Agitator and MP
From 1883–1885 O'Brien was elected MP for Mallow. Following the abolition of that constituency he represented Tyrone South from 1885 to 1886, North East Cork from 1887–1892, and Cork City from 1892–1895 and from 1901–1918, in the House of Commons. There were three periods of absence: 1886-7, from 1895–1900, and eight months in 1904. Amid the turmoil of Irish politics in the late 19th century he was frequently arrested and imprisoned for his support for various Land League protests.
In 1887 O'Brien helped to organise a rent strike during the Plan of Campaign at the estate of Lady Kingston near Mitchelstown, County Cork. On 9 September, after an 8,000-strong demonstration led by John Dillon MP, three estate tenants were shot dead, and others wounded, by police at the town's courthouse where O'Brien had been brought for trial on charges of incitement under a new Coercion Act. This event became known as the Mitchelstown Massacre. Later that year, thousands of demonstrators marched in London to demand his release from prison, and clashed with police at Trafalgar Square on Bloody Sunday (13 November).
Even in prison, O'Brien continued his protests, refusing to wear prison uniform in 1887. Being left without cloths, a Blarney tweed suit was smuggled in. He occasionally wore this much publicised suit in the Commons when confronting his incarcerator, Arthur Balfour. His imprisonment also inspired protests – notably the 1887 'Bloody Sunday' riots in London. In 1889 he escaped from a courtroom but was sentenced in absentia for conspiracy. He fled to America accompanied by Dillon who was on bail, then to France where both held negotiations with Parnell at Boulogne-sur-Mer over the leadership of the party. When these broke down, both returned to Folkestone giving themselves up, subsequently serving four months in Clonmel and Galway gaols. Here O'Brien began to reconsider his political future, using the time to write an acclaimed novel, a Fenian romance with a land reform theme set in 1860: When We Were Boys, which was published in 1890.
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