John O’Connor Power, Charles Stewart Parnell and the centralisation of popular politics in Ireland

In historical treatment, as was the case in life, John O’Connor Power has been overshadowed by Charles Stewart Parnell, his political nemesis who campaigned successfully to destroy Power’s influence. However during the decade 1874–84, Power was the most enigmatic, controversial and divisive figure in Irish politics. His fellow parliamentarian T P. O’Connor called him ‘one of the few [Irish M.P.s] who stood out from the ruck of Irish placehunters’, whose ‘profound knowledge, his temper ..his profound contempt for ignorance and, as he thought, at the same time the insanity of Parnell made him a source of division’ O’Connor described him as having ‘a powerful but very ugly face, the ugliness accentuated by the marks of a severe attack in childhood of smallpox’ Tim Healy remembered him as ‘reeking of the common clay’ and remarked that ‘Parnell’s aristocratic sensitiveness recoiled’ in Power’s presence.