WHO SWORE Pádraig Pearse into the IRB in December 1913? What key nationalist figure, associated with the Gaelic League, GAA, Sinn Féin, the IRB and the Irish Volunteers, took no part in the Easter Rising? The answer to both of these questions is a largely unknown figure in Irish history who is now happily the subject of a new study. Bulmer Hobson was born in Belfast in 1883 to a Quaker family. Although his parents disapproved of his early decision to adopt a belligerent stance towards the English government in Ireland, they allowed him freedom of thought in this matter.
Hobson was a voracious reader of Irish history and became an admirer of Wolfe Tone and James Fintan Lalor, the latter providing him with a framework for breaking England's link with Ireland. Essentially, this involved a campaign of passive resistance and guerrilla warfare (if possible) against foreign rule which explains why Hobson was so opposed to the manner in which the events of Easter Week were carried out. At the tender age of 26, he had published an important pamphlet entitled Defensive Warfare: A Handbook for Irish Nationaliststhat built upon the writings of Lalor. A copy of this rare publication whose centenary occurs this year can be found in special collections at UCD library where I work.
Interestingly, seven years before the Rising, this young militant republican was maintaining that “we must not fight to make a display of heroism, but fight to win”. Hobson’s intention was to persuade nationalists not to engage in the futile use of arms. Indeed, Roy Foster has argued that this pamphlet was “a major contribution to revolutionary tactics”. Any discussion of this man must embrace his relationship with two of the key actors in the bloody drama that was played out on Dublin streets in 1916.
Tom Clarke first met Hobson in early 1907 who later introduced him to Seán MacDermott and other young Northern-based republicans. The gradual disintegration of the relationship between these three men is meticulously traced in Marnie Hay's stunning book, Bulmer Hobson and the Nationalist Movement in Twentieth Century Ireland(Manchester University Press).
Hobson welcomed MacDermott into the Dungannon Club in 1906 (set up by Hobson and Denis McCullough in 1905 to promote Sinn Féin policy) apparently following a recommendation to McCullough that he knew of “a promising young fellow from the country who doesn’t drink”. MacDermott became the Dungannon Club organiser in Ulster in 1907 at the behest of Hobson and McCullough who provided him with a bicycle and a weekly salary of 30 shillings.
Around this time, Roger Casement worried about the officially unemployed Hobson in words that sadly resonate all too well today: “I don’t like to think of you idle and without a personal occupation of your own. It is good for no one to be without a purpose of one’s own in life and whatever you may be able to do for Ireland will be better done if you have your own private life and cares and worries to fight out too”.
Joseph McGarrity, leader of the Irish American Clan na Gael organisation, provided Hobson with £50 to assist with living expenses while he concentrated on nationalist work. Such work involved, among other things, the setting up of a short-lived journal entitled the Republic, voluntary Sinn Féin activities, and research on agricultural co-operation. A new journal, Irish Freedom, was launched in 1910 with an editorial committee that included Clarke, MacDermott and Hobson. Incidentally, on St Patrick's Day 1916, Seán MacDermott was introduced to an audience of Irish Volunteers and those sympathetic to the nationalist cause in the town square of Newcastle West, Co Limerick (where the humble writer of this diary originates from) as "the fearless editor of Irish
Freedom”.
Hobson left Sinn Féin in 1910 and became more active in the IRB, having been appointed secretary for Ulster the same month that Irish Freedomfirst appeared on the news-stand. He operated between Dublin and Belfast for a few years until finally settling in the capital city in 1911. By 1913 he had reached the pinnacle of his IRB career.
Later that year the Irish Volunteers were founded in response to the Ulster Volunteers. In 1914, Hobson made a critical decision which was to impact heavily on his role within the militant nationalist movement. He accepted John Redmond’s nominees to the provisional committee of the Irish Volunteers of which he was a key member, and persuaded the other members to do likewise in the interests of avoiding a split in June 1914. This action effectively ended his friendship with Clarke and McDermott. When the split eventually came following the outbreak of the first World War, Hobson’s support for the removal of Redmond’s nominees failed to repair the relationship between the three men. When conflict finally broke out in Dublin in 1916, the 1873 provision in the IRB constitution forbidding war against Britain without popular support was rigorously adhered to by Hobson, but Clarke and MacDermott chose to ignore it by their actions.
Fearing that he might seriously upset plans for the rebellion, Hobson was arrested by the IRB several days prior to the Rising and released on Easter Monday evening. Hobson’s subsequent activities can be briefly told. After working as a publisher for a few years, he became a civil servant, ironically based at Dublin Castle, and published a memoir a year before his death in August 1969.