149. The road to committee room 15

149. The road to committee room 15

This episode picks up Ireland’s story again, just as the English establishment turned its guns on Charles Stewart Parnell.

Round 1 of its attack was launched through the Times newspaper, in a series of articles entitled ‘Parnellism and Crime’. It set out to show that, despite his public commitment to the parliamentary road to achieving Ireland’s aspirations, in reality and in the background he was prepared to collaborate with men of violence. Indeed, in the second article of the series, the Times published a letter apparently from Parnell to a leading Fenian, in which he seemed to condone one at least of the Phoenix Park murders of 1882.

That attack failed when it emerged that the letter was simply a forgery.

Even so, damage had been done to the Irish movement by the sheer extent of the investigations carried out by the Commission set up to examine the allegations against Parnell. It cleared him but found other mud to throw at different parts of the Irish movement.

Round 2 of the attack came when William O’Shea, husband of Katharine, the great love of Parnell’s life, sued for divorce. The revelations at the trial were immensely damaging to him. In this episode, we follow events up to the point where the Irish Parliamentary Party, having rallied to him at one meeting, have called another to review that decision and Parnell has weakened his position by publishing a manifesto that could hardly have been better calculated to offend people on whose support he needed to count.



Illustration: The Times attack on Parnell, accusing him of association with criminality.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.


Avsnitt(274)

273. From a humble address to a royal arrest

273. From a humble address to a royal arrest

Well, we’re living in curious times.For the first time in four centuries, a member of the British royal family has been arrested in connection with a criminal investigation. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor...

22 Feb 14min

272. What a fine mess you've got us into

272. What a fine mess you've got us into

This is the last episode in this main series of A History of England. I may add others on specific topics – by all means use the comments to suggest any you’d like me to examine – or in response to in...

20 Dec 202543min

271. Breaking records

271. Breaking records

Following the rather grim comedy of Boris Johnson, the Conservatives gave Britain the even more ridiculous spectacle of Liz Truss. She proceeded to push the British economy to the edge of the abyss, a...

7 Dec 202514min

270. Phenomenal Boris

270. Phenomenal Boris

It’s the time of Boris. This episode tracks Boris Johnson’s character, starting with a less than complimentary report from his housemaster at Eton to this parents, through his time in the rich kids’ B...

30 Nov 202514min

269. Brexit

269. Brexit

In 2015, Cameron returned to office with a majority of his own even if it wasn’t particularly huge. At least it meant he no longer needed to be in a coalition with the Lib Dems, who’d taken a terrible...

23 Nov 202514min

268. The winners and the damned: peacetime coalition

268. The winners and the damned: peacetime coalition

It’s 2007, and Tony Blair is out. In his place is Gordon Brown, who’d proved his capacity as a Chancellor. Sadly, he was now to show that promotion to Prime Minister was one step too many , since he s...

16 Nov 202514min

267. Bliar

267. Bliar

As the title of this episode suggests, this is where we look at how Tony Blair’s reputation was wrecked by the growing awareness that he’d produced infamously bad justifications to launch Britain into...

9 Nov 202514min

266. A time of dodgy dossiers

266. A time of dodgy dossiers

When Tony Blair took Britain to war in Iraq in 2003, as part of a US-led and rather limited coalition of nations, it was against the will of large numbers of Brits expressed in possibly the biggest de...

2 Nov 202514min

Populärt inom Historia

massmordarpodden
p3-historia
historiska-brott
motiv
kod-katastrof
olosta-mord
rss-historien-om
rss-historiska-brottslingar
rss-seriemordarpodden
rss-brottsligt
historiepodden-se
historianu-med-urban-lindstedt
rss-massmordarpodden
krigshistoriepodden
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
mannen-utan-spar
militarhistoriepodden
obskyr-historia
nu-blir-det-historia
bedragare