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As dawn broke over Dublin on 1 January 1900, it was a truism to say that ‘the sun never set on the British Empire’. The far-flung domain covered all five continents and its position in being the world’s great superpower seemed unassailable.
Yes, she was fighting a costly war in South Africa (1899-1902) and dissensions were emerging in India, but the movements in the great economic and political tectonic plates occupied by the US and Germany were yet to become manifest.
In Ireland, Home Rule was still a desire but the fracturing of Irish parliamentary politics in the aftermath of the Parnell Split (1890), and the failure of Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill in 1893, meant that there was little concerted effort behind it. The founding of the United Irish League Party by William O’Brien in 1898 under the banner of “Land for the People” ensured that land remained central to Irish life and politics as the new century dawned.
Aristocratic family
In November 1900, George Wyndham was appointed chief secretary for Ireland. Wyndham was a scion of one of Britain’s most important aristocratic families and was regarded as a rising star of the Conservative Party. He had, however, strong Irish connections, his maternal grandmother was the daughter of the 1798 revolutionary, Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Wyndhham was a protégée of Arthur Balfour and had served as his private secretary when he was chief secretary in Ireland (1887-1891), so he was well acquainted with the country.
The 37-year-old Wyndham was ambitious and saw Ireland as the perfect platform on which to grow his already burgeoning political career. Unfortunately for him, as with so many of his predecessors, Ireland would prove a political graveyard but, as the fella, says ‘sin scéal eile’.
Like his mentor Balfour, Wyndham saw land reform as central to resolving the “Irish question” and placating demands for Home Rule. His first attempt at land reform in 1902 failed miserably, and his bill was withdrawn from parliament.
Undaunted, a year later in March 1903 he introduced the most far-reaching and ambitious land bill ever put before parliament. Its scale was monumental. Its estimated cost of £100m (about £10bn in today’s terms) dwarfed all other legislative measures up until the bank rescue legislation in 2008. It was an ambitious and complex piece of legislation.
In a period when there was no real market for land due to the unwillingness of banks to lend, Wyndham had a circle to square. His challenge was to find a price whereby landlords would sell and where tenants would buy and where the British taxpayer would not have to foot the bill.
Clever financial engineering
This he managed through clever financial engineering, overpaying landlords and introducing low-cost inter-generational, 69-year mortgages, the repayments of which (annuities) were less than what purchasers had been paying in rents. The result was that by the time the Wyndham Act of 1903 and its subsequent amending act, the Birrell Act (1909), had run their course at the outbreak of the first world war in 1914, 9.2m acres of land involving 256,735 individual holdings had changed hands at a cost of just over £82m.
The Great War and the subsequent War of Independence and Civil War put all legislative land reform measures very much on the back burner. The consequence of which was when the Free State came into being in 1922, there were still 114,000 unpurchased tenants in the system. Incredibly, within days of the ending of the Civil War in May 1923, the Irish Land Bill was introduced into Dáil Éireann on 28 May 1923 by the Minister for Agriculture, Patrick Hogan. When enacted in August 1923, this provided £30m of credit for land purchase, underwritten by the British exchequer. It was designed to complete the transfer of land ownership from landlords to tenants started in 1870 and thus bring a resolution to the centuries-old Irish land question.
While the land purchase element of the 1923 legislation was of course significant, the signals that it sent out were even more so. The new government was eager to send a signal to the rest of the world and particularly to those in the new state of Northern Ireland, that the Free State was one where the rule of law would prevail, and that the rights attaching to property would be recognised and protected. It was also an attempt to thwart attempts by anti-treaty factions to undermine the Government through an active and aggressive campaign of agrarian agitation. In all respects the Land Act 1923 succeeded.
As this series of three articles have hopefully shown, land has been a central theme in Irish history down the centuries. It has been manipulated and exploited to further the political aims of various protagonist.
The solutions adopted, had more to do with political expedience than any strategic intent. The resultant small farm structure has and continues to shape Irish society, politics, and economy to the present day.
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