Cork Free Press

The Cork Free Press was a nationalist

Irish nationalism

Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...

newspaper in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, which circulated primarily in the Munster

Munster

Munster is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the south of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial purposes...

region surrounding its base in Cork

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

, and was the newspaper of the dissident All-for-Ireland League

All-for-Ireland League

The All-for-Ireland League , was an Irish, Munster-based political party . Founded by William O'Brien MP, it generated a new national movement to achieve agreement between the different parties concerned on the historically difficult aim of Home Rule for the whole of Ireland...

party (1909–1918). Published daily from June 1910 until 1915, and weekly in 1915-16, it was the third of three newspapers founded and published within a decade by William O’Brien MP. It developed a unique approach to the national question and to the social issues of the day, with a pronounced conciliatory view to achieving Home Rule

Home Rule Movement

The All India Home Rule League was a national political organization founded in 1916 to lead the national demand for self-government, termed Home Rule, and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland at the...

for the whole of Ireland. It displayed a favourable attitude towards the Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...

movement. Its main rival newspapers were the Cork Examiner and the Freeman’s Journal.

The Irish People

The Irish People (16 September 1899 - 7 November 1903 ), was the first of three newspapers published by William O’Brien. Its object to support his new agrarian reform organisation, the United Irish League

United Irish League

The United Irish League was a nationalist political party in Ireland, launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People" . Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform, compelling larger grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution amongst...

. It was a Dublin based politically oriented weekly newspaper, its managing editor Tim McCarthy, previous editor of the Freeman’s Journal. The paper was financed principally by William O'Brien's wife Sophie, sister of poet and socialite Marc André Sebastian Raffalovich

Marc-André Raffalovich

Marc-André Raffalovich was a French poet and writer on homosexuality, best known today for his patronage of the arts and for his lifelong relationship with the poet, John Gray.-Early life:...

and daughter of the Russian Jewish banker, Hermann Raffalowich, domiciled in Paris. The Irish People ceased publication abruptly with O'Brien's resignation from public life on 4 November 1903, after he had been alienated from the Irish Parliamentary Party

Irish Parliamentary Party

The Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...

. He had successfully negotiated and won the Wyndham Land (Purchase) Act, 1903 which settled the age old Irish Land Question

Irish Land Acts

The Land Acts were a series of measures to deal with the question of peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909...

, but denounced in an Irish party attack launched by John Dillon

John Dillon

John Dillon was an Irish land reform agitator from Dublin, an Irish Home Rule activist, a nationalist politician, a Member of Parliament for over 35 years, and the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party....

MP rejecting his policy of conciliation with landlords. The paper’s editor Tim McCarthy only learnt of his demise a day later. As a future editor of the Belfast Irish News he later became one of O‘Brien’s bitterest critics. The machinery of the Irish People was bought by John O'Donnell

John O'Donnell (politician)

John O’Donnell was an Irish journalist, Nationalist politician and Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom House of Commons from 1900 to 1910....

MP and moved to Galway, where he set up the Connaught Champion (1904–1911).

The Irish People (30 September 1905 – 27 March 1909) was re-published in Cork

Cork (city)

after O’Brien’s return to public life in 1904, its editor John Herlihy. The paper aimed at furthering O’Brien’s concept of national conciliation and promoting full scale implementation of the Land Act, by encouraging tenant land purchase and extolling its benefits. This through an alliance with the Land and Labour Association
Irish Land and Labour Association
The Irish Land and Labour Association was a progressive movement founded in the early 1890s in Munster, Ireland, to organise and pursue political agitation for small tenant farmers' and rural labourers' rights. Its branches also spread into Connacht. The ILLA was known under different names—Land...

which had become the Munster

Munster

base for O’Brien’s renewed political activities. The Irish People, O’Brien’s prime political media, propagated from1906 the cottage building programmes won under the 1906 Labourer (Ireland) Act. Its editorials, usually penned by D. D. Sheehan

D. D. Sheehan

Daniel Desmond Sheehan, usually known as D. D. Sheehan was an Irish nationalist, politician, labour leader, journalist, barrister and author...

MP, condemned in regular rhetorical exchanges with the Irish party's Freeman’s Journal, the party’s relentless campaign against land purchase.

The Irish People ceased publication finally in March 1909 when O’Brien travelled abroad to recover from the December 1908 Baton Convention sickened by Devlinite

Joseph Devlin

Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician...

thuggery and corruption, but not before it praised Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin

as honest youngsters, who could yet be won over by a great new national movement.

The Cork Accent

The Cork Accent (1 January 1910 – 10 June 1910) appeared on O’Brien’s return at the end of the year. The short lived Cork Accent carried the following explanation of the title in every issue:
In its first editorial it condemned the Cork Examiner as representing a Delvinite

Joseph Devlin

Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician...

form of Catholic Orangism. Further issues covered the resounding success of the eight O’Brienite Independent Nationalists returned in the January 1910 general election, (soon to become O'Brien's new national movement, the All-for-Ireland League), as well as the political stalemate in the House of Commons. In February a fund was launched at the Cork City Hall for the publication of a new full-scale daily paper, the Cork Free Press.

The Cork Free Press made its appearance on 11 June 1910, with John Herlihy as the first of three editors. The opening issue carried a splendid leading article by the founder member and staunch supporter of the All-for–Ireland League, Canon Sheehan of Donerail. The League held its public inaugural meeting in March, and from July all issues had one central theme, to promote the conciliatory principles of the League in achieving Home Rule, with extensive coverage of election meetings in preparation for the December elections. It regularly attacked the Irish Party for allying with ‘socialists, secularists and land nationalisers’. The Redmondite controlled Freeman’s Journal countered by rebuking the O’Brienite Independents as dissident factionists. The Cork Free Press continually accused the Redmonite Cork Examiner of supporting the disreputable Ancient Order of Hibernians

Ancient Order of Hibernians

The Ancient Order of Hibernians is an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. Members must be Catholic and either Irish born or of Irish descent. Its largest membership is now in the United States, where it was founded in New York City in 1836...

.

Soon after the appearance of the Cork Free Press, however, Herlihy fell out with O’Brien. He had decided to replace the linotype printing machines with newly developed monotype technology, certainly more suitable for book publishing, but not for high-volume newspaper publishing. The Cork Free Press became notorious for misprints, and Herlihy was fired. He unsuccessfully sued for unfair dismissal, was then active as a journalist in London and in the mid-1930s, one year editor of the Irish Press. Herlihy’s successor was Hugh Art O’Grady, eldest son of Standish James O'Grady

Standish James O'Grady

Standish James O'Grady was an Irish author, journalist, and historian. His father was the Reverend Thomas O'Grady, the scholarly Church of Ireland minister of Castletown Berehaven, County Cork, and his mother Susanna Doe...

, a young Trinity graduate who was sincerely in accord with All-for-Ireland aspirations.
The December 1910 general election saw the League victorious in Cork, returning eight MPs, but elsewhere succumbed to clerical opposition. With Home Rule in the offing, the paper reflected the outrage of O’Brien and his party colleagues when Redmond gave way to partition under pressure from Sir Edward Carson

Edward Carson, Baron Carson

Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson PC, PC , Kt, QC , often known as Sir Edward Carson or Lord Carson, was a barrister, judge and politician from Ireland...

, after specific concessions were published in the January 1914 edition of the paper which O’Brien claimed were acceptable to Ulster, to enable it to come in on an All-Ireland Home Rule agreement.

The Redmondites saw themselves as achieving Home Rule, the All-for-Ireland League saw them as having achieved partition. When World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

broke in August 1914, Home Rule was set aside. The Cork Free Press published O’Brien’s reasoning for giving support to Irish participation in the war, by telling readers that the war had welded the Irish together and to secure All-Ireland Home Rule it was necessary to join Britain and the Allies in their hour of need. This was so very much in accord with O’Grady’s own martial enthusiasm that he eventually decided to resign his post in 1915 and enlist in the war.

The London correspondent of the Cork Free Press at the time was Frank Gallagher

Frank Gallagher (author)

Frank B. Gallagher was an Irish author and Volunteer.-Biography:A Cork native, initially London correspondent of William O'Brien's Cork Free Press, subsequently its final editor, though himself a separatist, personally admired O'Brien.The paper suffered closure in 1916 soon after the appointment...

, a Cork

Cork (city)

native and from 1915 its third editor, who though himself a separatist, personally admired O'Brien. He had attempted to dissuade O’Brien from his decision to support the war, as he was rightly worried about the negative effects it would have on circulation and on the League, particularly since rising losses and paper shortages forced the paper to become a weekly in mid-1915.

Lean to Sinn Féin

After the Rising

Easter Rising

The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...

in 1916, Gallagher contacted O’Brien in London to discuss the attitude of the Cork Free Press to it. He found that O’Brien attributed it to Larkinites

James Larkin

James Larkin was an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist, born to Irish parents in Liverpool, England. He and his family later moved to a small cottage in Burren, southern County Down. Growing up in poverty, he received little formal education and began working in a variety of jobs...

. Gallagher said the staff would walk out unless the paper took a more favourable attitude. O’Brien capitulated and soon developed admiration for the insurgents’ idealism and their desperation at possible consequences. O’Brien’s Cork Free Press soon began to present an altogether favourable attitude towards Sinn Féin, practically becoming a Sinn Féin organ. Though the paper continued to point out the lesson that physical force had been proved useless and that what was needed was a united constitutionalism. The editorials took on a distinctly heroic view of the rebels and damned Redmond and the Irish MPs for their anti- Sinn Féin utterances.

The editorial in the issue of 30 September 1916 betrayed all the hesitance about embracing Sinn Fein that had distinguished O’Brien’s attitude over the years: "It is to the Sinn Féin party that Ireland must now look to mould the future of her people". This mirrored Gallagher’s separatist aspirations and that of most of the paper’s staff. The quasi-separatist attitude of the Cork Free Press increased sales, though paper shortage and lack of capital left its financial position hopeless.

Suppressed

The paper suffered closure because soon after the appointment of Lord Decies

John Beresford, 5th Baron Decies

John Graham Hope de la Poer Beresford, 5th Baron Decies PC , styled The Honourable John Beresford until 1910, was an Anglo-Irish army officer and civil servant.-Background and education:...

as Chief Press Censor for Ireland. Decies warned the press to be careful about what they published. Such warnings had little effect when dealing with such papers as the Cork Free Press.

It was suppressed after Gallagher accused the British authorities of lying about the conditions and situation of republican prisoners in the Frongoch internment camp

Frongoch internment camp

Frongoch internment camp at Frongoch in Merionethshire, Wales was a makeshift place of imprisonment during the First World War. Until 1916 it housed German prisoners of war in an abandoned distillery and crude huts, but in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland, the German prisoners...

.

Finally, when in December 1916, O’Brien ceased publication of the Cork Free Press, he lost the last effective link with his constituents. To keep the paper alive since 1910 had cost £30,000 of his wife’s savings. In the 1918 general elections, the All-for-Ireland League MPs stood down in favour of Sinn Féin. Frank Gallagher was subsequently founding editor of the Irish Press and director of publicity for Éamon de Valera

Éamon de Valera

Éamon de Valera was one of the dominant political figures in twentieth century Ireland, serving as head of government of the Irish Free State and head of government and head of state of Ireland...

(1931–35).

External links

Maume, Patrick: History Ireland
History Ireland
History Ireland is a magazine about the history of Ireland published every two months. It features articles by a range of writers and book reviews. The focus is on history rather than archaeology.The magazine's editor isTommy Graham....

article feature: A nursery of editors: the Cork Free Press, 1910–16

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