New book explores how the Tipperary Star shifted its position on support for Home Rule

The growth of the market for provincial newspapers was an inseparable part of the development of literacy in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century in Ireland.

In the early 1900s, weekly or bi-weekly papers such as the Tipperary Star supplied their readerships with information and advertising on the commercial, agricultural and cultural affairs of their local districts.

Many papers also sent reporters to cover the regular meetings of the various local elected bodies – county councils, district councils and poor law guardians – set up under the Local Government Act of 1898. With their columns of grey newsprint unrelieved by illustrations or photographs, these long and often detailed reports can be intimidating to approach nowadays.

But a perusal of their contents can reveal the invaluable service they provided to local democracy.

From the historical point of view, perhaps the most interesting feature of the provincial press is the editorial commentary it offered on the national political events of the day - an expression of the growth of popular political consciousness during the period.

Shifting Sentiment: Press Opinion in Ireland’s Revolutionary Decade 1914-23 by Dermot Meleady, documents the various strands of political opinion among a large sample of the provincial newspapers of 1914-23, the period often termed "the decade of revolution".

In the decade leading up to 1914 and the outbreak of the Great War, a “cosy consensus” reigned over the majority of provincial newspapers in regard to political matters.

The Irish Parliamentary Party, representing nationalist Ireland with 74 seats at Westminster and led by the two Johns, Redmond and Dillon, was by far the dominant voice in the country.

The process of land transfer to tenant farmers under the 1903 Land Purchase Act was roaring ahead (if “roaring” is the right word for such a peaceful revolution), cottages for rural labourers were being built and the campaign for Home Rule had taken a quantum leap forward with the return of the Liberal Party to power in 1906.

Of the 42 papers surveyed in this book, 32 were loyal supporters of the party and its leadership who were expected to pilot the ship of all-Ireland self-government into port during 1914. Of the remaining 10, six shared the same hopes but were more reserved towards the party. Only four were regularly critical of it, mainly because they harboured more radical nationalist aspirations.

In early 1914, it seemed that the only obstacle to the fulfilment of those Home Rule hopes was the militantly expressed opposition of the unionist community in the north-eastern counties and their 15 MPs. But few of the papers that reflected nationalist opinion took this opposition seriously. They expected the Liberal Government to enforce the settlement on all 32 counties.

Among the first group was the Tipperary Star.

On 14 March, it praised the leadership of Redmond who “with head as cool as snow-capped Galteemore… went on his well-considered way, boldly and confidently” to push the Home Rule bill through the House of Commons. Later that year, with the outbreak of war, it was less keen on Redmond’s call for Irishmen to enlist for service in the British army, calling it “an unpleasant appeal”.

Just two years later, the paper was abandoning its support for the Irish Party. What had changed? The rebellion and the executions that followed it are only part of the answer. Most papers condemned the rebellion (the Tipperary Star called it “Inexplicable Imbecility”); very few expressed anger at the executions of its leaders.

The real trigger for the new ferment in nationalist Ireland was the dawning realisation that Home Rule would not apply to the whole island. The Act had become law in 1914, but was suspended for the duration of the war. Following the rebellion, however, the British government proposed to put it into immediate effect.

But it was now clear that six Ulster counties would be excluded from it. The new prime minister, David Lloyd George, meant to stick by the promise of his predecessor, Asquith, that the coercion of Ulster into Home Rule was an “absolutely unthinkable thing”.

As a wave of public anti-partition anger washed over the Irish Party in late 1916, the Tipperary Star commented that Redmond had been “too easy, too hopeful, too trustful, too gentlemanly, if you like, and he is now suffering for it”.

By the end of 1917, the paper was joined by 14 others that had withdrawn their support, most in favour of the previously tiny but now burgeoning Sinn Féin movement. Thus was the scene set for the landslide Sinn Féin victory in the general election of December 1918.

Such were the shifts in editorial policy that became common in Ireland’s provincial newspapers during the turbulent years covered in Shifting Sentiment: Press Opinion in Ireland’s Revolutionary Decade 1914-23 by Dermot Meleady, out now and available on www.wordwellbooks.com