Michael Davitt E-Book

Carla King

• Herausgeber: UCD Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Life and Times
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 218

Beschreibung

This short biography outlines the scope of Davitt's great interests and achievements.

Das E-Book Michael Davitt wird angeboten von UCD Press und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
Irish history, Land League, Land War

Leseprobe

Michael Davitt

HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND

LIFE AND TIMES

NEW SERIES

General Editor: Ciaran Brady

Now available

Michael Davitt by Carla King (ebook available, 2016)

Thomas Kettle by Senia Pašeta

John Mitchel by James Quinn

Denis Guiney by Peter Costello

Frank Ryan by Fearghal McGarry

William Martin Murphy by Thomas J. Morrissey, SJ

Justin McCarthy by Eugene J. Doyle

Charles Stewart Parnell by Alan O’Day

Terence O’Neill by Marc Mulholland

Seán Lemass by Robert J. Savage

Shane O’Neill by Ciaran Brady

Michael Davitt

CARLA KING

Published on behalf ofthe Historical Association of Irelandby

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN PRESS

Preas Choláiste Ollscoile Bhaile Átha Cliath

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Chronology of Davitt’s Life and Times

Abbreviations

Introduction

1    Background and Early Years, 1846–77

2    The New Departure and the Land League, 1878–82

3    After the Land League, 1882–91

4    The Parliamentarian, 1891–9

5    The Final Years, 1900–6

Conclusion

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

FOREWORD

Originally conceived over a decade ago to place the lives of leading figures in Irish history against the background of new research on the problems and conditions of their times and modern assessments of their historical significance, the Historical Association of Ireland Life and Times series enjoyed remarkable popularity and success. A second series has now been planned in association with UCD Press in a new format and with fuller scholarly apparatus. Encouraged by the reception given to the earlier series, the volumes in the new series will be expressly designed to be of particular help to students preparing for the Leaving Certificate, for GCE Advanced Level and for undergraduate history courses as well as appealing to the happily insatiable appetite for new views of Irish history among the general public.

Ciaran BradyHistorical Association of Ireland

PREFACE

I would like to thank Ciaran Brady for inviting me to write this book and for coping stoically with delays and computer breakdowns on my part. I am also very grateful to Colm Croker for his meticulous and expert copy-editing.

I am deeply indebted to Alan O’Day, Pauric Travers and my father, Justin Keating, for reading and commenting on draft versions. I take full responsibility for any errors that remain.

I should like to pay tribute to the support and encouragement of my colleagues and former colleagues in the History Department, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra.

I thank the Board of Trinity College, Dublin, for permission to quote from the Davitt Papers. In the case of two references in the Davitt Papers it proved impossible to identify copyright-holders, and I offer my apologies to them. I also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of librarians and archivists in Trinity College, St Patrick’s College, the National Library of Ireland and University College Dublin. Finally my thanks to my son Jonah who patiently endured maternal distraction while this was being written.

More specifically, in relation to this second edition, I should like to thank University College Dublin Press for republishing my short study of Michael Davitt and for allowing me to revise it. Barbara Mennell and Noelle Moran, as ever, provided invaluable, patient and most efficient assistance in producing it. I thank the Board of Trinity College Dublin, for permission to quote, once again, from the Davitt Papers and for permission to reproduce the photograph on the front cover. Bill Mc Cormack generously read and commented upon the manuscript.

CARLA KINGHistory DepartmentSt Patrick’s CollegeDrumcondraMarch 2009

CHRONOLOGY OF DAVITT’S LIFE AND TIMES

1846

25 March Michael Davitt born in Straide, County Mayo, to Catherine (née Kielty) and Martin Davitt, small tenant farmers.

1850

September (?) Davitt family evicted; they emigrate to Haslingden, Lancashire.

1857

8 May Davitt in accident at Stellfoxe’s Victoria Mill, following which his right arm is amputated. He is sent to John Poskett’s school, Haslingden.

1861

August (?) begins work in Haslingden post office, run by Henry Cockcroft.

1865

Joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB); shortly after elected ‘centre’ of the Rossendale ‘circle’ of the IRB.

1867

11 February leads a detachment of Fenians from Haslingden to take part in the abortive raid on Chester Castle, he and his men retreating undetected on realising that the police have been informed of it in advance.

5–6 March unsuccessful Fenian rising in Ireland.

1868

Appointed organising secretary and arms agent of the IRB for England and Scotland.

1869

July resigns from his employment in Haslingden to become full-time Fenian activist.

1870

14 May arrested and charged with treason–felony.

29 June Amnesty Association founded, with Isaac Butt as president

18 July sentenced to 15 years’ penal servitude.

1 August Landlord & Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870 (33 & 34 Vict., c.46) passed.

28 September Butt founds Home Government Association.

1871

December death of Martin Davitt at Scranton, Pennsylvania.

1872

18 July Ballot Act introduces secret voting.

1875

19 April Parnell enters House of Commons.

1877

31 July–1 August Parnell and Biggar undertake obstruction of House of Commons business.

19 December Davitt released on ticket-of-leave.

1878

13 January Davitt and three other released Fenians arrive in Dublin.

26 January Davitt travels on to Connacht.

4 Febuary returns to England to campaign for release of remaining Fenian prisoners.

9 March first address to large public meeting at St James’s Hall, London.

12 May Davitt tries unsuccessfully to persuade Parnell to join IRB.

20 June gives oral evidence to the Kimberley Commission on Penal Reform (having already submitted written evidence).

July–December on lecture tour in US, where he visits his family and meets John Devoy and other leaders of Irish-American nationalism.

24 October Devoy sends telegram to James O’Connor offering conditional support of Irish-American Fenians to Parnell.

27 December Devoy’s ‘New Departure’ letter published in Freeman’s Journal.

1879

19–26 January attends meeting in Paris in unsuccessful attempt to win IRB leadership support for ‘New Departure’.

6 April first meeting of Davitt and Devoy with Parnell in Dublin to try to win his support for ‘New Departure’.

20 April Irishtown meeting, County Mayo.

8 (?) May Davitt removed from Supreme Council of IRB.

1 June second meeting of Davitt and Devoy with Parnell, Dublin.

8 June Westport meeting, addressed by Davitt and Parnell.

16 August National Land League of Mayo founded, Castlebar.

21 October Irish National Land League founded, Imperial Hotel, Dublin; Davitt elected secretary.

19 November arrest of Davitt, James Daly and James Bryce Killen on charge of sedition; held in Sligo jail; released on bail, 25 Nov.

1880

11 March Parnell launches Irish Land and Industrial League of the United States.

9 May Davitt leaves for US to join Dillon in campaign for funds and to organise Irish National Land League of the United States.

18 May on Davitt’s arrival in New York, national convention of Irish National Land League of the United States elects him secretary, in which post he agrees to serve for the duration of his visit.

18 July death of Catherine Davitt at Manayunk, Pennsylvania.

18 September Davitt first meets Mary Yore, Oakland, California, whom he is later to marry.

15 October Ladies’ Land League established, New York.

20 November returns from the US.

December First Anglo-Boer War breaks out.

1881

24 January Protection of Person and Property Bill introduced in House of Commons (enacted 2 Mar.).

27–28 January meeting in House of Commons and later Westminster Palace Hotel considers but rejects plan to withdraw Irish Party from House of Commons, set up a national convention in Dublin and launch a ‘no rent’ campaign.

31 January Irish Ladies’ Land League launched under the leadership of Anna Parnell.

3 February Davitt’s ticket-of-leave is revoked and he is imprisoned once again, in Portland prison in Dorset.

7 April Land Law (Ireland) Bill introduced in House of Commons (enacted 22 Aug.).

13 October arrest of Parnell (arrests of other leaders follow) and imprisonment in Kilmainham Jail without trial, under provisions of the Protection of Person and Property Act.

18 October ‘No Rent Manifesto’ launched.

20 October Land Court opens; Land League proclaimed an unlawful organisation.

December Ladies’ Land League proclaimed an unlawful organisation.

1882

22 February Davitt elected MP for Co. Meath but declared ineligible as an undischarged felon.

2 May Parnell, Dillon and J. J. O’Kelly released under the terms of the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’.

6 May Davitt released; that evening Lord Frederick Cavendish, chief secretary, and T. H. Burke, under-secretary, assassinated in Phoenix Park.

15 May Arrears Bill introduced in House of Commons.

6 June Davitt makes first speech advocating land nationalisation.

3 August in meeting with Parnell, Davitt proposes the establishment of a new movement, ‘The National Land and Industrial Union of Ireland’.

8 August Ladies’ Land League dissolved.

18 August Arrears of Rent (Ireland) Act, 1882 (45 & 46 Vict., c.47) passed.

13 September ‘Avondale Treaty’ with Parnell.

17 October Irish National League founded, Dublin.

1883

8 February–4 June Davitt and T. M. Healy serve four months in prison for sedition.

11 December Parnell receives cheque for over £37,000 as testimonial at public meeting, Rotunda, Dublin.

1884

1 November Gaelic Athletic Association founded, Thurles.

6 December Representation of the People Act passed (Irish electorate increased from 126,000 to 738,000).

December Leaves from a Prison Diary published (dated 1885).

1885

January Davitt visits France and Italy; interview with Kossuth in Turin.

24 January dynamite explosions in Westminster Hall, House of Commons and the Tower of London.

April Davitt visits Palestine and Egypt.

May travelling in Switzerland and Germany.

3 July Davitt invited to stand as workingmen’s candidate for Sheffield; declines.

14 August Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1885 (48 & 49 Vict., c.73) (‘Ashbourne Act’) passed.

21 November Parnell issues manifesto calling on Irish in Great Britain to vote against Liberal Party in coming elections.

17 December Herbert Gladstone flies ‘Hawarden kite’, indicating that W. E. Gladstone favours Home Rule.

1886

27 January Conservative government resigns.

1 February Gladstone becomes Prime Minister for third time.

8 April First Home Rule Bill introduced in House of Commons.

9 June defeat of First Home Rule Bill.

1–17 July general election; Conservative victory.

29 July Davitt travels to US, where he remains until Jan. 1887.

23 October Plan of Campaign launched.

c.9–10 December meeting between Parnell and William O’Brien to discuss Plan of Campaign.

18 December Plan of Campaign proclaimed ‘an unlawful and criminal conspiracy’.

30 December Davitt marries Mary Yore at Oakland, California.

1887

1 February Michael Davitt, Mary Davitt and Sabina Davitt arrive in Ireland.

6 April Mary Davitt presented with Land League cottage, Ballybrack.

March–December London Times publishes series of articles on ‘Parnellism and Crime’.

June Bodyke evictions, County Clare.

1888

20 April papal rescript condemns Plan of Campaign.

13 August Special Commission on ‘Parnellism and Crime’ established.

1889

24–31 October Davitt gives evidence for defence before Special Commission.

25 October Tenants’ Defence Association formed; Davitt becomes a member of its council.

November Liverpool dock strike, in which Davitt serves as mediator.

1890

21 January Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation founded in Cork, with Davitt as president.

13 February report of Special Commission on Parnellism and crime.

March acts as arbitrator in dispute between Dublin United Builders’ Labourers’ Union and employers and as arbitrator in Liverpool.

25 April–3 May strike of workers on Great Southern and Western Railway in which Davitt and Archbishop Walsh act as mediators.

21 September Labour World launched, London, with Davitt as editor (ceases publication, May 1891).

17 November Captain O’Shea granted decree nisi in divorce proceedings.

22 November Davitt in editorial in Labour World calls for Parnell’s temporary retirement as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

6 December Irish Parliamentary Party splits over Parnell divorce case.

8–22 December Davitt organises anti-Parnellite campaign in North Kilkenny by-election. Publication of The ‘Times’– Parnell Commission: Speech delivered by Michael Davitt in Defence of the Land League.

1891

3–11 February Boulogne negotiations between Parnell, O’Brien and Dillon.

10 March anti-Parnellite section leaves the National League and establishes the National Federation, of which Davitt becomes secretary.

2 April North Sligo by-election, in which Davitt acts as organiser, won by anti-Parnellite candidate. Davitt travels to Canada and US.

23 May Labour World ceases publication.

5 August Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891 (54 & 55 Vict., c.48) passed.

6 October death of Parnell.

23 October Davitt returns to Ireland.

23 December Waterford city by-election; Davitt defeated by John Redmond.

1892

July Davitt elected MP for North Meath but result overturned on petition; declared bankrupt as a consequence.

14 August acts as arbitrator in conflict between Polish and Russian revolutionaries in London.

1893

19 January Gladstone introduces Second Home Rule Bill in House of Commons.

8 February Davitt elected MP for North-East Cork.

11 April maiden speech in House of Commons in support of Home Rule Bill; but forced to resign as a result of bankruptcy.

9 September Home Rule Bill defeated in House of Lords.

1894

27 April Irish Trade Union Congress founded.

15 August Irish Land and Labour Association founded.

1895

April Kathleen Davitt, eldest daughter, dies, aged seven.

April–November Davitt on lecture tour in Australia and New Zealand.

20 July general election; Davitt elected MP for South Mayo.

7 November executive of Irish National League of Great Britain expels Healy and replaces him with Davitt.

1896

2 February resignation of Justin McCarthy as leader of anti-Parnellites; replaced by John Dillon.

April Davitt’s family joins him in London; they rent a house in Battersea.

May–July Davitt is member of the select committee on government contracts (Fair Wages Resolution).

1–3 September Irish race convention at Leinster Hall, Dublin.

1897

April–June Davitt in US lobbying senators against the proposed Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty.

1898

Davitt takes part in celebration of centenary of 1798 rising.

23 January United Irish League founded by William O’Brien. Jan: publication of Life and Progress in Australasia.

April–July Davitt serves on the standing committee on law and courts of justice and legal procedure.

12 August Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898 (61 & 62 Vict., c.37).

1899

March (?) Davitt family moves back to Ireland; reside in Mount Salus, Dalkey.

May–July Davitt serves on select committee on the aged and deserving poor.

11 October Second Anglo-Boer War breaks out.

25 October Davitt resigns from House of Commons in protest against Boer War.

1900

30 January reunification of Irish Parliamentary Party.

26 March Davitt arrives in Pretoria, having travelled to South Africa as war correspondent; returns to Ireland in July.

1902

May publication of The Boer Fight for Freedom.

3 September publication of Captain John Shawe-Taylor’s letter.

September Davitt travels to US (returns early 1903).

October publication of Davitt’s pamphlet Some Suggestions for a Final Settlement of the Land Question.

1903

3 January report of Dunraven land conference.

25 March chief secretary George Wyndham introduces land bill based on recommendations of land conference.

19 April Kishinev pogrom.

22–31 May Davitt in Russia to investigate pogrom for New York American Journal.

14 August Irish Land Act, 1903 (3 Edw. VII, c.37) (Wyndham Land Act) passed.

December publication of Within the Pale: The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecutions in Russia.

1904

18 January Davitt denounces anti-semitic sermon of Redemptorist priest, Father John Creagh, in Limerick.

February–April Davitt family in US. May: publication of The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland.

June visits Russia for New York American Journal: he meets Tolstoy. Defends Dublin and District Tramwaymen’s Union in its claims against the Dublin Tramway Company.

1905

January–February Davitt in Russia investigating ‘Bloody Sunday’ and unrest that followed in St Petersburg, Moscow, Helsinki and Warsaw. Labour Representation Committee formed.

December–January 1906 campaigns in British general election on behalf of Labour Party.

1906

15 January letter in Freeman’s Journal by Bishop of Limerick, Edward O’Dwyer, urges Irish to support Conservative Party on denominational education.

22 January Davitt in letter to Freeman’s Journal defends state-aided, secular education.

16 February takes part in victory celebrations in Queen’s Hall, London, for 29 seats won by Labour Party.

30 May dies in Elpis Nursing Home, Lower Mount Street, Dublin.

2 June buried in Straide, County Mayo.

ABBREVIATIONS

CDB

Congested Districts Board

CID

Criminal Investigation Department

DP

Davitt Papers

GAA

Gaelic Athletic Association

IRB

Irish Republican Brotherhood

MP

Member of Parliament

NAI

National Archives of Ireland

OFS

Orange Free State

PRO

Public Records Office

TCD

Trinity College Dublin

TUC

Trade Union Congress

UCD

University College Dublin

UIL

United Irish League

Introduction

Michael Davitt has remained something of a national icon, revered as the father of the Land League, which won for Irish tenant farmers the right to own the land they worked. Yet, as Paul Bew has pointed out, while ‘few openly disputed Davitt’s ideals . . . many quietly and privately disavowed them’.1 For Davitt was a radical, struggling against a growing conservatism that sought to contain what he had no hesitation in calling an agrarian revolution. What he sought for Ireland was a far more egalitarian solution to the land question than that which eventuated.

Davitt remains an important figure, partly because his input was formative at a critical point in Irish history, at the beginning of the defeat of landlordism by the rising middle-class Catholic tenants. It was largely as a result of the marshalling of Irish public opinion around the Land League/Irish Parliamentary Party coalition, which Davitt played a crucial part in achieving, and in which popular grievances and nationalist sentiment were combined in a new and powerful mixture, that Home Rule became a realistic proposition in the 1880s. At the same time, the closing decades of the nineteenth century marked the point at which Irish society changed utterly; in Samuel Clark’s terms, the ‘challenging collectivity’ of the ‘comfortable’ middle-class Catholic farmers and rural bourgeoisie overcame the ‘retreating collectivity’ of Irish landlords.2

In his political development, Davitt made the transition between two political traditions in Ireland, the physical-force approach of the Fenians and the constitutional one of the Irish Parliamentary Party. To this he added the radicalism of the industrial England in which he had been raised and with which his contacts remained strong throughout his life, and the bond with Irish America, which was to play an influential role in Irish affairs from his time on. In a sense his career mirrors the interplay of forces that posed the famous ‘Irish Question’ in the late nineteenth century.

However, Davitt’s concerns extended well beyond Ireland: he sympathised with national struggles in Poland, Finland, Hungary and other countries; he took the Boer side in the Anglo-Boer wars; and he was a passionate advocate of social reform everywhere, whether in the improvement of prison conditions, or the rights of Kanaka labour in Australia, or the conditions of Jews in Russia.

Largely self-taught but widely read Davitt was perhaps the most original thinker among Irish nationalists of his day. His ideas show a clear evolution from the Fenianism of his early years to the internationalism and social radicalism of his later career, while his commitment to Irish nationalism never wavered. Yet the originality of his ideas set him, to some extent, outside the mainstream of Irish political life. He entered parliament only reluctantly in 1893 and was glad to leave it six years later; his main political achievements were outside Westminster. His work as a journalist and public speaker, by which he earned his living throughout his adult life, and his six books, all helped to shape popular opinion in Ireland, Britain, America and Australia.

Davitt’s warm personality, the hardships of his life and, above all, his identification with the downtrodden have made him a much-loved figure in Irish history, the equal, perhaps, of his con temporary, Charles Stewart Parnell. When writing the Introduction to the first edition of this little book, a decade ago, I expressed surprise that, with the important exception of Professor T. W. Moody’s work (published in articles and in his definitive biography, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846–82)3 there had been so little research on Davitt’s career and ideas. I am glad to note that since then that situation has changed and a range of work on Davitt, his contemporaries and issues of his day, have appeared.4

A short biography such as this cannot hope to do full justice to Davitt’s life and thought. The aim here is to introduce the reader to the range of his activities and interests and to situate them in the context of his time. What it is hoped will emerge is the extent to which he is a more complex and interesting figure than the traditional image of the son of an evicted tenant who later helped to smash landlordism – although that too is part of the story.

CHAPTER 1

Background and Early Years, 1846–77

Among the best-known features of Michael Davitt’s career, during his lifetime and since, is the series of adversities he faced in his childhood and youth. Born on 25 March 1846, in Straide, County Mayo, the son of Catherine and Martin Davitt, small tenant farmers, one of his earliest memories was of his family’s eviction from their home. Then aged four, he witnessed their house pulled down and underwent the experience of emigration to the Lancashire industrial town of Haslingden. He was to comment that all the family’s ills stemmed from that eviction,1 these formative memories lending a certain edge to his political outlook, in particular to his approach to the land question. As he wrote later, ‘The men who made the Land League were the sons of those who went through the horrors of the Great Famine’,2 among which eviction figured prominently.

Part of the 1,000-strong Irish community in Haslingden, Martin and Catherine Davitt found work in fruit hawking and in various other casual occupations. The family shared a house with other immigrants, encountering the antagonism of British workers who viewed the impoverished Irish as a threat to wage levels.3 Thrown together in a hostile environment, the Irish developed strong bonds based on their social life, religion and language. The Davitt family, like most of the Irish community around them, were native Irish speakers, but Martin Davitt, who spoke English and could read and write, helped neighbours by writing their letters and ran a night school in the house. The home of their neighbour, Molly Madden, was a centre for music, dancing and storytelling.

Michael Davitt was nine years old when he left his primary school and started work in the cotton mills of Haslingden. Two years later, while tending a machine, his right arm was caught and crushed, necessitating its amputation ten days later. It was one of many such industrial accidents, for which no compensation was ever paid. For the poor, such a disability was likely to mean marginalisation and dependence on relatives or on the most menial and insecure work. For Davitt and his family, the accident was certainly a tragedy. However, it was to save a bright child from what might have been a lifetime of mill work. When he had recovered his health he was sent, with the help of a philanthropic manufacturer, John Dean, to a local Wesleyan school and given a good education for a further four years. This provided a foundation on which he continued to build all his life, becoming a wide and avid reader. In the short term, it enabled him, in August 1861, to find work in Haslingden post office, run by Henry Cockcroft, who also had a small printing business. He was to retain happy memories of both school and Cockcroft’s employment. Therefore, although Davitt and his family had experienced hostility and difficulty in England, he had also met with encouragement.

It is here that Davitt’s development shares some of the formative features of a British working-class radical, and one might look for the source of some of his later attitudes to this period of his life.4 He joined the Mechanics’ Institute, where he continued to read and study at night. He attended lectures and came in touch with the Chartist5 leader Ernest Jones (1819–69), whom he was later to describe as the first Englishman he ever heard denouncing landlordism in Ireland. While in political terms Chartism was by the 1860s a spent force, it had been strong in Lancashire and many of its ideas were still current there. Thus, by his late teens Davitt might have followed the path of the upwardly mobile working-class radical. That he did not is attributable to his involvement with Fenianism.

Davitt joined the Fenians in 1865, at the age of nineteen. It was not an unusual step to take: many of the young men of the Irish immigrant community would have supported the movement. Frank Haran, a contemporary fellow-Fenian, related that in Haslingden at that time ‘every smart respectable young fellow was sworn in’.6 Moreover, Davitt later commented that there was a certain family tradition of being ‘agin the government’,7 and his father had been a member of a Ribbon society in the 1830s, although he would have been only sixteen or eighteen years old during the height of the Ribbon agitation of 1830–2.8 Martin and Catherine Davitt knew and approved of their son’s membership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood; though they may not have been aware how high or how rapidly he rose within the movement. He was soon elected ‘centre’ of the Rossendale ‘circle’ of the IRB, a cell of about fifty members. He led a detachment of Fenians in the ill-conceived attack on Chester Castle in February 1867, withdrawing his men and enabling them to return to their homes undetected when it became clear that the plan had been made known to the authorities and the police were lying in wait for them.

In 1868, when he was twenty-two, Davitt was appointed organising secretary and arms agent of the IRB for England and Scotland. This meant that he had to resign from Cockcroft’s employ ment and spend the next two years in the guise of a hawker, moving from place to place, furtively meeting with other Fenians and organising arms shipments to Ireland. From February 1867, even before the unsuccessful Fenian rising in Ireland, there was a police file on Davitt in Dublin Castle, although he was effective in covering his tracks to the extent that his importance in the movement was not grasped until later.9