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Yesterday, the Irish language was used during an address at the UK House of Commons for the first time in more than 100 years. Here, historian Neil Glackin remembers that day in 1901.
THE UK’S HOUSE of Commons is traditionally viewed as the epitome of mannered and upper-class politics. Its history can be traced as far back as the 14th century, making it one of the oldest democratic institutions in the world.
To attend the House of Commons as an elected Member of Parliament, there are a number of stuffy and sometimes bizarre rules to comply with, including not calling other members by name, not being allowed to read speeches off paper, and not being allowed to die.
It is certainly not a place where upsetting the status quo is looked upon kindly.
But that is exactly what one Irish Member of Parliament did on 19 February 1901.
Thomas O’Donnell was only 29 years old when he was elected as an MP for West Kerry in the 1900 General Election. O’Donnell grew up in Ballyduff, Castlegregory in County Kerry as part of an Irish-speaking family.
O’Donnell worked as a teacher but became involved in politics through the United Irish League and earned respect locally as an advocate for tenant rights in the West Kerry area. His involvement in the land issue was due in no small part to his own family being evicted from their home in 1880 and being forced to live in a cabin for seven years.
O’Donnell was elected as the Irish Parliamentary Party representative for West Kerry in 1900. The Home Rule movement had faced a period of uncertainty in the previous decade as a result of the Parnellite split, but by 1900 the party had regrouped and restructured under John Redmond’s leadership. O’Donnell was viewed as one of the up-and-coming stars of the movement.
Despite the Irish Parliamentary Party dominating Irish politics, save for Unionist strongholds in the north-east of the island, the issue of Home Rule itself was largely off the parliamentary agenda at Westminster due to the unsympathetic Conservative Party holding a strong majority in the House of Commons.
As he entered the Palace of Westminster Thomas O’Donnell was determined to drum up publicity, not just for himself, but also for one of the causes closest to his heart — the Irish language.
On 19 February 1901, the British House of Commons was discussing a speech made by recently crowned King Edward VII, when they broke for a short interval. O’Donnell was listed to speak after the interval in his first address to the House of Commons. Before re-entering the chamber O’Donnell informed his party colleagues he would be conducting his maiden speech as gaeilge.
This promise ensured an almost full attendance in the House of the 77 Irish Party MPs for a discussion that was of little concern to them.
British parliamentary records have been kept scrupulously since the early 1800s, but O’Donnell’s speech even managed to stump the record keepers. Where O’Donnell addressed the parliament in Irish, the record has been left blank.
But his words were recorded elsewhere, with the West Kerry MP quoted as saying —
[As an Irishman from an Irish-speaking constituency, a member of a nation which still possesses a language of its own, and is still striving bravely for freedom, I deem it my duty to address this House in my own language…]
At this point O’Donnell was interrupted by the flabbergasted Speaker of the House, William Gully, who cried –
Order, order! The honourable Member is proposing to address the House in a language with which I am not familiar, but which I presume is Irish, and he will not be in order in doing so. It is an unknown practice in this House, and I must ask the honourable Member to address the House in English.
But O’Donnell was unperturbed, continuing —
Nách fíor-Ghaelhilge mo theanga – teanga mo shinsear, teanga mo thír, teanga do labhras ó bhídheas óg agus gur gceart…
[Is it not true that Irish is my native language, the language of my ancestors, the language of my country, the language that I spoke from childhood and that it is right...]
At which point he was interrupted again.
The Speaker reprimanded O’Donnell for disregarding his ruling and said he would not be allowed to address the House “in any other language but English”.
O’Donnell’s party leader John Redmond chimed in, asking if there was “any rule, written or unwritten, to prevent an honourable Member speaking in the language which is most familiar to him”.
The Speaker, clearly taken aback by what was happening, retorted by saying —
There is no precedent one way or the other so far as I know; but during the 600 years Parliament has been in existence, there is no record of any honourable Member having attempted to address the House in any other language but English.
Edmund Leamy, Member of Parliament for North Kildare entered the debate, claiming that Irish chieftains spoke Irish in parliament around the time of the Act of Union of 1800.
Gully gave a stiff response:
I must remind the honourable Member that Irish Members have now sat continuously in this House for 100 years, and they have never before thought it to be a grievance to be prevented from speaking any other language but English.
I have no doubt that the honourable Member for West Kerry, with the usual eloquence of his countrymen, will be able to address the House in English if he pleases, quite as well as in Irish. A claim of this kind, if it is to prevail, must first be established by a Standing Order of the House.
A back and forth ensued between Redmond and Gully, with Redmond pointing out that the Welsh language had been spoken in the House only five years previously.
O’Donnell was quite content to sit back as the debate continued, happy that his scene had been created.
In an interview with the Daily Mail afterwards, O’Donnell explained his actions.
Over a million people, or a fourth of the population of Ireland, speak the Irish language, and do the greater part of their business transactions by means of that tongue. The taunt has been flung across the floor of the House that the Irish members in advocating the cause of the Irish language were urging the claims of a language which they themselves were unable to speak. To refute that charge I thought it my duty, if for no other reason, to address the House in Irish. While I know some English I can speak Irish more fluently and with far less trouble than I could English. I never spoke a word of English until I was twelve years of age… to me English is as foreign a tongue and as strange as French is to English people.”
The actions of O’Donnell marked him out as a hero of the Gaelic Revival of the late 19th and early 20th century. For some years, he had been an active member of the Gaelic League — founded in 1893 to revive Irish culture and its dying language — and his speech was designed to bring much-needed attention to the plight of the Irish tongue.
Though the British Government had little interest in reviving Irish culture, O’Donnell’s actions were part of a wider movement on home soil to advance not only the Irish language, but also traditional Irish music and sports.
Not only did he help manage to further a cause close to his heart — the revival of the Irish language — the incident also helped raise his own profile as a politician, a side-effect O’Donnell would have carefully calculated beforehand.
Thomas O’Donnell continued to serve West Kerry as an MP for another 17 years, actively campaigning for tenants’ rights as well as improvements in the local education and transport systems.
Despite his involvement in the Gaelic League, O’Donnell shunned the fenian tendencies of many of his associates, and when World War I broke out he followed John Redmond’s lead and urged Irish men to sign up for the British Army.
After the war and the rise of the Sinn Féin movement, O’Donnell sensed the changing tide of opinion in Ireland and decided not to contest West Kerry in the 1918 General Election.
He did venture into post-independence Irish politics in the mid-1920s by setting up a political party back-boned by former members and followers of the Home Rule movement. Despite some limited successes, O’Donnell’s National League Party was poorly run and poorly funded, and disappeared rather quickly into the political wilderness.
In the 1930s O’Donnell was taken on board by Éamon de Valera to act as a political advisor for Fianna Fáil. His fraternisation with Fianna Fáil no doubt helped in his appointment as a District Judge in his later years.
Like many members of the Home Rule movement, O’Donnell’s contribution to Irish nationalism has been largely overlooked in favour of the accomplishments of the men and women who fought in the 1916 Rising and during the War of Independence. Of course the people who fought for our independence must be celebrated, but so too must we appreciate the efforts of the constitutional nationalist movement pre-1916.
The name of Thomas O’Donnell is not well-known throughout Ireland. There are no murals or monuments in his name. There are no photographs of him on the world-wide web.
But 117 years ago on a February afternoon, O’Donnell disturbed the work of the United Kingdom House of Commons by addressing it as gaeilge, making the Irish language the big news story of the day.
No one can ever take that away from him.
Neil Glackin is an amateur blogger with an MA in Modern Irish History from UCD. Credit for the Irish translations of O’Donnell’s words in this piece goes to J. Anthony Gaughan. Gaughan’s biography A political odyssey: Thomas O’Donnell, MP for West Kerry, 1900-1918 is also where he first came across this story. This piece was initially published on his blog, which can be found here.
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I enjoyed that! GRMA, Neil!
Maith an fear!
In 1901, a million people did the greater part of their business in Irish. After almost a century of independence the figure is less than 75,000 daily speakers.
@Robin Pickering: yet gaa etc is flourishing. Scaey
@Conor Kleaver: what’s scary about it?
@Robin Pickering: the decline of our native language is worrying, thankfully its growing in some ares but clearly more needs to be done
@Robin Pickering: It’s simply down to the way Irish is thought in schools. The curriculum teachers are required to follow is ridiculous. It’s boring to the students and boring to the teachers. With many many, teachers regarding it as just a chore and most primary school pupils and secondary students thinking of it as torture. They just spend the minimum amount of time on it.
good article, but one stat is like to see is how the Irish language decline seems to have accelerated (according to O’Donnell, 1m natural speakers in Ireland as part of the Union) to the point of extinction in 100 years of self rule.
@Gulliver Foyle: 2.5 million Irish speakers on the eve of the famine in 1845. Clearly the Irish state failed to save the language, but at least an attempt was made. It probably didn’t make much of a difference who ruled, the people decided to switch.
That was extremely interesting and enjoyable. Thank you for the accurate and prideful history lesson. I my self hardly speak a word of Irish and know far more German despite starting Irish at 4 and German at 12. I wish I did though. I hope the study of Irish has changed since I was in school. German was taught to me as a living conversational language. Irish was taught as a history lesson. It was all rote essays and poems and learning off the sounds but not the meaning of phrases to pass the tests. I always thought the worst part was that the teachers would speak to each other in front of us in Irish safe and likely saddened in the knowledge that the calcified curriculum (forced on them and us) would keep the arcane secrets of the staff room beyond our understanding.
@Edmund Murphy: the real difference is that German is a living spoken language. Gaelige might be just about living but is certainly not spoken (except in the Gaeltacht and among na Teaghlaí Gaeilge. Where I live in Cape Town ( and by the way I am fluent in Munster, Connemara, Donegal Irish and Scots Gallic) the South Africans can switch between English, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans and many other languages because they’re living and what’s more important spoken. The problem in Ireland is there is no genuine effort to grow the language as a spoken language.
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: it’s almost like Ireland and South Africa are two different places.
Great story! Loved Irish at school but doubt if I could speak a word of it now Difficult as the Gaelgoers rarely are helpful to anyone trying to learn.
@blackcoffee: Might I suggest going to a Pop Up Gaeltacht or finding a Ciorcal Comhrá in your area. I started learning Irish two years ago ( I wouldn’t call what I did in school “learning”) and I found people to be very helpful. Peig.ie has a list of Irish groups in each area. It’s not a very well presented site but the info is in there. Most are on Facebook as well.
Its quite strange that members of parliament can if they wish address the house in Norman French which historically was the language of government and is still used in certain roles and functions. Maybe if SF ever do take their seats they should table all questions in Norman French and reply as gaeilge. That would bring some ironic confusion.
Feicim mé !
@Free Online Games: when a language is forced upon you by an authoritarian school system,is it any wonder its dying.
@Dave Walsh: English and maths are also compulsory subjects so I guess they are also ‘forced upon’ students by ‘an authoritarian school system’.
“forced upon you”….you have such a hard life.
Them kerrymen are cute hoors.
The irony of it is the English are probably the worst speakers of their own language…
@Daithi: My fair lady had a great song about that exact point called “why can’t the English” though the whole excellent musical is really about it.
@Daithi: nonsense
@Daithi: *Yawn*
More linguistic snobbery. A near-universal trait of languages is that the ‘correct’ form somehow always happens to be whichever variety is spoken by the ruling/upper classes, while the dialects spoken by the plebs is ‘nonstandard’/'incorrect’/'slangy’.
News flash people – there is *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING* ‘wrong’ with native speakera using double negatives, split infinitves or sentences which end on prepositions.
Great article, never heard of him before this. Thanks Niall
@Kerrie Roche: sorry Neil!
In 1901 a million people conducted the majority of their business in Irish. After almost a century of independence the figure is less than 75,000. I’d be interested to know what the figure was at independence.
The Shinners are right . Westminster is no place for Irish People .
It wasn’t the British Parliament at the time. It was the UK parliament, with representatives from all parts of the UK. Ireland was represented in the same way as every other part of the UK. I know it doesn’t sit well with the ‘colonial’ narrative, but there you go.
@Robin Pickering: Colonial ‘narrative’ ?. I suggest you open a history book and read a little about the Plantations of Ireland, Penal Laws, Protestant Ascendancy and the Cromwellian Plantations after which Catholic land ownership fell to 8%.
@John: would those be the same laws which were primarily geared to affect a small Catholic gentry and had little impact on the lives of most Gael commoners? If that’s the case then England has been a colony ever since the days of William the B*stard.
Survival for a tiny population in an increasingly globalised world post WW2 favours English. Especially when the mother country is economically flat-lined.
Interesting read, but his name lives on in Killorglin:
http://killorglinarchives.com/the-tom-odonnell-day-care-centre-which-was-the-old-carnegie-school/
I never understood why my great uncle had the middle name “O’Donnell”, he was born at the time Thomas O’Donnell made his HoC speech in Irish. This part of my Irish family were from Strandhill Co. Sligo in the west of Ireland where gaeilge was widely used. Now, I think I understand why he was so named. Sla`inte
Commons February 19, 1901: John Murphy MP East Kerry. As a humble Member of the House, sent here by the common people to try and seek justice for them, I feel considerable disappointment at the treatment given to the hon. Member for West Kerry. It would be a satisfaction and a pride if we were permitted to speak in the language which is dearest to our hearts, the language in which we were taught to lisp at our mother’s knee, and in which we can best express our thoughts. But while we are deprived of the opportunity of using that language, and compelled to resort to a foreign tongue, I have come to the conclusion that hon. Members care as little for our wants as for our language. The Irish language, however, has survived; a new effort has been made to cultivate it, and perhaps a time will come when hon. Members opposite, as well as Irishmen, will take an interest in its study and use. I do not appear in the House in 554 my present attire for the purpose of outraging the traditions of the House. I come here as I live and move amongst my own people, in order to show exactly what I am—one of the humble, ordinary folk who have to work for their living; and to make my appeal to you here for justice. I must confess, from my first impressions of this Assembly, I am not too hopeful of any good result from my presence here. I must say that when I came amongst the hon. Members who occupy seats on the one side or the other of this House, I expected to find men whose first desire and intention would be to try and learn the various points in connection with the different questions that would come up for discussion. But, after two or three days experience in the House, I find that too many hon. Members seem to be more anxious to learn the ins and outs of the smoking-room and the dining-room. I would not have intervened in this debate were it not for the purpose of joining in the appeal in behalf of the people I represent, and asking you to confer on them at least some of the rights to which they are entitled. When I came to the House I expected to hear that in His Majesty’s Speech from the Throne some concession was to be made to the feelings of Catholic Irishmen in regard to our faith, which is as dear to us as our very lives. But an oath which contains one of the most direct insults to that faith has still to be taken by the King. And yet we are asked to be loyal, and to shout “God save the King.” That, in itself, is one of the strongest and most painful arguments that could be used by an Irishman in regard to the inefficacy and hopelessness of Parliament. However, I do not believe that all hon. Members, even on the Tory benches, possess coldness of heart or want of interest in Irish affairs. I believe that some amongst them have good hearts and good intentions, and that if we could only get at their hearts and make them see the condition of things as they really exist in Ireland, and show them that such conditions ought not to continue, , I believe they would do justice to Ireland. But if they will not do justice to Ireland, the Irish Members will, I hope, make it impossible for them 555 to do justice to England also. That is the purpose for which we have been sent here, and we shall knock at the door of Parliament until justice has been done to our people—not asking as gentlemen who have had a university education, but with the honest voice of men who have sprung from the people, who feel with the people, and who take a pride and glory in belonging to the working masses of the land. The other evening the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Sleaford Division was speaking about Manchester beer. The only thing I remember about Manchester is that twenty-three years ago three honest Irishmen were offered there as a sacrifice to British tyranny, and for their loyalty to Ireland. In my own poor county of Kerry we have a labouring population which has been continually depleted by emigration. When I listened to His Majesty’s Speech read from the chair, I hoped to hear some indication that at the beginning of a new reign, of a new era, of a new century something was to be done for the Irish race, so that our men and women would be permitted to live in their own land without having to go abroad, surrounded by dangers and difficulties which few of them are aware of. When crossing from Dublin to Holyhead, one of the persons who accompanied me was a young Irish girl who was leaving her country to seek her fortune in the large city of Manchester. I hope when she gets there that she will not be induced to touch any of the poisoned beer. If any hon. Member had been with me on 557 board that boat and had seen that young girl—and remember, she was only one of thousands who are leaving our native land year after year—he would certainly have felt one touch of nature in his heart, and have evinced a strong desire to give us in Ireland an opportunity of managing our own affairs, so that our boys and girls should not be compelled to leave their native home in order to get a living elsewhere.I have spoken much longer than I intended, and I have merely striven to give expression to a few of the sentiments in my heart. I want you to understand that though you have thrust the Irish people to their knees, they are living still; and that until the right to manage their own affairs which they ask for is conceded, and until they are placed in a position to legislate for themselves, so that the Irish people of every description are able to live in their own land, they will continue coming and knocking at the doors of the British Parliament demanding that right for Ireland.
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