Lecture 5: Land Agitation
Eviction at Derrybeg, Co. Donegal
1. Tenant demands in post-famine Ireland and the Land
Act of 1870
2. Causes of the Land War
3. The New Departure
4. The Land War
5. Tactics employed during the Land War
6. The Plan of Campaign
7. Legislative responses to the Land War
8. The impact of the Land War
Group of fourteen people, including 3rd Lord
Clonbrock, gathered outside photograph house, 1870
‘Some look upon the wealthy Saxon and
prosperous Protestant as an intruder and
interloper who, notwithstanding the
prescription of three hundred years,
ought now to be deprived of his
possessions and expelled from the soil
of Ireland.’
Steuart Trench quoted in Cullen, L.M., Life
in Ireland
The ‘typical’ landlord owned about 2000
acres of land.
By 1876 less than 800 landlords owned
half of Ireland.
13.3% of landowners who owned 23% of
the land resided outside Ireland
36.6% resided in Ireland, but not on their
own estates.
EVICTIONS
1847-1850: 90,000 evictions
recorded
50,000 of those evictions took
place between 1847 and 1850
1854-1880: annual rate of
eviction dropped to 1.36 per
1,000 holdings
Family group and dogs outside Mount Congreve, includes
Lord Clonbrock, Ambrose Congreve, Augusta Congreve,
two Dillon sisters and an unidentified man c. 1865
The Three ‘F’s
‘the alliterative label widely used in
post-Famine Ireland to describe
long-standing, but in reality
ambiguous tenant demands for fair
rents, fixity of tenure and free sale
(another name for tenant right).’
Oxford Companion to Irish History, p571
Landlord and Tenant
(Ireland) Act 1870
• Gladstone’s first land act
• Conceded tenant right in regions where
it was customary
• It created smaller rights in other parts
of Ireland
• It provided for compensation for
disturbance of tenants evicted other
than for non-payment of rent
Landlord and Tenant
(Ireland) Act 1870
• It made provision for compensation
for improvements in the case of a
departing tenant
• The ‘Bright Clauses’ allowed tenants
to purchase their holdings but it
applied to very few
Eviction Scene, Castlebar, Co.Mayo
The New Departure
A compact made between
Parnell, Davitt, and the
Fenian leader John Devoy in
June 1879
Fenians, parliamentarians
and ‘advanced’ nationalists
agreed to work together
The New Departure provided
the basis for the effective
prosecution of the Land War
‘Show following to Kickham, and if approved present to
Charles Parnell and friends: Nationalists here will
support you on following conditions: (1) abandonment
of federal demand [and] substitution [of] general
declaration in favour of self-government; (2) vigorous
agitation of land question on basis of peasant
proprietary, while accepting conditions tending to
abolish arbitrary eviction; (3) exclusion of all sectarian
issues from platform; (4) [Irish] members to vote
together on all imperial and home questions, adopt
aggressive policy, and energetically resist all coercive
legislation; (5) advocacy of all struggling nationalities
in British empire and elsewhere.
Text of the ‘New Departure’ telegram
Irish National Land League
Founded in Dublin in October 1879
The key organization in the main phase of the Land War
Widely representative committee of 54
No mechanism for controlling the executive
Executive dominated by men of ‘advanced’ nationalist views
More than 500 branches established
Land League Poster from the 1880s
Characteristics of the Land War
• A farmers’ movement
• Townsmen played a prominent role
• Leadership provided by nationalist
politicians
• A Catholic movement
Tactics employed by the Land League
Open-air meetings, platform oratory, marching bands
Delayed evictions by legal means
Physically impeded evictions
Prevented the replacement of evicted tenants
Boycotting
‘They tried cases of people being evicted and grabbers. If a
person was put in an evicted farm, he would get a notice to
attend the meeting. If he didn’t turn up for three meetings, he
would be declared boycotted. His name would be written down
in papers and put on walls and trees telling the people not to
work for him or buy any of his cattle, etc. This notice would be
signed ‘by the order of Captain Moonlight’. Then if the
boycotted person went to a fair selling his cattle, pigs or
horses, one of the moonlighters would be around the fair and if
nay buyer would come to the man and be buying his animals,
the moonlighter would say ‘there is a smell from that animal.’
The buyer would then walk away…The boycotted people were
called‘roasters.’
Recollections of a Co. Kerry farmer, Irish Folklore Commission
The mean number of agrarian murders
a year from 1852 to 1878 was 5.
Between 1879 and 1882 it rose to 17.
In the last quarter of 1880 the number
of lesser agrarian crimes reported
stood at more than 25 times the level in
the same period of 1878. It did not
return to pre-1879 levels until 1883.
The Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 - Gladstone’s second land act) granted the three Fs. It also instituted the Land Commission.
The Ashbourne Act of 1885, advanced 5 million pounds for loans to
facilitate land purchase. A further 5 million was made available in
1888.
The Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1891 (the Balfour Act) introduced
land bonds as an alternative form of payment of landlords selling land
to tenants. It also set up the Congested Districts Board.
The Irish Land Act 1903, known as Wyndham’s Act, was the product
of agreement between representatives of landlords and tenants. It laid
down financial parameters within which an agreement between a
landlord and tenant would be automatically approved by the Land
Commission.
The Irish Land Act 1909 (the Birrell Act) was designed to
limit the cost to the exchequer of the success of the
Wyndham Act. The terms were disimproved and payment
of land bonds was reintroduced.
In the Irish Free State, the Land Act of 1923 (the Hogan
Act) converted rents into payments to the Land
Commission, pending compulsory transfer of ownership of
remaining tenanted land, abolished the CDB, and gave the
Land Commission responsibility for redistribution.
The Northern Ireland Land Act (1925) provided for
compulsory completion of tenant purchase of land in that
jurisdiction.
Eviction scene, Woodford, Co. Galway
c. 1886-1890
Eviction scene (Battering ram)
‘The battering ram has done its
work’
Michael Connell, Moyasta, Co.Clare after eviction
ca.1886-1890.
Illustrated London News, Nov. 12 1881