Michael Davitt (March 25, 1846 - May 30, 1906) was an Irish Social campaigner and Nationalist politician who founded the National Land League.
Early years
Michael Davitt was born in Straide, Co. Mayo, 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 were 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.
The young Davitt began working in a cotton mill at the age of 10 but within two years an accident with a spinning machine caused the amputation of his right arm. Because of this injury he subsequently attended a Wesleyan school for two years, after which he worked for a printing firm. It was around this time that he became interested in Irish history and the current Irish social situation.
Fenians
In 1865, this interest led him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (aka IRB or Fenians) and two years later he gave up his job to become organising secretary of the Fenians in Northern England and Scotland.
He was arrested in London in 1870 while awaiting a delivery of arms, and was sentenced to 15 years penal servitude . He would serve seven years of this sentence, in complete isolation, in prison. With other political prisoners he was released on ticket of leave on December 19th, 1877. Davitt remained defiant, however, and subsequently became a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB.
Davitt's mother and three sisters had settled in Philadelphia in 1873 and after his release he traveled to America hoping to gain the support of Irish American communities for his new policy of "The Land for the People." While in prison Davitt had come to realise that ownership of the land by the people was the only solution to Ireland’s problems, and he would later be frequently heard to say at meetings that "the land question can be definitely settled only by making the cultivators of the soil proprietors." Whilst a Land Act, introducing the concept of "fair rents", had been passed by the British Government in 1870 Davitt felt it hadn't gone far enough and that the common people of Ireland would never be able to improve their lot unless they had the right to own their land.
The Land War
Upon his return to Ireland in 1879 Davitt found the west was once again experiencing near famine conditions. It was one of the wettest years on record and the potato crop had failed for the third successive year. At a large meeting attended by Davitt in Irishtown, Co. Mayo on April 20th plans were made for a huge campaign of agitation to reduce rents. On August 16th, 1879 the Land League of Mayo was formally founded in Castlebar, with the active support of Charles Stewart Parnell who, on October 21st became President of the National Land League of which Davitt as one of the secretaries. This united practically all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements under a single umbrella and, from then until 1882, the "Land War" in search of the "Three Fs" (i.e. Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) was fought in earnest.
In 1881 Davitt was again imprisoned for his outspoken speeches, later released and arrested yet again in 1883. Upon his release in 1882, he campaigned for land nationalisation and an alliance between the British working class, Irish labourers and tenant farmers. In 1882 he was elected MP for Meath but was disqualified from taking his seat as he was in prison at the time. He was subsequently elected for West Mayo in 1895. Despite his differences with Parnell on the land question he was a strong supporter of the Liberal/Nationalist alliance and maintained this position in 1890 when the party split over Parnell's divorce. Davitt sided with the anti-Parnellite faction in Parliament but he became increasingly impatient with what he saw as the inability or unwillingness of that institution to right injustice. He left the House of Commons in 1896 with a prediction that "no just cause could succeed there unless backed by physical force."
Achievements
It was mainly through Michael Davitt's unceasing efforts that more Land Acts followed 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". This was later followed by the Wyndham Land Act (1903), a purchase act which offered generous inducement to the landlords to sell their estates to a Land Commission who would then collect land annuities instead of rents. At long last ownership of the land would be transferred from the landlords to the tenants. Davitt's ambitions had finally materialised although he himself was opposed to the Wyndham Act, objecting strongly to the landlords receiving any compensation for land which he felt belonged to the state.
In 1898 he helped found the 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 even attributed the origin of his own mass movement of peaceful resistance in India to Davitt and the Land League. The bridge from Achill Island to the mainland is named after him.
When Davitt died in 1906 the Lord Lieutenant attended the funeral, an public indication of the dramatic political journey taken by this former Fenian prisoner. He is buried in Straide (near Foxford), the town where he was born and where a museum now commemerates his life and works.
Notes
- It was during the "Land war" that the word boycott entered the English language. A former British Captain, Charles Boycott was the estate agent of an absentee landlord, the Earl of Erne, in Co. Mayo. In September 1880, protesting tenants demanded from Captain Boycott a substantial reduction in their rents. He not only refused but also ejected them from the land. The Land League suggested that, rather than resort to violence, everyone in the locality should refuse to deal with him. Boycott soon found himself isolated — his workers stopped work in the fields, stables as well as the house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him and the local postman refused to deliver post. Fifty Orangemen from Cavan volunteered to harvest his crops and one thousand police and soldiers had to be brought in to protect them. In the end Boycott gave way and one evening disappeared from the country, never to return. Within weeks the word "Boycott" was everywhere and was used by The Times of London in November 1880 as a term of organised isolation.
