William Martin Murphy (1844-1919) was an
IrishIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
nationalistIrish nationalism comprises political and social movements and sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and a sense of pride in Ireland and the Irish people...
journalist, businessman and politician, being
MPA Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a parliament. In many countries the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique title, such as senate, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators. Members of...
in the
House of CommonsThe House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 646 members, who are known as "Members...
of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and IrelandThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927...
and a member of the
Irish Parliamentary PartyThe Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...
representing Dublin from 1885 to 1892. He was dubbed 'William Murder Murphy' among Dublin workers and the press due to the Dublin Lockout of 1913. He was arguably both Ireland's first "press baron" and the leading promoter of tram development.
Murphy was born on 21 November 1844 in
BantryBantry is a town on the coast of County Cork, Ireland, located on the N71 route at the head of Bantry Bay. The Beara peninsula is to the northwest, with Sheep's Head also nearby, on the peninsula south of Bantry Bay....
,
County CorkCounty Cork is one of the traditional counties of Ireland. It is located within the province of Munster, and was named after the city of Cork...
, and educated at
Belvedere CollegeBelvedere College SJ is a private secondary school for boys located on Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Ireland. It is also known as St. Francis Xavier's CollegeBelvedere was founded in 1832...
.
When his father, a building contractor, died, he took over the family business.
William Martin Murphy (1844-1919) was an
IrishIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
nationalistIrish nationalism comprises political and social movements and sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and a sense of pride in Ireland and the Irish people...
journalist, businessman and politician, being
MPA Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a parliament. In many countries the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique title, such as senate, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators. Members of...
in the
House of CommonsThe House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 646 members, who are known as "Members...
of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and IrelandThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927...
and a member of the
Irish Parliamentary PartyThe Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...
representing Dublin from 1885 to 1892. He was dubbed 'William Murder Murphy' among Dublin workers and the press due to the Dublin Lockout of 1913. He was arguably both Ireland's first "press baron" and the leading promoter of tram development.
Life
Murphy was born on 21 November 1844 in
BantryBantry is a town on the coast of County Cork, Ireland, located on the N71 route at the head of Bantry Bay. The Beara peninsula is to the northwest, with Sheep's Head also nearby, on the peninsula south of Bantry Bay....
,
County CorkCounty Cork is one of the traditional counties of Ireland. It is located within the province of Munster, and was named after the city of Cork...
, and educated at
Belvedere CollegeBelvedere College SJ is a private secondary school for boys located on Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Ireland. It is also known as St. Francis Xavier's CollegeBelvedere was founded in 1832...
.
When his father, a building contractor, died, he took over the family business. His enterprise and business acumen expanded the business, and he built churches, schools and bridges throughout Ireland, as well as railways and tramways in Britain and Africa.
He was elected Irish Parliamentary Party MP for St Patrick's, Dublin, in 1885. He was a member of the informal grouping, the "Bantry band" - a group of politicians who hailed from the Bantry Bay area. The Bantry Band was also disparagingly dubbed the "
Pope'sThe pope is the Bishop of Rome and, as such, is leader of the worldwide Catholic Church...
brass band". Its most famous member was
Tim HealyTimothy Michael Healy, KC , also known as Tim Healy, was an Irish nationalist politician, journalist, author, barrister and one of the most controversial Irish MPs in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a career that spanned the period from Charles Stewart...
MP and included Timothy Harrington MP, sometime Lord Mayor of Dublin City - however, Harrington (unlike Healy and Murphy) was a Parnellite in the 1890s. (Tim Harrington MP was not the same individual as TR Harrington, who edited the Irish Independent from 1905-31, though they both came from the Bantry/Schull area in West Cork.)
When the Irish Parliamentary Party split in 1890 over
Charles Stewart ParnellCharles Stewart Parnell was an Irish Protestant landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, Home Rule MP in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
's leadership, Murphy sided with the majority
Anti-ParnellitesThe Irish National Federation was a nationalist political party in Ireland. It was founded in March 1891 by former members of the Irish National League who had left the Irish Parliamentary Party in protest when Charles Stewart Parnell refused to resign the party leadership as a result of his...
. However, Dublin emerged as a Parnellite stronghold and in the bitter general election of 1892, Murphy lost his seat by over three to one to a Parnellite newcomer,
William FieldWilliam Field was an Irish nationalist politician and MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party represented Dublin St Patrick's from 1892 to 1918. His father was a supporter of Young Ireland. Born at Blackrock, Co...
.
Murphy was the principal financial backer of the "Healyite" newspapers the National Press and the Daily Nation. His support for Healy attracted the hostility of the majority anti-Parnellite faction led by John Dillon. He made two attempts to return to Parliament, at
Kerry SouthCounty Kerry is one of the traditional counties of Ireland. It is located within the province of Munster. Kerry is the fifth largest of Ireland’s 32 counties in area and 14th largest in terms of population...
in 1895 and
Mayo NorthCounty Mayo is one of the traditional counties of Ireland and is located within the province of Connacht. It was named after the village of Mayo . Mayo is the secondlargest of Ireland’s 32 counties in area and 15th largest in terms of population...
in 1900, but both were unsuccessful because of Dillonite opposition.
In 1900, he bought the insolvent Irish Daily Independent from the Parnellites, merging it with the Daily Nation. In 1900 he re-launched this as a cheap mass-circulation newspaper, which rapidly displaced the Freeman's Journal as Ireland's most popular nationalist paper. In 1906, he founded the
Sunday IndependentThe Sunday Independent is a broadsheet Sunday newspaper published in Ireland by Independent News and Media plc. The newspaper is edited by Aengus Fanning, and is the biggest selling Irish Sunday newspaper by a large margin ; average circulation of 291,323 between June 2004 and January 2005,...
newspaper.
He refused a knighthood from King Edward VII in 1907 after organising a controversial International Exhibition in
Herbert ParkHerbert Park is the name of a road and a public park in Ballsbridge, Dublin.-History:The land used for the park was given to the city by the Earl of Pembroke whose family name was Herbert. In 1907, the World Fair known as the Irish International Exhibition was held in Ballsbridge...
, Dublin (it was opposed by many nationalists because it was cosmopolitan and encouraged the purchase of imported goods). In fact, the King Edward VII was in the process of knighting Murphy when he refused. Murphy appears to have been motivated by pride; he did not wish to have it said that he had angled for a title and compromised his nationalist principles.
Murphy was highly critical of the Irish Parliamentary Party; from 1914 he used the Irish Independent to oppose the partition of Ireland and advocate Dominion Home Rule involving full fiscal autonomy (which the 1914 Home Rule Act would not have granted).
Worried that the trade unions would destroy his
Dublin tram system Dublin tramways was a system of trams in Dublin, Ireland which commenced line-laying in 1871, and began service in 1872, following trials in the mid-1860s....
, he led Dublin employers against the trade unions led by
James LarkinJames Larkin , an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist, was born to Irish parents in Liverpool, England in 1875. He and his family later moved to a small cottage in Burren, southern County Down. Growing up in poverty, he received little formal education and began working in a variety of...
, an opposition that culminated in the Dublin Lockout of 1913. This made him extremely unpopular with many, being depicted as a vulture or a vampire in the workers' press.
After the 1916
Easter RisingThe Easter Rising , was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic...
he bought ruined buildings in
Abbey StreetAbbey Street is located on Dublin's Northside and is one of the principal shopping streets of Dublin, running from the Customs House in the east to Capel Street in the west...
as sites for his newspaper offices, however it was his viewpoints (expressed through his Irish Independent) that made him even more unpopular, by calling for the executions of Sean MacDiarmada and
James ConnollyJames Connolly was an Irish socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but despite this he would become one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. Though proud of his Irish background...
at a point when the Irish public began to feel sympathy for their cause. Murphy privately disavowed the editorial, claiming it had been written and published without his knowledge.
He was invited in 1917 to take part in talks during the
Irish ConventionThe Irish Convention was an assembly which sat in Ireland from July 1917 until March 1918 to address the Irish Question and other constitutional problems relating to an early enactment of self-government for Ireland, to debate its wider future, discuss and come to an understanding on ...
which was called to agree terms for the implementation of the suspended 1914
Home Rule ActThe Home Rule Act of 1914, also known as the Third Home Rule Bill, and formally known as the Government of Ireland Act 1914 The Home Rule Act of 1914, also known as the (Irish) Third Home Rule Bill, and formally known as the Government of Ireland Act 1914 The Home Rule Act of 1914, also known as...
. However he discovered that
John RedmondJohn Edward Redmond M.P. was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
was negotiating the temporary
exclusionThe partition of Ireland between the north-eastern six counties and the rest of Ireland took place on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The entire island of Ireland provisionally became the Irish Free State on 6 December 1922...
of
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. This infuriated Murphy who criticized the intention in his
newspaperThe Irish Independent is Ireland's largest selling daily newspaper that is published in both compact and broadsheet formats . It is a core publication of Independent News and Media.-History:...
, which severely damaged the Irish Parliamentary Party. However, the Convention remained inconclusive, and the ensuing demise of the Irish party resulted in the rise of
Sinn FéinSinn Féin is a political party in Ireland. The current party, led by Gerry Adams, was formed following a split in January 1970 and traces its origins back to the original Sinn Féin party formed in 1905. It is a major party of Irish republicanism and its political ideology is left wing...
, whose separatist policies Murphy also did not agree with.
Murphy died in 1919. His family controlled Independent Newspapers until the early 1970s, when the group was sold to
Tony O'ReillySir Anthony Joseph Francis O'Reilly, AO, is an Irish businessman and former international rugby union player. He is known for his dominance of the Independent News & Media Group, which he led from 1973 to 2009, and as former CEO and Chairman of the H.J. Heinz Company. He was the leading...
.