Thomas Power O’Connor (1848-1929)

Debating and politics have never been all that dissimilar, and the path from university debating societies into the political world is a well-trodden one. For the Lit & Deb, this appears to have been the case particularly in the mid- and late l9th century, when graduates of Queen's College Galway were to the fore of Irish politics, giving rise to Lord Justice Rentoul's famous comment: "I have seen seven Galway students waiting at the same moment in the House of Commons to catch the Speaker's eye. I referred to this fact when I rose to speak, and I said no other British college had so many men in the House at that time."

If success in politics can be judged by the length of a political career, then surely the most successful of the Galway graduates in the Commons at the time was Thomas Power O'Connor, who was first elected as an MP for the borough of Galway in 1880, moved to represent the Scotland ward of Liverpool at the next election in 1885, and held his seat in the House of Commons continuously until his death in 1929. His unbroken 49 years as an M.P. earned for him the title of 'father of the house', and it is a testament to the regard in which he was held by his constituents that a man elected as an Irish Nationalist in Liverpool in the days of Parnell retained his seat up until the end of the 1920's.

O'Connor was born in Athlone on 5^th October 1848. After studying at the College of the Immaculate Conception in Athlone, he entered QCG, receiving his BA degree at the age of only eighteen. An MA followed, and he was the college's Senior Scholar in History and Modern Languages. After leaving Galway, he moved into the world of journalism, and emigrated to London in 1870, where he became subeditor with the Daily Telegraph and later London correspondent for the New York Herald. He became famous for his biography of the then Conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, a Life of Lord Beaconsfield, which was first Published in 1876.

Elected to parliament for both Galway and Liverpool in 1885, he chose to take the Liverpool seat. Members of Parliament in the 1880's were not paid a salary, and O'Connor made ends meet by writing a

nightly sketch of the proceedings in parliament for the Pall Mall Gazelle. In later years, he founded and was the first editor of the daily newspapers The Star and The Sun, and a weekly journal known as T P. 's Weekly.

In 1917, he became the first President of the British Board of Film Censors, and was made a member of the Privy Council by the first British Labour government in 1924. He had the eminent distinction of being among the last members of the House of Commons to take snuff. and was presented with a Georgian gold snuff-box by his fellow MP's on his seventy-fifth birthday; his eightieth birthday drew the 'heartiest congratulations' of King George V. O'Connor died on 18 November 1929, and a portrait of him by Sir John Lavery hangs in the National Gallery in Dublin.

Mark Hanniffy (3rd Science)

Vice-Auditor

References:

Dictionary of National Biography, 1922-1930.

Who Was Who, 1929-1940.

Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, T.P. O’Connor, pub. Ernest Benn Ltd., 1929.