvation, and crime, and vice, and the hatred of all classes against each other. I thought there should be an end to that horrible system, which while it lasted, gave me no peace of mind, for I could not enjoy anything in my country, so long as I saw my countrymen forced to be vicious, forced to hate each other, and degraded to the level of paupers and brutes. This is the reason I engaged in politics".

John Martin's statement before sentencing on August 19 1848.^[1]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] Further Reading

• Alvin Jackson. Home Rule. An Irish History 1800-2000. Chapters 1-3. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2003. ISBN 0 184212 724 1

[edit] External Links

John Martin Biography in Newry Journal.
http://www.newryjournal.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=912&Itemid=31

Recollections of troubled times in Irish politics. by T. D. Sullivan. 1905.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/abl/etext/irish/trouble/irishpolitics.html

Articles on the Irish Question. Jenny Marx-Longuet. 1870.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/family/jenny/1870-ire.htm

The Politics of Irish Literature. Malcolm Brown. Chapter 15 - The Ballot Box Once More - Isaac Butt.
http://www.astonisher.com/archives/mjb/irishlit/irishlit_ch15.html

Timeline of John Martin's Life. From P A Sillard's 1893 book "The Life and Letters of John Martin".
http://www.theballards.net/Harshaw/Martin/Diary/Timeline.html