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The Land Annuities Agitation in Ireland 1926-32

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The Land Annuities Agitation in Ireland 1926-32 THE LAND ANNUITIES AGITATION IN IRELAND 1926-32 by DAVID GAHAN THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF PHD DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, MAYNOOTH HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: DR JACINTA PRUNTY Supervisor of Research: Prof. Terence Dooley 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii List of abbreviations iv Introduction 1 1 Beginning of land annuities agitation 1926 15 2 The agitation continues, O’Donnell works to broaden support base September - December 1926 33 (i) O’Donnell seeks support for non-payment campaign 33 (ii) Government response to non-payment and Ultimate Financial Settlement revealed 47 3 The annuities become a national issue 57 (i) Legal arguments, arrest and trial of O’Donnell 57 (ii) Prelude to General Election, June 1927 69 4 Fianna Fáil, elections and the annuities July – November 1927 79 5 Fianna Fáil, Maurice Moore and alliance with O’Donnell 90 (i) Fianna Fáil pursue position and policy on annuities 90 (ii) Alliance of O’Donnell and Moore 96 6 The ‘No Tribute’ campaign and efforts to build a national movement 104 7 The Anti-Tribute League and local government reaction 122 8 Parliamentary Debates, the Catholic Church, O’Donnell forms closer ties with the Comintern 137 (i) Fianna Fáil’s Dáil motion 137 (ii) Fr Fahy and the annuities 141 (iii) O’Donnell seeks terms with Patrick Hogan 147 (iv) O’Donnell and the European Peasants’ Congress 157 9 Emerging differences within the anti-annuities campaign 164 (i) The agitation under strain 164 (ii) O’Donnell and attempts to radicalise the working farmers, de Valera and elections 173 10 Land annuities and the 1932 General Election 184 Conclusion 207 Bibliography 214 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I express many thanks to Professor Terence Dooley under whose supervision from 2012-16 this thesis was completed. Thanks are due for his invaluable advice and encouragement over the last four years, also for giving me the space to develop this thesis and ways to approach it. Many thanks are also due to the History Department at Maynooth University and in particular Dr. Jacinta Prunty and Professors Marian Lyons and Jacqueline Hill who were always helpful and encouraging. The help from Ann Donoghue and Catherine Heslin in the History Department office is greatly appreciated. Thanks to all the staff at Maynooth University Library. The History Department at St. Patrick’s College, Dublin City University, Drumcondra deserve thanks for encouraging me during my degree, especially Dr. Carla King, Dr. Daithí Ó Corráin, Dr. Daire Keogh and Professor James Kelly. Thanks to Dr. Brian Hanley for advice at the start of the PhD and pointers since. Many thanks to Dr. Ruán O’Donnell for advising me when starting and encouragement since then. Thanks to all the staff at the National Archives of Ireland, National Library of Ireland, Dublin City Library Archive and the staff at UCD Archives. In addition, thanks are due to the staff at the libraries at Greystones and Bray who were always helpful. My family has been a constant source of support in many ways during this project and for this I sincerely thank my mother Patty, my sisters Thérèse and Tricia and my brother Liam. Finally but not least my children Seán and Mairéad who kept me going, and wholehearted thanks to my partner Katrin for all the various ways in which she helped and without whose help and support and understanding this would have been a far more difficult task. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACC Agricultural Credit Corporation AOH Ancient Order of Hibernians CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CPI Communist Party of Ireland DCLA Dublin City Library and Archive EPC European Peasants’ Committee FSR Friends of Soviet Russia GHQ General Head Quarters ILDL Irish Labour Defence League INTO Irish National Teachers’ Organisation INUM Irish National Unemployed Movement IRA Irish Republican Army ITGWU Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union IWFC Irish Working Farmers’ Committee IWL Irish Workers’ League KC King’s Counsel LAI League Against Imperialism MP Member of Parliament NAI National Archives of Ireland NLI National Library of Ireland O/C Officer Commanding PCRWP Preparatory Committee for the formation of a Revolutionary Workers’ Party RIC Royal Irish Constabulary RWG Revolutionary Workers’ Group RWP Revolutionary Workers’ Party TD Teachta Dála (Member of Dáil Éireann) UCDA University College Dublin Archive WPI Workers’ Party of Ireland WRP Workers’ Revolutionary Party WUI Workers’ Union of Ireland iv INTRODUCTION ‘The political and agrarian questions have always been so intertwined that no settlement of the former could make a prosperous and contented country while any real grievance remained owing to the unsettlement of the latter’.1 One of the most prominent issues in the post-revolutionary era in Ireland was the land annuities agitation 1926-32. The annuities were payments from Irish farmers to the British Treasury for money loaned to facilitate the purchase of land by tenant farmers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the mid-1920s a considerable number of farmers were in arrears and either could not pay or were refusing to pay. From this a campaign of non-payment developed which had a major effect on the electoral prospects of Fianna Fáil, leading to victory in the 1932 General Election and the party subsequently forming its first government. An examination of any survey history of twentieth-century Ireland demonstrates that the land question in post-Independent Ireland has received relatively little scholarly attention. The exception is Terence Dooley’s ‘The land for the people’: the land question in independent Ireland (2004). However, as Dooley sets out in the introduction, his is essentially a study of land acquisition and redistribution under the aegis of the Land Commission, with an evaluation of the extent of political interference in these processes. However, Dooley emphasises that the land question or land agitation did not end with independence. He looks at the importance of the role of the Land Commission in the new Free State and concludes that ‘land division, after all, came as close to a form of rural social policy as Cumann na nGaedheal managed in its term of office’.2 However, Dooley’s work makes little reference to the land annuities controversy of 1926-32, a highly significant social and political issue of its time, which has of yet only been touched on by historians. The aim of this thesis is to address this lacuna in the historiography of the land question in the early decades of post-independent Ireland, and to examine the land annuities agitation during this period. The thesis begins in 1926 when a first attempt was made to organise a campaign for non-payment of annuities, and ends in 1932 with the election of the Fianna Fáil government and the end of the agitation. The most prominent figure in the agitation was 1 Horace Plunkett quoted in Joseph Thomas Sheehan: ‘Land purchase policy in Ireland 1917-23: from the Irish Convention to the 1923 land act’ (M.A. thesis, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, 1993), p. 23. This was in Plunkett’s capacity as chairman of the Irish Convention, speaking in the autumn of 1917 about the relationship between the political and agrarian questions in Ireland. 2 Terence Dooley, ‘The land for the people’: the land question in independent Ireland (Dublin, 2004), p. 79. 1 Peadar O’Donnell, a socialist and leading member of the IRA from the mid-1920s until the early 1930s, and Sinn Féin TD for Donegal. For O’Donnell, the annuities were part of a wider campaign for radical social change in Ireland in which he hoped the IRA would play a leading role. He was appointed editor of the IRA weekly paper An Phoblacht (established 1925) in April 19263 and by the summer of that year; annuities were featuring prominently in the papers coverage.4 It was during that summer in 1926, that O’Donnell first became aware of the widespread issuing of decrees for annuity arrears to farmers in west Donegal.5 The arrears could not be paid and O’Donnell believed that, if organised properly, the farmers could resist these decrees and in doing so also resist the whole idea of annuity payments. O’Donnell’s twin roles as leading figure in the annuities campaign and editing An Phoblacht were pivotal for the agitation as he ensured that the campaign secured a national profile through the coverage in the paper. As he reasoned, it was his position as the son of a farmer who owed nine years rent that gave him a greater standing among the community in Donegal rather than the fact that he was an elected representative.6 He saw the potential effect of the annuities situation not only in Donegal but also throughout the country and it was largely through his vision and efforts that that the annuities were catapulted onto the national stage. Uinsean MacEoin writes that ‘in the case of the oppressed small holders of west Donegal he (O’Donnell) had taken hold of a weapon that would cause ripples to run through all parts of rural Ireland; that would eventually contribute to unseating the Cosgrave government’.7 Maurice Moore (who will be discussed in more detail later) was another significant figure in the anti-annuities campaign who allied himself with O’Donnell in 1928. Fianna Fáil’s contribution to the campaign was also important. O’Donnell, through Moore helped engineer more Fianna Fáil involvement in the annuities issue. Timothy M. O’Neill outlines the importance of the non-payment campaign begun by O’Donnell as a factor in the election of the Fianna Fáil government in 1932.8 However, over time Fianna Fáil would put its own stamp on the issue, concentrating on legal aspects of annuity payments to Britain.
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