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P. F. Johnson, nationalism, and Irish rural labourers, 1869–82

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Fintan Lane
Fintan Lane*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, Trinity College Dublin
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Extract

In the late nineteenth century Irish rural labourers had few consistent advocates willing to pursue their social and economic claims at a national level. Those that did exist, such as P.F. Johnson of Kanturk, have generally managed to elude the scrutiny of historians. A number of studies on the Irish land question have referred to Johnson, but he has remained a shadowy figure despite his role as the leading labourers’ advocate between 1869 and 1882. Rural agitation during this period is most often associated with tenant farmers and their perturbations with regard to the prevailing land-tenure system and its administration. The rural working class, especially before 1885, had limited political influence, and neither the British government nor the Irish Parliamentary Party treated its claims with the seriousness that they accorded to the perceived needs of tenant farmers. Nonetheless, many commentators remarked on the wretched condition of the rural labouring population in Ireland, and it was undoubtedly the greatest demographic and socio-economic casualty of the Famine. Wages, working conditions, unemployment and underemployment, housing and access to land were all issues that agitated labourers in the late nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 130 , November 2002 , pp. 191 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2002

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References

1 I use the term ‘rural labourer’ in preference to ‘agricultural labourer’ or ‘farm worker’ as a recognition of the fact that, while they derived their principal income from agricultural work, many rural labourers were versatile and worked temporarily as stonebreakers, railway navvies, building workers, fishermen, and so on.

2 Horn, Pamela, ‘The National Agricultural Labourers’ Union in Ireland, 1873-9’ in I.H.S., xvii, no. 67 (Mar. 1971), pp 340-52Google Scholar; Boyle, J. W., ‘A marginal figure: the Irish rural labourer’ in Clark, Samuel and Donnelly, J. S. (eds), Irish peasants: iolence and political unrest, 1780-1914 (Dublin, 1983), pp 323-5Google Scholar; Donnelly, J. S., The land and people of nineteenth-century Cork: the rural economy and the land question (London, 1975), pp 237-8Google Scholar; Moody, T. W., Da itt and Irish re olution, 1846-82 (Oxford, 1981), pp 341, 443Google Scholar; Lane, Pádraig, ‘The organisation of rural labourers, 1870-90’ in Cork Hist. Soc. Jn., c (1995), p. 155.Google Scholar

3 Hoppen, K. T., Elections, politics, and society in Ireland, 1832-85 (Oxford, 1984), pp 29, 31Google Scholar; Lane, Pádraig, ‘Agricultural labourers and the land question’ in King, Carla (ed.), Famine, land and culture in Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp 101-15.Google Scholar

4 Lane, Pádraig, ‘Perceptions of agricultural labourers after the Great Famine’ in Saothar, xix (1994), pp 14–22Google Scholar; Donnelly, Land & people of nineteenth-century Cork, pp 134-5, 228-30; Fitzpatrick, David, Irish emigration, 1801-1921 (Dundalk, 1984), pp 8–9Google Scholar; idem, ‘The disappearance of the Irish agricultural labourer, 1841-1912’ in Ir. Econ. & Soc. Hist., vii (1980), pp 66-92.

5 Fitzpatrick, ‘Disappearance of the Irish agricultural labourer’.

6 Ibid., p. 88. Nonetheless, it should be borne in mind that landless relatives of farmers constituted an increasing proportion of the labouring population and this was undoubtedly of significance in terms of socio-political attitudes.

7 Patrick Joseph Neilan (1852-95) was the son of a policeman; a journalist; initiator and joint-secretary of the Irish Democratic Labour Federation (1889); chairman at the founding conference of the Irish Labour League (1891); and a leading figure in the Irish Land and Labour Association (formed in 1894).

8 Daniel Desmond Sheehan (1873-1948) was the son of an evicted farmer turned shopkeeper/publican; active in the Irish Democratic Labour Federation; a journalist; leader of the Irish Land and Labour Association; and M.P. for Mid-Cork, 1901-18.

9 Cork Examiner (henceforth C.E.), 12 July 1869, 9 Apr. 1870; 1901 and 1911 household schedules for 8 Egmont Row, Kanturk, County Cork (N.A.I., census collection).

10 C.E., 26 Oct. 1869; The Irishman, 9 Aug. 1873.

11 C.E., 20 Mar. 1874.

12 Marriage certificate of Philip Johnson and Teresa Rourke, 14 Sept. 1857 (N.L.I., Roman Catholic parish register, St Mary’s church, Kilkenny city). For the years of birth of Johnson’s children see marriage certificate of Mary Frances Johnson and Redmond Joyce Connolly, Kanturk, County Cork, 12 Feb. 1879 (General Register Office of Ireland (G.R.O.I.)); baptism of Flora Kate Johnson, 6 Aug. 1861 (N.L.I., Roman Catholic parish register, Kanturk, County Cork).

13 Cancelled valuation books for County Cork, town of Kanturk, Row, Egmont, 1855-70 (Valuation Office, Dublin)Google Scholar; C.E., 28 Feb. 1914.

14 The Irishman, 16 Apr. 1870.

15 C.E., 24 Sept., 22 Oct., 17 Nov. 1868.

16 Ibid., 7 Sept. l869.

17 Ibid., 16 Mar. 1869. By November he had come under the eye of the police (N.A.I., Fenian files, 5058R).

18 C.E., 9, ll, 14 Apr. l870.

19 Ibid., 22 Sept. 1869, 18 Apr., 15 Mar. 1870.

20 Ibid., 21 Sept. 1869. His reference to growing to manhood ‘in the midst of revolution’ probably relates to his years in India.

21 Donnelly, Land & people of nineteenth-century Cork, p. 237.

22 C.E., 15 Aug. l873.

23 Quoted in Lane, Fintan, The origins of modern Irish socialism, 1881-96 (Cork, 1997), p. 230.Google Scholar

24 The Irishman, 17 July 1869.

25 C.E., 7, 21 Sept. 1869; The Irishman, 11 Sept. 1869.

26 The Irishman, 13 Nov. 1869; Flag of Ireland, 13 Nov. 1869.

27 The Irishman, 26 Feb., 2, 16, 23 Apr., 30 July 1870; O’Brien, William, Recollections (Dublin, 1905), p. 137.Google Scholar

28 C.E., l Feb., 8, 9 Apr. l870.

29 Comerford, R. V., The Fenians in context: Irish politics and society, 1848-82 (Dublin, 1985), p. 190Google Scholar. Regarding Fenian support for Knox, it was admitted during the course of the petition proceedings that he had the backing of amnesty-men and, significantly, that a letter from Father Patrick Lavelle was in circulation recommending him (C.E., 9 Apr. 1870). Knox, who was proprietor of the Irish Times, had a longstanding and largely positive relationship with Lavelle: see Moran, Gerard, A radical priest in Mayo: Fr Patrick La elle: the rise and fall of an Irish nationalist, 1825-86 (Dublin, 1994), pp 85, 121-2.Google Scholar

30 The Irishman, 26 Oct., 2 Nov. 1872.

31 Ibid., 2 Nov. 1872. Two months after this comment he restated his belief that Tipperary ‘in her selection of Rossa and Kickham laid the foundation of Home Rule’ (ibid., 25 Jan. 1873).

32 C.E., 22 Sept. 1869. O’Riordan’s age is taken from his death certificate, which also gives his occupation as ‘teacher’. However, his son’s death certificate from 1869 indicates that he was in fact working as a surveyor at that time; this would have brought him into regular contact with the labouring population. (See death certificate of Florence O’Riordan, 10 Aug. 1893, Kanturk, County Cork (G.R.O.I.); death certificate of William Riordan, 25 Dec. 1869, Kanturk, County Cork (ibid.).)

33 C.E., 28 Sept. 1869.

34 Daly, Seán, Cork, a city in crisis: a history of labour conflict and social misery, 1870-72 (Cork, 1978), pp. 115-18, 136Google Scholar; C.E., 30 June 1870.

35 C.E., 28 Sept. 1869.

36 Ibid., 26 0ct.l869.

37 The Irishman, 16 Oct. 1869.

38 ‘The state of the country as to Fenianism’, 2 Dec. 1869 (N.A.I., Fenian files, 5129R). Overall, this report concluded that while the situation was ‘worse’ than it had been since 1867 (in County Limerick the Fenians were ‘ready to rise’), the lack of organisation and recognised leaders made a renewed separatist rebellion highly unlikely.

39 Police report, New Pallas, County Limerick, 24 Oct. 1869 (N.A.I., Fenian files, 4869R).

40 Report of Her Majesty’s commissioners of inquiry into the working of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, ii: Digest of e idence, minutes of e idence, p. 840 [C 2779-1] H.C. 1881, xix, 90 (henceforth Bessborough Comm. e idence).

41 Report from the select committee on taxation of Ireland; together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes of e idence, and appendix, p. 193, H.C. 1864 (513), 227.

42 The Irishman, 22 Jan. 1870.

43 C.E., 12 Jan. l870.

44 Ibid., 31 Mar. 1870.

45 Address of Supreme Council, I.R.B., 20 Jan. 1870 (N.A.I., Fenian files, 6450R).

46 C.E., 15 Mar. 1870.

47 The ‘Gregory clause’ was an amendment to the 1870 land bill put forward by W. H. Gregory, M.P. for County Galway (1857-72). This amendment required an acre of land for each resident labourer, but in the event it was rejected on 30 May 1870 and only 20 of 105 Irish M.P.s voted in its favour. This should not be confused with the notorious ‘Gregory clause’ in the Irish poor law, which blocked occupiers of holdings in excess of a quarter-acre from receiving relief.

48 C.E., 7 June l870.

49 The Irishman, 22, 29 Jan. 1870.

50 C.E., 20 June, 2, 4 July 1870; Daly, Cork, a city in crisis, pp 127-9; The Irishman, 8 Jan. 1870.

51 The Irishman, 22 July 1871.

52 Ibid., 11 Nov. 1871. In fact Johnson went as far as to say that a man, Robert Kelly, suspected of killing a policeman, whether or not he was actually guilty of the offence, had been ‘sent by God to drive the spy from the land’.

53 C.E., 26 Oct. 1869.

54 Ibid, 5 July 1870.

55 Horn, Pamela, Labouring life in the Victorian countryside (Dublin, 1976), pp 128-31Google Scholar. See also Arch, Joseph, The story of his life told by himself (London, 1898).Google Scholar

56 Horn, ‘The National Agricultural Labourers’ Union in Ireland’, pp 340-42.

57 Ibid, p. 344.

58 O’Leary was active in the London branch of the Amnesty Association, as well as being a member of the Home Government Association, and he also shared Johnson’s devout Catholicism. On his background see O’Leary, Peter, Tra els and experiences in Canada, the Red Ri er territory and the United States (London, 1877), pp v–vi.Google Scholar

59 C.E., 16 Aug.l873.

60 The Irishman, 23 Aug. 1873. Thomas Nunan (1816-88) was one of Johnson’s closest friends, chairman of the Kanturk Amnesty Association, and later president of the local Land League. He was an important and influential nationalist organiser in north-west Cork, and died in Paris.

61 C.E., 15, 16 Aug. l873.

62 The Irishman, 26 July 1873.

63 Quoted in O’Sullivan, Patrick, ‘Out of the darkness: Kanturk in the second half of the nineteenth-century’ in Seanchas Dúthalla, xii (2000), p. 53Google Scholar. Mr O’Sullivan, a local historian, has dated this ballad by J. C. Deady to 1871-4 (private communication).

64 W. Vesey Fitzgerald to Isaac Butt, 26 Aug. 1873 (N.L.I., Butt papers, MS 10415(4)).

65 The Irishman, 6 Sept. 1873.

66 Ibid., 20 Sept. 1873; Limerick Reporter and Tipperary Vindicator, 16 Sept. 1873.

67 The Irishman, 20 Mar., 29 Aug. 1874.

68 C.E., 16 Aug.l873.

69 Ibid., 11 Oct. 1873; Leinster Express, 11 Oct. 1873.

70 Leinster Express, 18 Oct. 1873.

71 The Irishman, 18 Oct. 1873; The Nation, 18 Oct. 1873.

72 The Times, 16 Aug. 1873; Daily News, 20 Aug. 1873.

73 Horn, ‘The National Agricultural Labourers’ Union in Ireland’, pp 346-8.

74 The Irishman, 25 Oct. 1873.

75 Ibid, 20 Dec. 1873, 13 June 1874.

76 Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland (Manchester, 1881), Munster section, p. 141; Francis Guy’s Directory of Munster, 1886 (Cork, 1886), p. 523.

77 Moody, Da itt & Irish re olution, p. 341; C.E., 18 Dec. 1880.

78 ‘Return of Land League meetings in each county from April 1879 to 31 December 1880’ (N.A.I., C.S.O., R.P. 1881/1251).

79 C.E., 16 Feb., 14 Apr. 1880, 29 Mar. 1881.

80 Troposed arrest of Johnson’, 3 May 1881 (N.A.I., C.S.O., R.P. 1881/14094); ‘Proposal to arrest Johnson and Nunan’, 18 June 1881 (ibid., 1881/19738).

81 C.E., 27 Sept. 1880; The Irishman, 2 Oct. 1880.

82 C.E., ll Oct. l880.

83 The Irishman, 16 Oct. 1880.

84 C.E., 11 Oct. 1880.

85 Ibid., 18 0ct., 8Nov. 1880.

86 Bessborough Comm. e idence, p. 826 [C 2779 - I] H.C. 1881, xix, 76.

87 Ibid., p. 841(91).

88 C.E., 20 Oct. 1880.

89 Ibid., 18, 23 Dec. 1880.

90 Munster News, 7 May 1881.

91 Ibid, 21 May 1881; Freeman’s Journal, 20 May 1881.

92 For biographical information on Hishon and Upton see Lane, Fintan, ‘The Parnellite connection: Daniel John Hishon and the Joyces’ in James Joyce Quart., xxxvii, no. 1 (1999), pp 225-8Google Scholar; idem, ‘William Upton’ in Saothar, xxvi (2001), pp 89-90.

93 Freeman’s Journal, 9, 11, 15 July 1881.

94 Ibid., 20 July 1881.

95 Donnelly, Land & people of nineteenth-century Cork, pp 238-9.

96 Freeman’s Journal, 16, 17, 19 Sept. 1881.

97 Kennedy, Liam, ‘The economie thought of the nation’s lost leader: Charles Stewart Parnell’ in George Boyce, D. and O’Day, Alan (eds), Parnell in perspecti e (London, 1991), p. 190.Google Scholar

98 United Ireland, 26 Aug. 1882.

99 Freeman’s Journal, 7 Oct. 1881.

100 Munster News, 26 Aug. 1882.

101 National Press, 27 Mar. 1891.

102 C.E., 17 June 1913.

103 Cancelled valuation books for County Cork, town of Kanturk, Egmont Row, 1890-1930 (Valuation Office, Dublin); C.E., 28 Feb. 1914, 4 Nov. 1926; death certificate for Philip Francis Johnson, Clifden, County Galway, 3 Nov. 1926 (G.R.O.I.).