The Redmonds in Australia 1883 – Part 4: Victoria

Alfred Deakin would eventually be grateful for Irish support for a federated Australia, but his Victorian government of 1883 was less accommodating.

In 1905 Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond sent each other congratulatory telegrams. Deakin told Redmond the Australian people owed a debt of gratitude to the Irish Party for its support in Westminster for the Commonwealth Bill, which enabled the founding of Australia in 1901. In return Redmond sent a telegram of congratulations from Dublin to thank Deakin’s support for “the concession of home rule to Ireland”. The telegrams marked a huge change in relations after two decades ending, at least temporarily, Australian suspicion of Irish motives.

Twenty years earlier Deakin was in the Victorian colonial government, when John Redmond and brother Willie visited on their national tour in 1883. Their welcome in Melbourne, was less than hospitable from non-Irish elements. It was the same reception in Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane but despite similarities these colonies had no common government. Deakin was among the first to welcome a Federated Council of Australasia that might bring all of the colonies, including New Zealand and Fiji into one confederation.

While politicians grappled with the idea of one Australian nation, they were less welcome to Ireland’s hopes of forging its own identity, and becoming, like Australia, a separate entity under the crown. The Redmonds struggled against the weight of prejudice in three ways: the denial of meeting facilities, the refusal of the wealthy to engage, and the wrath of the popular press. The latter cut both ways and the Redmonds gained much publicity for their cause, even if they were painted as enemies of the state. Willie Redmond’s fiery speeches sometimes justified Australian anger, but elder brother John was always balanced, measured and erudite, only occasionally getting into the gutter to sling mud back at the press.

On May 16 John left Sydney after a fundraising international handball competition, and set off for Melbourne via southern NSW. He spoke to a large crowd in Goulburn that night and heard the Irish national anthem (God Save Ireland) sung by local students the following night. Then it was on to Burrowa, Young, Murrumburrah, Cootamundra, Temora and Wagga Wagga where he delivered lectures on the Irish National League and set up branches. He arrived in Melbourne on May 29, and was presented to the audience at St Patrick’s Hall on Bourke St.

His appeal he “should not be condemned unheard and by prejudice” was rejected by the Argus newspaper. Pointing to the 1882 Phoenix Park Murders, the Argus said there was almost a state of civil war in Ireland and the Irish National League was an “unlawful and criminal association”. Anyone who gave them money, they warned, was giving “succour (to) the Queen’s enemies”.  Redmond answered their points in a letter only to be refuted in another editorial.

Redmond delivered the first of three lectures in Melbourne on June 5 at St Patrick’s Hall, said to be an “eloquent address”. Willie Redmond revved up the crowd complaining many leading Irishmen of the colony were absent. He called them cowardly and said they hadn’t “the common manliness to stand by their side and adhere to the principles they professed to hold”. The following day John Redmond complained about the way the media reported his speech in a “bald, disjointed, unintelligible and stupid summary”. The Argus called Redmond impudent. Their reports were not for him, they said, but for the public which was satisfied with their reporting.

At the second lecture two days later, judge Frank Gavan Duffy (son of Irish-Victorian premier Sir Charles) objected to Willie Redmond’s reference to cowardly Irishmen saying the younger Redmond had no idea what sacrifices colonial Irish made for the cause. Duffy may have been speaking about James Dalton and two other Irish magistrates in Orange, NSW sacked for supporting the Redmonds. The frenzied reporting of the Phoenix Park murders trial did not help. A crowd of a thousand people heard Redmond’s third Melbourne lecture where he denounced violence. “I would rather see Ireland always remain in her present unhappy condition than do any wrong to assist the cause I advocate,” he said.

John was then met by enthusiastic crowds in Echuca, Rochester and Sandhurst (now Bendigo) where he stayed at the Shamrock Hotel. Willie joined him in celebration. On July 17, while still in Australia, Willie Redmond won the by-election for his home town seat of Wexford. Rejoicing Irish Australians claimed credit for his win.

Their tour rolled on despite attempts to deny them halls. Catholic English-born Charles Hamilton Bromby was also in Victoria giving talks on “the English in Ireland” saying the Irish had a right to use force to remove the English. The Argus reported his speech as “disloyal and semi-seditious”. His booking of the Melbourne Town Hall was denied on the excuse his language was objectionable and the Redmonds would be in attendance (a charge they denied). The Argus attacked the Catholic priest who tried to book the Hall saying the priesthood “has either been passive or has worked for evil.” As Jeff Kildea wrote when analysing the 1883 Redmonds tour, the Australian press’s Anglo-centric perspective meant English wrongs in Ireland would not be mentioned to avoid ill-feeling while exposure of Irish vices were encouraged in the public interest.

The unperturbed John Redmond continued his tour, now accompanied by James Dalton who travelled from Orange. Their procession into Daylesford was booed by locals while 1200 heard him speak in Ballarat, despite being denied the town’s biggest hall. The camp moved west to Colac, Camperdown, Geelong and then Warrnambool where he received “the most enthusiastic reception since he came to Australia”.

Redmond shelved a plan to return to Ireland in October. He spoke to more big crowds in the Irish town of Koroit, as well as Sale, Seymour, Benalla and Beechworth before returning to Melbourne. The success of their tour was clouded by news from England. The steamer Pathan was en route to Australia and aboard were members of the Invincibles who carried out the Phoenix Park murders now granted immunity from prosecution as informants. The Australian press was outraged they were being sent there and demanded citizens be quarantined from “criminal contamination”.

The three men aboard the Pathan were denied entry in Adelaide and again in Melbourne. At Sydney, the British Government resolved to send them home on a naval vessel. The Redmonds were smeared by association despite the Victorian branch of the Irish National League passing a motion of thanks to the Victorian premier James Service for denying the men access to Melbourne. The Redmonds left town in early August with a short trip to Tasmania before returning to Sydney where John found time to indulge in romance.

See part 5 here.

A history of the transits of Venus

The transit of Venus across the sun is a rare celestial alignment that, like London buses, comes along twice in quick succession. Venus orbits the sun every 225 days and its path occasional overlaps Earth’s. The transit lasts several hours with Venus visible from earth during the day as a black dot travelling across the sun’s surface. This happens roughly twice every century coming (usually) in pairs eight years apart. We’ve had it twice in the 21^st century but few of us will be alive to see the next one in December 2117. There is a gap of 105.5 years if the previous transits were in June (like they were in 2004 and 2012) or 121.5 years if the previous transits were December (as in 1874 and 1882). Together they form a cycle of 243 years.

Venus has been closely monitored by astronomers for thousands of years as a bright giant of the night sky, the Morning or Evening Star. The Egyptians called it “Benin”, the heron who disappeared under the Nile only to rise again. Once Copernicus discovered the planets revolved around the Sun, astronomers realised the planets closer to the Sun (Mercury and Venus) could move between the Earth and Sun.

Mathematical genius Johannes Kepler figured out when that would happen and correctly predicted the transit of Venus in 1631. Kepler did not live to see it, dying in 1630, but he realised transits were important not just as a celestial event. By using parallax mathematicians could determine the precise distance between the Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately it was night-time in Europe when the 1631 transit happened so no one saw it. No one in south Asia, where it was daytime, recorded it.

Kepler’s maths wasn’t completely accurate – he didn’t realise transits come in pairs and he missed the fact another was due eight years later in December 1639. That realisation fell to young English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks barely months before the 1639 event. Horrocks was the first written witness to a transit of Venus on an unusually clear winter’s day. Horrocks estimated the distance between the Earth and the Sun as 191 million kilometres, 40 million too high, but the most accurate distance yet recorded.

By the next transit in June 1761, scientists had a much better idea what to look for and where and when to look for it. Almost 200 astronomers trained telescopes on the transit from 100 locations with the best views in Asia. The British Royal Society sent two expeditions, despite the ongoing Seven Years War with France. One expedition to St Helena in the south Atlantic failed as the day was cloudy. The second was led by Greenwich Observatory’s Charles Mason assisted by surveyor Jeremiah Dixon. Their later work surveying the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania made them famous for the Mason-Dixon line but in 1761 they went to Sumatra to observe Venus. After their ship skirmished with French forces, they were delayed and only made it to Cape Town. Though the transit was partially blocked by clouds they successfully timed the moment Venus moved off the Sun. Mathematicians used their data to work out the Earth-Sun distance to within two million kms.

The war was over by the time of the next transit in June 1769. The British sent out an expedition with scientific goals but it also had political ends and accidentally ended up with the founding of a new colony. With the best viewing in the Pacific Ocean the Royal Society petitioned the government for funds to observe the transit noting other European nations had similar plans. The request was an excuse to fund a voyage of discovery to the South Seas and James Cook was the ideal person to lead it. Though not a commissioned officer he had the perfect combination of leadership, seamanship, astronomical knowledge, mapmaking and mathematics to understand the new method of finding longitude at sea.

His instructions from the Admiralty were to sail to Tahiti to make observations on June 3, 1769. When this was completed he was to “put to Sea without Loss of Time and carry into execution the Additional Instructions contained in the inclosed Sealed Packet.” The packet held Cook’s secret instructions to find the Terra australis incognita (unknown south land) in the southern ocean. If he could not find this, he was to chart New Zealand and return to England via whichever route was most convenient.

Aboard the Endeavour Cook arrived in Tahiti in April 1769 after an eight-month journey from Plymouth via Cape Horn. He erected Fort Venus to accommodate 45 men, an observatory, a forge and an oven. On the day of the transit they were ready to observe with two telescopes, a quadrant and an astronomical clock. To guard against cloudy weather Cook sent parties to two nearby islands. But as he observed, “not a Clowd was to be seen the whole day and the Air was perfectly clear”. They saw the “dusky shade” around the planet as it crossed the path of the Sun. They gathered excellent results although the demanding Cook saw the experiment as a failure because they missed the exact time of first contact, and the measurements his team took did not match precisely with each other.

After charting Tahiti’s islands, Cook left on July 13 to map the Society Isles before sailing south to find the terra incognita. By September he had found nothing and put off by heavy gales, he set sail for New Zealand. He circumnavigated the two islands to prove they were not part of a southern continent, concluding his mission in March 1770. The idea of going through Cape Horn in winter did not appeal so he decided to go home via the coast of New Holland and the East Indies.

The Dutch had mapped most of the north and west coast of New Holland but had found its inhabitants intimidating with little wealth in spices they could trade in Europe. The east coast was unknown to European navigators. Cook called this strange new land New Wales, then New South Wales, though it looked nothing like the British principality. Cook was aware of human habitation along the coast thank to the columns of smokes but the people kept their distance and were often hostile when Cook made landfall at Botany Bay, Bustard Head and Endeavour River.

Rounding the Torres Strait, Cook proved New Holland was a different land mass to New Guinea. At Bedanug, which Cook called Possession Island, he laid claim of all of New South Wales in the name of King George III. Returning home via Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope, he landed at Deal, Kent on July 13, 1771 to the shock of many who assumed the Endeavour was lost at sea.

The Royal Society was disappointed with Cook’s results from the transit and laid the blame on ship’s astronomer Charles Green who died on the way home. Cook’s discovery of New South Wales was also temporarily laid aside. Botany Bay wormed its way into the British consciousness in a way the science could not and although Cook did not live to see it, New South Wales became a reality within two decades as a home for transported prisoners.

Australia was born out of a rare celestial event, a fact remembered in Melbourne and Sydney a century later as a confident, wealthy and white Australia had the prime position to record the 1874 Transit of Venus. At Mornington near Melbourne maths professor William Parkinson Wilson observed the cloudless transit with great delight but the excitement was too much for him and he died two days later.

The results from 1874 and 1882 (where Europe and the US had the best viewing) showed the distance from Earth to the Sun to be around 149 million kms. The science from the 2004 and 2012 events has moved on to the study of exoplanets by measuring the dip in the planet’s brightness as it crossed the sun. With luck, by the time of the next transit on December 10, 2117, humans – if we survive the next century – will be making plans to visit one of those exoplanets, and like Cook find a new frontier. Let’s hope they will be more gentle on its inhabitants than those who followed Cook were.

The Redmonds in Australia 1883 – Part 3 Queensland and northern NSW

British flag raised in 1883 when Queensland annexed the southern part of New Guinea.

The 1883 visit to Australia of Irish nationalists, John Redmond MP and brother Willie Redmond, was a massive and controversial event wherever they went including Adelaide and Sydney, but they found Queensland was busy annexing a foreign nation.

With Germany and France a more visible colonising presence in the South Pacific from the early 1880s, there was alarm about the threat of their expanding power. On April 4, 1883 Queensland premier Thomas McIlwraith ordered Henry Chester, Police Magistrate on Thursday Island, to formally annex the south-eastern section of Papua New Guinea and adjacent islands in the name of Britain. The British government was appalled. It strongly rebuked McIlwraith and repudiated the claim, but it remained popular in Queensland.

New Ross MP John Redmond had arroved from Sydney aboard the Derwent on March 22, 1883 and was smart enough to keep his opinions on Queensland’s New Guinea adventure to himself. He set about winning a new colony over to his views on Irish nationalism. The Express newspaper said his reception in Brisbane was friendlier than Sydney but he remained plagued by a lack of suitable venues to make his case, as the Protestant establishment tried to derail his tour.

At a breakfast meeting at Lennon’s Hotel the morning after his arrival, parliamentarian Kevin Izod O’Doherty introduced Redmond. O’Doherty was a doctor and a Young Irelander transported to Australia for treason after the short-lived 1848 rebellion in Ireland. Later pardoned, he practiced in Brisbane and became a president of the Queensland Medical Association and a member for Brisbane in the Legislative Assembly. He retained a strong interest in Irish politics and was president of the Queensland branch of the Land League. Redmond stayed in Brisbane as O’Doherty’s guest. On Easter Monday O’Doherty presided as Redmond spoke to 2000 people at a Goodna picnic and set up a branch of the Irish National League.

A few days later Redmond addressed a Brisbane meeting. The Courier newspaper was impressed by Redmond’s moderate tone and approved the Queensland government’s decision to offer Redmond a free rail pass, something NSW would not do. The Courier was nuanced but explained on March 28 why Ireland could not have self-government unlike the Australian colonies. Australia was too distant from Britain to be governed by London (though it also castigated the Brisbane government for its New Guinea adventurism) while Ireland was an integral part of the UK. “It is not a mere dependency, and cannot be one while the British Empire exists,” the Courier wrote. “It is preposterous to suppose that any Englishman loyal to his country can sanction the disintegration involved in national Home Rule for Ireland”. They said a separate Ireland would impose duties on English products, raise a militia and would eventually proclaim a separate nation. While the Courier accurately predicted 20^th century events, its view was staunchly Anglo-centric, never willing to put itself in Irish shoes.

The Redmonds split up to cover regional Queensland. Willie spoke in Brisbane and Warwick while John took a ship to Maryborough. At Gympie there was a large contingent of Irish at the goldrush and the town created Australia’s first Land League branch. John spoke to 3000 people and was presented with gold by the ladies of Gympie. In Maryborough Redmond was initially refused use of the town hall but that decision was overturned when citizens petitioned the mayor. He went on to Rockhampton where he addressed the Hibernian Hall before departing to Brisbane.

On Friday, April 13 Redmond gave his main address at the Brisbane Theatre Royal where he explained what self-government for Ireland meant. He wanted decentralisation not separation, and a parliament responsible for internal affairs answerable to the Queen. Westminster would continue to regulate international functions. The Courier commended Redmond’s plain-speaking but remained firmly opposed to Irish home rule.

In Toowoomba Redmond attacked the Australian press which accused him of being a mouthpiece of “an intolerant faction… about 100 years behind their brethren at home in intelligence and information”. He held meetings in Warwick and Stanthorpe before crossing to NSW in Willie’s footsteps. At Tenterfield a cavalcade of 200 people on horseback and buggies escorted him into town. He was refused the hall and school of arts but spoke at the Catholic Church where he attacked anti-Irish politician Henry Parkes in his own electorate.

Parkes asked parliament to adopt a “loyal and dutiful address” to Queen Victoria to disapprove of the “strangers” in their midst. The move failed as Premier Alexander Stuart dismissed as absurd the idea the Redmonds could undermine colonists’ loyalty. An angry Redmond called Parkes a “political charlatan” who made false allegations against him and the Irish National League.

Redmond spoke in Inverell, Glen Innes, Tamworth and Tingha where the meeting was disrupted by “an explosion of Chinese crackers, gunpowder and cayenne pepper.” Meetings in Armidale, Maitland and Newcastle were less eventful. The gruelling northern tour ended with a short break in Sydney in early May. Willie Redmond lightened the tone with a Irish poetry lecture at St Patrick’s Hall while John recited Longfellow’s The Golden Legend, which told of the miracles and martyrdoms of the saints. As 1883 passed its half way mark, John Redmond remained hopeful of another miracle conversion: that of Australia’s press to the Irish cause.

See part 4 here.

The Redmonds in Australia 1883 – Part 2: Sydney and NSW

Detail from a cartoon in the Protestant Standard, March 17, 1883 “The Redmond Brothers and the cause they are begging for”.

The visit of Westminster parliamentarians John and Willie Redmond to Australia in 1883 fired up uncomfortable issues of Irish nationalism which did not sit well with the Empire jingoism of their hosts. Part 1 discussed the reasons for the Irish brothers’ visit and their reception in Adelaide. Part 2 takes up their arrival in Sydney on February 19, 1883.

The Redmonds landed in NSW as the men charged with the Phoenix Park murders faced trial in Dublin. The hostile Sydney dailies reported the news with horror and tried to implicate the Irish nationalist politicians in their midst. One paper said a trial defendant admitted they had money from a “murder fund” raised by the Irish Land League. The Echo said the Land League “stinks in the nostrils of decent people” while the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Willie’s incendiary Cork speech and damned John as an “itinerant preacher of sedition”. John Redmond wrote to the papers refuting the allegations, condemning the murders and disputing the existence of the murder fund. Nevertheless, the Echo said the connection was “too clear even to admit a doubt”.

Redmond planned to speak in Sydney’s Masonic Hall but its directors withdrew permission at the last minute, much to the Echo‘s delight. Organisers found an alternative venue and the meeting was packed despite MPs and bishops steering clear. Redmond accused the Sydney press of “malicious and criminal falsehoods” and condemned “the stupid insolence” of local MP James Young who tried to ban the meeting. The Echo compared Redmond’s politics to “germs of smallpox” saying Sydney should “shut its doors and say ‘Pass on’.” It wasn’t all negative press. Catholic organ the Freeman’s Journal denounced the “insulting slanders on (the Irish) race and nation” and dismissed the link between the Land League and the murders in Dublin.

Redmond’s cause wasn’t helped when his supporters disrupted a meeting at the Protestant Hall organised by opponents of the League. Henry Parkes moved a motion to protest the Redmonds’ visit amid howls and fights in the audience. Chairs and sticks became weapons and protesters attacked Parkes as he left the meeting, surrounding his cab and pelting it with stones. Redmond regretted the attacks but said they were provoked by false speeches. The Daily Telegraph said Redmond was “a public enemy” and called for his removal from Australia.

In early March, Redmond left Sydney to tour the NSW central west. He spoke in Bathurst and arrived in Orange on March 5 (Willie was ill and stayed in Sydney). About 1000 people met him at the railway station and he went by carriage to Duntryleague, home of prominent local Catholic James Dalton. Dalton warmly welcomed Redmond as the ablest of Parnell’s lieutenants who had won the world’s admiration by “resolute resistance to the oppressive proceedings of a foreign senate.”

Redmond was again denied local halls and made a speech at Orange’s auction rooms, with Dalton presiding. The meeting set up a branch of the Irish National League. Dalton was praised for his courage facing the remarks “of an insolent section of the press”. Two days later MP John Burns told parliament that Dalton, a magistrate in Orange, had made an address where the British government was spoken as a foreign one and his language was not that of a loyal citizen. Premier Alexander Stuart wrote to Dalton to ask if newspaper accounts of his speech were accurate. Presumably satisfied they were, Stuart dismissed Dalton from his post a month later, along with two other Irish magistrates in Orange. The Irish party in Westminster protested the decision but the British government endorsed Stuart’s actions. The action brought the Daltons closer to the Redmonds in ways that revealed themselves later that year.

John Redmond went to Dubbo and back to Bathurst and Orange, calling at Duntryleague to greet Dalton before leaving for Sydney’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Redmond addressed a crowd of 30,000 people at Botany, one of the largest Irish gatherings seen at Sydney, and they enrolled 1500 new Irish National League members. He criticised the riot at Protestant Hall as “Old World seeds of bitterness and hate”. He and Willie received medals engraved with the words “St Patrick’s Day – from the sympathisers of the Irish cause in New South Wales.”

That evening Redmond was guest of honour at Sydney’s premier St Patrick’s Day event. The St Patrick’s Banquet was traditionally an occasion for the well-heeled Irish to demonstrate loyalty to the crown and empire and attracted the wealthiest Catholics in the city. The Echo predicted Redmond would use the occasion to “set Ireland against Ireland, marshal Ireland against Britain and divide Ireland from Australia”. He did no such thing. Redmond was careful to avoid criticism of England or the press and reiterated his abhorrence of the Phoenix Park murders. Three days later, the brothers sailed north for Queensland temporarily leaving Sydney’s hostile press behind.

See part 3 here.

Staying in Europe will be David Cameron’s acid test for Britain

(photo: Telegraph.co.uk)

Tony Blair’s former spinner-in-chief Alastair Campbell wrote a (mostly) perceptive piece on his blog early on the day of the British election. Campbell was doing hindsight history showing how the electorate always gets it right on the day. His conclusion was they were about to get it right again by making Ed Milibrand prime minister, a dream that would be crushed in the following 24 hours. Britain had spoken again, but Doctor Campbell had misdiagnosed the illness. The patient wanted more of the drugs it already had, not a completely new treatment.

Campbell thought his analysis of the previous six election results in the UK would provide answers to a series of questions about the 2015 election. Twenty-eight years ago in 1987 Margaret Thatcher won a third election because she had the form and the agenda. Five years later Thatcher was gone but Britain said Labour was not yet fit for government under Neil Kinnock. In 1997 Britain finally thought “New Labour” (a slogan Campbell had significant investment in) meant something and gave them a landslide. That margin was enough to win again in 2001 but by 2005 Tony Blair was on the nose after Iraq. Like Thatcher he just did enough to win a third victory and like Thatcher, his biggest problem was on his own side.

By 2010, Blair was gone and it was Gordon Brown against David Cameron. Was Britain ready for change and was Cameron the answer? Campbell said the answers were “yes, and we are not sure.”  The political gravity shifted to somewhere between the Tories and the LibDems and the Coalition was born.

Campbell said the questions in 2015 were was Britain on the mend and were Cameron and Osborne trusted with the keys? Also, could Cameron keep the country together? Campbell said the Scottish referendum result was too close for comfort and Cameron was now playing off English nationalism against Scottish, with disastrous consequences.

“Ed Miliband, if he does become Prime Minister, will do so having shown he can make and win difficult arguments and do so in the face of a wave of powerful vested interests who have thrown all the money and the lies they can muster,” Campbell said. Campbell was right about the powerful vested interests and there will certainly be plenty of smiles in Wapping from newspaper owners, who still pack a punch despite the decline of their product.

But that was as good as it got. The rest of Campbell’s interpretation of history proved badly miscued. Labour made no inroads on the government, were smashed in Scotland and the Lib Dems collapse handed a thorough victory to the Conservative Party. When the message the electorate sent was they wanted the Tories with something to spare, Campbell was suitably chastened.

“Sometimes, when advising people I work with, I will say beware the dangers of being so deep inside your own team’s bubble that you end up believing your own propaganda and lose sight of what is really happening,” he said. Campbell blamed the process for picking Miliband saying Cameron had clear air after the last election while Labour dithered over its complicated ballot. Yet Campbell is saying Labour should take even longer time to have that “debate” this time round. “After a result as awful as this, there has to be real deep soul-searching, and honest analysis about how and we have gone from being a Party identified as the dominant force across UK politics over a decade and more, to where we are today.” Campbell didn’t really say what the party stood for “today” other than being “the dominant force.” That loss of identity is Labour’s biggest problem.

Right wing libertarian Brendan O’Neill says Labour had been captured by a “largely London-based opinion-forming set” which insulated it from the “incomprehensible” lives and aspirations of those in the real world. O’Neill’s contrarianism must be taken with a pinch of salt but in Campbell’s world of dominant forces, one man now stands supreme: David Cameron, unshackled from the Lib Dem coalition.

Cameron’s key item of business will be negotiating his major election promise, the tricky EU Referendum. Even here he is in the box seat, and can tell the EU he will walk away unless he gets significant concession he can sell to his electorate. He knows Germany wants Britain to stay in the Union and he will extract every euro cent from that advantage. But Cameron will have to take the matter to the electorate and from that point on, cannot control the result.

Predicting results of voter intentions in the UK is fraught, as this election proved. But smart money would be on a similar result to Scottish independence a roughly 55 to 45 split in favour of those wanting to stay in Europe. Opinion polling supports this outcome too. The position of the newspapers will be important, particularly those inclined to be Euro-sceptic. But Scotland itself will be the wildcard, especially as the vast majority there want to stay in the EU as Scottish citizens.

Alastair Campbell is right about the electorate knowing what they are doing: they chose the Conservatives because they offered the most certainty. The problem is there are many factors outside the control of the prime minister and the voters. Cameron has tighter control of the reins of power but whether he can hold the horses and keep them running in the one direction remains to be seen.

The Redmonds in Australia 1883 Part 1: Adelaide

Irish brothers and Westminster MPs John and Willie Redmond.

After the colonial destruction of Aboriginal Australia in the second half of the 19^th century, there was a strong push to turn the colonies into a Southern Britain with pro-Empire jingoism passionately upheld by the colonial press. Perceived enemies were everywhere, and the numerous Irish were especially considered a nest of treasonous vipers. When a deranged Irishman attempted to kill Prince Alfred in the Sydney suburb of Clontarf in 1868, prominent politician Henry Parkes sought to turn the affair into a Fenian plot.

Sectarian tensions and distrust of the Irish was still simmering 15 years later when Empire attitudes and Irish politics collided again. In 1883 two Irish brothers arrived in Australia looking for publicity and money for Irish “home rule”. Home rule, or a parliament distinct from London was something the five eastern Australian colonies had since the 1860s, but Westminster and its Australian supporters were disinclined to offer the same privilege to Ireland. While the visitors sought to change attitudes in Australia, arguably Australia had a bigger effect on them: the brothers both married into the prominent Irish-Australian Dalton family, cementing bonds that lasted a lifetime.

The brothers were John and William Redmond, from a wealthy Wexford Hiberno-Norman Catholic family. Elder brother John eventually became the most powerful Irish politician in London in the early 20^th century urging his people to enlist in the First World War in the cause of Home Rule. The 1916 rebellion in Dublin destroyed that hope and Redmond died a broken man in 1918. Younger brother Willie followed John into parliament and the First World War ended his life more directly. He enlisted and died at Messines Ridge in June 1917, the only Westminster MP to be killed in action in the war.

The Redmonds had a distinguished history in Irish and British affairs. John Redmond followed father William Archer Redmond into Westminster after his father died in 1880 taking the seat of New Ross (later moving to Waterford). William Archer was aligned with Isaac Butt’s moderate Home Rule Party and son John was an early ally of the charismatic Charles Stewart Parnell who combined home rule and land rights into one powerful argument.

In 1882 Parnell established the Irish National League superseding the National Land League, a tenants’ rights organisation suppressed by the British. The Irish National League agitated for land reform but had a wider aim of national self-government. Parnell wanted the support of the Irish Diaspora and Redmond was given the job of explaining the new organisation to the world.

While Parnell sought a parliamentary solution, more radical Fenians wanted a clean break from Britain. In 1882 Fenians assassinated the two top British administrators in Ireland in the Phoenix Park murders. The Land League was not connected to the crime but plenty were happy to accuse. The Redmonds arrived in Australia as the country was scandalised by the murders which Australia saw as proof Ireland could not be trusted.

John Redmond was a gifted orator and pacifist (until changing his mind in the First World War) who was appalled by the Phoenix Park murders. He was an ideal choice as ambassador for an Irish propaganda mission to Australia and America, raising funds and awareness for the Irish cause. Younger brother Willie was far less cautious and had a reputation for fiery speeches. John’s decision to take him had ramifications as Willie suffered ill health in Naples delaying the trip. More importantly Willie had a warrant for his arrest in Ireland for a speech he made in Cork deemed seditious by British authorities. Willie became a stick for Australian newspapers to beat his elder brother.

The Redmonds arrived in Adelaide on February 5, 1883, greeted by a thousand Irish well-wishers, Irish flags and a brass band playing “national airs”. Redmond held a meeting in Adelaide Town Hall attended by MPs and the Catholic bishop. He made a 90-minute speech criticising British rule in Ireland and outlined the Irish National League’s agenda. Willie made a shorter but more fiery speech saying reform could only be won from the British by “fierce and threatened agitation”.

The Australian press were already suspicious of the Redmonds but these speeches incensed them. Their attitude was not helped by news from Ireland implicating the Land League in the 1882 Phoenix Park murders of two senior British diplomats in Dublin. On the day the Redmonds left Adelaide, Englishman Edward Riley hosted an “Anti-Land League lecture” which described the Redmonds as trouble-makers. Sydney’s Evening News described the Redmonds as “men of the firebrand order, public agitators and disturbers of the public peace while their speeches were “violent, seditious, disloyal and inflammatory”.

New South Wales also brought the Redmonds into contact with the Dalton family, which had major personal ramifications and that is the subject of Part 2 of this story.