by Paul Bew
Fourth: That the Irish Members of Parliament elected through the public movement should form an absolutely independent party, asking and accepting no places, salaried and honorary, under the English government, either for themselves, their constituents or anyone else.74
The commitment not to attack Fenianism and maintain an independent stance at Westminster was hardly a difficult one for Parnell to sustain. Devoy’s comments make clear the other elements in Parnell’s position. He was concerned about the possibility of a ‘premature’ insurrection, on the one hand, and of an agrarian agitation drifting into demands for something else than peasant proprietary, on the other.75 As Devoy acknowledges: ‘He [Parnell] wanted the country to have a fair chance of having an intelligent policy presented to it and organising itself and he felt that hot-headed and impulsive men might force a premature crisis.’76 It was not so much that he feared a premature insurrection, but rather that incautious speeches and actions would give the government an excuse for repression.77 Devoy makes the point that the ‘third’ plank, the land issue, provoked the most discussion: ‘Parnell believed in peasant proprietary: it was his ideal solution, and, as he did not think a successful resolution probable in the immediate future, he wanted it reached through purchase. He was not so sure that compulsory purchase was likely to be conceded within any reasonable time, but he thought many of the landlords would agree to sell if the machinery and funds were provided. His fear was that politicians and lawyers might get hold of the movement and put forward a less satisfactory settlement.’78 But it is notable that in Devoy’s account here there is no suggestion—quite the opposite—that Parnell believed that the land question could be used as a lever to force a withdrawal from parliament. When Devoy refers to the issue of an ‘eventual withdrawal from parliament’, he makes it clear that he considered that Michael Davitt was a supporter of that policy but makes, tellingly, no reference to Parnell.
Parnell’s world-view contained three basic elements. Firstly, he clearly believed, unlike both Butt and the neo-Fenians, that it was possible to settle the land question within the framework of the United Kingdom, always providing enough pressure was applied. Secondly, this would eliminate the conflict over rent between Irish landlord and peasant. Thirdly, this would, in turn, create the conditions in which some Irish landlords could take their proper place as leaders of the Home Rule movement. At the very least, they would cease to use their influence against Home Rule. The nationalist movement would thus gain a new credibility and achieve victory.
Parnell was almost alone in his views. Only one man had, in the public controversy of January 1878, openly developed a similar theme. Andrew Kettle of Artane, Co. Dublin, the secretary of the Central Tenants’ Defence Association, had argued that a good land reform would have ‘the effect of turning the occupiers from slaves into men and the owners from irresponsible autocrats into Irish gentlemen’.79 However, apart from Kettle—with whom Parnell was often to discuss the problem in precisely these terms—the Wicklow squire’s view of the problem was entirely original and idiosyncratic. By the end of 1878, therefore, Parnell had already outlined the doctrine which was to play such an important role in the land war.
In public, when discussing this question, as at New Ross in the autumn of 1880, Parnell said ‘if it is desirable’ when referring to any possible future role for landlords in the national ranks. In private, he did not doubt that it was desirable, and, as far as the younger generation was concerned, achievable. Andrew Kettle has described an interesting discussion in 1880:
We reviewed the whole social system then existing in Ireland. He regretted having to take men away from their business and put them into public positions to do work for which they had no training or experience. He was always very hopeless about the older landlords ever throwing in their lot with the people in Ireland, but he expected that the young men would, if the land question was settled by purchase. I always held it would be an insult to common sense to imagine that England would ever delegate the governing powers of Ireland into the hands of such men as Parnell was gathering around him, unless the English Radicals overturned their own classes and got on to a democratic line in England. He would either have to go on to abolish the classes in Ireland or fall back and press them into the work of their own classes and get on to a democratic line in England. He would have to either go to abolish the classes in Ireland or fall back and press them into the work of their own country. But we always agreed that to nationalise mortgages and men with capital in Ireland it would be essential to push the land agitation to a final settlement as soon as possible.80
There is clearly a strong element of shared understanding here between Parnell and Kettle. F. S. L. Lyons has acknowledged: ‘Parnell’s favourite nostrum in these critical years was to bring the younger and more progressive landlords into the Home Rule movement so as to give it sufficient cachet to convince British legislators in London.’81 But it is important to avoid projecting Kettle’s views in their entirety on to Parnell. There is no doubt that Parnell believed that a good land purchase scheme would bring the younger generation of landlords into the Home Rule movement. He also believed that, in principle, many of the Irish MPs in his own party were unsuited to the task of impressing British political opinion: T. Wemyss Reid, Vernon Harcourt and Lord Derby all agreed—the Irish MPs quite simply were not ‘respectable’ gentlemen, not social equals. But he was also more aware than Kettle of the democratising pressures on the Westminster system in the 1880s, and he knew that this created opportunities for the Home Rule case. Nevertheless, Parnell had a view of the relationship between the land question and the national question, and one that set him apart from his neo-Fenian friends.
But this doctrine has an important secondary implication. It cannot be denied that Parnell genuinely held it. It was not, for example, a deceit to persuade the British government that he was a moderate at heart. Parnell’s numerous clear statements of this position, both in public and in private and over such a long time-span, from 1878 to the end of his career, rules out this interpretation. And in spite of its apparent eccentricity, the doctrine did have some political utility. Like his ‘Grattanism’, it served to mark him out from the other potential leaders of the new realignment of forces in Irish politics. It indicated a potential willingness on Parnell’s part to invest the land question with a nationalist political significance. It did not matter at the time that this was totally different from the significance given it by the neo-Fenians: what really mattered was that he was available to provide leadership for the new movement. In 1878–9 the other potential New Departure leaders, F. H. O’Donnell and P. J. Smyth, refused to take this step. They regarded the land question as unrelated to the task of building up national sentiment. P. J. Smyth (1823–85), the MP for Westmeath, had an impeccable Young Ireland past behind him, but he was more concerned to replace Buttite federalism with the notion of repeal than with agrarian politics. For Parnell, on the other hand, the land issue was vital. Thus he agreed with the neo-Fenians that the land question was the key to the national question, while at the same time he was able to remain an honest constitutionalist. He always insisted that the British parliament could settle the Irish land question, but that the outcome—the accession of the landlords to the Home Rule side—would make the cause of Ireland irresistible. It was, therefore, in a perfectly genuine sense that Parnell could claim to be a militant nationalist but also a conservative and constitutionalist. It was not so much that he gave different impressions to different groups—though, of course, he did that—but that he genuinely was all these things.
On 5 February 1879 Parnell attended, alongside twenty other MPs but excluding Isaac Butt, a national land conference. The meeting was attended by a number of strong farmers, who argued against the way in which Butt’s thinking (and his latest proposed land bill) had ignored the interests and aspirations of the large graziers. As a result, resolution 2 insisted that ‘all’ classes of tenant farmer should benefit from any new land bill. (Matt Harris, the wes
tern radical, denounced this move on behalf of the small farmers.) The objective of resolution 3 was to give the tenant ‘that security of tenure which would enable him, by industry and care, to acquire a property on his farm which would place him in a position to meet such vicissitudes’. Parnell intervened to add the following words: ‘And we consider it the duty of the Irish parliamentary party to use such pressure as may be necessary to induce the government to grant this claim.’82 ‘He [Parnell] believed that a united Irish party of forty or fifty determined men could bring such pressure to bear on the present government as would induce them—he would not say this bill now before them in its entirety; but at all events to make very considerable concessions in the land question (applause)’.83
As for the vexed issue of including or excluding the large farmers, Parnell had an easy way of dealing with it: ‘Mr Mitchell Henry had said that the majority of the House of Commons had sympathy with the small farmers of Ireland. He (Mr Parnell) denied that the majority of the House of Commons had more sympathy with the small farmers than the large (hear). The amount of sympathy for either class might, he believed, be estimated as that which meant nothing (hear).’84
It is necessary to place this discussion in context. The land of Ireland, after all, was held by two distinct classes of tenants—the small farmers who paid rent from £1 to £20, and the comparatively larger farmers who paid rent from £20 upwards. Of the first class, there were 538,000 holdings, averaging £6 each; of the second class, 121,000 holdings averaging £56 each. The rent payable by the first class was £3,572,000; and by the second class, £6,845,000. Five-sixths of the Irish tenants thus paid about one-third of the total rental, one-sixth paid nearly two-thirds. The strong farmers were strong because they held the good land. They produced the bulk of £16.5 million worth of cattle and sheep exported to England. The weak farmers were weak because they held the poor land.
Parnell was placing himself firmly in the camp of those who defined the land question as a national one: in other words, not a question simply defined by the needs of the small tenants, especially in the west. It was a central divisive issue in the nationalist movement: it had worried many other leaders but it did not worry Parnell. A few days later he dined in England with the English Radical Joe Chamberlain: both men agreed to co-operate in a mood of political optimism.85 These conversations were useful to Parnell. Irish nationalists—from the neo-Fenians through to land reformers like Andrew Kettle—had an exaggerated view of the frozen reactionary nature of British politics. Parnell, on the other hand, had a close knowledge of this balance of forces within the Liberal leadership—a level of insight much remarked upon by London commentators—giving him an edge when it came to political calculations.86
Chapter 3
‘A SPONTANEOUS UPRISING’: THE LAND LEAGUE
The Land League was . . . a spontaneous uprising. . . . It was not due, and its success was not due, to guidance or leadership.
PARNELL, SPEECH AT IRISHTOWN ANNIVERSARY MEETING, 1891 (WEEKLY FREEMAN, 25 APRIL 1891)
The revolutionaries did not convey their real sentiments on public platforms. Parnell believed in the efficacy of peaceful methods; but he left others with the strong impression that if they failed he would resort to force: each party deceived the other, and both parties deceived the people, but not intentionally.
P. J. P. TYNAN, THE IRISH NATIONAL INVINCIBLES AND THEIR TIMES (1894)
1
When Isaac Butt, in his early role as university professor, was examining in political economy at Trinity College, Dublin, he regularly asked his students the question: what limits rent?1 In the period 1879–82 the mass of the Irish peasantry were to give a peremptory but definitive answer to this question: the Land League.
Exceptionally wet weather, crop failures and falling prices in the winter of 1878–9 threatened the rural population in the west of Ireland with the worst economic disaster since the Great Famine. But this time the general socio-political context was totally changed. There was no likelihood that the mass of the peasantry would again passively accept their fate. They wanted a rent rebate, and the more militant wanted to inflict a harder blow against landlordism. A. M. Sullivan MP explained:
The agitation is much more than for remission of rent with certain of the men who are moving in the matter all over the island. With the older peasants, the unlettered drudges, the cry is merely for a momentary abatement of rent; but, my dear sir, the schoolmaster has been abroad; the National Schools and the penny newspapers have made their mark on a rural generation that has grown to manhood since ’47.2
This new generation, Sullivan claimed, regarded the Great Famine with ‘a deep, savage, mad feeling’. Michael Davitt, for example, spoke with such anguish and anger about the Famine that he almost seems to imply that those who died deserved to die because of their servility: ‘As the peasants had chosen to die like sheep rather than retain that food in a fight for life, or to live or die like men, their loss to the Irish nation need not occasion many pangs of regret.’3 They were determined to see that there should not be even a localised repetition. They were determined also to settle the agricultural crisis at the expense of the landlords.
But what else were these new ideologues in Mayo saying? The emphasis on self-reliance, on making the landlord bear the burden of the economic situation, is clear enough. But it has to be said that there was also available an almost utopian political and social rhetoric. The national school teacher Malachi Michael O’Sullivan was preaching armed revolution. He did not hesitate to imply that the current struggle for land reform was also the struggle for nationalist revolution. The penny-newspaper editor James Daly had revealed himself as the possessor of remarkable assumptions about Irish rural life. For Daly, the impending economic crisis was likely to herald a collapse of cattle farming among all sections of the farming population and a massive return to tillage. This was putting the clock back with a vengeance. He even held the millenarian view that vast numbers of Irish-Americans would return to enjoy the benefits of this new economy.4
Not surprisingly, in the face of these currents, Parnell’s early involvement in the land agitation was marked by an obvious hesitancy. Even after the success of a meeting held at Irishtown, Co. Mayo, on 20 April 1879 had indicated the obvious potential, he still held back. It required a special effort of persuasion from Michael Davitt to persuade him to attend the second key meeting at Westport, Co. Mayo, on 8 June 1879.
On 8 June 1879 Parnell finally made his ‘début as a land agitator’5 on a platform in Westport. He recommended land purchase to his audience, but with the qualification that it would be better if this could be done ‘without injuring the landlord’. But this was clearly a long-term aspiration. In the meantime the tenant must not be asked to pay more than a ‘fair rent’, which he defined as ‘a rent the tenant can reasonably pay according to the times’. If, in the existing bad times, the rents of three or four years previously were now insisted upon, there would be a repetition of the scenes of 1847 and 1848. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what must we do in order to convince the landlords to see the position? You must show the landlords you intend to keep a firm grip on your homesteads and your lands. You must not allow yourself to be dispossessed as you were dispossessed in 1847.’ The best way to get concessions—for example, a good land act—was to replace the Irish members by ‘men of determination, some sort of courage and energy’.
Perhaps I may be permitted to refer to the great question of self-government for Ireland. You will say perhaps that many men have said this struggling for concessions in the House of Commons is a demoralising thing. Now I am as confident as I am of my own existence that if you had men of determination or some sort of courage and energy representing you, you could obtain concessions (hear, hear).
We are not likely to get men of such importance and such amount as to run the risk of being demoralised. I have always noticed that the breaking down of barriers between different classes has increased their self-respect and increased the
spirit of nationality among our people. I am convinced that nothing could more effectively promote the cause of self-government for Ireland than the breaking down of these barriers between different classes. Nothing could be more effective for that than the obtaining of a good land bill—the planting of the people on the soil. If we had the farmers on the soil tomorrow, we would not be long in getting an Irish parliament.6
It is worth contrasting Parnell’s speech with that of Malachi O’Sullivan on the same day. O’Sullivan was a member of the revolutionary faction and his speech made that quite clear. There is no doubt that the crowd understood and appreciated his message:
All I have to say is that you may continue the demand for home rule, for you will never get it peaceably and keep your eye very readily on the other (great cheering). Moral force is truly a great power; but it becomes greater when backed up by physical force—by the power of the sword (great applause). Do you expect autonomy from your hereditary enemies by peaceful means? Do you expect tenant right from a parliament of landlords (cries of no, no)? No, my friends, you must depend upon yourselves and yourselves only.
[They were to combine and offer a fair rent; if that was not accepted, they were to pay none. By such means they would attain their ultimate objective:]
Before many years you’ll own your own lands (great cheering).
A VOICE: Three cheers for the revolution.
O’SULLIVAN: The rulers of your own country.
And here a ’98 pike was made to perform significant flourishes in the air.7
On 16 August 1879 the Land League of Mayo was founded in Castlebar. It issued a declaration of principle, drawing on the work of John Stuart Mill: ‘Before the conquest the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land, the land virtually belonging to the entire sept. The chief was little more than the managing member of the association.’ This happy egalitarian vision was contrasted with the brutal reality of Ireland in 1879. ‘Over 540 million acres of Irish land are owned by less than 300 individuals, 12 of whom are in possession of 1,297,808 acres, while 5,000,000 of the people own not a solitary acre.’8
