John O'Connor Power - Later Years

Later Years

He registered as a student of the Middle Temple in 1878, four years after his election to Parliament in 1874. He qualified in 1881, and spent his later years as a barrister.

He was a prominent journalist, writing throughout his life for newspapers and periodicals in Ireland, England and North America. He was a regular contributor to the Manchester Guardian and was a leader-writer for the Daily Chronicle and The Speaker. With his friends, Barry O'Brien, Charles Russell and Alfred Perceval Graves, he was an active member of the Irish Literary Society. He lectured on Thomas Moore and Edmund Burke and presided at a dinner, 12 January 1897, to mark the centennial birthday of Edmund Burke. Seventy Nationalists were present.

He expressed a strong interest in the Irish language.

He stood as a Liberal in Kennington (a seat with a substantial Irish electorate) in the 1885 general election, losing to a Conservative candidate; and attempted as a Gladstone Liberal to regain in his old heartland, Mayo West in 1892, losing to an Anti-Parnellite Nationalist. A Radical Liberal, he was an active member of the National Liberal Club and presided over the training of aspirant politicians in practical politics. He continued to lobby British governments for the next thirty years and 'was universally recognised as an able and conscientious worker in all English and Irish reforms ...'

In December 1878 the Quaker Lewis Fry won a seat in Bristol North with the help of the Irish vote. He was backed by the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain and O'Connor Power, who was present at the meeting before the poll at Colston Hall. At short notice, O'Connor Power stood as a Liberal (Radical) candidate for Bristol South in the 1895 general election, but again failed to re-enter Parliament. In the course of the election campaign, he threatened legal action when a Conservative paper accused him of having taken the oath of an illegal organisation. In 1897, he withdrew his candidature for Bristol South because of the attitude of the Liberal party towards Home Rule. As an Irish Nationalist, he would not stand for a Liberal constituency 'while any doubt existed as to the priority of Home Rule in the programme of the Liberal and Radical party.'

O'Connor Power was a guest of honour at John Dillon's table at the Ninety-Eight Celebration in London on St.Patrick's Day, 1898. There were over seven hundred Nationalists present. He and William O'Brien gave the principal toasts:

' no more justifiable insurrection had, in his judgement, taken place in the history of the world than the Irish rebellion of a hundred years ago. A rebel was a patriot who failed - a patriot was a rebel who succeeded, and he thought he did not misinterpret the spirit of that assembly if he said they were ready to toast the men of '98 in either capacity. He should never cease to be grateful to the United Irishmen, not only because they had bequeathed an example of courageous patriotism, but because they had given them one cardinal principle of high policy, and that was the principle of a united Ireland. He trusted that this memorable year would not be allowed to pass away without renewed efforts being made to restore union in the National Union, at present so unhappily divided.'

In June 1916 O'Connor Power forcefully condemned the suspension of Home Rule:

'The suspension of the Home Rule Act was advocated in the name of peace and conciliation, and we know the result. This scheme is supported on the same ground and will be followed as surely by similar disillusion and disappointment. I have read speeches of members of Parliament calling upon the young men of Ireland to go to the front because of the Home Rule Act. The brave young fellows rushed to the recruiting offices in tens of thousands: most of whom now sleep their last sleep in the blood-stained fields of Europe. They did not offer up their lives for a mutilated Ireland but for one united from sea to sea, and they did so with the promise of their leaders that national unity would never be given away. I ask is faith not to be kept with the dead? If so, the infamy of the broken Treaty of Limerick will be outdone by the betrayal of today.'

In September 1893 he married Avis Weiss, née Hooke, the wealthy widow of a surgeon. Bernard C. Molloy, M.P., was best man. Avis trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew's and worked for many years in the West London hospital for the working class. They were married for over two decades and Avis was at his bedside when he died peacefully at home in Putney, London.