Land War
The Land War was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland that began in 1879. It may refer specifically to the first and most intense period of agitation between 1879 and 1882, or include later outbreaks of agitation that periodically reignited until 1923, especially the 1886–1891 Plan of Campaign and the 1906–1909 Ranch War. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and its successors, the Irish National League and the United Irish League, and aimed to secure fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure for tenant farmers and ultimately peasant proprietorship of the land they worked.
From 1870, various governments introduced a series of Land Acts that granted many of the activists' demands. William O'Brien played a leading role in the 1902 Land Conference to pave the way for the most advanced social legislation in Ireland since the Union, the Land Purchase Act 1903. This Act set the conditions for the break-up of large estates by government-sponsored purchase.
Alongside the political and legal changes, the "Long Depression" affected rent yields and landlord-tenant relations across all of Europe from the 1870s to the 1890s.
Background
The population of Ireland was overwhelmingly rural; in 1841, four-fifths of the population lived in hamlets smaller than 20 houses. This ratio declined over the century, but only due to emigration from rural areas and not from growth of the towns and cities. Land in Ireland was concentrated into relatively few hands, many of them absentee landlords. In 1870, 50% of the island was owned by 750 families. Between 1850 and 1870, landlords extracted £340 million in rent—far exceeding tax receipts for the same period—of which only 4–5% was reinvested. This led landlords to take on a role of non-productive managers within the island's overall economy. Conflict between landlords and tenants arose from opposing viewpoints on such issues as land consolidation, security of tenure, transition from tillage to grazing, and the role of the market. The Irish nationalist politician Isaac Butt opined that Catholic Irish being tenants was worse than "the heaviest yoke of feudal servitude".The Devon Commission of 1843–44 found that various forms of tenant right were practiced throughout Ireland, not just in Ulster. There was a tension between English law, which protected the absolute property rights of the landlord, and Irish custom on the other hand in which the tenant enjoyed an "interest" in the property, which he could buy or sell. This "interest" could be as much as 4–6 years rent, which incoming tenants had to pay with capital that they might otherwise have spent on their own improvements. In the decades following the Great Famine, rises in agricultural prices were not matched by rent increases, leading to an increase in the tenant's stake in the farm, which may have risen to as much as 10–20 years of rent. The existence of tenant right was accepted by creditors who would extend loans with the tenant right as collateral.
During the Great Famine, the poorest cottiers and agricultural labourers died or were forced to emigrate, freeing up land that was purchased by larger farmers. In 1850, the Tenant Right League briefly dominated Irish politics with the demand for free sale, fixity of tenure, and fair rent. Although it never caught on with the poor smallholders in Connacht which it was intended to help, the League spurred the creation of the Independent Irish Party. In 1870, the Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone pushed through the Landlord and Tenant Act 1870. The act actually increased agrarian tensions, as landlords attempted to evade provisions intended to protect departing tenants, while the tenants retaliated by setting up local Tenants' Defence Associations. One such the Route Tenants' Defence Association, was however hostile towards the League.
Agrarian crimes were rising during the late 1870s, from 135 in 1875 to 236 two years later. At the same time emigration decreased by more than half. Nevertheless, as late as 1877 the areas which would be heavily affected by Land League agitation were completely calm, without any hint of what was to come. In 1878, the Irish-American Clan na Gael leader John Devoy offered Charles Stewart Parnell, then a rising star in the Irish Parliamentary Party, a deal which became known as the New Departure. As a result of this agreement, the physical-force and parliamentary wings of Irish nationalism agreed to work together on the land issue. This collaboration was cemented by a meeting on 1 June 1879 in Dublin between Devoy, Parnell, and Michael Davitt. It is disputed what was actually agreed to. Davitt maintained that there was no formal agreement, while Devoy claimed that the IPP had promised not to act against the Irish Republican Brotherhood and made other concessions in exchange for Irish-American support.
The west of Ireland was hit by the 1879 famine, a combination of heavy rains, poor yields and low prices that brought widespread hunger and deprivation. Compounded by the reduction in opportunities for outside income, especially seasonal agricultural income in Great Britain, many smallholders were faced with hunger and unable to pay their rent. Some landlords offered rent abatement, while others refused on the grounds that their tenants were participating in anti-landlord agitation. Irish historian Paul Bew notes that five of the largest landlords in Connacht also refused to contribute any money to relief funds, despite collecting more than £80,000 annually in rent. According to historians such as William Vaughan and Phillip Bull, the serious agricultural recession combined with a unified nationalist leadership set the stage to produce a powerful and lasting popular movement.
Chronology
Land League (1879–1881)
The Land War began on 20 April 1879 at a mass meeting in Irishtown, County Mayo organised by local and Dublin-based activists, led by Davitt and James Daly. The activists tried to mobilize an alliance of tenant farmers, shopkeepers and clergy in favour of land reform. Although the clergy refused to participate, some 7,000 to 13,000 people attended the meeting, having come from all parts of Mayo and counties Roscommon and Galway. The main issue was rent, which was typically paid in the spring; due to the poor harvest tenants could not afford to pay and many had been threatened with eviction. The crowd was guided and led into position by local Fenians—recruited by Davitt in an earlier trip with help from local IRB leader Pat Nally—even though the IRB council refused to sanction agrarian activism. Speakers included John O'Connor Power MP, Fenian Thomas Brennan, Glasgow-based activist John Ferguson, and Daly.Local Fenians organised meetings, at Claremorris on 25 May with 200 attendees and Knock on 1 June with a reported 20,000–30,000 turnout, in protest of the Church's position. Another meeting was held in Westport, County Mayo on 8 June, in protest against the Marquess of Sligo, the largest landowner in Mayo; Davitt persuaded Parnell to speak and 8,000 people turned out. Parnell went on with the engagement even after John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, denounced the meeting in a 7 June letter to The Freeman's Journal. Parnell also wanted to prevent the new movement's capture by Fenian radicals, as the latter were unacceptable to the Catholic clergy and to larger tenants, on whose support Parnell depended. This meeting, especially Parnell's speech in which he promoted peasant proprietorship, was widely commented in the press as far afield as London.
Initially, the movement was non-sectarian in character and Protestant tenants also took part in meetings. The focus of the leadership shifted from agitation to organization to harness the new energy for the nationalist cause. On 16 August 1879, the Land League of Mayo was founded in Castlebar, at which point the first overtures were made to the Catholic hierarchy. From September, priests quickly assumed leadership roles in the movement and presided over more than two thirds of the meetings in the rest of 1879. The movement continued to gain strength as the economic situation deteriorated. Involvement of the clergy made it much more difficult for the British government to take action against the movement, which instilled "almost perfect unity" among Irish tenant farmers. In several constituencies, Land League-backed candidates failed in the 1880 general election due to clerical opposition.
On 21 October 1879, the land League of Mayo was superseded by the Irish National Land League based in Dublin, with Parnell made its president. As the land agitation progressed, it was taken over by larger farmers and the centre of gravity shifted away from the distressed western districts. In Mayo, the autumn potato harvest was only 1.4 tons per acre, less than half of the previous year. At the Land League conference in April 1880, Parnell's program of conciliation with landlords was rejected in favour a demand for the abolition of "landlordism", promoted by Davitt and other radicals. On 17 May, Parnell was elected to the presidency of the IPP. Local chapters of the Land League frequently were formed from previous associations such as Tenants' Defence Associations or Farmers' Clubs, which decided to join the Land League because of the greater financial resources offered; this brought larger farmers and graziers into the movement.
The league adopted the slogan "the land for the people", which was vague enough to be acceptable to Irish nationalists across the political spectrum. For most of the tenant farmers, the slogan meant owning their own land. For smallholders on uneconomic holdings, especially in the congested western areas, it meant being granted larger holdings that their families had held previous to the Great Famine evictions. For radicals such as Michael Davitt, it meant land nationalization. The fusion between land agitation and nationalist politics was based on the idea that the land of Ireland rightfully belonged to the Irish people but had been stolen by English invaders who had foisted a foreign system of land tenure upon it. Nominally, the Land League condemned large-scale grazing as improper use of land that rightfully belonged to tillage farmers. As investment in grazing land was the main vehicle of upward mobility for rural Catholics, the new Catholic grazier class was torn between its natural allegiance to Irish nationalism and its economic dependence on landlords to rent land for grazing. Many sided with the Land League, creating a mixed-class body whose actual economic interests conflicted. This further consolidated the nationalist nature of the Land League.
The government set up the Land Commission in 1881 with quasi-judicial powers that eventually enabled most tenant farmers to buy freehold interests in their land.