The Emergency 1939 – 1945

Ireland was still very dependent on our nearest neighbour and it was hoped that the politicians would remain in good terms with them. Britain in turn had to do a bow turn, it had a large population to feed and supplies from abroad had suddenly become uncertain. The Second World War was a prosperous time for its farmers and farm labourers. According to Newby, ‘the need to expand agriculture almost at any cost was not only a wartime imperative but was given a added piquancy by Britain’s reliance on imported food, following decades of free trade agricultural policy. The intervention in agriculture was certainly the most urgent and in many respects the most far-reaching manifestation of the state’s new role in the countryside, but it was by no means the only element of rural reconstruction to be undertaken. ……………..Henceforth rural Britain was to be fashioned, controlled and administered through public policies, influenced albeit by familiar hierarchy of farmers and landowners. Nevertheless these policies were to emanate from Westminster, Whitehall and – much later – Brussels. The whole pattern of farming was drastically changed: neglected and derelict land was reclaimed, large numbers of livestock were slaughtered in order to save on feedstuffs, and a record acreage of land was placed under the plough. Compulsory cropping orders were issued and mechanization was enforced using a system of local tractor stations borrowed from Lenin’s New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union. Since Britain’s Ministry had virtually no field officers of its own and thus was ill-prepared to offer detailed advice or to safeguard the efficient use of government resources at local level – the Ministry created WAR Agricultural Executive Committees, or ‘War Ags’ as they were dubbed, drawn primarily from land commissioners, county advisory staff and university personnel, leavened by local exemplary local farmers and landowners. The War Ags issued advice, issued cultivation directions and allocated scarce resources such as fertilizers, feedstuffs and machinery. The intervention of the War Ags, into what previously regarded as the farmer’s own business was helped by the fact they also channeled grant aid and subsidies. British public opinion of agriculture also changed during the War, on the basis of renewed awareness of its strategic position.

For Ireland during the Second World War, James Meenan commented ‘The picture of Neutral Ireland waxing prosperous on wartime prices is therefore misleading’. Raymond Crotty gave the war years scant attention, because in his opinion, ‘they left no permanent imprint on Irish Agriculture. Farmers fared out reasonably well in comparison to other sections of Irish society according to Crotty. According to Cullen our exports halved between 1938 and 1943 in sharp contrast to the First World War. In 1945 net agricultural output, which is a close approximation to income from farming, was 16.8 per cent higher than in 1938/39. ……………………..and most of this was due to an expansion in tillage. However, these figures according to Cullen,and Daly ‘were very influenced by underinvestment in agriculture,   and that the U.K. had continued to subsidise their own farmers to produce the maximum amount from their land’. Furthermore Northern Ireland farmers were able to enjoy the subsidies and markets that the farmers in the South were excluded from. 

The level of output obtained during the war years could only be held for relatively short period, and at a later date additional investment in the form of fertilizer and equipment would be necessary to make good the neglect or under investment of the war years’. Although the British market offered no wartime bonanza, Ireland’s enforced self-sufficiency gave farmers the security of guaranteed price and a guarantee for most commodities. Politically farmers became more astute, in the form of deputations, delegations and resolutions. As result there were occasional allegations by the government and civil servants that farmers were furthering their own interests at national expense. 

The Emergency got its name from the 1939 Emergency Powers Act, which enabled government to make emergency order covering almost any matter, without going the time-consuming process of enacting legislation in the Oireachtas. During 1942 and 1943, for example, emergency powers orders were introduced to ensure the equitable distribution of fertilizer among farmers. Propaganda was an important aspect, which included Radio broadcasts, ministerial speeches (read on the newspapers), advertisements, emphasized neutrality and the survival of the nation was dependent on the ability of farmers to provide sufficient food. Posters at railway stations, creameries and schools urged farmers to till more land. ‘More and More Wheat’ was one of the slogans. The Great Famine references were used as a prod. Daniel Twomey secretary of the Department of Agriculture in a letter to the clergy remarked. ‘It would be tragic if, in view of the natural resources available, we failed to provide the means of feeding the people, and as a consequence had to face a repetition of the hardship endured during the forties in the last century’.  In April 1944 de Valera commented that although conditions were serious, he did not expect them to deteriorate to the level of Bengal, China, or in Ireland a century earlier.

The wheat output during the war increased from 255,300 tons in 1939 to 573,050 tons in 1945 an increase of 124 per cent, while acreage increased from 255,280 acres in 1939 to 662,498 acres in 1945. Wheat was essential for the national survival. For 1940/1 season the compulsory tillage order was extended from 12.5 per cent of the arable land to 20 per cent requiring to be tilled for all holdings greater than ten acres. The objective was to supply 50 per cent of flour from native wheat. The wheat growers were to be given 35s a barrel of wheat produced. In 1942/3 when prospects of imports appeared bleak, the quota was raised to 25 per cent of the land as the prospects of supply from a broad appeared bleak; Corry of Irish Sugar Beet Growers Association and a T.D. for East Cork gave helping hand by forcing through an increase per barrel of wheat of government subsidy to 50s per barrel. The percentage of land that had to be devoted to wheat increased to 37.5 per cent for the following year. In September 1943 the Department of Supplies recommended that flour-millers include 7% barley in the manufacture of flour as they expected that imports would not be sufficient. Also the Cabinet reduced beer exports by 50% in order to preserve supplies of barley. In 1939 the Department of Agriculture estimated that 65,000 acres of sugar beet would  be necessary to provide self-sufficiency. This figure was substantially exceeded for four of the War years. It was grown under contract to the factories.

In 1932 Fianna Fail-Labour government came into power and embarked on a radical change in economic policy. The government decided to suspend payment of the annuities owed to Britain under the Land Purchase Acts of 1903. This was part of its programme for government as well as self-sufficiency both in agricultural and industrial produce. Immediately, in retaliation, Britain imposed ad valorem duties of 20 per cent (later increased to 40 per cent) on most imports from Ireland. The Free State government introduced tariffs and quotas on a wide range of manufactured goods, including farm machinery. It banned the import of coal from Britain, hence the cant ‘burn everything British except its coal’. Farmers were encouraged to reduce their reliance on raising cattle for the British market and to concentrate instead on the domestic one. In future it was hoped that most Irish sugar would be produced from Irish sugar-beet; that up to fifty percent of Irish flour would be derived from Irish wheat; and that pigs and poultry would be fattened on home grown-grown barley and oats instead of imported maize. The new policy altered the role of the Dept of Agriculture and the relationship between farmers and the state. The Cumann na Gael (FineGael) government had supported the DATI-IAOS programme of  advice and education on improving the quality and marketing of Irish products. Now the emphasis changed to price stabilization, bounties and compensation payments, subsidies to domestic producers, and measures designed to achieve the government’s self sufficiency programme. The so called ‘economic war’ was responsible for a sharper fall in agricultural prices and for a more belated recovery than would have been warranted by the simple operation of international market conditions. Some 50 per cent of output before 1932 was exported. By the second third of the decade only a third of the output was exported. With the decline of exports Government policy was implemented with even more vigour. This policy was spear-headed by the key new Dept in government of Industry and Commerce with Sean Lemass as Minister. On the other hand the Minister for Agriculture lost a lot of his power, which was headed up by James Ryan, a farmer’s son and qualified medical doctor from Wexford. Manufacturing commanded greater importance, particularly when these interests did not coincide with agriculture. Britain’s policy for the 1930s’ had changed and took steps to reduce imports of agricultural produce that could be produce by British farmers. Commonwealth countries like Canada had to agree to a ‘voluntary’ reduction of shipments of live cattle. Denmark and Holland also experienced a decline in the volume and value to Britain. In that first year Lemass also presented de Valera with a number of more radical proposals. According to Daly he proposed setting of Marketing Boards as in the U.K.; referring to the sharp fall that had taken place for agricultural exports and emphasized that it had nothing to do with British tariffs  ref: s 6274 Economic Committee. ………In his opinion the collapse in livestock prices had destroyed any realistic prospect of developing tillage. ………………………Consequently self-sufficiency would inflict further damage on the Irish livestock industry. Lemass claimed that although, wheat was not dependent on a healthy livestock trade, that it would nevertheless necessary to offer a subsidy amounting to £4 per acre, which was greater than the wages paid and profits earned per acre. ………………………He recommended reducing agricultural output to the quantity that was necessary to meet the needs of the Irish people, together what would be exported at a profit, or even at a loss, in order to pay for essential imports. Farmers and farm workers not needed to produce essential food should be taken off the land and employed in public works. ………………….Export bounties should cease, with the money being used to subsidize food prices. Untenanted land should be subdivided into five-acre plots and given to labourers. Lemass must obviously have been impressed with Neville Chamberlain’s socialist programme for the 1885 British election.

Daly goes on to say ‘it is unclear whether Lemass intended these “revolutionary” proposals to implemented; they may very well have been to scare the Cabinet into abandoning the Economic War……………………. “until we are in a better position to fight it” and attempting to negotiate a secure market in Britain for Irish agricultural produce. On this, at least, it seems probable that the Department would have agreed. The Department of Agriculture does not seemed to have responded directly to Lemass revolutionary proposals,………………………..J.J. McElligott of the Dept of Finance ………………………..it was unquestionably better “for the full advantage to be taken of our natural agricultural resources than that people should be maintained in idleness and lands and farms allowed to become derelict”. Various arguments appeared to have gone on behind the scenes, particularly between Ryan’s and Lemass’s Depts. Lemass wanted Marketing boards under his Department, whereas Ryan’s Dept of Agriculture and the DATI personnel felt differently as it was dependent on half of what was produced by farmers to be exported and mainly to Britain. And in the case of Livestock farming, some five sixth’s of its output in 1929/30 was exported and mainly to Britain.  The Department of Agriculture personnel would have appeared to have had the expertise in these matters. Lemass viewpoint would have seemed to have come out in top because as a temporary compromise the Dept of External Affairs saw after exports. New markets were sought in Germany and Belgium providing for exports of cattle, butter, and eggs in return for Ireland importing coal. According to Daly even some efforts to secure alternative markets were regarded as foolhardy, or desperate, such as the attempt to strike a deal with Poland, which was a major agricultural exporter.

According to Patrick J. Sammon in his book “In the Land Commission – A Memoir 1933-1938” ‘Landless people came into their own, following the coming to power of the Fianna Fail Government in 1932. ….. For the eight year period from 1934 to 1942 it emerges …. That a total area in the order of 80,000 acres could well have been allotted to 2,750 landless applicants – each farm containing twenty seven acres of good land or equivalent’. Mr. Sammon goes on to write in another part of his book: ‘While the “Big Houses” of the landed gentry had flourished, they provided employment for gardeners, grooms, estate agents and the like …… offsetting these losses of employment opportunities is the security and freedom from want conferred on the former employees who secured compensation from the Land Commission following the acquisition of the Estate in the shape of holdings and parcels of land’. All this was taking place when most farmers in Ireland were losing money. It may have been a wiser policy for the land Commission to act as a landlord, leasing out the land like the local Co. Councils in Britain, and still continue to do. However, the thinking of the time, particularly by Fianna Fail is well expressed by Sammon when he writes: ‘ The sociological impact of the elimination of the Landlord Class offers scope for much interesting study. As a class, the landlords had acted badly by the tenants: it is not as if a cadre of benevolent landowners, who had functioned as leaders of the people, had been displaced. Successors of the original planters in most cases left no great void in the Irish scene’. Other opinion would say that, the state could very well have acted in a similar fashion as the “Good Landlords” had done before the Land Acts had been passed. A Land Commission based leasing system would have been more of a guardian for the new farmers, who in most cases lacked the skills of operating a business, farming education, money, etc. These were not the farmers, who were contacting the local agricultural and technical service; it was their neighbours who invariably had a much bigger farms. The farming system that has developed since the land Acts, has now resulted in 85 per cent of our farm production coming from fifteen per cent of the farms. A State leasing of land scheme would surely have given us a more balanced system of production.     

In the meantime going back to the 1930s, several committees were set-up by the Government to try an alleviate the farming crisis and while Irish livestock farmers were suffering badly, stories of farmers bringing cattle home from the monthly fair because the price was too low, having to sell them at the following month’s fair at half the price, were experienced throughout the Twenty Six Counties. Ryan complained about the substantial assistance given to industrialist with less generous treatment to farmers and insisted that the specific circumstances of farming were not given sufficient weight in the formulation of economic policy. He appealed for an increase in the export bounty for cattle, sheep and horses, should be quadrupled, but he also acknowledged that this would be an impossibility. In July 1934 the Cabinet decided after a Department of Agriculture proposal, that a ‘free beef scheme’, for all recipients of unemployment and home assistance be introduced until the end of 1936. Under the scheme each person that qualified got one and half pounds of meat per week. The scheme proved to be extremely popular. Men who received unemployment assistance refused to take jobs on relief works because they would forfeit their entitlement to free beef. Daniel Twomey, secretary to the Department of Agriculture, told the Banking Commission, ‘There are very large numbers of people in this country who were formerly on bread and tea line and who are now eating meat at least once per day’.  However, the high cost remained a problem. In January 1934, when the crisis of the livestock was most acute, the Department of Agriculture began to explore the possibility of buying diseased animals, and cows with poor milk yields for conversion to meat meal; as newspapers carried reports of dead livestock left lying in fields and cattle being killed in public places. By May 1934 the Department Robert Briscoe a Fianna Fail T.D., a cattle exporter Con Crowley and a German businessman negotiated the building of a Meat Plant at Roscrea – the state providing 75 per cent of the cost – up to £16,000, in return for receiving preference shares. The Department of agriculture paid £2.10s for each animal and arranged for the animals to be transported to Roscrea at the Department’s expense. In 1936, 45,000 animals were brought in under the scheme.  Another plant was opened up in Waterford to process young animals from south Munster. This one was in conjunction with Irish Co-Operative Meats Limited (Later known as Clover Meats). The C-Op agreed to provide a premises, equipment, and working capital for a ten year monopoly of the sale of canned meat and meat extract in Ireland. The plant would purchase cattle from the Department at 10s a cwt; the Department would pay farmers 16 s a cwt and would pay the cost of transport.  In December 1934, Britain and Ireland had a ‘Coal-Cattle’ pact, whereby the Free State would buy a certain amount of British coal for their buying a certain amount of its beef, whereby Irish cattle held in the U.K. for three months were entitled to a British subsidy.   In 1935 over 671,000 cattle were exported to Britain, compared with 511,000 for 1934. The value of those exports rose from £4.25 million to £5.36 million. The trade agreement with Britain in the spring of 1938 ended the Economic War. This brought a decided improvement in the market for agricultural exports; but that there would still be restrictions in relation to the volume of supply. The greatest benefit went to the livestock trade and it increased to £10 million and by 50 per cent by 1940 over the 1938 figures. One wonders if it would not have saved money to have had the Coal Pact and indeed the Trade Agreement before the above factories were negotiated. Or not to have started an economic war that one had no hope of winning.

The County Committees of Agriculture changed dramatically during the period leading up to 1938/39. In the seven years ending 1939, the cost of running the service increased by 34 per cent. They had now become involved in unemployment relief works, administering grants for schemes to extend or re-build creameries and to provide shelter belts. They continued to run egg-laying competitions and to provide subsidies for agricultural shows and grants for bee-keeping, but there was a growing emphasis —————–to promote new enterprises such as onion growing. New poultry houses were now grant aided as well as poultry equipment. They were even involved in grant aiding of rotary blowers to pump poisonous gas into rabbit burrows in order to reduce rabbit pest numbers. In some counties rabbit export grants were given and a grant to exterminate foxes.

The responsibilities of the Dept of Agriculture expanded considerably after the de Valera government came to office. Officials had now to deal with applications for licences to import parrot food, prize drakes, puppy food, macaroni, and many other exotic items. It had to determine the proportion Irish wheat to be used by flour millers, set the price of butter and the level of export subsidy, keep a close eye on poultry exports to Britain and the possible threat of British restrictions. From 1935 the Department had the authority to buy and store oats. The Department’s Export Advisory Committee purchased and exported cattle to continental Europe. Compound feed could only be manufactured under licence, it analysed the feed to ensure that it contained the stipulated proportion of home-grown grain. No wonder staff numbers had more than doubled between 1926 and 1936, most of which occurred when the new government were appointed in 1932.  A whole new beaurocracy had been installed not alone in Agriculture but in all Departments of government in a time that the country was broke. Division four in the new Department set-up was called Intelligence and General Four, which employed over 150 staff, was concerned with the Slaughter of Sheep and Cattle Act and Elimination of Old and Diseased Cows.

Horrific memories of the 1930s’ recall cattle being seized from farmers who defaulted on their rates and calves being slaughtered and a crisis in Irish agriculture. Some vestiges of these according to Daly crop up in Department files, such as a widow living on twenty acres who was unable to sell her stock, or the small farmers on the Ox Mountains who slaughtered their stock and sold meat door-to-door. John Healy in his Book Nineteen Acres wrote: These were the years of the Economic War. I knew nothing about it then. In Charlestown I would see hundred of bicycles come down from all the townlands around Charlestown for the “free beef”. You’d see men wobbling home, parcels of fresh meat under the springs of the carrier, the blood coming through the brown paper’

By 1937 the acreage of Sugar Beet had increased to 62,000. It was decided to build factories in Carlow, Mallow, Thurles and Tuam. The committee decided against a Co-operative venture and opted for partly public subscription with the balance provided by the State. In 1933 R.C Ferguson of the Department of Industry and Commerce noted that ‘while tillage for beet is practically impossible in Donegal, Connemara and certain other parts of the country, potatoes could be raised’. Ferguson noted that potatoes could be used to make industrial alcohol. The Department of Agriculture was very much in favour because of the huge surpluses due to the Economic War. Lemass kept the project very much under the control of Industry and Commerce, according to Daly “there is no evidence that the Department of Agriculture were consulted”. Distilleries were erected at Cooley in County Louth, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Corroy and Carndonagh, County Donegal and Labbadish, County Mayo. From the beginning all the factories suffered a shortage of potatoes, and the Cooley plant in 1937 with best prospects of supply could only acquire 7,000 tons and after that had to import molasses. No evidence either, from government records that information with regard to supply was sought from the local Committees of Agriculture Advisors nor the Co-ops by the Department of Industry and Commerce. For example, they could have found out that potatoes were being converted into starch at Farsid, Aghada, Co. Cork in the early 1800s. Lewis (1837) briefly noted ‘Here at the Rostellan mills for making starch from potatoes, conducted by Mr. Prendergast but other manufacturing may have been carried out as well’ ref CHAS Journal 1996-Patrick Holohan.  Potatoes were reported as ‘being sought for the cotton manufacturers’ being a superior dressing to American flour previously chiefly used for that purpose. The starch was said to be easily extracted, each stone yielding one and a half pounds of starch, giving a return of over £18 per acre at 1830s’ prices.   Furthermore it is extraordinary, in relation to supplies of potatoes, and viability that they should have all been erected in a cluster around Northern Ireland or had it something to do with votes. The production of industrial Alcohol continued at Carndonagh and Cooley. Ceimicí Teoranta then produced glucose at their Corroy plant, using imported maize starch. The company diversified into potable alcohol production in 1971—72. Ceimicí’s operations were as of 1980, therefore, confined to the following areas of activity: Industrial and potable alcohol production at the Cooley, County Louth, and Carndonagh, County Donegal, distilleries and production of glucose at their plant at Corroy, County Mayo. By 1996, the area under potatoes in Co. Louth had dropped to 1,000 Hectares, in Mayo had dropped to 3,000 Ha by 1980 from 16,000 Ha in 1897 and in Donegal dropped from 17,000 Ha in 1897 to just 3,000 Ha in 1996. By 2007 the total area under potatoes for the twenty six counties as a whole had dropped to 12,700 Ha.

The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI)

The Albert Agricultural College began life as the Glasnevin Model Farm in 1838 becoming the Albert National Agricultural Training Institution in 1853 after a visit by Prince Albert. The name Albert Agricultural College first appears in the 1902 Report of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. Its foundation was an important event in the history of Irish agricultural education, whose primary function in its early years was the provision of instruction for primary school teachers to teach agriculture and meet the requirements set down by Board of National Education in Ireland. The Board was established in 1831 to create a nationwide system of primary education. By 1837 it had decided that agriculture should be taught in all its schools and therefore teachers would need training in modern farming methods and the provision of this instruction was the main purpose of the college during the first sixty years of its existence. The Board’s 1938 Report mentions the beginning of Glasnevin’s teaching responsibilities and indicates also that from the earliest days, the Albert College also taught those who wished to make a career in agriculture.

The Board extended its policy of primary-level agricultural education by establishing twenty Model Agricultural Schools and provided many National Schools with small holdings or gardens. There were forty-seven of these Ordinary Agricultural Schools by 1859. From 1850 the Board adopted a policy of teaching agriculture in the workhouse schools and by 1859 lessons in agriculture was being given in fifty-nine workhouse schools. Despite its success, the Board met opposition from members of all religious denominations as one of its aims was to establish non-denominational education and various accommodations had to be made. However, no accommodation was possible with the prevalent laissez-faire economic policies. The Liverpool Financial Reform Association attacked the use of public money for agricultural education, and in parliament, Liberal MPs and several Chief Secretaries opposed the Board’s policies. The Board was forced to discontinue support for the workhouse schools in 1863 and in 1874 disposed of most of the model farms. The Albert Agricultural College survived, probably because it was not exclusively concerned with the Board’s educational policies (the Board’s own inspectors reported that both textbooks and teaching skills were inadequate)—it also carried out research work in new crop varieties, farming methods and breeding livestock. From the 1870s, valuable work was being carried out in the college in experimenting with new crop varieties and new farming methods, and in improving breed of livestock, especially pigs. In 1890 the college pioneered the use in Ireland of a French method of treating fungal infection. This turned out to be the first successful treatment for potato blight.

An 1896 report by the “Recess Committee” stated that big increases in agricultural production could be achieved by Organisation, Representation, and Education of the farming population. The Recess Committee was an unofficial committee organized, and chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett and composed of prominent Irishmen of all political and religious persuasions. Its function was to consider a wide range of matters concerned with Ireland’s economic and social future. The Agricultural and Technical Instruction Act, 1899, was passed as a result of this report. The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction [DATI], which began work in 1900, determined that the problems with the development of agriculture in Ireland would be better addressed through higher education and a Faculty of Education was established at the College of Science. Most of the teaching was carried out in the Albert Agricultural College and the college continued to teach courses of its own as well. Many of the students at the Faculty had first completed one of the college’s own courses. Peripatetic instructors were considered particularly important, and, by 1913–14, 175 of these had been trained by the Faculty. Further Agricultural training courses were offered by University College Cork from when it was established in 1845. However, the Agricultural Department ceased to exist in 1868. According to Professor John A. Murphy the course on offer was ‘theoretical dilettantish and at best availed of by small numbers of prospective managers’.  

DATI began to appoint Agricultural Instructors around the country in the County Committees of Agriculture and Technical Instruction under Local Government Act of 1898, to both teach and demonstrate the science of food production.  All counties complied and raised the rate to finance it. Plunkett described the agricultural instructor as ‘the guide and friend of the existing farmers’ County Tyrone was the first to appoint an itinerant instructor in agriculture and a poultry instructress. Later problems arose as DATI brought in a rule that all instructors appointed had to be from outside the relevant county. The IAOS were also getting substantial funding while Plunkett was Vice President of DATI, however when T.W. Russell took over from Plunkett, he recommended that DATI should phase out the subsidy to the IAOS by 1910. In his opening address to the Council of Agriculture on 19 November 1907, Russell described the existing arrangement between DATI and the IAOS as ‘the most unbusiness-like arrangement I have ever heard of’. He also accused the IAOS of setting out to create shopkeepers. Plunkett had resumed the presidency of the IAOS and he used his presidential address in Dec 1907 to launch an attack on ‘gombeen’ men and their political supporters. A major political row followed and Russell had the last word, he got the DATI board to confirm a £3,000 subsidy to the IAOS and that a monthly audit had to be carried out on its spending by DATI and that this would be the final grant to it. The matter continue to fester:  When the IAOS applied to the Development Commission for a grant of £6,000 in 1911. Russell contended that DATI should be responsible for developing co-operation, and he launched bitter attack on Plunkett and the IAOS, rehearsing the events of 1907/08 at considerable length. (Ref: The First Dept by Mary E. Daly). The row continued in 1911 when the IAOS objected to a key clause in DATI’s Dairying Industry Bill, which was designed to ensure the quality of Irish butter exports……………………………… The growing antagonism between DATI and IAOS and the withdrawal of subsidies are often regarded as triumph of evil over good, with the Irish Parliamentary Party and its allies, the gombeen men, triumphing over the noble and interested people who wished to improve the lot of Irish farmers. This according to Daly is too simplistic. Despite trumpeting the merits of self-help, the co-operative movement relied heavily on DATI’s money. ……………………….the IAOS were not good at reporting in comparison to the Committees of Agriculture, there was not a place for two bodies acting separately i.e. the local Itinerant Instructor and the IAOS Organiser-Instructor. Russell emphasized that DATI was responsible to Parliament, whereas the IAOS was an ‘irresponsible body’. Village shops had become more numerous in the second half of 1800s’. They were sometimes situated beside the post office whose role was itself a pointer to changing times. It was part of the changing improvement in living standards, however, it was also a shift in being less self sufficient. With increasing mobility, the bicycle, the pony and trap, the towns with a much larger selection of goods became more accessible. The Co-op creameries also put in shops, selling a fairly wide range of farmer requirements.  

There was modest improvement of Irish Agriculture for the years leading up to the First World War. Poultry was one sector that improved thanks to DATI. By then Ireland became the largest exporter of eggs to Britain. On the eve of the War poultry accounted for nine percent of agricultural output compared with 5-6 percent in the 1880s’/90s’. Instructresses trained in the Munster Institute (MI)-Cork city suburbs, under DATI control, advised the farm women. They also insured that the eggs were clean leaving the farm. In 1907 DATI employed an instructor in the packaging and grading of eggs and poultry and made his service available to shippers. Irish dairy cow numbers stayed static, as did the average milk yield, while the home consumption of butter increased, because more families now switched to bread and less maize and oatmeal was consumed. On the eve of the war just thirty nine percent of Irish butter was produced in creameries. According to Daly ‘it was quite possible that the dairy industry was a casualty of the division of labour and the disagreement between DATI and the IAOS.  The DATI’s concentration on beef cattle may also have been a contributing factor’. The DATI investigated the possibilities of establishing a dead meat trade and its London Office worked on the promotion of Irish fruit and early potatoes.

By 1920 agricultural prices were approximately three times higher than they were in 1913 figure. War brought unprecedented government regulation – compulsory tillage orders, guaranteed prices for grain, maximum prices for fertilizer, minimum wages orders and perhaps the temporary suspension of land purchase and distribution. Although farmers benefited from higher prices, labourers and smallholders felt frustrated at being denied their share of wartime prosperity. Emigration came to a halt because it was extremely difficult to get to the United States and the fear of conscription if they entered Britain. A volatile atmosphere resulted particularly after the 1916 rising. Wages ran behind food prices and labourers went on strike in Cos’ Clare, Cork, Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wexford. Moribund rural land and labour unions were revived and new organizations emerged, demanding minimum wages for farm labourers, the redistribution of land to smallholders and the provision of allotments. Men were entering grazing land, driving cattle away, and ploughing or digging land for tillage – using compulsory tillage orders as justification for their actions. In other instances they disrupted auctions for conacre land. They were fuelled by economic conditions but also by militant nationalism. On the 13^th November, two days after the Armitice, the Council of Agriculture debated a motion calling for labourers wages to be linked to maximum grain prices. However this was not carried The Irish Transport and General worker Union (ITGWU) launched a campaign for higher agricultural wages in 1919 and succeeded in bringing labourers out on strike in Meath and Kildare and there was a threat of a nationwide strike if Kildare farmers persisted in their plan to lock out all agricultural labourers unless they returned to work.

On March 1919  senior officials of DATI met a deputation of farmers who were demanding an end to compulsory tillage; the deputation included two representatives of North Kildare Farmers’ Federation, the Clare landlord and maverick Colonel O’Callaghan Westropp (An estate of over 8,000 acres in 1876) and farmers from Meath, Cork and Wexford. Devere, a large farmer from North Kildare, commented that the tillage order was ‘one great weapon’ that labourers could employ against farmers. During the previous summer he had been unable to harvest thousands of acres of corn when his labourers went on strike; he objected to the fact that farmers were compelled to till their land, while labourers were free to strike and ‘to demand whatever wages they liked’. When Gill – the Secretary reminded the deputation that Irish Farmers were receiving higher guaranteed prices than farmers in Britain, O’Callaghan Westopp countered, that guaranteed prices were worthless unless farmers had a guaranteed market,  guaranteed labour and a guaranteed season to harvest the crops. By March 11 1919 the British Ministry of Food conceded that while, the case for decontrolling the price of oats in Britain was ‘irresistible’, in Ireland, ‘the conditions are rather different’, and it agreed to honour its undertaking to buy 10,000 tons of oats a month in Ireland at the previously-announced price until July 1919. It also agreed to restrict exports of British oats and oatmeal into Ireland Compulsory tillage still applied for the 1920 season, but early in 1921 the DATI revoked it. It had become apparent that Irish farmers would no longer benefit from the guaranteed prices paid under the Agricultural Act of 1920, following the enactment of the Government of Ireland Act in the same year (establishing parliaments in Dublin and Belfast). The Agricultural Wages board was abolished in October 1921. From 1919 there were two Government Authorities for Agriculture namely the Ministry of Agriculture for Northern Ireland and DATI for the Twenty Six Counties – later to become Republic of Ireland. The two organizations pretty well worked together in the earlier years as many of the staff of the existing DATI had worked in the old DATI in Dublin.

Sir Horace Plunket and the Co-Operatibe Movement

It was in the Autumn of 1889, that the Honourable Alexis Roche, brother of Lord Fermoy, and Barney Fitzpatrick Baron of Castletown and had estates at Granston Manor, Abbeyleix and Doneraile Court, called on Sir Horace Plunkett to form a co-operative. For a year Plunkett had travelled through Ireland visiting friends and holding meetings to try and interest people in co-operation.   Roche remembered the young Plunkett, just out Oxford and home to act as agent for his father (Lord Dunsany), when he started a the Dunsany Co-operative society. It was a small shop selling groceries and providing a local market for eggs and butter. The shareholders were country folk, Dunsany tenants and labourers, the steward and Horace Plunkett himself. Plunkett himself worked in the shop before they could afford a manager, weighing provisions and fumbling with paper and string to tie up the parcels for old people, until they begged him to desist and let them do it properly themselves. Back in Doneraile, Plunkett was pleading for support to launch another venture. Roche could not refuse as he was an old friend of his, Fitzpatrick proved enthusiastic, Anderson (who owned a large farm at Mount Corbett, Buttevant) was committed and a decision was reached to establish a co-operative shop on the Dunsany (an Rochdale) model, but somewhat larger. They acquired a large shop in the main street and stocked it with goods mainly supplied by the English Co-operative Wholesale Society which by this time had established a number of depots in Ireland. The manager they appointed was not suitable, because in Anderson’s words ‘quite inefficient because he did not understand the people”.  Bolger notes “It is quite interesting to note that Anderson, himself more than a little Anglo-Irish described the unfortunate as a “Saxon”’. The committee of the co-op duly affiliated to the (Co-operative Union of Manchester) decided that it should sell everything from a needle to an anchor and supply all the requirements of both the gentry and the proletariat. Anderson, at this stage the Secretary, thought it was ambitious for Doneraile but the majority opinion prevailed. They started a bakery even though there was already an excellent baker in the village. Mickey the Fairy, the village baker won out and the co-op bakery project folded. The Saxon manager was replaced, but gradually the Co-operative aspect disappeared and it ultimately became a proprietary concern. It did make the local merchants sit –up and improve their shops and built a co-operative spirit in the area; which resulted in the Doneraile  Agricultural  Bank being formed in 1894. Anderson went on to become Plunkett personal assistant.

 When the Dept of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI) opened its doors in Upper Merrion Street, Dublin, on the 1 April 1900, it marked a new experiment in Irish administration and economic history. The DATI was given responsibility for developing the most important branch of the Irish economy. In August 1895 Sir Horace Plunkett, a unionist MP for South Co. Dublin and a member of a distinguished Anglo-Norman (family owned Dunsany Castle and Estate), wrote an open letter to the leading Irish newspapers, inviting all who were interested to join a committee to explore non-contentious measures that would promote economic welfare in Ireland. The Recess Committee, as it was known as, included twenty three men, consisting of unionist, and nationalist politicians, landlords, clergymen, prominent businessmen, and senior lawyers. Plunkett was the chairman; the secretary was T.P. Gill a journalist and former Home Rule MP.  Only co-operative people from both sides of fault-lines in Irish life – unionism and nationalism – Protestantism and Catholicism participated during its formative years. Irrespective of his political motives, Plunkett was correct in assuming that all major groupings in Ireland were concerned at the condition of agriculture.  The volume of agricultural output reached its post-Famine peak in the late 1850s; by the late 1890s, was 20 per cent below that level.   Increasing competition came also from South America, Australia and New Zealand resulting in falling prices in all of Europe. Although frozen mutton and beef was inferior to fresh meat produced by Irish and British farmers, many families switched over because it was cheaper. Hard-tack American bacon, which was salty, of low quality but cheap, found a ready market among poorer Irish families. Dairy farmers faced two problems – competition from ‘butterine’ (or margarine as it came to be known), a cheap inferior substitute for butter, and the threat of traditional farmhouse butter from butter in creameries. Farmhouse butter was of variable quality. On small farms it might take a week to fill a barrel, and it was essential to salt the butter heavily to prevent its becoming rancid. The large number of small producers meant it was impossible to maintain uniform quality despite the inspection procedures operated in places such as the cork Butter Exchange. Creamery butter was able to command higher prices. As from 1850 onwards Holland and Denmark were taking an increasing amount of the butter market, particularly in Great Britain.

By 1900 eighty percent of Danish milk was processed in co-operative creameries. But for Ireland the co-op movement was in its infancy. By 1894 thirty three co-op creameries were established and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society (IAOS) was formed to act a central coordinating body for the co-ops. The committee in 1894/95 consisted of seven landlords, one land agent, one businessman, one Catholic bishop, and one farmer who was a large grazier and cattle breeder. Sir Horace became executive head of DATI with the title of vice-president. By 1920 some 1,115 co-ops were operating in Ireland and co-op membership had reached 150,000. During the same period turnover increased to £14.6 million, reflecting the First World War and post war inflation. Plunkett believed strongly in the role of Co-operative movement and he wrote his views in Ireland in the New Century. This was to counteract Wyndham’s views in favour of stronger state control and greater centralization.  Unfortunately, by the 1906 election, when the Liberals came to power, Plunkett resigned – the differences between the different sides of the IAOS’s role versus DATI’s one, possible became too much for him as well as the Home Rule issue, which he was not in favour of.

The Irish Land League & Captain Boycott 

The fact that Charles Stewart Parnell was prepared to throw in his lot with Davitt’s land movement showed him in a new light. He was now able to play the role of popular orator and to make deep impact upon the minds and hearts of the Irish country people. At a mass meeting in Westport on June 8 1879 he spoke the following memorable words: “You must show the landlords that you intend to hold a firm grip on your homesteads and lands….. You must help yourselves, and the public opinion of the world will stand by you and support you in your struggle to defend your homesteads”  The gauntlet had been thrown down and the whole issue was clinched when Davitt founded the Irish National Land League, with Parnell as its first president, on 21 October 1879. 

The objects of the League were:

<![if !supportLists]>1.       <![endif]>To put an end to rack-renting, eviction and landlord oppression

<![if !supportLists]>2.      <![endif]>To effect such radical change in the land system of Ireland as would put it in the power of every Irish farmer to become owner, on fair terms of the land he tilled.

The Land League publicized the evils and the injustices of the Irish land system, they provided assistance for the evicted and helpless by building Land League huts and distributing money which had come mainly from America, they kept the people informed of their policy, which was to force out the landlords and give the land to the people. In April 1880 a general election was held, and Parnell found himself at the head of a powerful group at Whitehall, who were united in their aim to achieve justice for Irish tenant farmers. Gladstone, the Liberal leader, became Prime Minister and was prepared to introduce a new land bill. But in the meantime the land war continued in Ireland and it reached its most significant point when Captain Boycott, of Lough Mask House, Co. Mayo defied the League. Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott was an unpopular English landlord who moved to the Ballinrobe area in 1873 after an inheritance allowed him to take a thirty-one year lease on three hundred acres near Lough Mask. He also became an agent on the nearly one thousand five hundred acres estate of Lord Erne. There were 38 small tenant farmers on Lord Erne’s estates near Lough Mask and Castlebar. In September 1880, he and his family were reduced to a state of helplessness and found themselves cut off from their neighbours by the boycott- system, which Davitt and Parnell to a lesser degree had approved.  Certainly Parnell was in sympathy of such an attitude towards those who refused to cooperate with the Land League. On the 19 September 1880, he spoke to a large crowd at Ennis Co. Clare: When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you shun in the street of the town, you shun him at the shop counter, you must shun him in the fair and in the market-place, and even in the House of Worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old-you must show him your detestation  of the crime he has committed.  …….  By this ‘boycotting’, and other methods, the Irish farmers stood up to the landlords.

Captain Boycott and family being escorted out of Ballinrobe by the Constabulary on his way back to England after being ‘boycotted’ by the people.

The Government, although it had to admit that the Land League was a lawful organization, could not allow civil war to develop in Ireland. Gladstone was therefore forced to apply to parliament for exceptional powers under which he hoped to put an end to the Land League. He got Davitt and Parnell arrested in February 1881 and placed in Kilmaiham jail. The land war continued and the state of the country was described as follows by one writer, Barry O’Brien: “It rained evictions, it rained outrages, tenants who paid unjust rents, or took farms from which others had been evicted, were dragged out of their beds, assaulted ……… Graves were dug before the doors of the evicting landlords; murder was committed. A reign of terror has in truth commenced”.  Gladstone got the Land Act passed in 1881, as the Land Bill that got introduced in 1870 was completely ignored by the landlords. It guaranteed Three Fs: fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure to the Irish farmers, while at the same time Land Courts to fix rents. Though Gladstone was genuinely determined to provide a solution, his 1881 Act did not get to the root of the trouble. No provision was made for tenants unable to pay arrears of rent, and no guidance was given regarding what was a fair rent. In fact the land war continued and crime increased through-out the country. Gladstone was forced to introduce a new coercion Act after the new Chief Secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and T.H. Burke Under Secretary were assassinated in the Phoenix Park. The Settling of the Land Question was still to the forefront. It was aimed to provide a system whereby the tenants could buy out their land. The Irish farmers had no money for such a takeover; it would have to come from the state. In 1885, a conservative government passed the Ashbourne Land Act, by which £5 million was made available by way of loans from the Land Commission to the tenant farmers. This sum was found to be too small and in 1891 a further sum of £30 million was given. Finally, by the Wyndham Act of 1903 the sum of £100 million was put forward, while at the same time they gave £12 million to the landlords by way of compensation.

The land war changed the face of rural Ireland, by putting an end to the old landlordism, and turning Ireland into a land of peasant owners. Davitt’s dream of the Irish farmer owning his own plot of land was fulfilled. Charles Stewart Parnell died at forty five years of age in November 1891 and like O’Connell has not been forgotten by the middle class farm owners in Ireland. However, his main aim Like Butt’s was that of Home Rule was not granted, even though Gladstone was quite favourably disposed to a Commonwealth status for Ireland. It had to wait for an armed struggle.