of intellect, of power, but my whole heart has been in this work (hear, hear)….155
VII
The party’s and Directory’s June calls for renewed land agitation, echoed by Redmond in his speaking tour, were a response to the agrarian unrest that had resumed in certain parts of Ireland since the passing of the Wyndham Act, often assuming new forms as a consequence of it. An increase in average land prices of at least 26 per cent between 1903 and 1909 made it difficult for poorer farmers to purchase. While Ulster and Leinster together accounted for 60 per cent of land sales since the Act, 22 per cent of sales had taken place in Munster, and only 18 per cent in Connacht.156 Not long after the Act was passed, UIL branches in parts of the west and south adopted the tactic of ‘rent combinations’ to force down the price of land. Farmers wishing to purchase were encouraged to withhold part or all of their rent in order to pressurize the landlords to sell at lower prices. Rent combinations operated in fifteen counties (six in Munster, six in Connacht and three in Leinster) between January 1907 and June 1908; there were at least sixty-three such combinations in ten counties in January 1908.157 It seems that they stimulated the progress of purchase: 36 per cent of all the purchase deals reached between 1903 and 1908 were signed in 1908, the peak year for the agitation.158
A second arm of the agitation, the so-called ‘Ranch War’, was directed at the other long-standing UIL objective: land redistribution in the congested areas. The chief obstacle to this was the grazing system, under which landlords let untenanted lands for grazing on eleven-month leases, at rents that, reflecting market demand, were higher than those set by the land courts. These lands provided certain landlords with an increasing proportion of their income, giving them little incentive to sell. The failure to compel them to do so was one of the defects in the 1903 Act complained of by Redmond as well as the anti-conciliationists. Tenants in the affected areas wishing to purchase these lands took matters into their own hands by intimidating graziers into giving up their leases, the aim being to force a sale to the Estates Commissioners, who would then divide the land. In 1905 and 1906, the anti-grazier campaign was almost wholly confined to County Galway.159 The often illegal methods used in these forms of agitation did not have the approval of the UIL leadership, still less that of the Irish Party leadership. However, in October 1906, two MPs, Laurence Ginnell of North Westmeath and David Sheehy of South Meath, inaugurated the new tactic of ‘cattle-driving’ – the driving of cattle off the grazing farms. Action on this line soon followed in neighbouring counties. Within six months, cattle-driving had spread to parts of Connacht and to midland counties not previously disturbed. Cattle-drives numbered 390 during 1907, and rose to 681 the following year. They seemed to achieve their object: an unprecedented 174 grazing farms remained unlet in 1907.160
The political dimension of the campaign was soon on display. Unionists who expressed concern about lawlessness and disparaged the Government for inactivity were labelled ‘carrion crows’ by Birrell in April 1907 (indicating, as the Freeman put it, their ‘insatiable appetite for the unsavoury’). The phrase was taken up with enthusiasm by the nationalist press.161 Birrell’s claim that the country had not been more peaceful in 600 years seemed a complacent echo of nationalist propaganda, and would look hollow in the light of data he later gave for Irish agrarian crime in 1907: ninety-eight outrages with firearms (up from twenty-two in 1906), 276 cases of malicious injury to persons, animals and property and 270 people needing police protection.162 In August, six counties were proclaimed as seriously disorderly and 400 extra police drafted in at the request of the RIC Inspector General; the following June, a further two counties and 350 police were added.163 The Times called for the revival of the 1887 Coercion Act.164 Birrell warned that cattle-driving could only tie the Chief Secretary’s hands on reform. T.M. Kettle challenged such warnings as ‘reactionary’ utterances similar to those of ‘Buckshot’ Forster (Birrell’s Liberal predecessor in 1881), and sought to justify cattle-driving: ‘All the economics, all the public spirit, all the common sense was on the side of the cattle-drivers and against the Castle drivellers.’165
Before the Council Bill fiasco, Ginnell had complained to Redmond at his refusal to convene a party meeting to plan for the campaign: ‘Neither League nor party having decided to suspend agitation, I have no authority to suspend it. Your decision threw me back upon my own duty to keep the people up to the fighting line.’166 With the bill dead, it was time for the shift in attitude implied by Kettle’s words. Devlin, having conferred with Redmond, wrote to Dillon in June 1907 that the situation demanded that ‘prompt steps should be taken to give the country a lead’.167 He advised Redmond that the representative of each district where cattle-driving was carried on ‘should be sent into these places to associate himself with the people’. Listing the counties where the grazing agitation was most acute, he referred to Ginnell: ‘There is no row at present in Westmeath, but Ginnell has written me to say that he is coming over in order to create one, and I have given him every encouragement.’168 All this was reflected in the unwonted militancy of the June Party Statement and of Redmond’s call at Battersea for agitation for the compulsory purchase of the grazing tracts, repeated in east Galway, the heart of the disturbed area where Sinn Féin organizers were already active. A sizeable number of party MPs took their cue from Redmond and advocated boycotting and intimidation.169 Prosecutions for cattle-driving multiplied throughout 1907 and 1908. In late August 1907, six counties were proclaimed, and J.P. Farrell, MP for North Longford, who had called for the fight to be extended to every ranch, was arrested along with seventeen others. Ginnell was prosecuted and given a six-month sentence for contempt of court when he failed to attend in December.170 Farrell was jailed for six months the following December, and served three months.171
Paul Bew has described the novel aspect of the anti-grazier agitation that distinguished it from earlier phases of the land war. As Ginnell’s January 1907 letter to Redmond testifies, graziers were often well-to-do Catholics and nationalists, some even members of the League. The potential for double standards and hypocrisy, and conflicts within the League between nationalists divided by the land issue, was obvious.172 Ginnell complained of being attacked and thwarted at every turn by the ‘wealthy Westmeath grazing interest’ and its chief organ, the Westmeath Examiner, whose editor was J.P. Hayden, MP for South Roscommon and a personal friend and confidant of Redmond from Parnellite days. Hayden had made ‘incursions’ into his constituency, said Ginnell, who asked Redmond to ‘take serious notice’ of Hayden’s opposition to UIL policy and to prevent his making the League an organization for the defence of ranchers.173
IX
Everywhere Redmond went in autumn 1907, he was made aware of the strong grass- roots mood in favour of having O’Brien and Healy – the mortal enemies of 1900, whose relationship had slowly transmuted itself into an alliance cemented by a certain agreement on agrarian policy, a shared hatred of Dillon and a shared contempt for Redmond – and the former’s acolytes readmitted to the party.174 In early October, O’Brien publicly suggested a friendly conference with Redmond, who replied favourably to the idea at subsequent meetings that month. Efforts were made behind the scenes in November by Captain Donelan and George Crosbie to arrange such a conference.175 The moves revived all of Dillon’s old unease, especially when O’Brien insisted on Healy’s readmission, as well as on a convention to be held in advance to ratify the terms of agreement in both of their cases. Redmond’s suggestion that Healy’s case be deferred for a year until things settled down was refused outright by O’Brien, who wrote to Healy that: ‘He [Redmond] undoubtedly pines for an agreement, but shudders at the danger of offending Dillon and the Freeman.’ Healy found Redmond’s suggestion ‘not unnatural’, and was willing to allow O’Brien to re-enter without him, so strongly did he believe in his power to ‘stop the rot’ in the party.176 Meanwhile, Redmond battled against Dillon’s negativity:
I feel very strongly that if Crosbie’s letter were published tomorrow alongside of an absolute refusal by us, the effect would be extremely bad and many of our best friends would think us in the wrong.177
Despite Redmond’s refusal of a convention, and O’Brien’s adamance on the admission of Healy, initial impressions were nonetheless positive when the informal conference went ahead on 13 December, with Bishop O’Donnell joining O’Brien, Healy and Redmond.178 However, wrangling continued over the precise meaning of the party pledge. Redmond received a barrage of advice