Ireland
Key to Cowen's success in the elections was the support he found from the Tyneside Irish community. By the late-1860s/early-1870s, the British Liberal party was evolving and appealed to the Irish constitutionalists. When Cowen was first elected, in 1874, European agricultural prices dropped, leaving many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents. The Irish Land League was founded in 1879 - the same year that famine struck. The Land League, of which Cowen was an executive18, sought to abolish landlordism in Ireland and to help poor tenant farmers become the owners of the land they worked on. Cowen sympathised with Irish nationalism and supported calls for Home Rule. (Gladstone also championed Home Rule but it was a divisive issue within the Liberal party and the proposal to repeal the Act of Union, by which Irish M.P.s sat in London, in favour of the creation of an Irish parliament, failed to win widespread endorsement.) Furthermore, Irish issues were given considerable coverage in Cowen's Newcastle Daily Chronicle. Cowen's radical agenda and those of the Irish nationalists were closely aligned.
George Otto Trevelyan served as Chief Secretary for Ireland from May 1882 until October 1884, following the brutal 'Phoenix park murders' of Lord Frederick Cavendish and T.H. Burke who had been hacked to death by the 'Invincibles'. Trevelyan enforced a new Crimes Act but the maintenance of law and order remained challenging. The Manuscript Album contains a letter which is thought to have been written by Joseph Cowen to George Otto Trevelyan (it is written on House of Commons paper but is unsigned, undated and the recipient is identified only as “Trevelyan”). The letter refers to a “night search for arms and documents” and possibly relates to Ireland:
The L.L. - had come to the conclusion that a ... [?] to search for arms and documents - at night was unnecessary … [?] would, in the … [?] for arms, documents and so forth, and would in the … [?] … [?] to search at night for the purpose of discovering an … [?] where there was … [?] existed.
The Northern Echo carried this tribute upon Cowen's death:
The death of Mr COWEN is an event which deprives this country of a vigorous mind and intellectual influence, always exerted according to conviction, and of a philanthropist many of whose public-spirited sacrifices for the good of his race are more than half-forgotten.
Northern Echo, 20 February 1900.
