Bulmer Hobson

John Bulmer Hobson (1883 - 1969) was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) before the Easter Rising in 1916. [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7] Though he was a member of the organisation that planned the Rising, he was opposed to it being carried out, and attempted to prevent it.

Early life

Bulmer Hobson was born in Holywood, County Down Ireland in 1883. [Charles Townshend, pg.19, D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7] He had a "fairly strict" Quaker upbringing according to Charles Townshend, possibly intensified by being sent to a Friends' boarding school in Lisburn. Hobson later resigned on principle from the Quakers soon after the 1914 Howth gunrunning, as they forbid the use of violence.

Bulmer’s father was from Monasterevin in Co. Kildare and said to be a Gladstonian Home Ruler in politics, while his mother was English-born and a radical. In 1911 she was reported on a suffragist procession in London and was long involved in Belfast cultural activities. She gave a lecture, entitled 'Some Ulster Souterrains' as the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club’s representative in 1901 at the British Association’s annual meeting in Leicester. With the poet Alice Milligan, she organised the Irishwomen’s Association whose home reading circle met in the Hobsons' house.

Hobson began at thirteen to subscribe to a nationalist journal, "Shan Van Vocht". The journal belonged to Alice Milligan. [Charles Townshend, pg.19] Soon after he joined the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association. [ Martin, p. 98] He was sworn into the IRB in 1904 by Denis McCullough, their head in Belfast. [ Martin, p.99]

In Belfast, along with McCullough, Hobson founded the Dungannon Clubs. The object of the club's title was to celebrate the victory of Volunteers of 1782 in restoring to Ireland her own Parliament. [T. A. Jackson, pg, 105-13] The Volunteers of 1782 were an armed militia whose success, they suggested, could offer instructive lessons. [Charles Townshend, pg.18] The first Dungannon Club manifesto read: “The Ireland we seek to build is not an Ireland for the Catholic or the Protestant, but an Ireland for every Irishman [sic] Irrespective of his creed or class." [Charles Townshend, pg.18] Hobson was one of the founding members of the Irish Volunteers, and served as their secretary before the Rising. Earlier in August 1909 he had, with Constance Markiewicz, founded Na Fianna Éireann as a republican scouting movement. [ Martin, p.101] He also put together the plan to bring sufficient Volunteers and their supporters, discreetly to Howth on Sunday 26 July 1914 to unload and distribute the arms being landed from the "Asgard". This became known as the Howth gunrunning.

Easter Rising

Hobson became a close friend of veteran Fenian Tom Clarke, with whom he had a very close relationship until 1914. [Martin p. 101] Under the direction of Denis McCullough, Hobson became one of the key figures in the ongoing revitalization of the IRB in Ulster, along with Sean MacDermott, Pat McCartan and Ernest Blythe. [Martin p. 98] He was elevated to the Supreme Council in 1911, which coincided with the resignations of P.T. Daly, Fred Allen and Sean O'Hanlon, which opened the way for Tom Clarke and the younger men to take control of the IRB. [ Martin, p 102] In November 1913 he was one of the founding organizers of the Irish Volunteers, remaining a primary connection between the Volunteers and the IRB. As a member of the Volunteers provisional council, Hobson was instrumental in allowing Parliamentary leader John Redmond to gain control of the Volunteers organisation. [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7] He reluctantly gave in to Home Rulers' demands for control, believing that defying Redmond, who was popular with most rank-and-file Volunteers, would cause a split and would lead to the demise of the Volunteers. [ Kee, "The Bold Fenian Men", p. 205] Clarke, steadfastly opposed to this action, never forgave him or spoke to him informally again. Hobson resigned as a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, and was fired from his job as Dublin correspondent for the newspaper the "Gaelic American". [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7]

Though he remained a member of the IRB, like Eoin MacNeill he was unaware of the plans for the Rising. [O'Hegarty, pg.697-8] Though he could detect underground preparations, he had no certain evidence. [ Martin, p 106] He would later be told by Volunteers officers J. J. O'Connell and Éimer Duffy that the Volunteers had received orders for the Rising, timed for Easter Sunday, and he subsequently alerted Volunteers chief-of-staff Eoin MacNeill about what the IRB had planned. [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7, Tim Pat Coogan, pg. 81] MacNeill issued a countermanding order, which meant that most Volunteers did not take part. Hobson was kidnapped by the organisers of the rising to stop him from spreading news of MacNeill's order, and was held in a safehouse in Phibsboro until the Rising was well underway. [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7]

Although MacNeill was later to serve in the government of the Irish Free State, Hobson was confined to a role in the Department of Post and Telegraphs after independence. [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7] Though he had been one of the most active members of the IRB for years, and was instrumental in the founding of the Volunteers, Hobson took no major role in politics (though he was later an occasional adviser to Clann na Poblachta) after the Rising, or the subsequent Anglo-Irish War. [D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty pg. 206-7]

Later Years

Following a heart attack during the 1960s, Bulmer Hobson lived with his daughter in the village of Castleconnell, Co Limerick. There he finished his definitive account of his life in the movement for Irish freedom, "Ireland Yesterday And Tomorrow" (Anvil Books, Ireland, 1968).

References

ources

* "Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin, 1916", F.X. Martin (ed.), Methuen, 1967.
* "A new Dictionary of Irish History from 1800", D. J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty, Gill & Macmillian, 2003, ISBN 0 7171 2520 3
* "Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion", Charles Townshend, Penguin Books, 2005, ISBN-13: 978 0 141 01216 2
* "1916: The Easter Rising", Tim Pat Coogan, Phoenix, 2001, ISBN 0 75381 852 3
* "The Green Flag Vol. II: The Bold Fenian Men", Robert Kee, Penguin Books, 1972
* "Ireland Her Own", T. A. Jackson, Lawrence & Wishart, Fp 1947, Rp 1991, ISBN 0 85315 7359
* "A History of Ireland Under the Union", P. S. O’Hegarty, Methuen & Co. 1952
* "Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a Study of his Background, Sexuality and Irish Political Life", Jeffrey Dudgeon, Belfast Press 2002