History: Fergus Campbell argues lucidly for the centrality of land to revolution in pre-industrial Ireland. In Land and Revolution, he explores the nature and dynamics of popular political activity between the death of Parnell and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
He examines the relationship between agrarian conflict and nationalist politics over a 30-year period, and offers challenging interpretations of key developments in Irish history. Influenced by the historiographical movement pioneered by EP Thompson and others, he has rescued the rural proletariat from the "enormous condescension of posterity".
Dr Campbell is a true revisionist. He revises historical opinions in the light of his own original research. For instance, his discovery of missing police records in the National Archives adds a new dimension to our understanding of the intriguingly-titled Ranch War of 1904-8.
After the Famine the population continued to decline, while the number of cattle in the country doubled between 1841 and 1871. Farmers who had been radical agitators during the Land War often became conservative graziers in its aftermath. The strong tenant farmers experienced something of a golden age between 1881 and 1898. Their rents were reduced substantially by the land courts, providing them with capital for investment. Increasingly, this capital was invested in renting the untenanted or grass farms which landlords were keen to let on the 11-month system. This enabled large tenants to take advantage of a boom in the international cattle trade.
Indeed, the tenant farmers gained a sizeable share of the profits from the Irish cattle trade, formerly dominated by landlords and British graziers. Nevertheless, they remained dissatisfied with the system of dual ownership established under the 1881 Land Act. They wanted to purchase their holdings so as to "secure absolutely the fruits of their industry and enterprise", George Wyndham, architect of the 1903 Act, observed. They were keen to consolidate their status as an arriviste bourgeoisie by becoming owners of their farms. Their concern to become landowners rather than landholders intensified after 1898, when the gains they had made in terms of both income and land were threatened by the United Irish League, formed in that year by William O'Brien.
A veteran of the Land War and Plan of Campaign, O'Brien realised that land purchase alone would not improve the living standards of western smallholders. Filled with a "sacred rage" at their poverty, he embarked on a campaign for land redistribution. League branches maintained agitations against graziers, "grabbers" and landlords. The ensuing Wyndham Land Act virtually abolished landlordism. Almost 200,000 Irish tenant farmers became owner-occupiers. But the cleavage between graziers and peasants was growing. An agitation against the grazing system was revived after 1903, with the new objective of pressurising landlords to include untenanted land in the sale of their estates.
The Ranch War aimed to complete the unfinished business of the land struggle. The strategy was to make life difficult for ranchers so as to coerce them into leaving grazing land derelict, the purpose being to induce landlords to sell it to the Estates Commissioners for redistribution among smallholders. Under the slogan of "the land for the people and the road for the bullocks", a new tactic emerged. The first public advocate of cattle driving was Laurence Ginnell, MP for North Westmeath, whom John Dillon considered "a clever but quite wild man". This form of intimidation involved large crowds dispersing the grazier's cattle; it meant economic disruption: cattle might be injured and a great deal of time spent rounding up his herd.
The Ranch War was associated with the IRB and Sinn Féin, which may have had links with pre-existing secret societies in south Galway and north Clare. For the rural poor the struggles for political independence and land redistribution were intertwined. Augustine Birrell, the literary chief secretary, believed Sinn Féiners were "Fenians and Ribbonmen and separatists in new clothes and with some new ideas".
In Clare, the RIC county inspector regarded Sinn Féin "as the nearest approach to an oath-bound secret society" and held it responsible for many agrarian outrages. At Carron in 1908, a Sinn Féin meeting attended by 40 members resolved "that all herds[ men] in the parish refuse to herd graziers' cattle".
Land hunger resurfaced during the War of Independence. While one-fifth of western farmers continued to occupy unviable holdings, the ranks of the rural poor had been swollen by wartime restrictions on emigration. They wanted a share in the agricultural boom, prices for most farm produce having trebled between 1913 and 1920. With the coercive apparatus of the British state receding, an agitation to persuade ranchers to give up their 11-month lettings swept through 16 counties in 1920.
Kevin O'Shiel, a Tyrone barrister, was sent by Dáil Éireann to investigate. He recalled that "the last land war" spared neither ranch nor medium farm and inflicted "in its headlong course sad havoc on man, beast and property".
Dr Campbell suggests this radical tendency beneath the surface of the republican movement has been airbrushed out of our history. His thought-provoking and scholarly work overlooks one consideration. Serious attempts to change the social balance of power were indeed resisted by conservative elements among the Sinn Féin elite, which determined the outcome of the political revolution. Nonetheless, the ultimate reaction was provoked by those who, using progressive rhetoric, sought to overthrow the Treaty settlement through anarchy.
Patrick Kavanagh's Epic forms an apposite leitmotif to Land and Revolution. One doubts if Homer could have made the Iliad from the subject matter of Michael Wheatley's book. Nationalism and the Irish Party: Provincial Ireland, 1910-1916 seeks to explain the enigma of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which went from dominating nationalist politics in 1914 to electoral oblivion four years later.
Nothing is inevitable in history. Only a small minority rebelled against Redmond's policy. Constitutional nationalism was overtaken by events. Regarding the impending demise of his party, John Dillon said presciently in the House of Commons during the 1916 executions: ". . . you are washing out our whole life work in a sea of blood."
The burning of Wildgoose Lodge ranks among the darkest outrages committed by agrarian secret societies. In 1816 eight people died in an arson attack on Wildgoose Lodge in Reaghstown, Co Louth. The murders were in revenge for the prosecution of Ribbonmen. Two of the victims had given information to the authorities about an arms raid which led to the execution of three men. Subsequently, after trials tainted by perjury and informers, 18 men were hanged for the Reaghstown crime, some of them protesting their innocence to the end.
The macabre story of Wildgoose Lodge has fascinated writers from William Carleton to Benedict Kiely. Raymond Murray has gone to the archives to discover what happened and the reasons for this atrocity. Mgr Murray - poet, human rights activist and editor of Seanchas Ard Mhaca - places it in the context of an unjust land system and the brutalisation of the poor.
Brendan Ó Cathaoir is a historian and Irish Times journalist
Land and Revolution: Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland, 1891-1921 By Fergus Campbell Oxford University Press, 356pp. £55
Nationalism and the Irish Party: Provincial Ireland, 1910-1916 By Michael Wheatley Oxford University Press, 295pp. £50
The Burning of Wildgoose Lodge: Ribbonism in Louth - Murder and the Gallows By Raymond Murray Cumann Seanchais Ard Mhaca, 359pp. €15