MARYBOROUGH IN FIRST
COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTIONS
By Teddy Fennelly

chief secretary for Ireland (1895-1900), utterly changed the Irish political
scene. The setting up of county councils, which replaced the old Grand
Jury and Board of Guardian systems, and the extension of the franchise,
led to administrative powers at local level in all areas outside of Ulster,
where unionists were in the majority, being effectively stripped from
the Protestant landlord class and transferred to the Catholic nationalist
population, mainly constituted of modest merchants, smaller landowners,
artisans and working class.
It was a profound piece of legislation for a British government to
introduce, particularly a Tory government never noted for their sympathy
to the Irish nationalist cause. One speaker commented during the
debate on the Bill in the House of Commons that the legislation was not
so much intended to satisfy the demands of the Irish people as to satisfy
the conscience of the British people.1 If it was a matter of conscience, it
was the British establishment, rather than the British people, who had
good reason to feel penitent for wrongs perpetrated on Irish Catholics
over the centuries. It is highly unlikely, however, that it was the collective
prickled conscience of the Conservative political establishment that
motivated such a benevolent concession to Irish nationalists. It was, as
usual, a case of political expediency.
The burning issue for Irish nationalists in the closing decades of the
19th century was Home Rule. As the new century beckoned the issue had
cooled but this was due more to a bitter split in the nationalist party than
for any other reason. It was a time bomb that had been merely temporarily
defused. The Conservatives were very aware that unless the moderate
nationalists were appeased by some major political initiative on their
part in the short term, the issue of Home Rule would soon again rear its
threatening head.
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Giving nationalists control of local government in areas where they
were in the majority made good sense to the Conservatives. Prime
Minister, Lord Salisbury, and his government believed that these concessions
would ease the demands for Home Rule from nationalists without
upsetting unionists. The grim prospect of civil conflagration on the
Home Rule issue, with unknown consequences to the government and
the country, would thus be averted. They were right. The local government
reforms relegated the Home Rule issue well down the nationalist
political agenda for a decade or more. But, as history reminds us, it was
a crisis shelved rather than settled.
In Laois Heritage Journal No. 1, I addressed the political thinking
behind the legislation, the landlords’ reaction to it and the campaign and
results of the elections in Queen’s County (Laois), which proved quite
interesting.
Despite the general resentment and feelings of being badly let down
by their own people in the Conservative party, members of the old order
contested most of the divisional elections. But the weight of votes was
stacked against them and, as expected, the nationalist candidates swept
the boards.2 The closest contests were between rival nationalists, who
quickly embraced the opportunities created by the realities of their new
political situation.
Perhaps the most hotly contested division in the Queen’s County
was for Maryborough (Portlaoise). The election developed into a bitter
head to head clash between two highly experienced and accomplished
political rivals, P.A Meehan (1852-1913) and James J. Aird (1864-1916). Both
men were Redmondite supporters and came from families successful
in the business and commercial fields, with strong Catholic nationalist
backgrounds. After his election to Chairman of Maryborough Town
Commissioners in 1890, Aird was appointed as Justice of the Peace and
magistrate for Maryborough. Meehan was one of the founders of the
Land League in Queen’s County and claimed friendship with Parnell and
Davitt. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1891.
The first County Council elections were fixed nationwide for
Thursday, 6 April 1899. The duel for the hearts and minds of the electors
of Maryborough had begun much earlier. A motion was tabled before
the Mountmellick Union, to which Maryborough was attached, in April
1898 demanding a reduction in the rents of labourers’ cottages. Meehan,
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in a letter to the Board of Guardians of the
Union, of which both men were members,
argued that the rents in Maryborough should
not be reduced in fairness to the ratepayers
of the town, who were left with a large deficit
due to the high costs involved in providing
the houses. Aird supported the motion stating
that it was simply not true that the ratepayers
of Maryborough were being fleeced. He
claimed that it was the labourers who were
being milked dry. This row, which simmered
for the rest of the year and into 1899, cast Aird
in the role of defender of the working class,
while it portrayed Meehan in the role of spokesman for the merchants
and landowners.
Aird chaired a meeting of labourers in the Town Hall on Wednesday,
11 January 1899, in advance of the Town Commission elections on the
following Monday. There were almost 400 present, all eligible to vote.
He accused Meehan of making a false statement that the ratepayers were
paying £100 per year extra in lieu of the shortfall in the labourers’ rents.
He encouraged the labourers to vote only for their own candidates. “Go
for your four or five men. If you vote for others not pledged to your
interest, you weaken your own vote.” He also had some practical advice
for the illiterate. “I would ask all the men to come early to vote, more
particularly men who cannot read or write as they, while voting, block
every other voter for the time being.”
He castigated Meehan for nominating himself as a candidate for the
first County Council elections, which were to take place three months
later, without seeking ratification for his candidacy at a public meeting,
as others were doing in all parts of the country. He mocked his adversary,
“I think he is suffering from an attack of ‘County Councils’”, a remark
which greatly humoured the gathering. Nor was Aird yet finished.
“Whatever I do, I do it straightforward and above board. When I heard
him (Meehan) recount his 15 years of service (at a public meeting on New
Year’s night) in which the political machine was made to play as it suited
him and his clique at the time, without one friendly voice or cheer of
recognition, I had to feel that honesty was the best policy.”
James J. Aird
(1864-1916)
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Patrick A. Meehan
(1852-1913)
James J. Aird was duly returned at the
head of the poll for the Town Commission.
The brass band played up to the Town Hall,
tar barrels were set alight and a large crowd
gathered enthusiastically outside the hall to
hail the victor.
Later that month, Aird issued a circular
calling on Maryborough voters to withhold
their promise to any candidate for the County
Council until a public meeting was called to
make a selection. Meehan also issued a circular
reaffirming that he was offering himself as
a candidate. The election battle had begun in
earnest.
The public meeting held in the Town Hall on Monday, 6 February,
at which an estimated 1,000 packed into a room, which could comfortably
hold only 300, was reminiscent of mob scenes during the Terror in
the French Revolution. The Leinster Express headline of the following
week read: “Disorderly Scenes – Mob Law”. The Chairman of the Town
Commission, Patrick Kelly, presided. He said that the meeting had been
called by notice posted around the town and signed by over twenty ratepayers.
He condemned another notice issued as an insult to ratepayers.
The second notice was circulated by Aird’s supporters on behalf of the
labourers, most of whom were being allowed to vote for the first time
due to the electoral reforms recently introduced. Bedlam ensued. The
chairman, a supporter of Meehan, battled vainly to keep control of the
meeting and to quieten the hordes, who had come to show their support
for Aird. Eventually he was forced to withdraw and Aird’s supporters
installed their own chairman. The Leinster Express report of the meeting
noted that but for the presence of a dozen RIC officers and some
British Army personnel from the 4th Leinster Regiment, the bitter verbal
exchanges would have erupted into full-scale violence.
It was Aird’s night. He had come prepared with his legion of supporters
and a volley of verbiage to match the occasion. He accused Meehan
of spreading lies that he (Aird) had promised the local curate, Fr. Harris,
that he would stand for Maryborough Rural instead of Maryborough
Urban, for which Meehan had declared.
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Aird proceed to unleash an unrestrained political and personal attack
on his older and more experienced rival. He accused Meehan of deserting
all the principles he had promulgated many years before. Meehan,
he said, was once the promoter of Home Rule, of a Catholic University,
of low rents on labourers’ cottages and for an amnesty for political prisoners.
He pointed out that these issues were not now mentioned on
Meehan’s agenda. Aird promised that these were the very issues that he,
himself, would pursue if elected. To a rapturous response, he proclaimed:
“Remember, it is not a fight between Mr. Meehan and myself. It is a fight
between the labourers and the landlords ... a fight between labour and
landlordism”.
The Leinster Express account of the lengthy and explosive meeting
reported every word, whisper and gasp of what was an historic night in
Maryborough Town Hall. The report concluded: “Notwithstanding the
great excitement, there was no blood spilt.” The editorial comment was
caustic of the carry-on in the Town Hall: “The meeting ... was a deplorable
exhibition of the attempt to force the opinions of a majority without
the slightest consideration for the minority”. (One might be tempted to
respond that this sentiment of outrage sounded rich coming from the
proprietor of an unapologetical unionist newspaper that never noticed
anything deplorable about the minority, under the old Grand Jury system,
forcing not only their opinions but also their dispensation of justice and
executive power on the downtrodden majority. However, that is a different
issue.)
Meehan was stung by the ferocity of Aird’s attack and especially on
being branded a liar. He immediately set out to clear his name and used
both local weeklies, Leinster Express and Nationalist, to do so. A series
of letters from both men, and from other interested parties as well,
appeared in both newspapers each week up to election day. Meehan drew
first blood. He refuted Aird’s claim that he was a liar and drew on a letter
from Fr. Harris, to prove his point. The Portlaoise curate confirmed
that Aird had made a promise that he would not oppose Meehan. His
letter stated: “Mr. Aird more than once said to me, ‘I shall not oppose
Mr. Meehan for the County Councillorship of the town if he so wishes
to go for it; he has the first claim to it; he is the best entitled to it after
his representing Maryborough at Mountmellick (Union) for many years.
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If I be invited to stand for the Moore’s Forest Division3 I would gladly
accept it’ ... ”
Mr. Meehan added, in another letter,: “It is not my intention to follow
Mr. Aird in his programme of vilification or expose other of his calumnious
statements; they are all of the same character – recklessly untrue.”4
Mr. Aird responded in a lengthy letter to both local newspapers the
following week. He explained his position on the alleged promises made.
He concluded by saying: “If Fr. Harris proves to any three respectable
men in the parish that I lack either the business capacity, uprightness of
character, either in public position or commercially, or am deficient in
any essential qualification, I will retire; on the other hand if he cannot
do so, why should the electors who requested me to go forward, and who
selected me unanimously at a public meeting, be thwarted from carrying
out their wishes.”
When the nominations closed Aird and Meehan were alone in the
field for Maryboro’ Urban. The prospect of a contest for the County
Council seat pleased at leased one correspondent of the Leinster
Express. “Having read the correspondence appearing in your columns
over recent weeks ... it caused me no small amount of surprise to learn
that the representation ... were to be handed away without the thousand
electors of those divisions having a word to say in either choice or election
of candidates. The arrangement would have succeeded but for Mr.
Aird’s refusal to be party to the compact. Our great objection, hitherto,
was that the Lord Lieutenant appointed the High Sheriff and the High
Sheriff the Grand Jurors ... If such a system prevailed we would only be
removing the despotic rule of the Lord Lieutenant to replace it by the
more galling rule of men who would be ready to plant any personal favourite,
no matter what his political record, on the necks of the people. If
this is the outcome of the boasted enfranchisement we are after obtaining
under the Local Government Act, God help us. Yours truly, One of
the Thousand Electors.”5
The bitter exhanges between Aird and Meehan continued in every
forum, including Mountmellick Union, at public meetings and in the
press up to election day. While it appeared that Aird had swung the vote
decisively in his favour a month prior to the election, Meehan recaptured
some lost ground in the intervening period. A close contest was expected
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and, as events transpired, the vote could not have been closer. Meehan
won the day by 225 votes to 224.
At the first meeting of the County Council of Queen’s County, James
J. Aird6, who was not present, was one of two candidates co-opted to the
new body, after a three-way vote. A little later Patrick A. Meehan7 was
elected its first chairman, defeating James MacMahon by a single vote
(15-14).
Notes
1 Observation made by Colonel Saunderson during the second reading of the Bill in March
1898.
2 Few of the landlords in the Queen’s County supported the reforms, the most notable of
whom was Lord Castletown, a charismatic and compassionate character with a love for
the Irish language. He was returned unopposed to represent the Donaghmore Division
on the first County Council and was the only Unionist representative elected in Queen’s
County.
3 The Moore’s Forest Division included Maryboro’ Rural.
4 In letters to the Leinster Express (18 February 1899).
5 Letter to the Editor in issue of the Leinster Express dated 18 March 1899.
6 James J. Aird was later to become vice-chairman of the County Council. He made two
unsuccessful attempts to become an M.P. His son, William Patrick, joined him on Maryboro’
Town Commission in 1916. He was later to become a T.D. for Laois-Offaly. The Aird family
continued to be closely connected with public life throughout the past century. James J.
Aird’s great grandson, William, has been for many years an elected member of Portlaoise
T.C. and Laois County Council. He is currently chairman of Laois County Council.
7 Patrick A. Meehan was elected M.P. for the Leix Division of the Queen’s County in 1906,
a position he held until his death in 1913. His son, Patrick Joseph, was M.P. for Queen’s
County from 1913/’19. Another son, William Conleth, was Chairman of Portlaoise T.C. for
many years.