Ire land - Village Magazine

April 2017 3 5

AND – the lack of it, and the lament for it – is a

foundation source for annals of Irish poetry,

song, theatre and legal dispute. It has played

host to the battle of a Catholic King and a Prot-

estant Prince, giving undue deference to 1690

as the pivotal moment for this island, while denying the

potency of the occupation of Ireland from the 1650s, its

plunder and its plantation, fuelled by a sectarianism that

will persist across time if not readdressed in our own,

dangerously interesting, times.

In 1649, half a century before the Battle of the Boyne,

Charles I of England was executed. In his wake, the

Reformed armies of an English Commonwealth, under

the command of Oliver Cromwell, embarked upon a jour-

ney across the sea to subdue the Irish and to complete

the conquest of this island. To the victor, the spoils: the

armies led by Cromwell included chain-laden surveyors

deploying the tools of cartographers in service to the

newly dominant power. Across Ire-

land, chains were laid down. The

Down Survey, conducted under the

authority of William Petty, was the

“ﬁrst detailed land survey, on a

national scale, anywhere in the

world” (downsurvey.tcd.ie). The land

was measured, forfeited by Irish

owners and redistributed to Adven-

turers, to English soldiers and

others, thus securing the ‘planting’

of new settlers loyal to their benefactors. For example,

Trinity College Estates enjoyed a boost to its land bank.

Twelve London companies were granted land ”in return

for a ﬁnancial contribution to the scheme for the planta

tion of Ulster” (Dooley, 2000).

The sectarian transfer of ownership, in large part but not

exclusively from Catholic to Protestant l, included all land

surveyed and valued that was between 500 acres and

“almost 157,000 acres”, creating a newly enriched landlord

class. Tenant rents, collected by a ‘middleman’- often the

second son of an absentee landlord - fostered division and

sub-division of the estates. Land was fragmented, tenan

cies rendered insecure and lives made precarious with

both poverty and resistance widespread.

Tensions inherent in the Cromwellian settlement and

later plantations were compounded, under the 1801 Union

of Great Britain and Ireland, by the failed harvests of 1845,

1846 and 1847, and by famine. Authoritative sources esti

mate 700,000 tenants on small holdings were evicted.

Under instruction from the Courts of Equity, bankrupt

landlords were relieved of their property and the Encum-

bered Estates Act of 1849 facilitated a fur ther 1200 petitions

for sale. Meanwhile the gombeens, who exploited the

starving by selling much-needed food and goods on credit

at ruinous interest rates, were rising.

One million famine related deaths, and the fraught pas-

sage of a million dispossessed, transported disaffection

– Whiteboys, Molly Maguires, the Knights of Labour –

across the world from Munster to Liverpool, to the

coalmines of Pennsylv ania, and beyond. Ragged battalions

of Ireland were dispatched to colonies across the British

Empire, fostering the political will to organise, to return

and to subvert. In 1867 the Fenians, emerging from the

secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, resolved to secure

a Republic for Ireland by force of arms.

British Prime Minister William Gladstone acknowl-

edged that there was injustice across Ireland. Irish MPs

How the

gombeens

prevailed

by Mary Jones

Agitation for land reform

was fuelled by the claims

and the ambitions of ‘strong

farmers’, the dominant

social and political class in

nineteenth-century Ireland

Ire

‘We declre he righ of he people of

Irelnd o he ownership of Irelnd’.

Third paragraph, 1916 Proclamation of the

Irish Republic.

Illusrion couresy of www.rbble.ie

3 6 April 2017

POLITICS

at Westminster entered strategic alliances, seeking leg-

islative reform to resolve disputations arising from the

‘Land Question’. The 1870 Landlord and Tenant Act

recorded the ﬁrst challenge on the island to the perva-

sive power of landlordism.

1870s Ireland, overwhelmingly rural but with a grow

ing urban population of working people, was again hit

by poor harvests. In the market towns, shop assistants

and artisans – an increasingly literate population –

mobilised in expressions of economic and social

discontent. Lack of land security and fear of famine pro-

voked the tenant farmer population to organise. Michael

Davitt, a former Lancashire mill worker, proposed the

nationalisation of the land of Ireland. An agrarian radi-

cal, he declared that he was “...persuaded that the land

question held the key to the national question”. Linking

control of land to the national question was strategically

endorsed by John Devoy, the Fenian leader based in New

York.

The establishment of the Land League in 1879 reﬂected

a change in emphasis towards securing tenant interests,

diverting the rights of landless agricultural labour. Par-

nell, a landlord elected as president of the League, and

allies, launched a 41-hour session of parliamentary

resistance seeking appropriate legislation.

By 1880, at a meeting in County Down, landed estates

were served notice that, until the question of land own-

ership was settled, rent payable by tenants would be “in

arrears”. The 1881 Land Act reduced rent, but rent strikes

nevertheless proliferated, and “3,433 episodes of agrar-

ian violence” were recorded. The anti-rent ‘Plan of

Campaign’ between 1886 and 1891 earned the Chief Sec-

retary of Ireland the title ‘Bloody Balfour’. Balfour moved

to conserve the Union by “the creation of a peasant pro-

prietary”: under the 1884 Representation of the People

Act, the electorate was extended to include all men

within the Union who owned or rented property, from a

cottage to a single room in a tenement. The ‘Ulster

Custom’, enhancing tenant compensation and purchase

rights, was extended across the island and given force

of law.

Balfour introduced the Perpetual Crimes Act to stall

‘boycotts’, intimidation and unlawful assembly but he

also legislated for railways and technical instruction,

and introduced the 1891 Land Act. Land purchase

became the cornerstone of Conservative Party policy in

Ireland, facilitated by £33m from the imperial exchequer.

Agrarian unrest was paciﬁed and diverted, and the

status quo conserved.

Agitation for land reform was fuelled by the claims and

the ambitions of ‘strong farmers’, the dominant social

and political class in nineteenth-century Ireland. The

Wyndham Land Purchase Act, 1903, followed by a

second Land Purchase Act in 1909, legislated for a major

transfer of land ownership, with some 46% of farmers

deﬁned as owner-occupiers. Strong farmers were

aligned, and linked by rail: to trade, to travel and to serve

the goods of commerce. The ambitions of a rising mer-

chant class in the cities of Belfast and Dublin, and the

potential for Home Rule linked to the markets of Empire,

had enhanced, for many, the appeal of the Union of Great

Britain and Ireland. A speciﬁc agenda and the class that

was served by it were being facilitated.

The appeal was not universal – in 1905 the Sinn Féin

National Convention outlined a programme for self-gov

ernment including “the creation of courts…separate

from those then established” - a jurisdictional challenge

to the judicial authority of the Crown and all who

depended on it.

The early twentieth century witnessed the advance of

land rights by statute in a context where the majority of

the population remained landless or on unproductive

holdings. Across the island “income per head...of the

Protestant minority between 1851 and 1901...was gener-

ally triple, sometimes quadruple, that of the Catholic

majority” (Dooley 2000). Class tensions were obscured

as wealth differentials were conﬂated with denomination

– one skilled industrial workers, tenant farmers and

lords of the realm; the other the evicted, unskilled

labour, aspiring merchants, tradesmen and profession-

als. The former united within the Orange Order, where

skilled and loyal industrial workers marched alongside

their lords; from within the ranks of the latter, unskilled

labour challenged the authority of an Irish merchant

class. In 1912, from within the Orange lodges, the Ulster

Volunteer Force rose to resist the imposition of a Dublin

Parliament; and from the street, in 1913, the Dublin Lock

Out and the formation of the Irish Citizen Army imposed

military discipline within a pool of simmering industrial,

social and sectarian discontent.

Across the Union outrages and disorder ﬂared, with

the greatest number of industrial strikes across both

islands recorded on the cusp of World War I. On the out-

break of war, farming proﬁts began to rise, sales of land

under the Land Acts were suspended and thousands of

the landless and the disaffected registered as recruits

in defence of the Realm.

On the home front, on Easter Sunday, 1916, the Proc

lamation of the Irish Republic was read from the portico

of the GPO. Commercial interests and a disquieted public

looked on as much of Sackville Street and Henry Street

Across the island “income per head...of the

Protestant minority between 1851 and 1901...

was generally triple that of the Catholic majority”.

Class tensions were obscured as wealth and

religious differentials were conﬂated.

April 2017 3 7

was reduced to ruins. The summary execution by Crown

forces of the rebel leadership transformed an ambivalent

Irish public into a formidable, cross-class nationalist

resistance to British Rule.

From Westminster, Lloyd George outlined a proposed

settlement for Ireland: Home Rule, with the six north-

east counties excluded. Newspapers reported that

ﬁgures indicated “considerable ﬁnancial disturbances

may result from the offensive political partition of the

territory in which the banks operate”. The prospect

caused “serious misgivings in Belfast business circles,

but the commercial interests are overawed by the

sectarians”.

In deﬁance of the British Government, the First Dáil

was established and adopted the Democratic Pro-

gramme, sounding a considered note of deﬁance with a

socialist thrust. A system of Dáil Courts was established,

with Parish Courts under judges elected from the ranks

of the ordinary. By late 1919, “Impromptu tribunals were

springing up…to deal with growing disturbances…on the

issue of land occupation”. Native Irish Industry week was

launched as veterans of the British Army marched to pro-

test at the lack of jobs. At the stock exchange, shares at

Marconi and Dunlop fell. Food prices rose and the Irish

Labour Party and Trade Union Executive placed an

embargo on the export of foodstuffs.

Violence ﬂared and guerrilla warfare convulsed Ire-

land. Martial law was imposed in Dublin and, in

Tipperary, the ﬁrst shots in the War of Independence

were ﬁred. Boundaries were scorched, as the Dáil land

courts were recast as the Land Settlement Commission,

seeking a ﬁnal settlement to all land disputes. By 1921

the Land Acts had reformed land ownership in Ireland –

“holdings on 9.03 million acres had been sold…for £85.9

million”, but by 1923, over three million acres remained

“in landlord ownership”. Smallholders and the landless

demanded “the break-up of estates”. The lament for the

destruction of beauty in the property of the gilded gen

erations takes little account of the lot of those who did

the building, and whose lives were played as pawns to

keep a few lords-a-leaping.

In December 1921 the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty

ended British rule in three of the four provinces of Ire-

land. Agitation on the land question did not abate and

by 1923 a general strike against the paying of rents was

underlined by serious intent – to force land purchase, or

to enforce conﬁscation. The 1923 Land Act, with – of

course - speciﬁc exceptions, vested “all land”, and

“untenanted land in congested districts”, under the

authority of the Land Commission.

Are the deeply ﬂawed shades of a progressive union

ism the best that the Republic of Ireland can bequeath

to those twentieth-century Irish citizens who live on the

hazard, prey to rampant landlordism of a very modern,

deeply venal variety? Mary Kotsonouris, former judge of

the District Court in the Republic of Ireland, ruefully

notes of the 1905 programme for self-government, “one

would have looked in vain for some declaration about

the ownership of land in an independent Ireland”. Does

it matter, so long after the laying down of chains and the

taking up, and laying down, of arms? We are a diverse

peoples, but as Thomas Piketty et al, have noted, the

inheritance of wealth persists – over generations and

across centuries, as unequal outcomes characterise life

on this island.

The 1937 Constitution enshrined the rights of private

property, most notably the private ownership of land,

but made provision also for the concept of ‘the common

good’, a concept singularly undeveloped in the legisla

ture and courts of modern Ireland. The Irish State

continues to equivocate, failing to address policies that

have lined the pockets of privilege, bequeathing genera-

tions of penury to those it has so singularly failed to

serve. The agenda that has prevailed, the agenda of the

big political parties, is that of the landlords, the

gombeens, the big farmers. It’s no accident. It’s histori-

cally determined.

The lament for

the destruction

of beauty in the

property of the

gilded generations

takes little account

of the lot of those

who did the

building

Big political parties: big agendas

Docklands: serves modern landlord's agenda well