WITH A LARGE IRISH constituency, Graham’s views on home rule and land reform shaped his pronouncements prior to entering parliament. His first major statement on Ireland was given at Shettleston on 7 September 1885, where he insisted that its inhabitants:

At his next speech, given on 17 September in Coatbridge, while conceding that Ireland was ‘difficult to touch on, and so kittle when touched’, he believed that the history of Ireland had been ‘a history of oppression, misconception, tyranny, and folly, such as the world has hardly ever seen, and such as may well make us blush for the Anglo-Saxon race.’ If the land question was paramount throughout Britain, in Ireland it had been intensified by the evil of absenteeism, whereby the greater portion of the revenue of the kingdom was spent outside, by a small privileged class. His solution was to abolish what he referred to as ‘the puerile vice-regal system’, to stop treating the population of Ireland as children, but to treat them as we would treat ourselves, to impartially accord them their rights and justice, and to grant them full powers to manage all their internal affairs.

These views no doubt appealed to the Irish home rule elements in his audiences, but over 80 per cent of Irish immigration into Scotland’s Central Belt came from Ulster; and the majority were neither nationalists nor Roman Catholics, but many were Orangemen and sectarian incidents were common in the constituency. Graham’s views on Ireland were thus as likely to alienate as attract support, which, added to Parnell’s command that Irish home rule supporters should vote Tory, undoubtedly lost him the 1885 election. In fact, the local newspaper noted the unique sight, at the end of the tumultuous election campaign, of joyous Roman Catholic and Protestant electors, amicably celebrating the announcement of Graham’s defeat – together.