Irish National Land League

What did traditional music sound like in your family when you were growing up?

Well, when I was growing up in the early 60s, my father was one of the only musicians in the parish that would play out in the public because there was a reason for that going back to the time of the Land League where the local priest, although he was very good with supporting people's rights, he hated the music and he'd go around and he'd break up instruments.

So the only people that played...

Traditional music in Giddor at the time was Kahalo Curran's grandfather, Joe Jack, and my father, Francie Mooney.

But he didn't attend the meeting in Irishtown, although when he heard about the large turnout and the peaceful ideas, he became interested in the movement.

In October of 1879, another meeting held by Michael Davitt took place at the Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, County Mayo, to form what would become known as the Land League.

Davitt had previously asked Parnell to lead the new movement, which he agreed to.

And although he was not present that day, Parnell was elected president of the Land League.

Once he took up this role, he was able to successfully negotiate with the previous reluctant religious clergy to come on board, which at the time was a massive turning point for the movement, as the church had a far stronger hold over Irish society than the British.

And once they joined and took up leadership positions, it became extremely difficult for the British government to resist the movement.

By now a stubborn man in his late 60s, he only traveled with armed protection when it was absolutely necessary and often traveled through the Galway countryside in his horse-drawn carriage with just his wife and driver.

Blake had insisted that he would never show fear to anyone that wished to do him harm, an attitude that in time would ultimately cost him his life.

But this bloke was a very particularly famous instance of it during the struggle for land reform in Ireland in the 19th century.

And there was this fellow, his name was Charles Stuart Parnell, who was the president of the Irish National Land League.

And he got up and gave this famous speech about how, you know, through things like nonviolent resistance and political protests and that sort of thing, When landlords or when the government was acting in a way that people weren't happy with, right, instead of riots and burning stuff down or whatever, he said, what you've got to do is we've got to shun people, right? You make it clear we're not going to have anything to do with them.

We're not going to deal with them.

The landlord-tenant dynamic was permanently altered.

Widespread evictions and the failure of landlords to maintain rents led to increased support for tenant rights movements like the Land League.

These movements eventually secured the right to purchase their farms, redefining property relations in rural Ireland.

In New York City's Five Points, immigrants opened soup kitchens named Hunger Relief, recalling their ancestors' sufferings.

Tenants saw themselves as part of a community fighting an unjust system.

When the Land League sprang up under Charles Stuart Parnell in 1879, it built on that solidarity and added political weight.

Tenants had men in Parliament who could speak their concerns.

Parnell's style was fascinating.

Like at the end of the day, this is the people we have came from and the resilience of that people is, to forge a living after that, but also forge a life after that.

And in relation to the workhouse in Swinford, one of our most iconic people that went through the workhouse in Swinford was a guy called Michael Davitt, who later on developed the Land League and it was him who basically and Daly from the Connacht Telegraph that basically set up the Irish Town Meeting for the farmers and tenant farmers in Ireland so they could actually get the land back and they did that and like within 25 years the tenant farmers had access to their land and they were able to move forward and have stability within that.

You know, prior to that, they could be working the land and they could be basically thrown off their land if they couldn't pay the rent or whatever.

So there was no security.

Yeah.

Very, very much famous for being the founding place for the Irish Land League.

But as I always say, it's not just the Irish Land League that was founded there actually.

Castlebar Tennis Club was founded there too, which is very important to the people of Castlebar.

Really? Yes.

It also placed him inside a wider transatlantic political world.

Irish America had already played a major role in Fenianism and it had supported the Land League.

Money, newspapers, organizers, and political ideas moved constantly across the Atlantic.

Castle, lines, and Boston were separate worlds, but not separate.

A page of paper, unintelligibly perforated for some purpose unknown, was in itself a suspicious thing.

And what did suspicion suggest to the enquiring mind in South Western Ireland, before the suppression of the Land League? Unquestionably, police.

On the way back to his employer, the banker's clerk paid a visit to an old friend, a journalist by profession, and a man of varied learning and experience as well.

invited to inspect the remarkable morsel of paper, and to discover the object with which the perforations had been made, the authority consulted proved to be worthy of the trust reposed in him.