Ireland (16 page)

However, other young men had a similar dream to Davis’ and joined the Young Ireland movement; among them were William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Meagher and John Mitchel. All these witnessed the horrors of the Famine at first hand and saw the indifference of the British government toward the suffering of the Irish people. Like Davis, they became determined to act, and planned a rebellion for 1848.

Like rebellions of the past, it was doomed from the start. It was badly planned, the rebels were poorly armed, and there was poor communication. As had happened before, the government learned of the rebellion from informers. Another problem was that the people were in no position to rebel. They had endured three years of hunger and disease. Hardly a single family had escaped the spectre of death. They were too demoralised, weak and traumatised to fight. Hundreds of thousands of young Irish men and women, who might have been willing and able to fight, had also left the country.

The rebellion, if it could be called that, was a disaster. The only major conflict was at Ballingarry, County Tipperary, and here the rebels were quickly defeated. The leaders were arrested, tried and convicted, and transported to Tasmania, which at that time was named Van Diemen’s Land. Though the Young Irelanders failed in their rebellion, they did leave a large collection of literature, which inspired other Irishmen to pursue their goal of an Irish nation. John Mitchel wrote a journal while he was in jail and it’s now regarded as one of the finest jail journals of all time.

Those sentenced to imprisonment, or who were transported, were eventually released. Many of them did not return to Ireland, while those who did so quietly lived out their lives. However, some members of the Young Irelanders still believed in rebellion, though they probably thought that it would be many years before there was another one. But they did not have long to wait.

The English government must have also believed that there was little chance of another rebellion. The rising of 1848 had shown them the Irish people had no heart for it. It seemed as if the Famine had achieved what hundreds of years of war, plantation and bloodshed had not been able to achieve – the utter defeat of the Irish nation. But just like the Young Irelanders, the English were mistaken.

Inspired by the writings of the Young Irelanders, a west Cork man, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, founded an organisation in 1856 to discuss political and literary matters. He named it the Phoenix Club after a mythical bird, which is supposed to rise up from its own ashes. At the same time, a young Kilkenny man, James Stephens, who had fought in the 1848 rebellion, founded a secret society. Its aim was to win Ireland her freedom and create an Irish Republic, similar to that envisaged by Wolfe Tone. Stephens met with O’Donovan Rossa while setting up cells of his secret society in Munster. In order to counteract informers, Stephens ensured that the membership of each cell was unknown to members in other cells.

At the same time, another member of the 1848 rebellion, John O’Mahony, formed a secret society called the Fenian Brotherhood, in New York. He was a Limerick man, and following the 1848 rebellion escaped to Paris with Stephens. O’Mahony and Stephens met and their secret societies then became known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). It was one of the most important secret societies ever founded on behalf of Ireland, and was to play a major part in the fight for Irish freedom.

Stephens, O’Donovan Rossa and O’Mahony began to plan rebellion. The latter had a great love of ancient Irish stories and legends and he suggested that they call themselves Fenians, after the Fianna of ancient Ireland. There was great optimism that this rebellion would succeed. In Ireland, tens of thousands joined Stephens’s secret society and took the Fenian oath. Among them were about 15,000 Irishmen who were in the English army. These were highly trained soldiers and would be well capable of fighting in any rising. Irishmen also joined the movement in Britain, and were willing to return to Ireland and fight.

In America, a civil war had been fought in the years 1861–1865. Irishmen, who had gone to America during and after the Famine, had fought on both sides in this war. These trained soldiers were also willing to return to Ireland and fight. By 1866, Stephens calculated that he had over 90,000 men who were sworn Fenians.

Unfortunately, Stephens was a hesitant, cautious man, and refused to set a date for the rising. Then disaster struck. Despite Stephens’s precautions, his organisation was betrayed by informers. Many of the leaders, including O’Donovan Rossa, were arrested and imprisoned. Fenian soldiers in the English army were also arrested and many were transported to prison in Australia. Stephens was captured, but escaped from prison and made his way to America.

The leaders in Ireland were expecting help from America, but it never came. Frustrated by this, they set the date for a rising on 5 March 1867. But like the rising of 1848, it was badly planned and was another disaster. Apart from fighting in Munster and Leinster, there was little other action in the country.

In America, some Fenians tried to invade Canada, which was a British colony, but that too failed. In England, a police van taking Fenian prisoners to jail in Manchester was attacked by other Fenians. During the attack, in which the prisoners were freed, a policeman was killed. Three Fenians, who did not take part in the rescue and were therefore innocent, were arrested and eventually hanged. They became known as the ‘Manchester Martyrs’. Because they were innocent, their deaths aroused strong feelings in the Irish people. As a result, many joined the IRB.

In London, an attempt to blow up the wall surrounding Clerkenwell Prison and free a Fenian prisoner being held there, failed. 12 people were killed in the explosion. A Fenian, Michael Barrett, was tried and convicted of the attack, though there was little evidence to link him with it. He was hanged in May 1868, the last person to be publicly hanged in Britain.

Rebellion had failed yet again to obtain freedom for Ireland. The people still suffered from oppression and poverty. Rents were still high, and those who couldn’t pay were evicted, causing great hardship. It seemed as if Ireland would never gain its freedom from England by physical force and so another way would have to be found to help the people.

Other men now began to look at ways in which they might help the Irish people. Most people worked on the land, but few of them actually owned their land. Instead, they rented it. They were at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords and their agents who charged high rents, and who could throw them off their land at any time. If something could be done to obtain rights for the farmers, then their lives, and those of their families, could be greatly improved.

In 1852, Charles Gavan Duffy put forward three suggestions to help the tenant farmers. These became known as ‘The Three Fs’. These were Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure (a farmer could not be evicted without a very good reason) and Freedom of Sale. However, little came of this proposal and the tenant farmers continued to suffer as before. But another man was determined to remedy this situation. He was Michael Davitt, another famous name in the list of great Irishmen.

M
ichael Davitt was born at Straide, County Mayo, on 6 March 1846 at the height of the Famine. His father was a small farmer, and when Michael was seven years old the family was evicted from their home because they could not pay the high rent. The young boy witnessed the eviction and never forgot what he saw.

An eviction, which was usually carried out in the morning, was a horrific event to witness. The local sheriff arrived, accompanied by soldiers and men carrying a battering ram. If the family hid in their thatched cottage, or mud cabin, the soldiers broke down the door, entered the cottage and forcibly removed the family. There would be a great deal of screaming and crying as men, women and children were dragged outside. Often there were grandparents living with the family, and they, too, were dragged outside. Even if they were old or infirm or sick, they were shown no mercy. Once everyone was outside, their meagre belongings were then thrown out of the cottage or cabin. In winter it would be bitterly cold, maybe snowing or raining, and the family would have no shelter.

Once the people and their belongings were out of the home, a battering ram was set up. This consisted of a heavy beam of timber or the trunk of a tree, which was hung from a three-legged wooden frame. Once set up, the timber beam or tree trunk could be swung backwards and forwards. It was used to batter down the walls of the home until the roof collapsed, leaving the building in ruins. This meant that the home could no longer be lived in, and that the evicted family could not return.

With their home destroyed, the family was left by the roadside with no place to go. Sometimes neighbours or relatives took them in, but often people were afraid to do so in case they earned the wrath of the landlord. Many families built makeshift shelters under hedges, or burrowed into banks of earth. Others had no choice but to enter the workhouse.

As a seven-year-old, witnessing the eviction of his family had a profound effect on Michael Davitt. Even when the family moved to Lancashire in England, Michael never forgot what he had seen that morning. It instilled in him a desire to do something to prevent such an event ever happening to another family.

At nine years of age, Michael began working in the cotton mills in Lancashire. This was not unusual, for back then children as young as seven worked in factories. Young boys were also used as chimney sweeps, and had to climb up the inside of chimneys to clean off the soot. If a boy was frightened, or was reluctant to climb high up in the chimney, his master would light a fire in the grate and the boy would have to then climb up to avoid the heat and smoke.

Despite having to work for twelve hours a day, Michael Davitt still found time for reading and studying. One day, while operating a spinning jenny, a machine for spinning cotton thread, he caught his right hand in the machine’s cogs. His hand was so severely injured that it had to be amputated. But this did not prevent him from continuing to dream of helping the tenant farmers of Ireland.

Michael was an Irish patriot and joined the IRB. It was illegal to belong to such a group and he was arrested in 1870 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served his time in Dartmoor, a prison built on the bleak English moors, where in winter it was bitterly cold. He was held in solitary confinement, and suffered terribly under the severe prison regime. Irish prisoners, especially, were singled out for much harsher treatment than other prisoners.

Due to public protests about the treatment of the prisoners, Davitt was released after seven years. He returned to Ireland, and then went to America, where he spoke at meetings of his hope of obtaining rights for tenant farmers. On his return to Ireland he founded an organisation, which he named the Land League. It had two major objectives: to obtain rights for tenant farmers and eventually to ensure that they could own the land.

Though Davitt had been a Fenian, he now believed that his objectives could be obtained by peaceful means. He put forward a policy proposing that people should not have anything to do with a landlord or agent who mistreated his tenants. Any landlord or agent who did so should be shunned. He proposed that if a landlord evicted a tenant that no other person should take the farm, thus denying the landlord any rent. No one should speak to that landlord, or serve him in shops, or help him in any way. This strategy eventually became known as boycotting.

The word is derived from the name of a notorious land agent, Captain Charles Boycott, who lived near Ballinrobe, County Mayo. When he tried to evict some of his tenants in September 1880, the local people shunned him. They refused to speak to him, to serve him, or to work for him. Because of this, Protestants from the north of Ireland travelled to Mayo to help gather in his harvest. Large numbers of soldiers and police were needed to protect these workers, and the cost was enormous. Boycott was forced to return to England and his departure showed the people that they could defeat the landlords. All over the country people now began to boycott unjust landlords and their agents.

The British government’s response to boycotting was to pass numerous acts, known as Coercion Acts. These gave the police and soldiers extra powers to deal with those who were taking part in boycotts, and those who were organising them. Many people were jailed, including Michael Davitt, but boycotting continued. It caused great unrest in the country, and led to violent clashes between the people and the soldiers and police.

The British government eventually realised that coercion would not work, and they passed several land acts between 1881 and 1903. These granted rights to tenants, and also provided money to tenants to buy their land. This money was given as a loan, which had to be repaid. Some tenants availed of the loan, but others could not afford to, and the boycotting continued. Eventually, the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which provided £100 million for land purchase, greatly helped to solve the land problem.

When Michael Davitt died on 30 May 1906, he had seen his life’s work almost complete. By now a great many Irish people once more owned their own land. But they still did not have their own government and were still subject to the British king. Ireland was still not a nation as it once had been.

While Michael Davitt was struggling to obtain rights for Irish farmers, other men, just as determined as he, were intent on winning freedom for Ireland. The aim of these men was to force the British government to grant Ireland what they described as Home Rule.

The leader of this campaign for Home Rule was Charles Stewart Parnell. In the 1880s he was the most popular man in Ireland since Daniel O’Connell. The people thought he would obtain Home Rule and often referred to him as the High King of Ireland. But just as the people were dreaming that Ireland might become, in the words of Thomas Davis, ‘a nation once again’, Parnell fell in love with another man’s wife. This caused a great scandal and would have serious consequences for Ireland and its people.