On December 6th 1922, the Irish Free State was formally established. Just over two weeks later, Patrick Hogan, Minister for Agriculture in the Free State government, sent a Cabinet memorandum on "seizures of land" to William Cosgrave, president of the Irish Free State, and key government ministers. Hogan's note included the following assertion: "The Land War is very widespread and very serious even at present."
This statement may surprise those who associate agrarian unrest in Ireland with the late 19th century and assume that the Irish land question was answered by land purchase acts. But as indicated by Hogan’s memo, outbreaks of land agitation occurred in Ireland well after the events of 1879−82 that are generally termed the land war, and such significant land bills as the Wyndham Act of 1903.
In the spring and early summer of 1920, rural unrest was particularly pronounced with officially returned "agrarian outrages" higher than in any other year since 1882. There was also notable unrest during the Civil War, including the latter months of 1922, with Hogan warning that "there are all the signs of very serious trouble developing in the months of January and February."
The dominant form that rural agitation took in the early 1920s was the seizure of land. An immediate context for such land seizures was escalating tensions over resources due to the impact of the First World War on emigration and beef prices. In the west of the country in particular, an already chronic land hunger that "peasant proprietorship" of itself could not alleviate was exacerbated by restrictions on emigration, with increased wartime beef prices ensuring that land was more likely to be let out for commercial grazing than subsistence farming.
In 1922, there was a general slump in agricultural prices, including beef, but antagonism between different farming interests continued. While even the farms of small and middling farmers were not guaranteed to be safe, land let out to large-scale graziers on the eleven-month system was especially targeted by rural agitators. This type of letting, being for less than a year, was not liable to periodical rent revisions. It suited graziers looking to lease land on a short-term basis for the fattening of cattle, but was resented by small farmers who did not have the capital to outbid them.
As a result, cattle-driving was a common tactic employed by agrarian agitators in advance of seizing land. This involved removing cattle from a farm and either driving them to the grazier’s house, placing them on another farmer’s land or leaving them on a road some distance from that farm. Some seized land was broken up into holdings for individual farmers, non-inheriting farmers’ sons or landless labourers, and some turned into commons, occasionally referred to as soviets. A 1,000 acre farm in Co. Clare belonging to H.V. McNamara, which was seized and used collectively by at least 37 small farmers and fishermen, is an example of one such commons.
Hogan’s memorandum points to a tense relationship between agrarian agitators and mainstream nationalists. In the west, land congestion had created a dissatisfaction that provided much of the energy for the War of Independence, but there was a relatively low participation in that part of the country in the war. For many within the nationalist movement, the land issue was not only a distraction from the national project but threatened to derail it. Hence, direct action aimed at land redistribution was a source of considerable anxiety for both the First Dáil and the Free State government.
Land was also a factor in the civil war conflict. Rural discontent was viewed by Liam Mellows and other opponents of the Treaty as a means of mobilising anti-government support. On the other side, key members of the government were hostile to an agitation that they believed was being used to undermine the authority of the Free State. Thus a connection was made between land seizures and anti-Treaty "irregularism", and a corresponding link formed between the defence of private property rights and the defence of the fledging state.
Attempts to curb agrarian unrest in the early 1920s included the establishment of special land courts and a Dáil land commission by the First Dáil, and the introduction of a 1923 land bill focused on redistributive land reform by the Free State government. Coercive measures were also employed. Hogan paved the way for such measures by claming in his memo that "it is quite impossible" to deal with the current outbreak of rural agitation "as an ordinary criminal matter". He outlined in graphic detail why the civil authorities were ineffectual in this regard:
"Cattle are driven from a man’s land; the police interfere and arrest some people; they are brought up on the next Court day before a Magistrate; all the neighbours are in attendance; the Court is crowded, the general atmosphere is that a few martyrs are being tried for highly moral and religious convictions which they refuse to repudiate. There is no evidence because, of course, the cattle are always driven at night, or perhaps a good alibi is proved. The Magistrate is unable to convict and the prisoners are released and carried through the town on the shoulders of their admiring neighbours and taken home with tar barrels lighted in front of them. That night the owner’s walls are knocked, he receives a threatening letter, and if he has the timidity to put his cattle back on his land they are driven again and so on until the owner either gives up the land or is shot."
A special infantry corps comprised of about 4,000 men was set up just over a month after Hogan outlined the need for military intervention. A unit of the Free State’s National Army, the corps was described in a 1924 army inquiry committee hearing as having done "effective, if 'rough and ready’ work in stamping [out] agrarian anarchy and other serious abuses existing and arising at that time."
In 1923 the corps arrested at least 173 people for "agrarian offences". Reasons recorded for arrest include "interfering with land other than his own", "breaking down walls", "unlawful grazing", "illegal tillage" and "unlawful possession". More commonly, the corps simply cleared seized land, often resorting to violence to do so.
Those who established the illegal commonage on McNamara’s estate in Co. Clare were initially evicted by the special infantry corps in July 1923. Following reoccupations of the land, they were again evicted in December 1923 and May 1924. Further coercive measures included the confiscation of stock, as took place in the case of the Co. Clare occupants in the December 1923 eviction, the debarring of those involved in seizures from future land distribution and the paying of fines and compensation.
But despite this, agrarian unrest continued to be a feature of Irish society. This was evidenced by the anti-land annuities agitation that commenced in 1926, and activism associated with Clann na Talmhan in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
