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The National Agricultural Labourers' Union in Ireland, 1873-9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2017

Pamela L. R. Horn
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Extract

It was in 1872 that English agricultural labourers formed their first nationally organised trade union, and with this development came immediate pressure to secure improved wages and reduced hours of employment, wherever possible. In such circumstances unionists were clearly anxious to create a general scarcity of labour, in order to strengthen their bargaining position, and they particularly frowned upon the itinerant Irish workers who came to swell the agricultural market during the hay and corn harvests. Although, from the farmers' point of view, extra labour was clearly needed at these busy seasons of the year, the farm workers themselves were keen to eliminate—or at least to regulate—this type of competition.

In practice the Irish harvest migration had probably already reached its peak by the end of the 1840s and had then fallen off fairly rapidly, in the face of the massive emigration movement of the early 1850s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 67 , March 1971 , pp. 340 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1971

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References

1 For information on the formation of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union see, for example, Groves, Reg, Sharpen the sickle! (London, 1949)Google Scholar; J. P. D. Dunbabin, ‘ The revolt of the field : the agricultural labourers ’ movement in the 1870s' in Past and Present, no. 26 (Nov. 1963), pp 68–97; and for a regional picture, P. L. R. Horn, ‘ Agricultural labourers ’ trade unionism in four midland counties, 1860–1900' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 1968).

2 This desire to eliminate Irish competition was apparent even before 1872. For example, following outbreaks of incendiarism in Leicestershire in 1870, threatening letters were found tied to the hedge near to the scene of the fires. One found in the village of Kibworth stated : ‘ If you don't raise wages this week, you won't have a chance next. If there is any Irish left here after this week they will have to have a fresh gaffer. This is the last week of low wages …’ (Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, 23 July 1870).

3 This point is made by Collins, E. J. T., ‘ Harvest technology and labour supply in Britain, 1790–1870 ’ in Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, xxii, no. 3 (Dec. 1969), p. 472 Google Scholar. See also Jones, E. L., ‘ The agricultural labour market in England, 1793–1872 ’ in Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, xvii, no. 2 (Dec. 1964), p. 333 Google Scholar. Information collected within Ireland itself in 1870 bears out this viewpoint. For example, in Sligo, County Leitrini, County Wicklow, County Kerry and County Cork, harvest migration was considered far less common than in earlier periods. On the other hand, labourers and very small farmers from parts of Galway were said to ‘ leave their own country in the month of May and [return] in the commencement of autumn, bringing with them sums averaging four pounds per man ’. See Report from poor law inspectors in Ireland as to the existing relation between landlord and tenant, p. 53 [C 31], H.C. 1870, xiv.

4 Kleinwächter, F., ‘ Zur Geschichte der cnglischen Arbeiterbewegung im Jahre 1872 ’ in Jahrbuch für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 1875, p. 385 Google Scholar. Also in Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, 4 May, 1872.

5 Cox's involvement in the matter was the subject of a question in the house of commons, the home secretary being asked whether the Derbyshire magistrate's actions were ‘ consistent with the duties of a justice of the peace ’. The home secretary was able to set these fears at rest. (Hansard 2, ccxv, 100, 25 Mar. 1873)

6 Smyth (1826–85) was born in Dublin, where his father was a prosperous tanner. While in America in the late 1840s he had become identified with the Irish national movement there. In 1854 he visited Tasmania and planned and carried out the escape of John Mitchcl from his Tasmanian prison. Smyth married in Tasmania in 1855. His later career, after the rise of Parnell, proved an unhappy one, and he died in straitened circumstances.

7 In a letter written to P. F. Johnson of Kanturk in the summer of 1873, Cox declared: ‘ From the first start of the home rule movement I have been with you …’. (Labourers' Union Chronicle, 19 July 1873)

8 As an example of Johnson's interest in home rule, see his speecli to the Kanturk Farmers' Club on 30 August 1873, quoted in Cork Weekly Herald, 6 Sept. 1873.

9 For information on wage rates in England at this time, see Minchinton, W. E. (ed.), Essays in agrarian history (Newton Abbot, 1968), ii, 188-91Google Scholar.

10 Reports from poor law inspectors on the wages of agricultural labourers in Ireland, p. 9 [C 35], II.C. 1870, xiv.

11 Ibid., p. 31.

12 Ibid., p. 31.

13 Census of Ireland, part I, ii: province of Munstcr, p. 161 [C 873. ii], H.C. 1873, lxxii, pt 1.

14 Cork Weekly Herald, 10 May 1873.

15 Loughborough Advertiser, 8 May 1873.

16 Census of Ireland, 1871, pp 287, 293, 312, 632, 634.

17 Thomas Cronin may have been the Thomas Cronin of Pound Lane, Listowel, earthenware dealer, listed in Slater's Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland (Manchester, 1881).

18 W. Vesey Fitzgerald to Butt, 26 Aug. 1873 (N.L.I., MS 10, 415 (4)). Fitzgerald was a landowner.

19 To Isaac Butt was given the credit for this move. The Daily News declared : ‘ from the first [he had] “annexed” Mr Arch … as a subordinate in the business of home rule agitation ’ (20 Aug. 1873).

20 Economist, 23 Aug. 1873.

21 Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, 16 Aug. 1873.

22 Arch, Joseph, The story of his life told by himself (London, 189B), p. 174 Google Scholar.

23 For example, when Arch unsuccessfully contested the Wilton constituency in 1880, he called in his election address for ‘ a temperate, liberal and wise continuation of measures for improving the condition of the Irish peasantry ’. In 1885, when he successfully contested the northwest Norfolk division as a liberal candidate, Ireland was not, however, mentioned in his address. It was only after Gladstone's conversion to home rule for Ireland that Arch became truly enthusiastic for the Irish cause. For details of Arch's concern with Irish affairs in the 1880s see my Joseph Arch (Kineton, 1971).

24 Royal commission on labour: the agricultural labourer, iv, Ireland, p. 34, [C 6894], H.C. 1893–4, xxxvii.

25 I am indebted to Mr J. P. D. Dunbabin for drawing my attention to this point. By early August 1873 Gardner was certainly holding meeting in Northumberland; see, for example, Labourers' Union Chronicle, 16 Aug. 1873, when he also reported that he was working from the ‘ Miners' Office ’ in Newcastle-on-Tyne.

26 Irishman, 11 Oct. 1873.

27 Slater's Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland, 1881.

28 Labourers’ Union Chronicle, 22 May 1875.

29 Ibid.

30 Royal commission on labour: the agricultural labourer, iv, Ireland, report by W. P. O'Brien (assistant commissioner) upon the poor law union of Kanturk, p. 34 [C 6894], H.C. 1893–4, xxxvii (hereafter cited as Kanturk report 1893).

31 Kanturk report 1893, pp 35–6.

32 Kanturk report 1893, p. 34.

33 Cork Weekly Herald, 20 Sept. 1879.

34 For evidence of his interest in this direction see Cork Weekly Herald, 7 Aug. 1880 and Cork Examiner, 25 Aug. 1880. At a Land League meeting held at Tullylease near Co. Limerick and attended by Michael Davitt himself, Johnson proposed : ‘ that we look upon as an enemy to the cause of the country any person bidding for, or taking possession of, a farm from which a tenant has been evicted for nonpayment of an unjust and oppressive rent ’ (Cork Weekly Herald, 21 Feb. 1880).

35 Cork Weekly Herald, 27 Dec. 1879; English Labourers’ Chronicle, 6 and 13 Jan. 1883.

36 There is some evidence that elsewhere a few independent agricultural unions survived a little longer. Thus a ‘ Labour League ’ in the Wexford area apparently only died out in the early 1880s, while in the Mountmellick district of Queen's and King's Counties traces of union organisation ‘ in the southern extremities of the district ’ persisted into the early 1890s. However, neither of these attempts seems to have been very effective. Royal commission on labour: the agricultural labourer, iv, Ireland, reports by W. P. O'Brien (assistant commissioner) upon the poor law union of Wexford and upon the poor law union of Mountmellick, pp 76 and 116 [C 6894], H.C. 1893–4, xxxvii. For information on the Kanturk strike, see Kanturk report 1893, p. 34.

37 Royal commission on labour: the agricultural labourer, iv, Ireland, summary report by R. McCrca (assistant commissioner) on certain selected districts in the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Londonderry, Longford, Loutli, Meath, Monaghan, Sligo, Tyrone and Westmeath, p. 12 [C 6894], H.C. 1893–4, xxxvii.

38 Ibid., p. 12.

39 This view is supported by a report which had earlier appeared in Economist, 16 July 1881 : ‘ The majority [of Irish labourers] with their wives and families, earn all the year round little more than a shilling a day, with two poor meals, usually of porridge, for the head of the family, while in Cork, Limerick, and Galway the amount earned, taking one week with another, sinks to two-thirds of this amount; … Out of this sum they … [have] to pay 18s. a year for a single-roomed cottage… . The numbers seeking employment … [have] not seriously diminished, for the class is too poor to emigrate, … while of higher wages we see little or no prospect…’.

40 Kanturk report 1893, p. 36.