THE TITLE of a forthcoming two-day conference at Queen's University, Belfast next month - " From Parnell to Paisley: Constitutional and Revolutionary Politics in Ireland, 1879-2008" - demonstrates that yet again Isaac Butt is the forgotten man of modern Irish history, writes Frank Bouchier-Hayes.
Butt was born on September 6th, 1813 at Glenfin, Co Donegal and was the son of a Church of Ireland rector. He entered Trinity College Dublin at 15 years of age, co-founded the Dublin University Magazine in 1833 and edited it for four years. He became professor of political economy there in 1836 and held this position until 1841.
After being called to the bar in 1838, Butt quickly established a name for himself. Strongly conservative at this time, he was chosen in 1843 to argue the case for the union with Britain when Daniel O'Connell and his followers were campaigning for its repeal. Nevertheless, O'Connell was so impressed with Butt's performance that he declared: "Depend upon it that Alderman Butt is in his inmost soul an Irishman, and that we will have him struggling with us for Ireland yet."
O'Connell is also reported as having said to the young lawyer on this occasion: "Isaac, you are young and I am old. I will fail in winning back the parliament, but you will do it when I shall have passed away."
Butt's 1846 pamphlet Protection to Home Industry so impressed John Mitchel that he argued successfully for its purchase and distribution among supporters of repeal. It is interesting to note that this idea later formed part of Sinn Féin's programme, and Fianna Fáil under Eamon de Valera was strongly committed to protectionist policies. Butt also wrote movingly and convincingly of the plight of the people in A Voice for Ireland, The Famine in the Land(1847), and went on to defend William Smith O'Brien and Thomas Meagher when they were put on trial for sedition in 1848.
Butt founded the Home Rule movement at a meeting in the Bilton Hotel, Dublin on May 19th, 1870. Several months later, the Home Government Association was publicly inaugurated at the Rotunda. Four years later, its members, reconstituting themselves as the Irish Home Rule League, won 60 seats in the general election. A month after their election victory, the Home Rule Party was officially established. This new party pledged to remain independent of conservatives and liberals in the House of Commons in pursuit of self-government for Ireland, defined as a federal arrangement whereby an Irish parliament would regulate and legislate for domestic affairs while an imperial parliament, with Irish representatives, would deal with all other matters affecting the imperial crown and government. It is worth noting that although the Home Rule movement was begun largely by Protestants, it quickly attracted the support of the Catholic middle class.
Ultimately, Butt's efforts to secure self-government for Ireland were unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. In particular, his strategy of trying to win the respect of English MPs by peaceful persuasion yielded no results. This led to an obstructionist policy being adopted, to the great displeasure of the party leader, who felt this would damage the Home Rule cause in Britain. However, the first significant indicator that Butt's influence was waning came with the election of Charles Stewart Parnell in his place as leader of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain.
Butt struggled on as leader of the Home Rule Party until his death on May 5th, 1879.
Although Butt was Protestant, he observed a number of Catholic practices. James Collins, in Life in Old Dublin, recalled that he kept a small cross on his study table, which had been brought from Jerusalem by John Aloysius Blake MP. Butt also treasured a small book entitled The Glories of Mary, and Collins often heard him expressing his veneration for the Mother of God. We also learn that he carried miraculous medals enclosed in a little pocket-book with him wherever he went. Before important legal cases, Butt would arrange, through a friend, for a Mass to be said for a successful outcome, and he also contributed towards the "decorating and illuminating" of an "altar of Perpetual Adoration to the Blessed Sacrament". Finally, he arranged to go to Mount Mellary and occupy the room which Daniel O'Connell had used many years earlier during his stay at the famous Trappist monastery. Sadly, before he could embark on this journey, Butt was struck down with a stroke that ultimately proved fatal.
Isaac Butt's place in Irish history is largely overshadowed by Parnell, whom he described in 1874 as "a splendid recruit, an historic name, my friend, young Parnell of Wicklow". But it is worth bearing in mind Roy Foster's point that in seeing "Parnell simply as the man who displaced Butt, we forget that he was, before that, the man who followed Butt". Foster also finds fault with David Thornley's analysis of Butt as someone who was "somehow destined to miss the nationalist boat" and argues that Butt "might equally be seen as someone with a Protestant, even Orange, pedigree who shared in and helped create a sense of Irishness that accepted historic English influence while claiming realistic autonomy".
The historian Alvin Jackson recently paid tribute to Butt's federalist ideas, which were not only taken up a century later by Terence O'Neill in 1969, but also inspired some of the unionist signatories to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
• For further information on the Parnell-Paisley conference, to be held at the Institute of Irish Studies at QUB on September 5th-6th, contact Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid (cnicdhaibheid01@qub.ac.uk) or Colin Reid (creid06@qub.ac.uk).