Irish Land and Labour Association
Encyclopedia
The Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) was a progressive movement founded in the early 1890s in Munster
, Ireland
, to organise and pursue political agitation for small tenant farmer
s' and rural labourers' rights. Its branches also spread into Connacht
. The ILLA was known under different names—Land and Labour Association (LLA) or League (LLL). Its branches were active for almost thirty years, and had considerable success in propagating labour ideals before their traditions became the basis for the new labour and trade unions movements, with which they gradually amalgamated.
in 1850, which first demanded the adoption and enforcement of the Three Fs
to aid Irish tenant farmers, namely
all of whom lacked these rights, the first ineffective Irish Land Acts of 1870, 1880 and 1881 followed. By giving priority to farming interests, the Acts severely restricted labourers' cottage building, generally in the hands of landowners. The additional half-heartedness shown towards labourers' housing by the Acts was symptomatic of the fact that rural labourers had been little involved in the Irish Land League's Land War
waged on behalf of small tenant farmers by Michael Davitt
and William O'Brien
from 1879 to 1882 in the poorer regions of Connacht and Munster, where conditions were especially severe. Together with Charles Stewart Parnell
and his party lieutenants, they went into a bitter verbal offensive and were imprisoned in October 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act
in Kilmainham Jail for "sabotaging the Land Act", from where the No-Rent Manifesto was issued calling for a national tenant farmer rent strike
which was partially followed. Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian crimes increased widely.
In 1881, nearly 75% of Irish people lived in rural areas. About 38% of these comprised the agricultural workforce, of which nearly 70% were agricultural labourers, 25% of these forming a class of 'landless' labourers, an estimated 60,000 in number, together with their families amounting to nearly a quarter of a million of the rural population, struggling to survive in the squalor of 40,000 one room 'cabins'
(together with their animals if they could afford them). Their simple twin demand was for a decent home and a small piece of land. The Land League was thus forced to also address labourer's issues.
The first phase of Irish Labourers Acts from 1883 to 1906 began with the 1883 Labourers' (Ireland) Act which was cumbersome as was the 1885 Labourers' (Ireland) Act, both amended in 1886. The Acts empowered to initiate schemes for building labourers' cattages with half acre allotments, the expenses of these to be met from local rates. They were therefore unpopular and few were built as both the empowered Guardians and local farmers were themselves the ratepayers. The Acts were further overshadowed by two events, firstly due to falling prices for agricultural produce and bad weather tenants could not pay their rent and united in the Plan of Campaign
to withhold excessive rents. At the same time Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party
(IPP) held the balance of power in the House of Commons
. Their key concern in 1886 turned to Gladstone
's First Irish Home Rule Bill, which was subsequently defeated.
Although Parnell had become converted to the labourers' cause whilst in Kilmainham Gaol
, after he became leader of the IPP their cause fell victim to his distancing himself from the Plan of Campaign in the interest of pursuing Home Rule. Then further by his fall from power in 1891 and the ensuing Party split, aggravated by the rejection of the Second Irish Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords
in 1893. Not least, from the middle of the 1890s less than 1,000 cottages a year were being built for small tenant farmers or privileged labourers.
tradition, at Narraghmore, Co. Kildare in June 1892, and of the National Labour League in Kanturk in January 1893, that the required organisation of the labourers began to take shape.
The rural area of North Cork
around Kanturk
and Duhallow
had been since the 1860s a centre of labourer agitation and strikes, forming a number of early trade unions. The most successful was the Kanturk Trade and Labour Association established in 1889 with the assistance amongst others, of a young man as its secretary, D. D. Sheehan
who had experienced eviction with his family at the height of the Land League's Land War in 1880, when his father followed William O'Brien's "Pay No Rent" manifesto, their farm taken over by a "land-grabber" who paid their rent arrears. The Kanturk Association spread to other districts under a new title, the Duhallow Trade and Labour Association, in which Michael Davitt also became involved, until it broke up under the Irish Party's "Parnell split" in 1891.
It was realised on all sides, that the 1884 enfranchisement of the labourers had been insufficient in itself to wrest solutions to grievances from the state and the rural upper- and middle-classes. The control exercised over the implementation of the labourers' acts by conservative elements in rural society had had a ruinious affect. This finally brought the labourers' bodies together in order to gain political muscle. It became the raison d'être for calling a labour convention at Limerick Junction
, County Tipperary
on 15 August 1894, at which the Irish Land and Labour Association was created and officially launched, its founders D. D. Sheehan as chairman together with a young Carrick-on-Suir
solicitor
J. J. O’Shee as its secretary. Sheehan founded the Association to pursue tenant-farmer and labourer's grievances as a labour lobby within the nationalist movement. With labourers 'as strangers in a strange land, without influence and without rights' it was to be expected that obstructions placed in the path of the labourers' welfare by landowners and farmers would invite bitter recrimination at the new Associations meetings. The Association would prove itself to be the most enduring of the labour groups. Agrarian agitation was unique in that it was an all-Ireland agitation. Ulster tenant-farmers and labourers equally demanded rights, their movement the Farmers and Labourers Union led by T. W. Russell.
, a "grass roots home rule" Act, totally reorganised the old aristocratic landlord "Grand Juries", eliminating their power by transferring it to Local County Councils elected by tenant farmers, town traders and labourers. This coincided with William O'Brien founding the United Irish League
(UIL), the wide expansion of the agricultural co-operative movement established earlier by Horace Plunkett and Sheehan becoming both President of the ILLA and editor of the Skibbereen
based Cork County Southern Star newspaper.
The Act was immediately recognised by the labourers, who for the first time held both active and passive electoral franchise, as a means to achieving their interests and facilitating those who desired to help them on local county councils. The prospects offered by the Act of radically overhauling the socio-economic distribution of political power in the countryside was not lost on the labourer movement. The ILLA took resolute steps to both organise the voting power of the labourers and to see to the 'proposal of labour candidates'.
Modelling themselves on Davitt’s concepts, the ILLA platform included demands for:
Its strategy was to achieve these through political and parliamentary leverage, pressure of the press and public agitation rather than by physical-force means or trade union action.
ILLA concern for other labour issues developed after the Local Government Act transferred responsibility for cottage building, land reclamation, drainage, road building, their repair and maintenance, to the County and District Councils. This called for considerable ILLA involvement when it came to tenders for contract work and the fair employment of local contractors and labour, settling disputes and complaints, often arising out of local political patronage. The situation of previously evicted tenants, now reduced to landless labourers, was also on their agenda.
's sedulous refusal to consider direct Parliamentary representation for the Land and Labour Association was but an instance of the middle-class obsession with maintaining its hold over national politics.
The desire to keep the labouring class in tow prompted the United Irish League to eventually give the Land and Labour Association entry to national councils in 1900. The failure of the UIL and the Irish Party to either refer to the labourers in their deliberations or to do anything for them at Westminster indicated the Associations intended subservient position. It took the Mid-Cork by-election of 1901 to show that the understanding between the UIL and the ILLA was paper-thin. When it became clear that the ILLA candidate, D. D. Sheehan, was going to make an impact, he was accused of being an "anti-Healyite
" and that his first allegiance was to the labourers rather than to the party, expressed the class bias of the Irish Party against the workers.
, who stood on a labour platform, defeating the UIL candidate of the Irish Party, as Member of Parliament (1901–1918) in the House of Commons. Their ILLA organisation had grown to 98 branches by 1899, expanding to 144 branches in 1904 mainly in counties Cork
, Limerick
and Tipperary
.
UIL agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase and resulted in the calling of the December 1902 Land Conference
, an initiative by moderate landlords led by Lord Dunraven on the one hand and William O'Brien, John Redmond
MP, Timothy Harrington MP and Ulster
's T. W. Russell MP representing tenant farmers on the other hand. It strove for a settlement by conciliatory agreement between landlord and tenant. After six sittings all eight tenant’s demands were conceded, O’Brien having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of conciliation. He followed this by campaigning vigorously for the greatest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, orchestrating the Wyndham
Land Purchase Act (1903) through Parliament. The Act provided very generous bonus subsidy terms to landowners on sale.
Purchases between tenants and landlords were negotiated by Sheehan and the ILLA branches after O'Brien and Sheehan established an Advisory Committee to mediate between landlords and tenants on purchase terms with low interest annuities which produced an exceptionally high take-up of land purchase. Munster tenants availed of land purchase in higher numbers than in any other province.
The act effectively fulfilled the first important demand of the ILLA, the abolition of "landlordism"
, replaced by land purchase, to finally resolve the Land Question
. The result was the formation of a new proud farming proprietorship, and the steady extinction of the Anglo-Irish
landed gentry
. Whereas in 1870 only 3% of Irish farmers owned their land, by 1908, this jumped to nearly 50%. By the early 1920s, the figure was at 70%, the process being later completed.
Despite some deficiencies of the Land Act, O'Brien could take some pride in its working since its passage. The social effects of the Act were immediate The year 1903 alone saw a 33% drop in reports of intimidation, a 70% decline in boycotting cases, 60% fewer people needing police protection, and a 50% decrease in the number and acreage of grazing farms unlet or unstocked because of agitation. In the period 1903 to1909 over 200,000 small peasant tenant-farmers became owners of their holdings under the Act. By 1914 75% of occupiers were buying out their landlords under the 1903 Act and the later Birrell
Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1909 which extended the 1903 Act by allowing for the compulsory purchase of tenanted farmland by the Land Commission. In all, under these pre-1921 Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchased their holdings amounting to 115 million acres (465,388.9 km²) out of a total of 20 million in the country.
and John Dillon
who feared O’Brien’s course and popularity would drive a wedge between the farming and labouring community allegiance to the Irish party.
O'Brien then joined forces a year later with Sheehan’s ILLA organisation, identifying himself with Sheehan's demand for agricultural labourers' housing, who up to then were dependent on limited provision of cottages by local County Councils or landowners at unfavourable terms.
The Second Phase of the Labourers Acts (1906–1914) began with O'Brien achieving the unprecedented Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906). The so called 'Labourers Act' provided large scale state funding for extensive agricultural labourer-owned cottages, the accommodations to be erected by the local County Councils. A major socio-economic transformation in rural state housing erasing the previous inhuman habitations, O'Brien saying that the Labourers Act -- "were scarcely less wonderworking than the abolition of landlordism itself", in 1904 Davitt going so far as to declare that the Labourers Acts constituted -- "a rational principle of state Socialism" .
In the next five years the programme produced a complete 'municipalisation' of over 40,000 additional commodious working-class dwellings dotting the rural Irish countryside, the proportionally larger number of 7,560 cottages erected in County Cork in coordination with Sheehan and the ILLA branches, became known locally as "Sheehans' cottages". At first the compulsory surrender of an acre of choice land to each labourer who claimed it was resisted by the new land owning farmers. In due course they too reaped the benefits, gone the days when a farmer never knew when or where to find labour to work his fields. Either they were migrant or drink ridden. Now occupying their own proud family home and vegetable patch at the corner of his farm, they worked cooperatively for him all year round. This had enormous long-term consequences for rural Irish society.
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Only 17 per cent of labourers had lived in houses with five or more rooms in 1841; in 1861 one rural family in ten still lived in what were classed by the census as fourth class accommodation, essentially meaning one room per family. By 1911 only one per cent of families did. The bulk of the labourers' cottages were erected by 1916, resulting in a widespread decline of rampant tuberculosis
, typhoid and scarlet fever
. Up to a quarter of a million were housed under the Labourers Acts by 1921. It is not an exaggeration to term it a social revolution, in a sense it was the first large-scale public-housing schemes in the country, a development neglected by historians, because the houses, rural based and more scattered, were not as evident as the urban tenements, that officialdom would not even look into.
Having successfully settled the main grievances of small tenant farmers and agrarian labourers, O’Brien and Sheehan moved on by turning their attention to the unresolved question of the Home Rule Movement
, founding for this purpose a new organisation, the All-for-Ireland League
, many LLA branches joining the League.
, Redmond and Dillon were determined to undermine O’Brien and "squelch that body by getting a few reliable Munster MPs to start a new Land and Labour group and claim it as the legitimate continuation of the original association". In 1905, Dillon's ally and ILLA secretary J. J. O’Shee MP was tasked with forming a break-away 'party-subservient' organisation in answer to Sheehan's domination of the original one. Sheehan had created that domination on order to
O’Brien and some others rejoined the IPP in 1907 for the sake of unity, but he was again driven out at the rigged 1908 Dublin "Baton Convention" in a dispute over the financial arrangements for the next stage of the 1909 Land Purchase Act. By January 1910 further ILLA groups split off, in Cork city P. J. Bradley, building an empire on the title, and William Field
MP, as president of a Dublin based Land and Labour League (LLL), each claiming Irish Party credit for the earlier ILLA achievements. Sheehan resigned the LLA presidency in July 1910 , his colleague Cornelius Buckley taking over. Cork then had three LLA factions from 1910 to 1915.
This greatly damaged the labourer’s movement as soon nobody knew which organisation they belonged to. In other counties where branches were long established, they remained independent with divergent local activities, in some cases in Connacht under R. A. Corr, with the dual title Trade and Labour Association (T&LA), as successor to Davitt’s Democratic Labour Federation.
By the end of 1919, most ILLA and LLA branches had completed amalgamation with the expanding Irish Transport and General Workers' Union
(ITGWU), some independent branches remaining active in outlying areas of Munster and Connacht into the 1920s, when they in turn fused with the ITGWU, all forming the basis of the new labour movement. Later Irish governments continued rural cottage building well into the middle of the 20th. century, though at a much slower rate
Munster
Munster is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the south of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial purposes...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, to organise and pursue political agitation for small tenant farmer
Tenant farmer
A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying...
s' and rural labourers' rights. Its branches also spread into Connacht
Connacht
Connacht , formerly anglicised as Connaught, is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the west of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for...
. The ILLA was known under different names—Land and Labour Association (LLA) or League (LLL). Its branches were active for almost thirty years, and had considerable success in propagating labour ideals before their traditions became the basis for the new labour and trade unions movements, with which they gradually amalgamated.
Background
Following the early formation of the Tenant Right LeagueTenant Right League
The Tenant Right League, established in 1850, was an organisation which aimed to secure reforms in the Irish land system. Formed by Charles Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas , it united for a time Protestant and Catholic tenants, Duffy calling his movement The League of North and South.The political...
in 1850, which first demanded the adoption and enforcement of the Three Fs
Three Fs
The Three Fs were a series of demands first issued by the Tenant Right League in their campaign for land reform in Ireland from the 1850s. They were,...
to aid Irish tenant farmers, namely
-
-
- fair rent;
- fixity of tenure;
- free sale;
-
all of whom lacked these rights, the first ineffective Irish Land Acts of 1870, 1880 and 1881 followed. By giving priority to farming interests, the Acts severely restricted labourers' cottage building, generally in the hands of landowners. The additional half-heartedness shown towards labourers' housing by the Acts was symptomatic of the fact that rural labourers had been little involved in the Irish Land League's Land War
Land War
The Land War in Irish history was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and was dedicated to bettering the position of tenant farmers and ultimately to a redistribution of land to tenants from...
waged on behalf of small tenant farmers by Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt was an Irish republican and nationalist agrarian agitator, a social campaigner, labour leader, journalist, Home Rule constitutional politician and Member of Parliament , who founded the Irish National Land League.- Early years :Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo,...
and William O'Brien
William O'Brien
William O'Brien was an Irish nationalist, journalist, agrarian agitator, social revolutionary, politician, party leader, newspaper publisher, author and Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
from 1879 to 1882 in the poorer regions of Connacht and Munster, where conditions were especially severe. Together with Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
and his party lieutenants, they went into a bitter verbal offensive and were imprisoned in October 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act
Irish Coercion Act
The Protection of Person and Property Act 1881 was one of more than 100 Coercion Acts passed by the Parliament of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1801 and 1922, in an attempt to establish law and order in Ireland. The 1881 Act was passed by parliament and introduced by...
in Kilmainham Jail for "sabotaging the Land Act", from where the No-Rent Manifesto was issued calling for a national tenant farmer rent strike
Rent strike
A rent strike is a method of protest commonly employed against large landlords. In a rent strike, a group of tenants come together and agree to refuse to pay their rent en masse until a specific list of demands is met by the landlord...
which was partially followed. Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian crimes increased widely.
In 1881, nearly 75% of Irish people lived in rural areas. About 38% of these comprised the agricultural workforce, of which nearly 70% were agricultural labourers, 25% of these forming a class of 'landless' labourers, an estimated 60,000 in number, together with their families amounting to nearly a quarter of a million of the rural population, struggling to survive in the squalor of 40,000 one room 'cabins'
Sod house
The sod house or "soddy" was a corollary to the log cabin during frontier settlement of Canada and the United States. The prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone; however, sod from thickly-rooted prairie grass was abundant...
(together with their animals if they could afford them). Their simple twin demand was for a decent home and a small piece of land. The Land League was thus forced to also address labourer's issues.
The first phase of Irish Labourers Acts from 1883 to 1906 began with the 1883 Labourers' (Ireland) Act which was cumbersome as was the 1885 Labourers' (Ireland) Act, both amended in 1886. The Acts empowered to initiate schemes for building labourers' cattages with half acre allotments, the expenses of these to be met from local rates. They were therefore unpopular and few were built as both the empowered Guardians and local farmers were themselves the ratepayers. The Acts were further overshadowed by two events, firstly due to falling prices for agricultural produce and bad weather tenants could not pay their rent and united in the Plan of Campaign
Plan of Campaign
The Plan of Campaign was a stratagem adopted in Ireland between 1886 and 1891, co-ordinated by Irish politicians for the benefit of tenant farmers, against mainly absentee and rack-rent landlords. It was launched to counter agricultural distress caused by the continual depression in prices of dairy...
to withhold excessive rents. At the same time Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party
Irish Parliamentary Party
The Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...
(IPP) held the balance of power in the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
. Their key concern in 1886 turned to Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
's First Irish Home Rule Bill, which was subsequently defeated.
Although Parnell had become converted to the labourers' cause whilst in Kilmainham Gaol
Kilmainham Gaol
Kilmainham Gaol is a former prison, located in Kilmainham in Dublin, which is now a museum. It has been run since the mid-1980s by the Office of Public Works , an Irish Government agency...
, after he became leader of the IPP their cause fell victim to his distancing himself from the Plan of Campaign in the interest of pursuing Home Rule. Then further by his fall from power in 1891 and the ensuing Party split, aggravated by the rejection of the Second Irish Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
in 1893. Not least, from the middle of the 1890s less than 1,000 cottages a year were being built for small tenant farmers or privileged labourers.
Origins
Acting in response to specific local needs, be it housing, land or employment, steadfast local spirits sustained Trade and Labour Leagues in parts of Cos Wicklow, Kilkenny, Laois, Kildare, Roscommon, Tyrone and Tipperary. However it was not until the formation of the Knights of the Plough a farm laborers' body founded by Benjamin Pellin, a small land-owner in the William ThompsonWilliam Thompson (philosopher)
William Thompson was an Irish political and philosophical writer and social reformer, developing from utilitarianism into an early critic of capitalist exploitation whose ideas influenced the Cooperative, Trade Union and Chartist movements as well as Karl Marx...
tradition, at Narraghmore, Co. Kildare in June 1892, and of the National Labour League in Kanturk in January 1893, that the required organisation of the labourers began to take shape.
The rural area of North Cork
County Cork
County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...
around Kanturk
Kanturk
-Transport:*Kanturk railway station opened on 1 April 1889, closed for passenger traffic on 27 January 1947 and finally closed altogether on 4 February 1963. Kanturk is however served by the nearby Banteer railway station.-People:...
and Duhallow
Duhallow
Duhallow is a barony located in the north-western part of County Cork, Ireland.- Legal context :Baronies were created after the Norman invasion as subdivisions of counties and were used for administration. Baronies continue to be regarded as officially defined units, but they are no longer used...
had been since the 1860s a centre of labourer agitation and strikes, forming a number of early trade unions. The most successful was the Kanturk Trade and Labour Association established in 1889 with the assistance amongst others, of a young man as its secretary, D. D. Sheehan
D. D. Sheehan
Daniel Desmond Sheehan, usually known as D. D. Sheehan was an Irish nationalist, politician, labour leader, journalist, barrister and author...
who had experienced eviction with his family at the height of the Land League's Land War in 1880, when his father followed William O'Brien's "Pay No Rent" manifesto, their farm taken over by a "land-grabber" who paid their rent arrears. The Kanturk Association spread to other districts under a new title, the Duhallow Trade and Labour Association, in which Michael Davitt also became involved, until it broke up under the Irish Party's "Parnell split" in 1891.
It was realised on all sides, that the 1884 enfranchisement of the labourers had been insufficient in itself to wrest solutions to grievances from the state and the rural upper- and middle-classes. The control exercised over the implementation of the labourers' acts by conservative elements in rural society had had a ruinious affect. This finally brought the labourers' bodies together in order to gain political muscle. It became the raison d'être for calling a labour convention at Limerick Junction
Limerick Junction
Limerick Junction is an important railway station in South Tipperary, Ireland which was originally named "Tipperary Junction". Tipperary town is about two miles away to the south-east. Limerick Junction, with a cluster of pleasantly presented railway cottages and a pub, is a small hamlet...
, County Tipperary
County Tipperary
County Tipperary is a county of Ireland. It is located in the province of Munster and is named after the town of Tipperary. The area of the county does not have a single local authority; local government is split between two authorities. In North Tipperary, part of the Mid-West Region, local...
on 15 August 1894, at which the Irish Land and Labour Association was created and officially launched, its founders D. D. Sheehan as chairman together with a young Carrick-on-Suir
Carrick-on-Suir
Carrick-on-Suir is a town in South Tipperary in Ireland. As the name – meaning "the rock of the Suir" – suggests, the town is situated on the River Suir. The of the town gives the population as 5,906 and shows that it has grown by 5.7% since 2002...
solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
J. J. O’Shee as its secretary. Sheehan founded the Association to pursue tenant-farmer and labourer's grievances as a labour lobby within the nationalist movement. With labourers 'as strangers in a strange land, without influence and without rights' it was to be expected that obstructions placed in the path of the labourers' welfare by landowners and farmers would invite bitter recrimination at the new Associations meetings. The Association would prove itself to be the most enduring of the labour groups. Agrarian agitation was unique in that it was an all-Ireland agitation. Ulster tenant-farmers and labourers equally demanded rights, their movement the Farmers and Labourers Union led by T. W. Russell.
Programme
The passing of the revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
The Local Government Act 1898 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that established a system of local government in Ireland similar to that already created for England, Wales and Scotland by legislation in 1888 and 1889...
, a "grass roots home rule" Act, totally reorganised the old aristocratic landlord "Grand Juries", eliminating their power by transferring it to Local County Councils elected by tenant farmers, town traders and labourers. This coincided with William O'Brien founding the United Irish League
United Irish League
The United Irish League was a nationalist political party in Ireland, launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People" . Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform, compelling larger grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution amongst...
(UIL), the wide expansion of the agricultural co-operative movement established earlier by Horace Plunkett and Sheehan becoming both President of the ILLA and editor of the Skibbereen
Skibbereen
Skibbereen , is a town in County Cork, Ireland. It is the most southerly town in Ireland. It is located on the N71 national secondary road.The name "Skibbereen" means "little boat harbour." The River Ilen which runs through the town reaches the sea at Baltimore.-History:Prior to 1600 most of the...
based Cork County Southern Star newspaper.
The Act was immediately recognised by the labourers, who for the first time held both active and passive electoral franchise, as a means to achieving their interests and facilitating those who desired to help them on local county councils. The prospects offered by the Act of radically overhauling the socio-economic distribution of political power in the countryside was not lost on the labourer movement. The ILLA took resolute steps to both organise the voting power of the labourers and to see to the 'proposal of labour candidates'.
Modelling themselves on Davitt’s concepts, the ILLA platform included demands for:
-
-
-
- - land for the people
- - houses for the people
- - work and wages for the people
- - education for the people
- - state pensions for old people
- - all local rents shall be paid by the ground landlords.
-
-
Its strategy was to achieve these through political and parliamentary leverage, pressure of the press and public agitation rather than by physical-force means or trade union action.
Objectives
The name of the association was somewhat anomalous, as it strived to represent and pursue the twofold interests of small tenant farmers and rural agrarian labourers. Both were a deprived and down trodden class supporting each other in their common plight, tenant farmers paying excessive rents or suffering eviction, labourers "compelled to live in hovels not fit to house the brute beast of the field" (Sheehan's later House of Commons speech). The objectives of the ILLA were therefore to achieve tenant land purchase, new and improved housing, welfare working conditions and access to land holdings for rural labourers.ILLA concern for other labour issues developed after the Local Government Act transferred responsibility for cottage building, land reclamation, drainage, road building, their repair and maintenance, to the County and District Councils. This called for considerable ILLA involvement when it came to tenders for contract work and the fair employment of local contractors and labour, settling disputes and complaints, often arising out of local political patronage. The situation of previously evicted tenants, now reduced to landless labourers, was also on their agenda.
Middle-class hostility
However where initial success such as the election of five of the Association's Central Council to County Councils, it was nullified by the continued domination of farmers and landowners in the local authorities. Where the Land and Labour Association clashed with middle-class interests, it was excluded from all effective political action, which even led to the exclusion of the labourers from United Irish League meetings. The belief of J.F.X. O'Brien and others was that there should be no separate labour organisation alongside the UIL, which attempted to tactfully bring the Association and its followers under its wing. John RedmondJohn Redmond
John Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
's sedulous refusal to consider direct Parliamentary representation for the Land and Labour Association was but an instance of the middle-class obsession with maintaining its hold over national politics.
The desire to keep the labouring class in tow prompted the United Irish League to eventually give the Land and Labour Association entry to national councils in 1900. The failure of the UIL and the Irish Party to either refer to the labourers in their deliberations or to do anything for them at Westminster indicated the Associations intended subservient position. It took the Mid-Cork by-election of 1901 to show that the understanding between the UIL and the ILLA was paper-thin. When it became clear that the ILLA candidate, D. D. Sheehan, was going to make an impact, he was accused of being an "anti-Healyite
Timothy Michael Healy
Timothy Michael Healy, KC , also known as Tim Healy, was an Irish nationalist politician, journalist, author, barrister and one of the most controversial Irish Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
" and that his first allegiance was to the labourers rather than to the party, expressed the class bias of the Irish Party against the workers.
Land ownership
By the turn of the century the working class segment of the electorate were a new power, a very worthy class to be courted and flattered with at election time. They displayed this at the selection convention for the Mid-Cork by-election in May 1901, returning their President D. D. SheehanD. D. Sheehan
Daniel Desmond Sheehan, usually known as D. D. Sheehan was an Irish nationalist, politician, labour leader, journalist, barrister and author...
, who stood on a labour platform, defeating the UIL candidate of the Irish Party, as Member of Parliament (1901–1918) in the House of Commons. Their ILLA organisation had grown to 98 branches by 1899, expanding to 144 branches in 1904 mainly in counties Cork
County Cork
County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...
, Limerick
County Limerick
It is thought that humans had established themselves in the Lough Gur area of the county as early as 3000 BC, while megalithic remains found at Duntryleague date back further to 3500 BC...
and Tipperary
County Tipperary
County Tipperary is a county of Ireland. It is located in the province of Munster and is named after the town of Tipperary. The area of the county does not have a single local authority; local government is split between two authorities. In North Tipperary, part of the Mid-West Region, local...
.
UIL agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase and resulted in the calling of the December 1902 Land Conference
Land Conference
The Land Conference was a successful conciliatory negotiation held in the Mansion House in Dublin, Ireland between 20 December 1902 and 4 January 1903. In a short period it produced a unanimously agreed report recommending an amiable solution to the long waged land war between tenant farmers and...
, an initiative by moderate landlords led by Lord Dunraven on the one hand and William O'Brien, John Redmond
John Redmond
John Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
MP, Timothy Harrington MP and Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
's T. W. Russell MP representing tenant farmers on the other hand. It strove for a settlement by conciliatory agreement between landlord and tenant. After six sittings all eight tenant’s demands were conceded, O’Brien having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of conciliation. He followed this by campaigning vigorously for the greatest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, orchestrating the Wyndham
George Wyndham
George Wyndham PC was a British Conservative politician, man of letters, noted for his elegance, and one of The Souls.-Background and education:...
Land Purchase Act (1903) through Parliament. The Act provided very generous bonus subsidy terms to landowners on sale.
Purchases between tenants and landlords were negotiated by Sheehan and the ILLA branches after O'Brien and Sheehan established an Advisory Committee to mediate between landlords and tenants on purchase terms with low interest annuities which produced an exceptionally high take-up of land purchase. Munster tenants availed of land purchase in higher numbers than in any other province.
The act effectively fulfilled the first important demand of the ILLA, the abolition of "landlordism"
Absentee landlord
Absentee landlord is an economic term for a person who owns and rents out a profit-earning property, but does not live within the property's local economic region. This practice is problematic for that region because absentee landlords drain local wealth into their home country, particularly that...
, replaced by land purchase, to finally resolve the Land Question
Irish Land Acts
The Land Acts were a series of measures to deal with the question of peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909...
. The result was the formation of a new proud farming proprietorship, and the steady extinction of the Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
landed gentry
Landed gentry
Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....
. Whereas in 1870 only 3% of Irish farmers owned their land, by 1908, this jumped to nearly 50%. By the early 1920s, the figure was at 70%, the process being later completed.
Despite some deficiencies of the Land Act, O'Brien could take some pride in its working since its passage. The social effects of the Act were immediate The year 1903 alone saw a 33% drop in reports of intimidation, a 70% decline in boycotting cases, 60% fewer people needing police protection, and a 50% decrease in the number and acreage of grazing farms unlet or unstocked because of agitation. In the period 1903 to1909 over 200,000 small peasant tenant-farmers became owners of their holdings under the Act. By 1914 75% of occupiers were buying out their landlords under the 1903 Act and the later Birrell
Augustine Birrell
Augustine Birrell PC, KC was an English politician, barrister, academic and author. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916, resigning in the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising.-Early life:...
Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1909 which extended the 1903 Act by allowing for the compulsory purchase of tenanted farmland by the Land Commission. In all, under these pre-1921 Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchased their holdings amounting to 115 million acres (465,388.9 km²) out of a total of 20 million in the country.
Cottage ownership
In 1903, O’Brien left the IPP when his policy of "conciliation" with landowners was rejected by John RedmondJohn Redmond
John Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
and John Dillon
John Dillon
John Dillon was an Irish land reform agitator from Dublin, an Irish Home Rule activist, a nationalist politician, a Member of Parliament for over 35 years, and the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party....
who feared O’Brien’s course and popularity would drive a wedge between the farming and labouring community allegiance to the Irish party.
O'Brien then joined forces a year later with Sheehan’s ILLA organisation, identifying himself with Sheehan's demand for agricultural labourers' housing, who up to then were dependent on limited provision of cottages by local County Councils or landowners at unfavourable terms.
The Second Phase of the Labourers Acts (1906–1914) began with O'Brien achieving the unprecedented Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906). The so called 'Labourers Act' provided large scale state funding for extensive agricultural labourer-owned cottages, the accommodations to be erected by the local County Councils. A major socio-economic transformation in rural state housing erasing the previous inhuman habitations, O'Brien saying that the Labourers Act -- "were scarcely less wonderworking than the abolition of landlordism itself", in 1904 Davitt going so far as to declare that the Labourers Acts constituted -- "a rational principle of state Socialism" .
In the next five years the programme produced a complete 'municipalisation' of over 40,000 additional commodious working-class dwellings dotting the rural Irish countryside, the proportionally larger number of 7,560 cottages erected in County Cork in coordination with Sheehan and the ILLA branches, became known locally as "Sheehans' cottages". At first the compulsory surrender of an acre of choice land to each labourer who claimed it was resisted by the new land owning farmers. In due course they too reaped the benefits, gone the days when a farmer never knew when or where to find labour to work his fields. Either they were migrant or drink ridden. Now occupying their own proud family home and vegetable patch at the corner of his farm, they worked cooperatively for him all year round. This had enormous long-term consequences for rural Irish society.
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, typhoid and scarlet fever
Scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
. Up to a quarter of a million were housed under the Labourers Acts by 1921. It is not an exaggeration to term it a social revolution, in a sense it was the first large-scale public-housing schemes in the country, a development neglected by historians, because the houses, rural based and more scattered, were not as evident as the urban tenements, that officialdom would not even look into.
Aims accomplished
Additional funding for the erection of a further 5000 cottages was won under the follow-on Labourers (Ireland) Act (1911), Sheehan making the concluding speech during the passage of the bill. Although he retired from the LLA in 1910, Sheehan remained active in the labour movement as its leader in Munster. Around 1912, Ireland was economically one of the prosperous small countries of Europe. D. D. Sheehan maintained in 1921, that the labourers, as a result of these housing acts (particularly the landmark 1906 bill),"were no longer a people to be kicked and cuffed and ordered about by the schoneens and squireens of the district; they became a very worthy class indeed, to be courted and flattered at election times and wheedled with all sorts of fair promises of what could be done for them".
Having successfully settled the main grievances of small tenant farmers and agrarian labourers, O’Brien and Sheehan moved on by turning their attention to the unresolved question of the Home Rule Movement
Irish Home Rule Movement
The Irish Home Rule Movement articulated a longstanding Irish desire for the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 by a demand for self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The movement drew upon a legacy of patriotic thought that dated back at least to the late 17th...
, founding for this purpose a new organisation, the All-for-Ireland League
All-for-Ireland League
The All-for-Ireland League , was an Irish, Munster-based political party . Founded by William O'Brien MP, it generated a new national movement to achieve agreement between the different parties concerned on the historically difficult aim of Home Rule for the whole of Ireland...
, many LLA branches joining the League.
Adversity
The Irish Parliamentary Party, after had it alienated O’Brien from the party in 1903, tried by every means to curtail his activities after he became associated with Sheehan’s ILLA, regarding their conciliatory approach in the land question as a dangerous deviation from party policy. In the manner in which the Party took control of O'Brien's UIL through the involvement of Joseph DevlinJoseph Devlin
Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician...
, Redmond and Dillon were determined to undermine O’Brien and "squelch that body by getting a few reliable Munster MPs to start a new Land and Labour group and claim it as the legitimate continuation of the original association". In 1905, Dillon's ally and ILLA secretary J. J. O’Shee MP was tasked with forming a break-away 'party-subservient' organisation in answer to Sheehan's domination of the original one. Sheehan had created that domination on order to
realize the great democratic principle of the government of the people by the people and for the peoplein the teeth of party autocracy. A larger section, mainly in counties Cork, Limerick, Kerry and Tipperary , followed Sheehan who renamed it the 'Land and Labour Association' (LLA). Its members sat on most Rural and District County Councils. Splitting-off and in-fighting became symptomatic of all national movements after the Parnell split.
O’Brien and some others rejoined the IPP in 1907 for the sake of unity, but he was again driven out at the rigged 1908 Dublin "Baton Convention" in a dispute over the financial arrangements for the next stage of the 1909 Land Purchase Act. By January 1910 further ILLA groups split off, in Cork city P. J. Bradley, building an empire on the title, and William Field
William Field (Irish politician)
William Field was an Irish butcher from Dublin, and a nationalist politician. From 1892 to 1918 he was Member of Parliament for Dublin St Patrick's, taking his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.His father was a supporter of Young Ireland...
MP, as president of a Dublin based Land and Labour League (LLL), each claiming Irish Party credit for the earlier ILLA achievements. Sheehan resigned the LLA presidency in July 1910 , his colleague Cornelius Buckley taking over. Cork then had three LLA factions from 1910 to 1915.
This greatly damaged the labourer’s movement as soon nobody knew which organisation they belonged to. In other counties where branches were long established, they remained independent with divergent local activities, in some cases in Connacht under R. A. Corr, with the dual title Trade and Labour Association (T&LA), as successor to Davitt’s Democratic Labour Federation.
By the end of 1919, most ILLA and LLA branches had completed amalgamation with the expanding Irish Transport and General Workers' Union
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union
The Irish Transport and General Workers Union, an Irish trade union, was founded by James Larkin in 1908 as a general union. Initially drawing its membership from branches of the Liverpool-based National Union of Dock Labourers, from which Larkin had been expelled, it grew to include workers in a...
(ITGWU), some independent branches remaining active in outlying areas of Munster and Connacht into the 1920s, when they in turn fused with the ITGWU, all forming the basis of the new labour movement. Later Irish governments continued rural cottage building well into the middle of the 20th. century, though at a much slower rate