Art O'Brien has been an elusive figure in Irish historiography, featuring on the fringes of scholarship on the Irish revolutionary period, but never taking centre stage. Based on extensive research in both Britain and Ireland, Mary MacDiarmada has drawn from a wealth of archives and personal papers to chart Art O'Brien's life. Naturally, she relies on O'Brien's personal papers, held in the National Library of Ireland, and admits that historians have made great use of them. Thus it is surprising that O'Brien has remained on the margins of historiography on the revolutionary period. MacDiarmada has rectified this oversight and brought O'Brien's contribution to Irish nationalism to the forefront of Irish scholarship.
Born in London in 1872, Art O'Brien qualified as an electrical engineer. Despite his father hailing from County Cork, O'Brien had negligible ties to Ireland until his membership of the Gaelic League in 1900. From here, MacDiarmada has skilfully analysed O'Brien's radicalisation as a militant republican and leader of Irish nationalism in London. Art O'Brien was a member of the most prominent Irish organisations in London, including the aforementioned Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.). The two former provided O'Brien with ‘a strong cultural outlet’, while the two latter organisations pulled O'Brien into militant Irish politics.
O'Brien's initiation into the Irish Volunteers in 1914 drew him into Irish militant activity and he became involved in undercover gun-running to Ireland. His segue from cultural to political activity was not unusual in London-Irish circles and many Gaelic League members joined the Irish Volunteers. These organisations put O'Brien in contact with the most prominent Irish revolutionary leaders of the time, including Patrick Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt and Michael Collins. It is unsurprising then that the Easter Rising and the disproportionate British response galvanised O'Brien into more direct militant action, and in June 1916 he became a member of the I.R.B. MacDiarmada has determined that it is at this point that O'Brien's transformation to a ‘radical militant republican’ was complete.
A particular highlight of the book is MacDiarmada's assessment of O'Brien's close relationship with Michael Collins. Their friendship dated back to 1913 when both were members of the Gaelic League, but the relationship deepened after O'Brien became a member of the I.R.B. Although O'Brien was the London envoy to the Irish Republic, which should have officially put him under the supervision of Dáil Éireann's Department of Foreign Affairs, it was Collins who spearheaded O'Brien's appointment in London; therefore, O'Brien dealt directly with Collins. Their correspondence demonstrates that O'Brien followed an I.R.B. agenda in his role as envoy, managing underground activity and financing gun-running operations in London. The two men shared republican ideals which, as MacDiarmada has pointed out, made O'Brien ‘a Collins man through and through’.
O'Brien was successful in his role as Irish envoy in London. Alongside his underground work for Collins, O'Brien succeeded in crafting a public role. The hunger strike and subsequent death of Terence MacSwiney in Brixton Prison in 1920 launched O'Brien's star and placed him firmly in the centre of Irish nationalism in London. He provided support to MacSwiney's wife (Muriel) and sister (Mary), and he coordinated a propaganda campaign, publicising MacSwiney's condition. The toll of watching MacSwiney deteriorate, and the workload associated with the publicity campaign, took a heavy toll on O'Brien's health and the event impacted deeply upon him.
O'Brien ultimately rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 which damaged his relationship with Collins beyond recognition. His rejection of the Treaty, his imprisonment during the Irish Civil War and his subsequent legal battle for false imprisonment made him deeply unpopular with both the Irish Free State and republicans. MacDiarmada portrays O'Brien as energetic and a perfectionist with a strong work ethic, but he was also temperamental, caustic and possessed ‘a highly inflated sense of his own importance’. His personality did not endear him to many, so his fall from grace after 1921 is unsurprising.
To call this book a biography of Art O'Brien is to do it an injustice: it is in fact an extensive analysis of the Irish independence movement and an examination of the political milieu of the Irish diaspora in Britain in the early decades of the twentieth century. To date, we still do not have a complete history of Irish revolutionary activity in Great Britain and MacDiarmada has gone some way to fill the lacuna. It fits with the emerging historiography of recent years, which has moved away from an Irish-centric approach to the Irish revolutionary period, to examine the period in the international context. MacDiarmada could have extended the scope of the book to engage more fully with O'Brien's position in later years as Irish envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to France and Belgium (1935–8). This, however, is a slight critique of a book which significantly adds to our understanding of Art O'Brien as a leading figure of Irish independence in London and to our knowledge of the Irish revolutionary period in the context of Anglo-Irish affairs.
