by Joe Power
The mood of the people turned more against the war and the Home Rule Party, and more in favour of the policies of Sinn Féin. The Clare Champion and bishops such as Dr O’Dwyer and Dr Fogarty began to publicly oppose the war and the policies of John Redmond and the Home Rule party. The ‘Soldier’s Song’ began to replace ‘A Nation Once Again’ and the popular British Army marching song, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ also went out of fashion. This was seen during the East Clare by-election of Eamon de Valera in 1917, following the death in France of Maj. Willie Redmond, MP, for the constituency of East Clare. Naturally, levels of recruitment continued to decline. Apart from ‘political’ crimes, such as drilling openly with arms, and the cattle drives, for which many republicans were arrested under DORA, there were very few indictable petty crimes in the county.
Early in the New Year, before the growing season started, the British authorities encouraged farmers to grow more tillage under a new compulsory Tillage Act. Farmers were obliged to till 10 per cent of their land. Compulsory tillage had been decreed because there was a necessity to have more home-grown food. Great emphasis was put upon the growing of crops such as wheat, oats and potatoes. These, they argued, were the cheapest, the best and the most easily procured foods in Ireland. It was argued that 1 acre under oats or potatoes would supply more food than many acres under grassland. It was claimed that 1lb of oatmeal was equal in food value to 3lb of beef. As an incentive, farmers were promised a guaranteed market at fixed prices for these products. More tillage would require more men, give more work, produce more food and provide more prosperity for Irish farmers. Ironically, there was no reference at this time to the reluctance of the farmers to enlist! They had other more important duties.1
Bishop Fogarty issued his Lenten pastoral letter in February and that year he returned to the theme of war, but, perhaps to the disappointment of many Sinn Féin supporters in Clare and elsewhere, he did not condemn the war. ‘It was’, he said, ‘the most dreadful visitation of divine wrath that has ever befallen humanity. Everything about this war is a portend, a terrible instrument in the hand of God chastening a world that has largely disowned its creator. But it is not only a purge, it is gradually revealing itself as a curative agency of Providential good purging gross social evils like a purifying fire.’ He welcomed as Providential the Compulsory Tillage Act, which would put people back on the land and end the ‘life-less’ cattle ranches. He referred to the ruthless and tyrannical manner in which the Irish people were driven from the lands they cultivated by rapacious evictors. He hoped the young men and women would not disdain to work on the land in the wholesome clay, which if it stains their hands will not be the dirty stain of the city slums! He warned that the danger of famine was grave and he urged that surplus grain and potatoes be kept in Ireland until June.2
WHY GRASSLAND MUST BE BROKEN
To furnish the most food, for the poorest people in the shortest time.
Quantity: an acre of merely average land will produce: 1 ton of oats, or 1 ton of potatoes. An acre of the finest fattening land will not produce more than 5cwt. of beef (live weight containing hides, bones and all).
Food Value: an acre of oats will feed for a week 100 people.
An acre of potatoes will feed 220 people.
An acre of beef will feed 8 people.
Time: to grow oats takes 5 months;
to grow potatoes takes 4-6 months;
to rear fattening beef takes 2-3 years;
to grow beef takes 2 years!
Deptartment of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Clare Journal, 15 February 1917.
A few months later, Bishop Fogarty addressed an audience in Birr, reminding them of his pastoral letter, saying:
This universal war … came only because man has become unnatural in his devices and has defied Heaven … as a sign of this witness the cry of the suffragettes. While they might be otherwise bonafide, the idea of educated bejewelled ladies attacking policemen and being dragged along the street in a manner which one was accustomed to associate with the most abandoned of women, was a clear indication of how wrong Ireland was going.
The world was in a terrible state and no one could tell when the war would end. The present was no time for running around spending money at cinematic exhibitions and such like. It was no time for wasting money. A drunken man was now an unthinkable anomaly … for before twelve months we may be faced with famine, at least a bread famine. Women in particular, ought not to be wasteful of money, it is sacrilegious to spend the money wrongly … above all, women should never enter a public house! The present was a time for patience and charity. The employer should understand that the workingman could not live now on anything but a very substantial wage. He could not possibly exist on 14 or 15 shillings a week. The present was a time for sharing burthens. I hope for an early close of the war, it has caused great suffering here, but I am told it is greater in England than in Ireland.
Dr Fogarty, becoming almost puritanical or Calvinistic in tone, also denounced the influences of ‘frivolity, fancy costumes and hedonism’. He welcomed the ‘restriction on excursion trains’; he hoped that the ‘demoralising picture houses’ would be closed down, as well as the ‘detestable clubs in the towns’, all of which ‘were promoting scandals’.3
Besides commenting on the war and its economic and social impacts, the bishop, later in the year, reacted against Summer Time this year. He instructed his clergy to ignore the new Summer Time Act and to leave the hours of Sunday masses to be regulated by Greenwich Mean Time. The new Summer Time Act was, he said, wholly inapplicable to the circumstances of the country. Some parts of the diocese, he said, would be almost two hours ahead of the great clock set up by nature for the guidance and regulation of human life, namely, the sun in the heavens. He told his clergy to say the Masses at the old time, ‘God’s time’.4
Though Bishop Fogarty did not publicly condemn the war yet, an editorial in the Clare Champion of 14 April strongly called for an end to the war: ‘What is the object of prolonging the war? Has not the slaughtering been sufficient to satiate the most bloodthirsty? Are not the maimed and crippled sufficient appeals to the cause of humanity? Has not the greatest treasure been spent, sufficient to realise the utopian dreams of our greatest reformers? Is it not time to rescue the world from the horrors into which secret diplomacy has lured it?
Two weeks later, on 28 April, the Clare Champion denounced the ‘bad faith’ of England in Mr Asquith’s proposed Amending Act to the Home Rule Bill, allowing for the exclusion of six counties. The editor declared that partition would never be undone. ‘Asquith and Lloyd George were traitors to Ireland; enemies of the Irish people … no Irish person could trust them.’ The editor was clearly indicating to John Redmond that the Clare Champion was no longer supporting his Home Rule Party or his policies.
A surprise intervention on the issue of partition was made by Dr T.S. Berry, Church of Ireland Bishop of Killaloe at the Killaloe Diocesan Synod, as reported in the Saturday Record of 11 August. The bishop stated, ‘I would to God that we could feel that the most terrible war in history was nearing its close, but of this there were, at present, no signs. We must pray for the dawn of peace and the reuniting of the nations … As to the partition of Ireland, I believe that every Irishman who loved his country said “may no such partition take place”’.
On 28 July, near the third anniversary of the outbreak of the war, the Clare Champion editor wrote; ‘We are nearing the end of the third year of war, the most wicked crime ever committed against the human race’. Such comments in the local nationalist paper did not encourage recruitment for the British Army at a time when the need for recruits was desperate because of the terrible losses due to the war of attrition on the Western Front at battle sites such as Ypres and on the Somme.
Dr O’Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, became more vocal against the war and recruitment. In his Lenten pastoral letter of February of this year he launched a strong attack on Britain’s continuance of the war.
He said that Britain had rejected the peace talks proposed by Germany and that England was the real cause of the war.
The pastoral letter must have had a huge impact, not alone in the diocese of Limerick, but throughout Ireland, and certainly in the diocese of Killaloe, according to Bishop Fogarty. Bishop Fogarty wrote a private letter to Bishop O’Dwyer congratulating him on his pastoral and agreeing with him that ‘England was the real cause of the war … your pastoral has created a furore of delight amongst the people. They are all scrambling, especially the young, to get a copy of it. They are sick and tired of falsehood, hypocrisy and cowardice with which the papers drench them …’5
Cattle Drives
Perhaps inspired by advertising in the local press urging more tillage with slogans such as: ‘Why grassland must be broken’, cattle drives became common in Clare during 1917. The men who drove the cattle from the large ranches of Clare may also have been spurred into this illegal activity by the words of Bishop Fogarty in his pastoral letter in which he attacked the ‘lifeless’ ranches. There may also have been other reasons such as ‘land hunger’ and ancient disputes over land holdings behind the new agrarian conflict.
Whatever the reasons, large groups of small tenant farmers and labourers invaded the cattle ranches. They drove the cattle off the lands and began to plough up large areas to grow crops such as oats and potatoes as soon as possible. This agrarian revolution apparently started in north Clare and, in a manner reminiscent of the old Land War, spread throughout the county during the spring of 1917. The Irish Volunteers took a prominent role in this land agitation. Sinn Féin men and women turned out in large numbers, sometimes hundreds of people, almost whole communities, armed only with hurleys and sticks to drive the cattle from the graziers’ farms, and then the men ploughed up the land. County Clare was becoming ungovernable as the people brazenly defied the RIC and openly ignored the law. An editorial in the Clare Champion of 20 January 1917 was sympathetic to the broad aims of the cattle drives from the non-residential grazing farms: ‘A large portion of the ranches is still being left to the bullocks. Yes, for generations the bullock has taken the place of the tiller of the soil of north Clare. The awakening is extraordinary …’
The testimony of leading IRA volunteers in the county recorded in the 1930s and ’40s clearly indicated that the local Irish Volunteers or Sinn Féin leaders were very active in the agitation. While some recorded that the landowners would be compensated, others were interested in the acquisition and division of the large ranches and the remains of the old landed estates in the county and tried to ensure that the local Sinn Féin members would get preference in any land division:
The lands were ploughed and put under oats by people who had taken lots, mostly small farmers, whose holdings were unsuited to tillage. Most of the ploughing was done by Irish Volunteers, and, while this was going on the police took their names. It was made clear to the authorities that there was no question of confiscation of the seized lands and that the people who had taken lots or tillage would pay reasonable compensation to the owners.
(Andrew O’Donoghue)
We took an active part in the campaign in the agitation for the acquisition of ranches … we tried to ensure that our members would get preference …
(Joseph Barrett)
Cattle were driven from the lands of Dr Howard, Drumclife and Tom Crowe, Loughavilla. Both holdings were non-residential and the owners were well-known imperialists who used the lands entirely for grazing.
(Peter O’Loughlin)
In many districts large tracts of land had been cleared of tenants in order to make ranches for the landlord class, who were mostly absentees and who used the lands solely or grazing purposes. The descendants and friends of the evicted tenants never gave up the idea of recovering the farms from which they had been ejected and a continuous agitation was carried out to get the ranches divided …
(Thomas MacNamara)
Cattle drives became very popular and all over the county Volunteers took part in them as organised units …
(Michael Brennan)
Fr William O’Kennedy, St Flannan’s College, Ennis, a well-known Sinn Féin supporter, expressed concern that cattle drives were being organised against ‘comparatively small farms and non-ranchers’ and he warned against undesirable elements joining the cattle drives ‘for private grudges, personal spleen, jealousy or greed’. These ‘irresponsible individuals’, he said, would try to shelter under the wings of Sinn Féin. However, Bishop Fogarty did not seem unduly concerned with the phenomenon, claiming that ‘cattle driving and ploughing up the grasslands had ‘no political significance, it was’, he said, ‘a social trouble’.6
The authorities were keeping a close eye on the Catholic clergy at this time and Catholic RIC men, who were attending Masses reported ‘seditious’ sermons to their superiors, which were brought to the attention of the highest authorities in the chief secretary’s office in Dublin and files were kept on such clergymen. Fr Maher of Garranboy and Killaloe allegedly made a seditious sermon in 1917. Another prominent Sinn Féin priest at this time was Fr Charles Culligan, CC. He had been curate in Carrigaholt and was part of the group of Sinn Féiners who occupied the boardroom of the Ennis Workhouse on 29 January 1916. He was subsequently transferred to the parish of Silvermines in Tipperary, but that did not silence him, or curtail his activities as the following police reports testify:
While attending divine service at Ballinclough chapel Rev Fr C Culligan addressed the audience and said:
“I want to speak to you about the grave times we are passing through at present. In a couple of months or less we may be unable to buy anything except by food tickets. Germany threatens to sink every ship in sight, and there is not enough food in England to support her for a fortnight. She is on the brink of starvation.
So till all ye can and I do not mean so to be tilling for the British army, but to till it for yourselves, if you can keep it, if is not taken from ye, which is doubtful.
Some time ago some people went around to these parts of the county collecting for the Red Cross societies and eggs for the wounded soldiers. These people now are not giving an acre of land to people who need it for tillage purposes, because they don’t care about ye and will grind ye if they can!
It shames me to see people living under those whose ancestors were from the rottenest country in the world. I would like to say a lot more, but maybe I have said enough. Anyway, till all ye can and keep it for yourselves if ye can, because ye have nothing to get from outside sources.’
The local sergeant, Sgt Daughton reported to the authorities, ‘This clergyman is an extreme Sinn Féiner and he is endeavouring to foster and develop Sinn Féinism in Silvermines and its parish’.
In a second report, Fr Culligan was reported as saying the following at a sermon in Silvermines:
Anyone who takes an interest in the policy of Sinn Féin might like to get this paper, Nationality, it costs only a penny, you can order it locally, Mr Griffith is the editor … he organised Sinn Féin in this county seven years ago …
Ye are on the verge of starvation, or very soon will be. Some people with hundreds, in some cases, thousands of acres of land were very anxious to get men for the army when the war started. Now these people to avoid tilling want to let it out on conacre … that would be only improving the land under such a system. They want exorbitant prices for it. If ye don’t get it at a better term then don’t take it, they will have to till it themselves then. They will have to employ labour and I should like to tell you that this is a time when labourers ought to combine for a better wage. A weekly wage of 10/- or 12/- is scandalous. How is a labourer on such a wage to support a family, pay the rent and keep a cow?7
The Sinn Féin party was anxious that its local leaders were not to be seen to be prominent in the cattle drives, though they probably organised them. The Sinn Féin leadership at national level were also anxious to ensure that the party should not be tainted by allegations of communism, tho
ugh the cattle drives in north Clare, which sparked off the phenomenon, actually predated the February Revolution in Russia. It must be remembered that the communists under Lenin did not seize power until October 1917. The Bolsheviks confiscated the landed estates from the aristocracy in Russia and divided their estates amongst the peasantry. This was not the case in County Clare. Bishop Fogarty and the Catholic Church strongly condemned socialism and atheistic communism and respected the rights of property owners. But property had its duties as well as its rights and the needs of the people were paramount when there was a danger of a serious food shortage in Ireland at the time. There was little sympathy for the landlords or for the extensive graziers on ‘the lifeless ranches’ of County Clare. The Catholic Church did not condemn the cattle drives as immoral, as long as compensation was paid.
Immorality
Bishop Fogarty seemed to be more concerned about other forms of immorality, which he believed were causing greater scandals in the county. Early in January Councillor P.J. Linnane of Ennis UDC condemned at a meeting of the council what he said were ‘immoral’ pictures at the cinema in Ennis. He said that the pictures were promoting adultery; ‘they were not suitable for young women.’ A week later, Bishop Fogarty, taking his cue from Mr Linnane, launched a tirade against the local cinema in a letter to the editor of the Saturday Record:
Dear Sir,
I hope the people of Ennis will note well the revelations made by Mr P.J. Linnane at the last meeting of the Ennis Urban Council, about the pictures shown at the Town Hall. Every man in Ennis should be grateful to that worthy gentleman for drawing public attention to this scandal.
