Arthur Clery

Arthur Edward Clery (1879 – 20 November 1932) was an Irish republican politician and university professor.^[1]

Early life and education

His father, Art Ua Cléirigh, was a barrister practising in India who published books on early Irish history. Politically, Art was an associate of Isaac Butt. This branch of the Ó Cléirigh family had originally settled in Kilmallock from Tír Conaill in the aftermath of the Battle of Kinsale. Clery was brought up to a considerable extent by a relative, Charles Dawson. A cousin, William Dawson (who used the pen-name "Avis"), became his closest friend and associate. Clery was educated at the Catholic University School on Leeson Street (where he acquired the confirmation name "Chanel" in honour of the Marist martyr Peter Chanel, which he often used as a pseudonym), at Clongowes Wood College, and University College in Stephen's Green. He was a university contemporary of James Joyce.

Professional life

Clery's principal themes included the difficulties of Roman Catholic graduates seeking professional employment, dramatic criticism (he hailed Lady Gregory's play Kincora as the Abbey Theatre's first masterpiece but was repulsed by the works of Synge), Catholic-Protestant rivalry, tension within the Dublin professional class, and the vagaries of the Gaelic revival movement (including Clery's own attempts to learn Irish in Ballingeary, and such questions as whether a true Gael should play tennis).

Clery advocated partition on the basis of a two-nation theory, first advanced in 1904–05 (possibly in response to William O'Brien's advocacy of securing Home Rule through compromise with moderate Unionists). Several of his articles on the subject were reprinted in his 1907 essay collection, The Idea of a Nation.

Clery derived this unusual view for a nationalist from several motives, including a belief that arguments for Irish nationalists' right to self-determination could be used to justify Ulster Unionists' right to secede from Ireland, fear that it might be impossible to obtain Home Rule unless Ulster were excluded, and distaste for both Ulster Protestants and Ulster Catholics, whom he saw as deplorably anglicised. He remained a partitionist for the rest of his life. Clery was not particularly successful as a barrister, but on the establishment of University College Dublin (UCD) in 1909 he was appointed to the part-time post of Professor of the Law of Property.

After 1914 he moved from unenthusiastic support for John Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party to separatism. Before the 1916 Easter Rising he was an inactive member of the Irish Volunteers, and was defence counsel at the court-martial of Eoin MacNeill. During the 1918 general election he campaigned for Sinn Féin. As one of the few barristers prepared to assist the Sinn Féin Court system he was appointed to the Dáil Supreme Court.

Clery opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty because he believed it would lead to re-Anglicisation and the eventual return of the Union. He was elected to Dáil Éireann as an abstentionist independent Teachta Dála (TD) for the National University of Ireland constituency at the June 1927 general election.^[2]

He did not take his seat and he did not contest the September 1927 general election since new legislation obliged candidates to pledge in advance that they would take their seat.^[1] Clery spent his last years in solitude, having never married. He was one of the lawyers who advised Éamon de Valera that the Irish Free State was not legally obliged to pay the Land Annuities which had been agreed in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922.

Personal life

Clery was a close friend of Tom Kettle (who died serving on active duty in Europe during World War I), with whom he founded a dining club, the "Cui Bono". Hugh Kennedy (later Chief Justice of the Irish Free State) was also a lifelong friend. The principal influence on Clery was the Irish Ireland editor D. P. Moran, to whose weekly paper, The Leader Clery became a frequent contributor. (Clery also wrote as "Chanel" for the University College paper at St. Stephen's, and as "Arthur Synan" for the New Ireland Review.)

Death

Clery died, unmarried, in November 1932 from pneumonia contracted at a public meeting. In addition to The Idea of a Nation, Clery published Dublin Essays (1920) and (as Arthur Synan) The Shadows of the King, a historical novel modeled on Thackeray's Esmonde.

References

Sources

• Arthur Clery, The Idea of a Nation (UCD Press edition, 2002; edited by Patrick Maume)
• Patrick Maume, "Nationalism and partition: the political thought of Arthur Clery", Irish Historical Studies November 1998, pp. 222–240