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CHAPTER 1

Family, Education and Politics, 1893–1921

John Joseph Hearne was born on 4 December 1893 at 8 William Street in the city of Waterford. He was the fifth son and the seventh of eight children, five boys and three girls, born to Richard Hearne (1850–1929) and Alice Mary Hearne, née Power (1856–1934).1 The William Street home in which he lived was not much more than 250 metres from the Viking Triangle, a small area of approximately two hectares, where the Vikings first settled in 914 and which came to define the historic centre of the city, the oldest in Ireland. As he grew up, Hearne came to appreciate the rich heritage of his birthplace and the significant role his family played in it. He always retained affection for the city of his birth and regarded it as ‘home’, often visiting it at Christmas while his parents were alive.2 In December 1945, returning after the War from Canada, where he was Ireland’s High Commissioner, he again came to Waterford for Christmas. On 18 December, he and his son, Maurice, then aged about ten, were both granted the freedom of the city on the basis of hereditary application, his father Richard having been a freeman.3 The fact that he applied for this suggests Hearne’s sense and appreciation of family history and municipal tradition, expressed in claiming a privilege, albeit strictly honorary, defined by familial right and in accordance with the old and established practice of the city’s Corporation.

Waterford at the turn of the twentieth century

The city of Hearne’s birth recorded a population of 20,852 in the 1891 census.4 This was to increase to 27, 464 by 1911;5 indeed, between 1901 and 1911, Waterford’s population grew faster than that of any other southern Irish city, except Dublin. Prosperity depended on the provisions’ trade. In the 1890s, bacon curing was one of the few significant industries, employing 850 people in four factories and supporting 150 pig buyers.6 The number of jobs available in Waterford, however, failed to keep pace with the rising population. Unemployment continued to rise steadily though, by 1911, the number of males out of work had fallen. As a consequence of joblessness, poverty was pervasive. Appalling housing conditions, with attendant problems of poor drainage and lack of hygiene, meant that the city recorded the highest death rate of any town in Ireland in the 1880s. By the 1890s, the Corporation began tackling the housing problem but conditions were far from satisfactory and, in 1909, a particularly high number of deaths from tuberculosis was recorded.7

The most densely populated area in Waterford was the Centre Ward and it was here that some of its poorest inhabitants lived.8 Although William Street was not far from this part of the city, the life experience of John Hearne was very different to that of many of the people in that ward. Society was structured according to a graduated class system9 and the Hearne family was middle class. Their house was located in Tower Ward, where 70 per cent of residents were house owners; by contrast, the comparable figure for the Centre Ward was only 3 per cent.10 The Hearnes had a live-in domestic servant.11 In what has been described as ‘the endemically stratified social life of the city’,12 John Hearne very likely had no significant contact with those less socially advantaged than he. This is apparent from an account of a conversation his son Maurice remembered having with him, in which his father recounted an event while serving in the Free State army during the Civil War:

One experience when he was a junior officer remained with him and he related it to me as a small boy in Canada, probably, I think, to let me know how well off we were in comparison with so many others. He was passing by the NCOs’ mess one dinner time and he heard a soldier, when asked what was on offer for dinner, reply almost in disbelief: ‘Mate, again, begob’. It only dawned on him that the average Irish family could afford meat but once a week at the very outside.13

Richard Hearne: businessman

The Hearne family’s middle-class status was due to the business success enjoyed by Richard Hearne, John’s father. He was born in 1850, at Drumrusk, near Passage East, a village just over thirteen kilometres from Waterford.14 As a young man he began working in the city as an apprentice at Messrs Walsh, a leather store situated in Broad Street. On the death of Edward Walsh, Richard Hearne and James Cahill took over the business. Under the new name of Hearne and Cahill, it soon became one of the city’s best known industries, manufacturing boots. In a book published in 1894, Patrick Egan gave a detailed account of it:

Entering the cutting room we counted twelve hands cutting out … Passing on to the machine room we counted in one room twenty-two girls employed working sixteen machines … Those machines include all the newest designs which the art of invention has developed up to the present time, they having replaced within the present year older ones, now obsolete. We also witnessed the machine for sole sewing, ‘Keats Fortuna’, at work, which is the only one of its kind in Ireland, and the fifth made; and which is capable of sewing five hundred pairs daily. There are several finishing rooms, all filled by busy workmen, and the leather stores, in a factory where upwards of ninety hands are constantly going, with all the machines at their disposal, are of necessity well stocked by large quantities of the different leathers required.

Reflecting his admiration for the factory, Egan proclaimed: ‘Waterford may feel justly proud of having one of the very few boot factories in Ireland.’ Inspired by its example, he made a political point: ‘If Waterford had many industrial resources such as this, it might look forward to the day when it would be able to recover all the native industries which have been filched from the country during ages of misdealing, through inimical laws and other grooves, by which the lifeblood of the Irish nation has well-nigh been exhausted.’15

On the death of Richard Hearne in 1929, the business was inherited by his son, also called Richard. In 1933, the factory was extended and new machines acquired with the potential to increase production by almost 50 per cent. By this time, the company was also producing light and more fashionable footwear, including ladies’ shoes, in addition to boots.16 Its importance as a source of employment in Waterford was highlighted in April 1948, when its closure, for a number of weeks, was raised at a meeting of the city’s Corporation. It appears that this was due to overproduction but it did reopen.17 However, manufacture ceased in 1951, dealing a major blow to the local economy.

Richard Hearne: public man

Like many successful businessmen in an era of a very restricted local franchise, Richard Hearne was elected a member of Waterford Corporation, representing the Custom House Ward.18 He was a supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party led by Charles Stewart Parnell, which was campaigning for Home Rule for Ireland. In 1889, members of the Corporation elected him High Sheriff of Waterford.19 However, in 1890, when the Irish Parliamentary Party split over the issue of Parnell’s affair with Catherine O’Shea, Hearne opposed Parnell. He was one of the founders of the National Commercial Club which met at Paul’s Square in the city. It became the focus of anti-Parnellism20 in a city that continued to be one of Parnell’s strongest areas of support and which, in 1891, returned a Parnellite, John Redmond, to parliament in a by-election.

Notwithstanding this fact, Hearne continued to oppose the Parnellite majority locally – not a popular position to espouse in a decade of intense political bitterness and division. His obituarist commented: ‘Into that movement [anti-Parnellism], despite fierce opposition and threats of harm, with all his moral consciousness, he threw the full weight of his great energy and enthusiasm.’ The obituary continued: ‘Then, when the blessed reconciliation came, and the leaders joined hands again as united Irishmen, Ald. Hearne became as devoted to Parnell’s successor, the late Mr John Redmond, as he had been strenuously opposed to the policy Mr Redmond championed during the split.’21 On Sunday, 22 April 1900, when John Redmond returned to Waterford as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Hearne was among those present at a public meeting to welcome and congratulate him.22

In 1901, Hearne was elected Mayor of Waterford.23 The Waterford News welcomed his election, despite the fact that it had ‘disagreed very materially’ with the position he held on the issue of Parnell’s leadership. The newspaper described the Corporation’s choice ‘as wise and judicious from every point of view’, the new mayor being ‘a sound businessman and large employer, experienced in corporate affairs’.24 Hearne recognised the significance of his election in the context of a reunited Irish Parliamentary Party, declaring at his installation: ‘I am proud to be the first mayor after unity has been restored.’25 He was re-elected the following year for a second term.26 As the first citizen of the city, he proposed that the freedom of Waterford be conferred on John Redmond,27 which happened on 12 September 1902.28

Arguably, the most important event, in political terms, during his tenure as mayor was the setting up of a branch of the United Ireland League in the city in December 1901. This was the constituency and fund-raising organisation of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The invitations to the public meeting to discuss the branch’s establishment were issued by Hearne, in his capacity as mayor.29 He was to play an active role in its affairs.

In addition to membership of the Corporation and two terms as mayor, Hearne also served in a number of other public and semi-public offices. He was a borough magistrate,30 poor law guardian and Master of the Holy Ghost Hospital, a charity tracing its origins back to the reign of King Henry VIII.31 In January 1920, when Sinn Féin secured control of the Corporation in the local elections, Hearne retained his seat,32 suggesting that he was a figure who commanded a degree of regard. His funeral in May 1929 was, in the words of the Munster Express, ‘one of the largest demonstrations of sympathy and respect seen in Waterford for years’ with ‘every section of the community in the city and county’ represented.33 A motion of sympathy passed by the Corporation noted the loss of a person ‘who was close on half a century so honourably associated with [Waterford’s] public and commercial life’.34 Clearly, Richard Hearne was a man of some substance in the economic and political life of the city for many years.

Education

John Hearne attended Waterpark College, run by the Irish Christian Brothers, which was approximately 300 metres from his home. According to Christian Brother and historian, Barry Coldrey, this school and Christian Brothers’ College Cork ‘were intended for the type of middle-class clientèle who would be unlikely to send their children to an ordinary school’ conducted by the order.35 A description of the school, published in 1914, suggests that it would appeal to parents ambitious for their children’s educational and professional prospects:

Waterpark College … was established in 1892. It is pleasantly situated on the river bank in the suburb of Newtown … The Christian Brothers have built a large study hall and recreation rooms and have enlarged the recreation grounds. Pupils are prepared in this excellent educational establishment for commercial life or for the legal, medical or engineering professions. The highest distinctions possible in all departments of public life have been won by Waterpark students.36

For a prominent family such as the Hearnes, the character of the school was probably the deciding factor rather than simply its proximity.

Christian Brothers’ schools were noted for their nationalist ethos and an extraordinary bond was forged between them and Irish nationalism.37 In 1901, on the occasion of the order’s centenary, the Gaelic League congratulated the Brothers on the work they were doing for the Gaelic cause.38 John Hearne is recorded in the 1901 census as being able to speak Irish,39 though in his career in the civil service there is no evidence of his having any great degree of proficiency in the language.40 While Christian Brothers’ schools were often credited with inculcating an ethos of robustly anti-British values and endorsing radical nationalism,41 this was probably not as pronounced in a more middle-class school such as Waterpark, the parents of whose pupils were not always as sympathetic to such tendencies. This may explain why, when reminiscing to an American audience in 1957, Hearne commented that, as a boy, the only history he knew ‘was a kind of birth-and-death register of defunct British monarchs’. He knew the dates on which all the kings of England died and the name of the diseases which killed some of them.42 Though he was to express robust nationalist views when older, these were, very definitely, in the Home Rule and Redmondite traditions. His education may have influenced his political views; time spent in a Christian Brothers’ school should not be equated simply with the espousal of Sinn Féin nationalism.

Having completed his education at Waterpark College, Hearne entered St John’s College, Waterford, in September 1910, to commence study for the Roman Catholic priesthood.43 Opened in 1871, this establishment trained students for Waterford and other dioceses.44 On 12 September 1911, he began studies at Maynooth College, the national seminary. The course of training for clerical students involved three years’ study for a BA degree in philosophy and arts, followed by a four-year theology degree. For some reason, Hearne studied four years for a BA and was awarded one in 1915, his subjects being Latin, English literature, logic and psychology, and metaphysics and ethics. He commenced studies in the Faculty of Theology in the academic year 1915–16, but left the seminary sometime during the academic year 1916–17.45

The timetables at the seminaries Hearne attended show a heavy schedule of lectures and classes which demanded a great deal of intellectual vigour. The young Hearne studied philosophy, morality, Church law, ethics, logic and politics. He also studied languages such as Latin, Greek and Hebrew.46 According to Chief Justice Susan Denham, ‘this experience undoubtedly enriched his work as lawyer, public servant and diplomat … The formative years spent at the seminaries in Waterford and Maynooth clearly influenced John Hearne’s understanding of the world and human nature, and graced the stylishly written drafts he wrote, which ultimately became part of our Constitution.’47

The decision to leave Maynooth cannot have been an easy one for Hearne. He was a very religious person throughout his life, as will be seen later. The fact that he spent a total of seven years preparing for the priesthood suggests a strong personal belief in his having a vocation. His son, Maurice, in his contents for a ‘proposed biography’ of his father, made a note which highlighted some of the difficulties Hearne faced: ‘Left Maynooth a short time before due to be ordained. His family disappointed and [include] a short discussion on the trauma associated with such a decision at the time in provincial Ireland.’48 When he wrote of ‘trauma’, what Maurice had in mind was that his father would have been regarded as a ‘spoiled priest’.

Having a priest, nun, or brother in the family was not merely socially acceptable, it conferred a unique respectability, as well as presumed advantages in the order of grace. The social attitude towards the priesthood carried the further assumption that any young man who commenced a clerical career was, ipso facto, ‘called’ to the priesthood; he had a ‘vocation’. Therefore, a clerical student who failed, for whatever reason, to proceed all the way to ordination was called a ‘spoiled priest’. The particular Irish Catholic usage carried a certain social stigma.49

This social stigma was explored in a play written in 1912 by Thomas C. Murray (1873–1959). Entitled Maurice Harte, the eponymous protagonist decides to quit his clerical studies at Maynooth, to the deep shock of his parents and brother.50 His mother proclaims: ‘If you don’t return [to Maynooth] how can I ever face outside this door, or lift up my head again? … How could I ever face again into the town of Macroom? … I tell you, Maurice, I’d rather be lying dead a thousand times in the graveyard over at Kilnamartra.’51

While it is not being suggested that the Hearne family reacted with such melodramatic intensity, the play does give a valuable insight into contemporary attitudes. Maurice Hearne was aware of the Hearne family’s ‘disappointment’ and the social attitudes then prevalent. His source of information for both was almost certainly John Hearne himself. This reinforces the sense that, for personal, family and social reasons, it was probably an anxious and difficult time in his life. The fact that he had an older brother, Maurice, who had been trained in St John’s College and ordained on 17 June 1906,52 could have either exacerbated or mitigated this anxiety. Whatever the case, significantly for John Hearne, he had the support of his father.53 This made things somewhat easier for him, but the distress the decision might have caused him should not be underestimated in the Ireland and Waterford of 1916.

Hearne was a committed Catholic throughout his life. He was known to his contemporaries as a devout man,54 a view confirmed by his niece, Alice Bowen, who knew him well and remembers him as being very religious.55 A letter he sent her in acknowledgement of her expression of sympathy on the death of his son, Justin, aged twenty, as result of a shooting accident in September 1957,56 suggests a person with a deep sense of personal faith.57 The influence of his clerical training revealed itself in particular ways. While acknowledging a letter of sympathy from a nephew, Fr Ignatius Fennessy, again on the occasion of his son’s death, he observed that a Catholic priest would be able to appreciate what he felt at that time.58 This was a remark respectful of the Catholic priesthood and informed by his association with clerics, especially at the seminaries he attended. While serving as Irish Ambassador to the United States (1950–60), his younger son, David, was involved in a motor accident in which an elderly woman was killed. Hearne insisted on going to the woman’s funeral in South Carolina and preaching the sermon at the funeral service.59 During his tenure as ambassador, he was invited to speak at Catholic universities and his addresses were inspired by deeply-held religious beliefs. He delivered a speech on the occasion of the commencement exercises at the University of Notre Dame on 4 June 1950 and included the following:

It will depend on you [the graduates] whether or not this country can weather the maelstrom [of challenges facing it]. Be prepared for that. Be prepared by being practical, day to day, men of faith; not believers merely, but doers also. Let the excellence of your lives shine for all to see in the community in which you live, in your professional relations and your social surroundings. Be intellectually honest and intellectually humble. Teach your friends and neighbours, aye, and your enemies, how to distinguish money from wealth, interference from influence, notoriety from fame, pride from self-respect, speed from progress, luxury from elegance, glamour from distinction, fashion from taste, respectability from worthiness – I mean the spurious from the genuine and the temporal from the eternal.

He continued with an exhortation founded on Christian principles:

Never before has mankind been so much in need of the true pattern as well as the true tradition of human life formed in the mind of the Designer and spun from the hand of its Author. The world needs teachers much, but it needs models more. And if we be not the models there will be none. On us and our example will depend the issue of whether or not the image of God is written upon the character of this and the next generation.60

Throughout his life he retained a deep interest in philosophy and theology, interests which served him well during the drafting of the Constitution.

In 1916, Hearne entered University College Dublin, graduating with a LLB degree in 1919.61 He was also admitted to the King’s Inns as a student in the Michaelmas term, 1916, and was called to the Bar in 1919.62 His career at the King’s Inns was an illustrious one. He received three gold medals for his achievements in the year 1917–18: for oratory, legal debate and the Lord Chancellor’s Prize for oratory and legal debate combined.63 For 1919–20, he served as auditor of the Law Students’ Debating Society of Ireland.64 In that capacity he delivered the inaugural lecture, entitled ‘University Culture and the Rule of Law’, at the opening meeting of the society’s nineteenth session. Some of the sentiments he expressed, as reported in the Freeman’s Journal, are of interest in light of the future part he was to play in the making of the state’s new basic law in 1937 and as a diplomat at the League of Nations:

[the] … upshot from all their [the audience’s] knowledge of the world war was that international law as a governing force in the world had signally failed. He believed that the power and permanence of their legislative and executive establishments in the state, and of progressive international polity in the world, would depend increasingly in the future upon the degree of advancement obtained by the common people of the nations in moral culture and self-discipline, in public virtue, in knowledge to appreciate their liberties, and prudence to use them wisely, in light to understand those of others, and to recognise them generally, in the consciousness of their power as the makers and administrators of the law, and a corresponding sense of their responsibility as citizens of the state and the custodians of its destinies … Self-discipline and social betterment would carry us a long way further at this moment than the world had yet advanced, and make the new citizenship the chief and primal sanction of a reformed international system and of the capital institutions of every free land.

The same newspaper reported that the vote of thanks was proposed by the Lord Chief Justice, who complimented Hearne on his address and ‘predicted for him a great career at the Bar’. Seconding the motion, Timothy Healy, KC, a future Governor-General of the Irish Free State, joined the Lord Chief Justice in prophesying for the auditor ‘a high place’ in the profession.65

Hearne was to practise law on the Leinster Circuit, which included Waterford, until 1922. However, before he began his legal career, his oratorical skills were to be employed in the political bear-pit of local and national politics.

Politics

On 6 March 1918, John Redmond, MP for Waterford City, died and a by-election was called for 22 March. His son, Captain William Archer Redmond, was selected to contest the seat by the local United Ireland League; his opponent was Dr Vincent White, representing Sinn Féin. This political contest, an important one locally and nationally, was bitterly fought. Prominent in their support of Captain Redmond were the Hearnes, John and his father, Richard. For the younger Hearne, it was to be his first public engagement in electoral politics and, by his involvement, he revealed the extent of his commitment to the Home Rule cause and the Redmondite tradition.

For the two parties the election had a practical and symbolic significance. Sinn Féin had won four by-elections in 1917, though it had suffered a defeat in Armagh South in February 1918.66 In practical terms, a victory in Waterford would represent a continuation of successful progress in its determination to supplant the Irish Parliamentary Party as the dominant force in Irish politics. There was also a deep symbolic significance attached to a win. The election was for John Redmond’s old seat and the opposing candidate was his son. His nomination was regarded by Sinn Féin as ‘the last kick of the dying “home rule upon the statute book” Irish Parliamentary Party’.67 Defeat for Redmond would deliver a political coup de grace, sending his party into a spiral of irreversible decline. Therefore, there was no doubt that Sinn Féin understood the importance, even the necessity, of victory. Its local director of elections, Nicholas Whittle, recorded the fact that:

all members of the executive … participated in the election in Waterford City and canvassed the city daily … The republican movement in Ireland threw everything it had in to the by-election. Sean Milroy, general director of elections, wrote daily letters to prominent republicans throughout the whole country to come to Waterford and lend a hand.68

For the Irish Parliamentary Party the stakes were even higher. It appeared to be in decline following a series of election defeats. On a practical level, a victory would halt the progress of Sinn Féin; it might even reverse it and herald a restoration of the Party’s fortunes. The contest was also charged with a deep emotional symbolism – the memory of John Redmond cast a shadow over his supporters in Waterford. He was viewed by them as a martyr for the Home Rule cause just as Patrick Pearse had come to represent martyrdom for the republican one. They were seeking to vindicate and protect Redmond’s political legacy and to use his memory as an inspiration for party renewal and revival against the Sinn Féin onslaught.

For supporters of Home Rule, even more fundamental than these practical and symbolic considerations was their revulsion at the direction politics was taking. The restoration of constitutionalism was of paramount urgency in the face of what was regarded as the dangerous revolutionism of Sinn Féin. The mayor, David McDonald, asserted that the country could get what it required ‘by constitutional means … Was it worth spilling untold quantities of Irish blood? … For eighteen months these marauders have gambled with the destinies of Ireland … Waterford can finish the humbug that has been going on for the past eighteen months’.69

Given the importance of the election for both parties, it was a very hard-fought contest. Arthur Griffith was to comment to Whittle: ‘Do you know this has been the roughest election in Irish history, not excepting the famous Galway election?’70 Notwithstanding Sinn Féin’s election successes in 1917, the Waterford contest presented a real and serious challenge, as it had to contend with the formidable Redmondite political machine in the city. John Redmond had first been elected in a by-election in 1891, defeating Michael Davitt, of Land League fame.71 He retained his seat in all six subsequent general elections, in four of which he was returned unopposed.72

Central to his victories was the support he enjoyed from the Pig Buyers’ Association, located in Ballybricken, in the heart of the city. Of this body Egan observed that ‘in every movement, social, political and commercial, the men of Ballybricken, owing to their high position and influence as traders in the city, play an important part’.73 On the basis of their support, Redmond built a powerful constituency organisation74 which ‘permeated and suffocated local politics’.75 The Irish Parliamentary Party became the near monopoly leader of local nationalism and had the ‘copyright’ of the national movement and its machine.76 William Redmond could count on this organisation and machine in March 1918.

A spectre of violence, actual and threatened, hung over the election campaign. When Griffith’s newspaper, Nationality, complained that ‘constitutionalism was upheld by “constitutional” stones and bludgeons’, it was telling the essential truth.77 Much of the violence and disorder which characterised the contest was instigated by Redmond’s supporters, who outnumbered and were more organised than Sinn Féin’s.78 The former could rely on the pig buyers, former soldiers and wives of serving soldiers. The women interrupted Sinn Féin meetings with singing and heckling. De Valera was attacked and his party’s candidate spent a week in hospital after an assault.79 Sinn Féin responded by bringing in Volunteer units from outside Waterford to protect its election workers.80

Clearly, the March by-election was one fought with intensity and ferocity and all participants appreciated this fact. The Hearnes, father and son, played a central role in it. On 8 March, Richard Hearne, in his capacity as president of the city branch of the United Ireland League, was on the platform at a meeting in the City Hall to express sympathy to the Redmond family on its bereavement.81 He attended the opening meeting of Captain William Redmond’s campaign on 12 March.82 Three days later he presided at a meeting in Ferrybank, regarded as a Sinn Féin stronghold, introducing Redmond to the crowd.83 On St Patrick’s Day he played a prominent part in Redmond’s last election rally at Ballybricken, again introducing him to the gathering.84

On 12 March, at the opening meeting of Redmond’s campaign, John Hearne delivered what was probably his first speech in his native city; it might, in fact, have been his first ever speech delivered at an election meeting. In this address, he articulated the views and concerns informing the attitudes and aspirations of Home Rule supporters. He began by acknowledging the emotions and symbolism of the occasion, declaring that it was fitting that it was in Redmond’s adopted city that ‘the first staggering blow should be struck for Redmondism and reason, when John Redmond himself, the living embodiment of political sound sense, is no more’. He announced the intention of his supporters not to cede political ground to any other party: ‘We are to be here this time, next time and all the time.’ In fact, they were resolved to ‘smash Sinn Féin’ and he asserted that ‘Waterford was safe for political sanity.’

He then sought to motivate his audience by appealing to their sense of history: ‘Daniel O’Connell told Isaac Butt that it was not the Clare election that won [Catholic] emancipation; he said that it was the Waterford election [1826] that turned the tide finally for religious freedom. It was the Waterford election of 1891 which gave us John Redmond for our member, and gave him to Ireland as the “Chief”.’ Hearne was very clear in his assertion that the election was essentially about the political legacy of Redmond: ‘Let it be the Waterford election of 1918 that will vindicate the greatness of his chieftaincy.’ In a rhetorical flourish, he summarised the significance of the occasion and what was at stake: ‘We are going to lift up the old flag and unfurl it upon our City Hall, upon our Cathedral and upon the castles and towers of our dear ancient city, and we are going to proclaim Waterford the greatest, the most powerful and the most impregnable stronghold of the principles of John Redmond and constitutional home rule.’85William Redmond won the by-election, by 1,242 votes to White’s 745.86

In the early hours of Sunday 24 March, John Hearne delivered another political speech, this one at a meeting celebrating victory. It was a trenchant and uncompromising address, motivated and shaped by the bitterness of the campaign. He began with an emotional proclamation that the city had been true to John Redmond and his son. He quickly launched into a vitriolic attack on Sinn Féin: ‘The life blood of the late Mr John E. Redmond and the late Major William Redmond [his brother]87 went forth for the same imperishable ideals of nationality. One was shot dead by the enemies of civilisation abroad, the other’s heart broken by the enemies of civilisation at home.’ He referred to Sinn Féin supporters, who had been drafted in for the election, leaving the city after their defeat: ‘Was it any wonder that they [Redmond’s supporters] opened their windows and let in the pure splendour of God’s sunlight, because they knew that the pestilence had gone from the city.’

He continued in a menacing tone: ‘They knew that if they did not go in time, the people of Waterford would see that they would go in eternity.’ Jeeringly, he announced that ‘Mr Darrell Figgis88 had fled from Waterford as he fled from British soldiers in Easter Week and Mr A. Griffith had gone to Clontarf to meditate on Brian Boru.’ He reserved particular bile for those who had voted for White, especially former Redmond supporters: ‘There were men in the city who should hang their heads in shame. There were men even in Ballybricken who might hang their heads in shame – men who stood by John Redmond in sunshine and deserted him in the dark days.’ Hearne then turned his attention to the British government, denouncing its treatment of Redmond, accusing it of doing all it could to ensure that his position was made ‘unbearable’ in the country: ‘They knew that he was the only man powerful enough and with brain enough to restore to Ireland what they had filched from it, their national self-government.’ He linked the behaviour of the government and Sinn Féin together to discredit both: ‘Sinn Féin was the strongest ally the government had in keeping their country in subjection. The government gloried in Sinn Féin, because they knew that as long as the country was in a state of insufferable anarchy, they could say that Ireland was unfit for home rule.’

However, Waterford, he declared, had transformed the situation by showing the world that the country was fit to rule itself. In an assertion inspired by the moment of victory, he proclaimed: ‘It was quite impossible to exaggerate the importance of that tremendous moment in the history of their country. For the past two years there had been an avalanche of abuse launched at the head of John Redmond … Waterford had, once and for all, turned the tide in the teeth of Sinn Féiners and the government.’ Coming to the end of his speech, he urged preparation for the general election, appealing to Home Rule supporters to remain united: ‘They must try to bring their forces together, for the Sinn Féiners did their traitorous work well.’ He finished on a note of menace: ‘Those men should never have been allowed to poll 700 votes in the City of Waterford, and that must not occur again.’89

The importance of the Hearne family in the Home Rule movement in Waterford was confirmed in the aftermath of the March election, when Richard Hearne was re-elected president of the city branch of the United Ireland League.90 In October, a Young Ireland branch of the league was inaugurated. This was inspired by, and modelled on, the branch founded in Dublin in December 1904, which had as its aim the encouragement of a younger membership in the party,91 so that it could ‘infuse new lifeblood into the increasingly sclerotic arteries of the home rulers’.92 John Hearne was the principal speaker at its inaugural meeting. His association with the branch was consistent with his call on supporters during his March victory speech to organise themselves. According to a newspaper report, he was invited to speak because ‘his speeches made such an impression during the election campaign’.93 Canon Furlong, who presided, said in his short address that ‘the eloquence of Meagher,94 Sexton95 and Leamy96 was not dead while they had John Hearne among them’. He was to deliver a significant speech in terms of outlining his political ideas.

Hearne began by delivering a panegyric to John Redmond, who was described as the ‘embodiment’ of nationalism and whose ‘illustrious’ name would be ‘the bright symbol in hopeful future years’. Once again, it was evident that the emotional attachment of Redmond’s followers to their dead leader was akin to that of Sinn Féiners for the 1916 leaders. Both groups of followers operated in the shadow of dead men and, in their public utterances, these followers were in thrall to their political legacies. Hearne stated that it was ‘fitting to inaugurate a Young Ireland branch in Waterford to carry on the old fight, along the old lines … with the master mind of Redmond still controlling the work and his extended hand pointing the steadfast way forward’. He outlined the purpose of the branch and his words echoed those of Redmond: ‘[it] proclaims the unabated, unbroken and unbreakable allegiance of the youth of our city to the age-old principle of parliamentary representation for Ireland, to work for and to win full and final self-government, absolute and unconditional, for our native land’.

Of course, this ‘full and final government’ was to be achieved in the context of Ireland’s continuing membership of the British Empire. Hearne utterly rejected the charge that Home Rule was setting boundaries to the march of the Irish nation. He argued that the alternative to Home Rule was not an Irish republic: ‘The controversy does not lie between these two alternatives, for the one is a practicable and attainable national policy, the other is a morbid and an amorphous and delusive national idea.’ Elaborating briefly on what he meant as a ‘practicable’ policy, he explained that it was to work to win for Ireland ‘a dignified and self-developing status among free peoples’. This policy he contrasted with Sinn Féin’s ‘political extravagances’ and ‘erroneous and maudlin patriotism’. The supporters of Home Rule were ‘not prepared to continue this turmoil that exists in Ireland today on the steadily receding chance of setting up a national republic somewhere about the time the archangel will set one foot upon the water and the other upon the land’. Rather than pursuing a futile dream of a republic, there were urgent issues demanding attention:

In the financial readjustment that will follow the war, the present ghastly and unreal prosperity of Ireland will be made the pretext for taxing our agricultural and industrial interests out of existence by our enemies in Great Britain and Ireland, unless our position be safeguarded and secured by the united, nation-supported efforts of our people in parliament. The status of the teaching profession, the great invaluable secular asset for the island of saints and scholars, must be uplifted from its present scandalous and disreputable condition. Turn where you will, the immediate needs of the nation call for vigorous and violent parliamentary agitation.

In focusing on taxation and education, Hearne was echoing opinions and concerns articulated by leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party. John Redmond had spoken about over-taxation and education on a number of occasions, claiming that misguided British policies in these areas had ‘annihilated’ Ireland. Thomas Kettle97 had identified these issues as among the two most pressing ones for a native government.98 In the light of much work to be done, Hearne called on Home Rule supporters to be organised and disciplined. He concluded his speech with a rousing, rhetorical flourish:

Let them concentrate their energies, let them define their aims, let them pursue them in every circumstance of derision and defeat with fearless and steadfast confidence, and let them persevere to the very end. Let them remember, above all, that when the long night is past, and Ireland stands forth again in the white glory of her risen generation as the spiritual law-giver to the free nations of the earth, as the great commercial emporium between the continent of Europe and the cities of the western world, as the leader in the vanguard of the new freedom which is truth and justice and charity, the achievements will be attributable first, above all, to the men who fought with the emblem of peace and goodwill upon their banners, and the virtues of mutual trust and tolerance in their hearts.99

1918 general election

Within a few weeks of this speech, Waterford City was convulsed by the 1918 general election. Again, Richard and John Hearne played prominent roles in the campaign. William Archer Redmond’s selection as its candidate by the local United Ireland League was seconded by the former100 and he also seconded his formal nomination papers.101 John Hearne addressed meetings in the city; he spoke at Grace Dieu on 10 December102 and at a rally in Broad Street on 12 December.103 An indication of his increasing stature in political circles was an invitation to speak at a meeting in the county in support of the candidacy of James John O’Shee, the Home Rule candidate. In its account, the Freeman’s Journal listed the speakers, but made a particular reference to Hearne, commenting that ‘he delivered a powerful speech’.104 Unfortunately, no details were given of this or, indeed, of any of his speeches during the election.

Unsurprisingly, it was a bitter contest marked by incidents of disorder and violence on both sides. Volunteers were again drafted into Waterford to protect Sinn Féin canvassers who were outnumbered by their opponents. One volunteer recorded his impressions of the campaign thus: ‘I was in Waterford city for the most exciting election contest in the 1918 general election … I have never met anything since to equal the fanaticism of the Redmond supporters in that contest, who at times went berserk.’105 On the eve of polling, there were street brawls106 and disorder on polling day itself.107

Redmond retained his seat with 4,915 votes to White’s 4,431. For the Irish Parliamentary Party the election was a disaster nationally: it won six seats as against Sinn Féin’s seventy-three. Though Sinn Féin secured 48 per cent of the total votes cast and the Irish Parliamentary Party 23 per cent, the first-past-the-post system ensured the spoils to the victor. Constitutional nationalism was not dead but it had lost its voice for the moment. As Meleady has written: ‘Thus died, within months of his own death, all of the projects that had absorbed Redmond’s energies – home rule within the empire and the party fashioned to bring it into being.’108 John Hearne and his father also saw their political dreams, beliefs and commitment pushed aside as the country embarked on a new course.

Nearly forty years later, while serving as Irish Ambassador to the United States, John Hearne summed up his experiences of 1918 in an address to American lawyers: ‘I supported a political party which not only lost control of the country the year I joined its political hopefuls, but at the same time passed out of existence.’ He also shared with his audience the assessment of T.M. Healy of his venture into politics: ‘Young man, your political career was short, brilliant and disastrous.’109 While brutal in their directness, Healy’s words were accurate.

John Hearne’s political views: a summary description

At this point it may be useful to review and attempt a summary description of Hearne’s political ideas and views. This presents some real difficulties: ‘The reconstruction of mentalities is notoriously difficult, particularly when few records of intimate thoughts and aspirations, as those which sometimes appear in diaries and personal letters, are available.’110 However, his two election speeches and his address to the Young Ireland branch give a reasonable, if necessarily limited, insight into Hearne’s mentality. Clearly, he was an ardent and uncompromising supporter of Home Rule for Ireland. He spoke of it as giving the country a ‘self-developing status among free peoples’. Perhaps here he was subscribing to an idea, albeit inchoately, that it would not be in itself a final settlement – Ireland in time would achieve all the attributes of freedom associated with a sovereign state. Whatever about reading too much into that comment, he was, undoubtedly, committed to constitutionalism and parliamentarianism as the means of winning self-government. Given this view, his admiration for John Redmond and his achievements was real and understandable, an admiration reinforced by the fact that he had been the MP for Waterford City.

A corollary of this dedication to Home Rule was Hearne’s rejection of Sinn Féin and its policies. He regarded them as impractical and unattainable – the advocacy of a republic, in particular, a delusion – when considered against the practicality and attainability of Home Rule which was on the statute book. Believing Sinn Féin’s revolutionary proposals and methods to be damaging to Irish national interests, he promoted the primacy of the constitutional agenda. However, he had no illusions about, and was very critical of, English policy towards Ireland and condemned the attitude of the government. He articulated the language that was already fully developed within the Home Rule movement and used during the crises of 1914 and 1916–18 against what was regarded as a succession of English betrayals. Like many advocates of Home Rule, he was steeped in the bellicosity of language, sense of victimhood, glorification of struggle, identification of the movement’s enemies and antipathy to England which suffused provincial nationalist orthodoxy.111 John Hearne thus revealed himself as a typically robust nationalist in the constitutional, Redmondite tradition.

His engagement in politics affords us also some insight into his personality. He showed himself to be more than able to involve himself in the rough and tumble of a very tempestuous election campaign. The particularly embittered nature of the electioneering did not seem to bother him. Indeed, he himself contributed to the heat engendered by the contest by excoriating, even eviscerating, the Sinn Féin opposition. What emerges from a consideration of his political involvement is a man of determined views, convinced of their integrity, trenchant in their expression and lucid in their enunciation.

It is interesting to remember that Hearne was campaigning for Home Rule and Captain William Redmond while Éamon de Valera was on the opposite side, supporting Sinn Féin and an Irish republic. Hearne attacked with deliberate vitriol the party led by the man with whom he was to work so closely in the 1930s. To one of his antagonists in the crucial election in Waterford in 1918, de Valera later entrusted one of his most important concerns – a new constitution. This is a fascinating and dramatic illustration of how political circumstances change with the passage of time.

John Hearne and the revolutionary generation

Scholars have studied the revolutionary generation, the men and women who participated in the 1916 Easter Rising and those inspired by it, who rejected Home Rule and constitutional politics. Roy Foster surveyed the lives and beliefs of some of this generation, born roughly between the 1870s and the 1890s.112 In an earlier study, Tom Garvin considered the revolutionary elite who constructed the independent Irish state and their political formation in the years 1890–1914.113 There is an overlap in both studies in terms of personnel and time frame. What emerges from both is a fascinating political portrait of some of Hearne’s contemporaries. ‘The fact remains that during this era enough people – especially young people – changed their minds about political possibilities to bring about a revolution against the old order, which included not only government by Britain but the constitutionalism of the previous generation.’114 In considering these studies and the generation they examine, light can be shed on the political formation of Hearne and why he, in contrast with others, continued to espouse the cause of Home Rule.

A central tenet of this generation of revolution was their alienation from British rule and rejection of Home Rule. Constitutional nationalism was spurned and self-government, as promoted by John Redmond, regarded as ‘a corrupt and exhausted compromise’115 which would impose on Ireland ‘a grubby, materialist, collaborationist, Anglicised identity’.116 As the person most associated with it, Redmond was utterly scorned, as was his party. Patrick Maume has commented that ‘it is a shock to rediscover the ferocity and extent of contemporary separatist invective denouncing Redmond as a conscious traitor who was deliberately selling Ireland and sending her to destruction’.117 When Seán T. O’Kelly spoke of the need to rid the country of the Irish Parliamentary Party ‘incubus’,118 he was articulating a common view of those disposed to revolutionary means.

The previous generation was often perceived as the enemy, every bit as much as the British government and the Irish Parliamentary Party were. Patrick Pearse declared that ‘there has been nothing more terrible in Irish history than the failure of the last generation’,119 and there were those who agreed with him. ‘For radical nationalists … the previous generation had sold the pass to craven constitutionalism, by deciding that the Fenian agenda of achieving separation from Britain through physical force was outmoded and opting for parliamentary agitation instead.’120 What was emerging was a new generation alienated ‘not only from British rule but from the values and ambitions of their parents, and finally from the alternative offered by the constitutional Irish Parliamentary Party’.121

Members of the new generation felt like this because they were frustrated, their education often leaving them to face limited opportunities.122 Feeling also excluded from political power, they began to critically assess the status quo and became intent on self-transformation.123 After the 1916 rebellion, the police were convinced that many of the local leaders were people who turned to revolutionary politics in a society that offered them little opportunity.124 Garvin has observed: ‘In Yeats’ classic phrase many of them indeed possessed great hatred and suffered from little room; little room was accorded them by Irish society or by the Anglo-Irish establishment and great hatred was commonly the consequence.’125 In their assessment and rejection of the status quo there was also impatience with the power of the Catholic Church.126

On Hearne’s part, there was no rejection of Home Rule or of the previous generation. As we have seen, he and his father figured prominently in the Home Rule movement in Waterford. He promoted the same politics as his father. He was not impatient with the Catholic Church; on the contrary, he had been a seminarian for many years. It would seem that he did not feel or share in the frustration of the revolutionary generation. He did not experience ‘great hatred’ because he did not experience ‘little room’; his personal circumstances, because of the status and position enjoyed by his family, offered him the opportunity of a meaningful role in society. Crucially, there was also the influence of his father. Foster has noted that, in the life stories of many revolutionaries in this era, as confided to the Bureau of Military History in the 1940s and 1950s, the influence of a family member who provided a powerful nationalist conditioning was emphasised.127 Richard Hearne provided a different but no less powerful conditioning for his son. John Hearne grew up in a home where Home Rule politics were a central part of family life; and just as some learned revolution in and from their families, he learned constitutionalism.

He also shared things in common with the revolutionary generation. He was educated by the Christian Brothers, who may have influenced his nationalism. He could be robustly critical of the British government. He wanted freedom for his country and saw Home Rule as giving this. He was a nationalist, a representative of the 23 per cent who voted for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1918 election. John Hearne serves as a reminder that not all voters subscribed to the Sinn Féin version of nationalism; there were significant numbers who were recusants. This minority was to be silenced and marginalised in the years 1919–21, but their silence must not be allowed to obscure the fact of their existence.

John Hearne and the ‘lost generation’

Among those silenced and marginalised were many of the Catholic university elite who had expected to be leaders in a Home Rule Ireland. Their circumstances have been studied by Senia Pašeta.128 These young men and women were self-consciously preparing themselves for important roles in a self-governing country129 and expressed, confidently and regularly, their expectation that one day they would compose Ireland’s ruling class.130 Economist George O’Brien (1892–1973) commented:

We all took it for granted that if Home Rule was achieved, we would be among the politicians of the new Ireland. A Home Rule parliament in College Green in those days would, no doubt, have been dominated by the Irish [Parliamentary] Party, which would have earned the credit for its establishment. We, in the college [University College Dublin] had many connections with the Irish Party … We all confidently expected that in a short time we would be exercising our oratory, not in the dingy precincts of the old physics theatre in 86 [Earlsfort Terrace], but in the ‘old house in College Green’… I remember Arthur Cox saying to me that there were only three positions for which we were being fitted by our education – prime minister, leader of the opposition and speaker of the House of Commons.131

Pašeta has made the important point that ‘the years between Parnell and Pearse … was a period of preparation, not for independence but for Home Rule and a central place in the empire’.132 This world, however, disappeared with the 1916 Rising and the advent of Sinn Féin’s revolutionary politics. Thus the demise of constitutional nationalism dealt a death blow not only to Redmond’s party but to those members of the Catholic university elite preparing to be leaders in the new political era of self-government. The triumph of Sinn Féin doomed many talented men and women to become a lost generation of leaders.133 Some could not find a place in the Ireland of the Irish Free State.

Hearne was a member of this Catholic university educated elite. He might have expected to play an important role in an Irish Home Rule parliament. This would not have been an unreasonable expectation, considering his family’s status in one of the party’s strongholds, his political activism, his education and undoubted abilities, particularly in law, a profession with strong links to politics. Such speculation, such engagement in counterfactual history, while diverting, is of no value here. What did happen was that he had no role in a Home Rule Ireland because there was no such thing. Rather he came to play a significant role in the new political dispensation after the Anglo-Irish Treaty settlement of 1921. Instead of being one of the ‘lost generation’ of Home Rulers, he was to become a member of the ruling elite in a newly independent state.