The Arrest of Charles Parnell

On Monday October 24th, 1881 the Dublin Daily Express published an article regarding the arrest of Charles Stewart Parnell, the president of the Irish Land League. Parnell was an Irish nationalist and held a seat in the British House of Commons, in 1879 he was elected the leader of Irish National Land League and was in charge of Irish land reform. In 1881 he was arrested because the publication that he owned, United Ireland, criticized the Irish Land Acts and the minimal progress that had been made over a decade’s time, British officials claimed that he was attempting to “sabotage the Land Act.”. The Irish people were furious that Parnell had been arrested so they decided to stage protests across both Ireland and England, many of the banners were about Irish freedom as they advocated for “Ireland for the Irish.” The author of the article writes that these actions taken against Parnell were “cowardly and lawless action of the Coercion Government in imprisoning, without trial, Mr. Parnell and other leaders of the Irish people, and attempting to suppress by force the freedom of speech.” At a protest at Hyde Park in London the Irish Prime Minister, William Gladstone gave a speech urging the protestors to stop protesting claiming that Parnell “would sell his country” and that he did not truly have Ireland’s best interests in mind. The author provides insightful commentary, stating that Gladstone and the other men speaking out against Parnell were “political turncoats” and “sedition mongers” and that “they were not the men to exercise moral authority over Ireland.” 

This article is particularly interesting primarily because it comes from an Irish publication, one that is clearly a supported of Parnell and the wellbeing of the Irish people. The authors of these news articles always manage to have some kind of agenda, with the British papers there is very clearly a British tone, one that undermines and demoralizes the Irish people every opportunity they are given. This publication, being an Irish newspaper, accurately articulates the opinions held by the Irish people regarding their political leaders, the people are clearly disgruntled and upset with the direction the Gladstone and many of the other members of the British House of Commons are leading the country. There are many terms used in this article that are not present in many of the British articles I’ve read for this class, one that stood out the most was “Irish Freedom,” the prospect of Irish Freedom is mentioned numerous times throughout the article while it does not appear once in any of the other articles I have written about. The Irish people have made it clear that they seek freedom from their British oppressors, and they believe that Irish nationalists such as Charles Parnell can lead them to the freedom that they so desperately deserve.