An Introduction to Bernard Shaw's "Mr. Bernard Shaw, Special Interview"

On 3 October 1910, the day when Bernard Shaw delivered his first public lecture in Dublin, an interview with Shaw was published in The Freeman's Journal, titled "mr. bernard shaw, special interview."¹ The interview, under the title of "Mr. Bernard Shaw in Dublin," was also published on the same day in Dublin's Evening Telegraph.² Since the interview appeared in the two papers, it is certain that it was a self-interview provided by Shaw. While Dan Laurence mentions the interview in Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography, he and David Greene included only a brief excerpt from it in the second edition of The Matter with Ireland, which they titled "My Motto Is Ireland for All." The interview/article was publicity for the lecture Shaw delivered that evening, "Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland."³ While the lecture was through an invitation from the Irish Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law, it was part of Beatrice and Sidney Webb's, and Shaw's, crusade against destitution, stemming from Beatrice Webb's 1909 Minority Report in response to the majority recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law and to William Mick's "Report of the Vice-Regal Commission into Poor Law Reform in Ireland." Shaw's speech would prove to be highly influential among Dublin trade unionists, such as James Larkin and William O'Brien, and among socialists like Hannah and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and—most importantly—the newly returned from America, James Connolly.⁴ By 1910, Shaw had been well covered in Dublin papers for at least a decade, with his plays being regularly performed in Ireland beginning in 1907.⁵ Yet his 1910 lecture was Shaw's first announced public appearance in Dublin.⁶

Shaw's "Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland" was delivered near the end of a six-week visit to Ireland by Shaw and partner Charlotte, which was spent mostly outside of Dublin and well away from Dublin leader writers. Shaw's "special interview" begins with a quick portrait of a busy but elusive dramatist: "when 'Blanco Posnet' was produced here last year, and when all the interviewers were on his track, he avoided Dublin rather than submit to their interrogations."⁷ The interview curiously touches on various "subjects of topical interest." The first being the Osborne Judgement of 1909.⁸

In late 1909, the House of Lords ruled that it was illegal for trade unions to collect funds from members to be used to finance political parties, in this case the Labour Party. Specifically, the ruling came about when a branch secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS), Walter Osbourne, brought the case forward. He objected to the ASRS funding the Labour Party, which stemmed from Osbourne's staunch support of the Liberal Party and his suspicion that Labour harbored socialism. Labour was requiring its MPs to commit support to organized labor.⁹ The self-interview asked Shaw if the Labour Party would succeed in reversing the judgment. "No; the Labour Party cannot get it reversed. How can they? It is the judgement of the ultimate tribunal." Shaw then suggested Labour's only course of action: "What they can do is to work for a new Act, making it legal for Trade Unions to maintain Labour members in Parliament."¹⁰ In three years, Shaw was proven prophetic as the Osborne Judgement was reversed through Parliament's Trade Union Act 1913.¹¹

In the interest of expanding his views on the Osborne moment, Shaw provided a lengthy explanation stemming from the Liberal Unionist Austen Chamberlain's objections to trade unions funding the Labour Party by exposing the hypocrisy of Chamberlain's objections: "Chamberlain might have added that a subscriber to the funds of the [Liberal] Unionist Party who happens to be a Free Trader is in the same disagreeable position." Shaw further, and again prophetically, declared: "And this, if you please, is the moment our anti-Labour politicians settle the question forcibly in favour of Syndicalism by making it illegal for [Trade] Unions to spend their funds...