Michael Davitt

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Michael Davitt (Irish name: Mícheál Mac Dáibhéid) (25 March 1846 – 30 May 1906) was an Irish social campaigner and nationalist politician who founded the Irish National Land League.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Fenians 3 The Land War 4 Achievements 5 Memory 6 Popular culture 7 Writings 8 References 9 See also 10 External links 10.1 Institutions

[edit] Early years

Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo, Ireland, at the height of the Great Famine, the second of five children born to Martin and Sabina Davitt. When he was 6 years old his family was evicted from their home in Straide and his father travelled to find work in England, while his wife and family, refusing shelter in the workhouse, were offered accommodation by the parish priest in Straide, Fr. John McHugh. In 1855 Mrs. Davitt and her children finally joined her husband in the industrial town of Haslingden in Lancashire, joining the local Irish community.

The young Davitt began working in a cotton mill at the age of 9 but a month later when he argued with his boss he was fired. Next year he went to work to a cotton mill in Baxenden where he was put to operate a spinning machine. In half an hour his right arm was entangled in a cogwheel and mangled so bad it had to be amputated. He did not receive any compensation.

Probably because of this injury an anonymous benefactor helped him to attend a Wesleyan school. In 1861 at the age of 15 he went to work as an errand boy for a printing firm. In spite of his injury he learned to set type. He was later promoted to a letter carrier and bookkeeper and worked for them for a total of five years.

Around the same time Davitt had started night classes at the local Mechanics Institute and used its library. He became interested in Irish history and the contemporary Irish social situation.

[edit] Fenians

In 1865, this interest led Davitt to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenians organization in Ireland. He soon became part of the inner circle of the local group. Two years later he left the printing firm to devote himself full time to the IRB, as organising secretary in Northern England and Scotland, organising arms smuggling to Ireland.

Davitt was arrested in Paddington Station in London in May 1870 while awaiting a delivery of arms. He was convicted of a treason-felony and sentenced to 15 years of penal servitude in Dartmoor Prison. Here he was kept in strict isolation during the unremitted portion of his term. In prison he concluded that ownership of the land by the people was the only solution to Ireland’s problems. He managed to get a covert contact to an Irish MP John O'Conner Power who begun to campaign against cruelty inflicted to political prisoners, reading Davitt's letters in the Parliament. Partially due to public furore Davitt was released when he had served seven and half years, along with other political prisoners on 19 December 1877, on a "ticket of leave".

Davitt rejoined the IRB and became a member of its Supreme Council. The British Government had introduced a concept of "fair rents" in the year of his arrest, but he continued to hold that the common people of Ireland could not improve their lot without the ownership of their land, and frequently insisted at Fenian meetings that "the land question can be definitely settled only by making the cultivators of the soil proprietors".

In 1873 while Davitt was imprisoned his mother and three sisters had settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the late 1870s, Davitt travelled to United States in a lecture tour sponsored by Dr William Carroll, Irish-American Fenian, hoping to gain the support of Irish-American communities for his new policy of "The Land for the People".

IN 1886 Davitt married Mary Yore, of Oakland, California. In 1887 the couple returned to Ireland and lived in the Land League Cottage in Ballybrack, Dalkey, County Dublin that was given to them as a wedding present by the people of Ireland. They had five children, three boys and two girls, though one, Kathleen, died of tuberculosis aged 7, in 1895.

[edit] The Land War

Upon his return to Ireland in 1879, Davitt found that the West of Ireland was once again suffering near famine conditions. It was one of the wettest years on record and the potato crop had failed for the third successive year. Davitt organized a large meeting of around 70,000 people in Irishtown, County Mayo on 20 April and made plans for a huge campaign of agitation to reduce rents. The local target was a Roman Catholic priest, Canon Ulick Burke, who had threatened to evict his tenants. Campaign of non-payment pressured him to cancel the evictions and reduce his rents by 25%.

On 16 August 1879, the Land League of Mayo was formally founded in Castlebar, with the active support of Charles Stewart Parnell. Meetings were every Sunday. On October 21 it was superseded by the Irish National Land League. Parnell was made its President and Davitt was one of the secretaries. This united practically all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements under a single organization and, from then until 1882, the "Land War" in search of the "Three Fs" (Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) was fought in earnest. The League organized resistance to evictions, reductions in rents and aided the work of relief agencies. Landlords' attempts to evict tenants lead to violence, but the Land League denounced it.

One of the actions the Land League took during this period was the campaign of ostracism against the land agent Captain Charles Boycott in the autumn of 1880. This incident led to Boycott abandoning Ireland in December and coined the word boycott.

In 1881 Davitt was again imprisoned for his outspoken speeches when he had accused chief secretary of Ireland W. E. Forster of "infamous lying". His ticket of leave was revoked and he was sent to Portland jail.

Parnell protests loudly in the House of Commons and the Irish members protested so strongly that they were ejected from the House. The government passed the Coercion Bill.

In 1882 Davitt was elected Member of Parliament for County Meath but was disqualified because he was in prison. Upon his release in 1882, Davitt campaigned for land nationalisation and an alliance between the British working class, Irish labourers and tenant farmers. This alienated Parnell and even many of the tenants. Davitt was subsequently elected for MP in 1892 and for South Mayo in 1895.

Despite his differences with Parnell on the land question, he was a strong supporter of the alliance between the Liberal Party and the Irish Nationalist Party and maintained this position in 1890 when the party split over Parnell's divorce. Davitt sided with the anti-Parnellite faction in the House of Commons at Westminster but he became increasingly impatient with what he saw as the inability or unwillingness of that institution to right injustice.

To further those ends Davitt initiated the Irish Democratic Labour Federation in 1890, an organisation which adopted an advanced social programme including proposals for free education, land settlement, worker housing, reduced working hours, labour political representation and universal suffrage, not least his conviction to which he adhered to all his life, that peasant land proprietorship must go hand in hand with land nationalisation.

Davitt left the Commons in 1896 with a prediction that "no just cause could succeed there unless backed by physical force." Parliament alleviated this need by granting full democratic control of all local affairs, a form of "grass roots home rule", to County and District Councils under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898.

[edit] Achievements

Michael Davitt's unceasing efforts were instrumental to future Land Acts after the Gladstone's First Land Act of 1870. The most important of these was the Land Act of 1881, which finally granted "the three Fs" under Davitt's "Irish Democratic Land Federation".

The next stage was the Wyndham Land Act (1903) of William O'Brien, a purchase act that offered generous inducement to the landlords to sell their estates to the tenants, the Irish Land Commission mediating to then collect land annuities instead of rents.

Finally the ownership of the land would be transferred from the landlords to the tenants and Davitt's ambitions had finally materialised. However, he opposed the Wyndham Act, objecting strongly that the landlords should receive any compensation for land which he felt belonged to the state. He never gave up his adherence to land nationalisation.

In 1898 Davitt helped William O'Brien found his United Irish League and he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of the British Labour Party, as well as being an inspiration for D.D. Sheehan's Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA). Many years later Mahatma Gandhi attributed the origin of his own mass movement of peaceful resistance in India to Davitt and the Land League. His other travels and extended tours included Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa, The Holy Land, South America, Russia and most of continental Europe including almost every part of Ireland and Britain.

Davitt was a frequent visitor to Scotland where he was closely associated with the crofters' struggles in the Highlands and Islands. He also urged the Irish immigrant population to integrate into the politics of their adopted country and in particular the infant Labour Movement rather than to pursue a particularly Irish agenda. In Glasgow, where he had a strong following, Davitt's prestige was attested to by the fact that he was invited to lay the centre-turf at Celtic Park at the time of the football club's inauguration in 1888. The turf was stolen overnight giving rise to a poem which began: "The curse of Cromwell blast the hand that stole the sod that Michael cut; May all his praties turn to sand - the crawling, thieving scut"!

Davitt supported himself with writing and lectures and as a journalist defended the disadvantaged. In 1899 he left his seat in the parliament in protest of the Boer War and later wrote about it. In 1903 he went to Russia to investigate news of anti-Semitism and later wrote about the subject. Next year he spoke against the Anti-Jewish pogroms in Limerick.

Davitt died in Elphis Hospital, Dublin on 30 May 1906, aged 60, from septic poisoning. The fact that Lord Lieutenant of Ireland attended the funeral was a public indication of the dramatic political journey this former Fenian prisoner had taken. The plan had been not to have a public funeral, and hence Davitt's body was brought quietly to the Carmelite Friary, Clarendon Street, Dublin. However, the next day over 20,000 people filed past his coffin. Train then took the remains to Foxford, County Mayo, and Davitt was buried in the grounds of Straide Abbey at Straide (near Foxford), near the town of Straide where he was born.

[edit] Memory

At Straide, Davitt's birthplaceis now a museum that commemorates his life and works. A life-sized branze statue stands before it. The bridge from Achill Island to the mainland is named after him.

The town of Haslingden has also commemorated Davitt's link with it by a public monument erected in the presence of Davitt's son. The inscription reads as follows:

"This memorial has been erected to perpetuate the memory of Michael Davitt with the town of Haslingden. It marks the site of the home of Michael Davitt, Irish patriot, who resided in Haslingden from 1853 to 1867. / He became a great world figure in the cause of freedom and raised his voice and pen on behalf of the oppressed, irrespective of race or creed, that serfdom be transformed to citizenship and that man be given the opportunity to display his God given talents for the betterment of mankind. / Born 1846, died 1906. / Erected by the Irish Democratic League Club, Haslingden (Davitt Branch)."

[edit] Popular culture

Irish folk musician Andy Irvine's 1996 Patrick Street song, "Forgotten Hero", is a tribute to Davitt. In addition, Irish-born musician Donal Maguire has recorded an album of songs based on Davitt's life, entitled Michael Davitt: The Forgotten Hero?.

[edit] Writings

• Michael Davitt, Collected Writings, 1868-1906 (2001) ISBN 1-85506-648-3
• Michael Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland ISBN 1-59107-031-7
• Michael Davitt, The "Times"-Parnell Commission: Speech delivered by Michael Davitt in defence of the Land League (1890)

[edit] References

• D.B. Cashman and Michael Davitt, The Life of Michael Davitt and the Secret History of The Land League (1881)
• Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Michael Davitt : revolutionary, agitator and labour leader (1908, etc.)
• M.M. O'Hara, Chief and Tribune: Parnell and Davitt (1919)
• Carla King: Michael Davitt, Dundalk (1999)
• T. W. Moody: Davitt and Irish Revolution 1846-82, Oxford (1981)
• Kevin Haddick Flynn: Davitt - Land Warrior (History Today May 2006)

[edit] See also

• List of people on stamps of Ireland

[edit] External links

[edit] Institutions

• Michael Davitt Museum, County Mayo, Ireland
• The Irish Democratic Club, (Davitt Branch) in Haslingden, the town where Michael Davitt was brought up

Preceded by: Alexander Martin Sullivan	MP for Meath 1882	Succeeded by: Edward Sheil
Preceded by: William O'Brien	MP for North-East Cork 1893	Succeeded by: William Abraham
Preceded by: Jeremiah Daniel Sheehan	MP for Kerry East 1895	Succeeded by: James Boothby Burke Roche
Preceded by: John Francis Xavier O'Brien	MP for South Mayo 1895–1899	Succeeded by: John O'Donnell