J. J. Clancy (MP)

John Joseph Clancy (15 July 1847 – 25 November 1928), usually known as J. J. Clancy, was an Irish nationalist politician and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons for North Dublin from 1885 to 1918. He was one of the leaders of the later Irish Home Rule movement and promoter of the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Act 1908, known as the Clancy Act. Called to the Irish Bar in 1887, he became a King's Counsel in 1906.

Origins

Son of a farmer, William Clancy of Carraghy, J. J. Clancy was born at the height of the Great Irish Famine in the parish of Annaghdown, Co. Galway, which was one of the worst affected areas. He was educated at the College of the Immaculate Conception, Athlone, and at the recently founded non-sectarian Queen's College, Galway, obtaining an MA in Ancient Classics in 1868. At both institutions he was a contemporary of his later parliamentary colleague, T. P. O'Connor.

Clancy spent three years as a Classics teacher at Holy Cross School, Tralee, where he married Margaret Louise Hickie (d. 1912) of Newcastle West, County Limerick, in 1868. She was from a strongly Nationalist family and one of her nephews was the Irish revolutionary and author Piaras Béaslaí, who had close relations with the Clancy family.

Early political life

In 1870, J. J. Clancy took up the post of assistant editor of the leading Nationalist weekly ''The Nation'', acting as editor in 1880–85. During this time he was active in the Land League, Home Rule League, Young Ireland Society and Irish Labour and Industrial Union, and was elected to the Organising Committee of the Irish National League on its foundation in 1882. He organised a vigorous voter registration campaign in County Dublin after the Nationalist defeat at a by-election in 1883, and was elected MP for the North seat in the Nationalist landslide December 1885 general election.

Clancy was appointed by the Irish Party in 1886 as editor of the Irish Press Agency in London, whose purpose was to win support for Irish Home Rule in Great Britain. In this role he wrote or edited dozens of pamphlets, many of them attacking the regime of coercion introduced by Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland after the Conservative Party returned to power in 1886.

Parnell split

Clancy had long been a strong supporter of the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell. When a majority of the Irish Parliamentary Party turned against Parnell in November 1890, following what amounted to a demand by the Liberal leader, Gladstone, that Parnell should stand down over his involvement with Katharine O'Shea, Clancy rapidly emerged as one of Parnell's key defenders. On the third day of the Irish Party's week-long debate on Parnell's leadership in Committee Room 15 of the House of Commons, Clancy proposed an amendment that attempted to compromise by seeking further views from Gladstone and the other British Liberal Party leaders. Although this move held off a decision for another three days, it was ultimately unsuccessful. Clancy was among the minority who stayed with Parnell when the party split on 6 December 1890 into the pro-Parnellite Irish National League (INL) and the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation (INF). He later joined the editorial staff of the ''Irish Daily Independent'', founded to support the Parnellite cause.

After Parnell's death in October 1891, the Parnellites were in an isolated position. At the July 1892 general election they faced vigorous opposition from the Catholic Church and Clancy was one of only nine INL Parnellites elected. Thereafter he worked closely with John Redmond, who led the small Parnellite group and after the 1900 general election the re-united Irish Parliamentary Party. Together with fellow Parnellites Willie Redmond and Pat O'Brien, Clancy was one of the small core of Redmond's confidants, and until Redmond's death in March 1918 was his most trusted adviser on legal draftsmanship and constitutional law. After the retirement of Thomas Sexton, Clancy was seen as the Irish Party's financial expert.

Reforming legislation

Following the overwhelming rejection of the second Irish Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords in 1893 and the Conservatives' return to power in 1895 general election, immediate prospects for Home Rule were abandoned. Over the next 15 years, Clancy focused on making the most of opportunities for reform. He helped in the framing of the various Land Acts, which settled the land question by enabling tenant farmers to buy their holdings, publishing a guide to the Land Act of 1896. He supported the introduction of democratic local government in Ireland following the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 by publishing a guide to the Act and editing the ''County Councils Gazette''. He acted as spokesman for the Irish Party in support of the Trade Disputes Bills of 1904 and 1906 that restored the effective right to strike—which had been undermined by the Taff Vale Case

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