The Land War

In March 1879 John Devoy, the head of Clan na Gael, the main Fenian organisation in America, met Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Party MP, in northern France.

There, in secret, Devoy explained what he described as a ‘new departure’: the Fenians would abandon plans for armed revolt and support the drive for Home Rule, provided Parnell backed the campaign of tenant farmers against the landlords. Though he was careful not to put it in writing, Parnell did not hesitate to give his approval.

Michael Davitt played a pivotal role in brokering this deal between republican revolutionaries and constitutional nationalist politicians. A Fenian recently released from a term of penal servitude after conviction for illegal arms dealing, Davitt was to make sure that Parnell would lead a great national campaign to break the power of the landlords.

During that year of 1879, drenching rain, a succession of bad harvests, and the reappearance of potato blight had brought many families – particularly in the west of Ireland – to the brink of starvation.

Co Mayo took the lead in defying the landlords and in the formation of the Irish National Land League in October 1879.

A poster explained its aims:

First – To put an end to Rack-renting, Eviction, and Landlord Oppression.

Second – To effect such a radical change in the Land System of Ireland as will put it in the power of every Irish Farmer to become the owner, on fair terms, of the land he tills.

Such excitement had not been witnessed in Ireland since Daniel O’Connell’s monster meetings for Repeal of the Union more than 30 years before. Huge numbers of country people, threatened with eviction, unemployment and starvation, assembled to hear fiery speeches from Land League agitators.

Economic conditions worsened in the hard winter of 1879 – 80 and once again torrential rains in the ensuing spring and summer threatened to ruin the harvest.

As the general election of 1880 approached, the Fermanagh Times declared: 'The question of the hour is a sad one – destitution. It is echoed from the Giant’s Causeway to the Cove of Cork. Go where we may, throughout Ireland to-day, we hear the wail of distress for food.'

The Land League demanded substantial rent reductions and, if these were refused, tenants were urged to refuse to pay the rent. The Liberal leader, W E Gladstone, declared that eviction notices were now falling like snowflakes. This seemed all too true. How could evictions be stopped without recourse to violence?

The Land League’s answer was to make life impossible for any farmer who took over an evicted man’s holding. Michael Davitt, at a meeting in Knockaroo, Co Mayo, made reference to a holding from which the occupier had been just evicted: 'This farm I trust will not be tenanted by any man…If such a traitor to your cause enters this part of the country, why, keep your eyes fixed upon him – point him out – and if a pig of his falls into a boghole let it lie there.'

Charles Stewart Parnell, President of the Land League, had returned from a brilliant whistle-stop tour of America during which he had addressed Irish-Americans in 62 towns and cities, addressed Congressmen in the House of Representatives, and raised great sums for famine relief and for the Land League. Now, he gave his full support for the approach recommended by Davitt.

At Ennis in Co Clare on Sunday 19th September, even though it was four in the morning, hundreds were waiting for him when he arrived. A procession formed up with lighted torches and a band to escort him to his hotel.

Later in the day, as 12,000 stood before him, Parnell asked: 'Now, what are you going to do with a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted?

'Now I think I heard somebody say, “Shoot him”, but I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more Christian, a more charitable way which will give the lost sinner an opportunity of repenting.

'When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must show him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and at the market place and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a sort of moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he were a leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed.'

Soon after, this advice was followed with brilliant effect in Co Mayo. Here by Lough Mask, Captain Charles Boycott, was to experience at first hand the formidable power of the Land League.