What was life like in Ireland prior to the Famine?

I have not had the time over the past few days to respond to this thread - but I am going to address a number of issues relating to my previous comments

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

My comment was not intended as derogatory, it is a comment on the issue I have with any slant/bias used to interpret data in an attempt to justify a political belief.

Your comments are utterly derogatory - you are accusing me of slanting my comments to fit a particular agenda - I am not. I am taking historical evidence, much of which is based on personal research, and am viewing that evidence from a particular perspective. The fact that I am viewing it from a particular perspective does not negate the validity of the interpretation.

You are also displaying bias (and an utterly dismissive attitude towards someone who has been an active historian for several decades) and often engaging in opinion that is not remotely backed up with evidence.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

If you want to propound your politics, there is a forum for that. To classify a tenant farmer with 9 acres living in a hovel as “an Irish Catholic Tenant Farmer” and an exploiter the masses is inaccurate. Ireland had huge economic problems, to try to simplify it to your view of a "downtrodden proletariat" is a nonsense.

My politics have no more to do with my historical interpretation than do yours.

It is interesting that you put a figure of '9 acres' on your interpretation of the 'tenant farmer' - particularly given my assertion that tenant farmers on 10 acres survived the family with relatively little difficulty. The reality is that Irish Catholic tenant farmers WERE 'exploiters of the masses' during this period - and there is copious amounts of evidence to back up this assertion.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I’ve also made a comprehensive study of several trials that took place as a result of the Coercion Act of 1847– one high profile Limerick case that comes to mind is the murder of a misfortunate named Kelly who took the 3 acres of an evictee (Ryan) to add to his own 9 to help provide the means of survival for a large family. Ryan Senior had been killed in a faction fight and despite having several adult sons they had not paid rent for years. (And, BTW, the evictor landlord in question was not “an Irish Catholic Tenant Farmer”.) I’ve also studied advowsons and the Tithe wars, and am familiar with the work of many on that topic (for e.g. Noreen Higgins-McHugh of UCC)

None of this negates anything that I have asserted

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I said a holder of less than ten acres had only marginally better circumstances than a labourer with one or two. Both lived in primitive conditions (look at the Census returns for ’41 I quoted earlier) , both were dependent on the potato, and the ten-acre owner also needed the potato for animal feed, so the failure of the staple diet affected both dramatically.

Again you are building paper castles - I never made any assertion about holders of less than 10 acres - I made assertions about the holders of MORE than 10 acres. However, it is utter nonsense to suggest that a farmer with 9 acres was only 'marginally' better of than the landless labourers - to start with he had significantly more land to feed himself and his family. Many 9 acre farmers survived the family with little difficulty - 600,000 labourers either died or emigrated while pratically all the other 600,000 suffered dramatically during the famine.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

To suggest that a ten-acre man is to be blamed for what happened to the labourer is not correct.

More paper castles - I never claimed that this was the case - what I asserted is that the Irish Catholic tenant farmer exploited the crisis for his own financial gain, at the expense of the landless labourer and the cottier.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

“Clearances” is hardly the correct word to apply to a small tenant farmer refusing to renew conacre for one or two landless labourers living at the end of his field. The farmer’s back was to the wall as he had to pay his rent and provide for his family. Sub-division and subdivision of subdivisions of smallholdings made the unit size totally uneconomic.

So the tenant farmer with his 'back to the wall' was justified in bumping up the price of conacre, bumping up the price of provisions and driving down the wage rates of the landless labourer? From your perspective you might see such antics as justified - not from mine.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I repeat what I said earlier – Ireland was a basket-case, over-populated and overdependant on the potato. (I’m quite prepared to go into an argument on the nutritional aspects of the potato, yield rates, etc. but see little point at this stage, as we both accept its role in the downfall.) Many of the smallholders surrendered their holdings under the ‘Gregory clause’ in the Relief Act of 1847. Many others surrendered to avail of assisted emigration – look at several of the big estates in Kerry, Sligo, Mayo, etc. and the thousands who were evicted or whose ‘leaving’ was financed by big absentee landlords To cite just one big landlord eviction, the Times of London protested vigorously against the treatment and eviction of 300 tenants from the estate of Mrs Gerrard at Ballinglass, Co. Galway, on 13 March 1846:-
‘How often are we to be told that the common law of England sanctions injustice and furnishes the weapons of oppression? How long shall the rights of property in Ireland continue to be the wrongs of poverty and the advancement of the rich be the destruction of the poor?’ [Times, 31 March 1846]

Etc.

Your assertion
simply does not meet normal proof criteria and your answer to Kildare John on Whiteboy offences ignores what happened at their inception – refresh your mind on the Ascendancy landlords and Fr. Sheehy.

Nothing that you have quoted takes anything away from my original assertion - namely that the social conflict during the famine was primarily a conflict between the Irish Catholic tenant farmer and the landless labourer and that the Irish Catholic tenant farmer exploited the crisis for their own financial gain at the expense of the landless labourer.

So let's take primary source evidence from the aforementioned Limerick (and this is just a smattering of stuff from my own notes that were at hand - I have little intention of dusting down all of them)

1845 began with a spate of clandestine attacks in Co. Limerick on tenant farmers by landless labourers. On 9 January a large number of tenant farmers met in Toomevara to demand action by the police to suppress the night-time attacks on farmers in East Limerick and North Tipperary (Limerick Chronicle, 11 Jan 1845). The Landlord and Tenant Commission put the blame for rising conacre rent firmly on the tenant farmers, claiming that the practice of landlords renting to middlemen was now non-existent with their role of renting conacre to landless labourers being taken up by tenant farmers (Limerick Chronicle, 22 Feb 1845). The clandestine attacks were followed by the agricultural labourers demanding wage rises to compensate for the rising conacre rent (Limerick Chronicle, 3 May 1845).

The most extensive attacks occurred in November 1845 when dozens of attacks were occurring on a nightly basis all over Co. Limerick in response to the fact that the tenant farmers were not passing on the rent cuts they had received from the landlords to the conacre rents for the labourers (Limerick Chronicle 12, 19, 26, and 29 November 1845). The scale of attacks to the Northside of Limerick City around Clonlara, Ardnacrusha and up to Killaloe prompt landowners and tenant farmers (note – landowners and tenant farmers together) to meeting in Doonass to plan a response to the night-time raids and to demand for the deployment of extra police (Limerick Chronicle, 13 December 1845). In the run-up to Christmas the attacks continue, grain stores of farmers were raided and the local clergy joined with the tenant farmers in condemning the labourers for the ‘whiteboy’ activities (Limerick Chronicle, 13, 17 and 20 December 1845).

One particular incident demonstrated that attitude of the tenant farmers. In early December a landlord in Sixmilebridge named Wilson, distributed some land on his estate to labourers who had been evicted by the tenant farmers on his estate. The tenant farmers threatened him with assault and riot unless he withdrew the offer and distributed any available land to the tenant farmers (Limerick Chronicle, 13 December 1845). After dumping the labourers off of the conacre they had rented to them the tenant farmers then acted as a unit in forcing the landlord to withdraw a small amount of land the he was willing to rent to these labourers to help them survive and compel him to give it to the tenant farmers.

This situation continued right throughout the famine –

On 15 August 1846 Caleb Powell, Castleconnell, reported that a poor woman with a large family had applied to him to intercede with a tenant farmer who had refused her access to the potato crop her husband had raised on his farm without payment of a large sum of money, far more than was affordable (National Archives, RLFC3/1/)

On 12 Nov 1846 Thomas Kearney, wrote to the OPW, giving an account of conditions in Coshlea barony. He stated that the inhabitants work well at piece work, but that there wages cannot keep in line with rising food prices, especially as food is becoming almost unobtainable as a result of the tenant farmers hoarding corn to drive the price up (National Archives, RLFC3/2/17/).

On 25 March 1847 Rev T Corkery RCC in Croagh and a member of the relief committee wrote to the Undersecetary claiming that “most farmers in the area are rackrenters” (National Archives, RLFC3/2/17/).

On 27 July 1847 Rev William Willis, secretary of the Kilmeedy and Castletown Relief Committee, wrote about ‘irregularities in the distribution of labour tickets (which were going to the tenant farmers rather than the starving landless labourers) and corruption amongst stewards (who were primarily larger tenant farmers) on public works. There were also constantly complaints about the tenant farmers getting 4/5 more in wages on the relief schemes than the labourers for using a horse (National Archives RLFC3/1/).

As I said - this is just a sample of the reports from Limerick alone. The social conflict was not confined to rural areas. Regular food rioting, raids on food stores, attacks flour convoys, on Irish Catholic (and Protestant) flour merchants and, notably, regular attacks on the Catholic merchant bakers who were driving up the price of bread.

The conflict during the famine was not a sectarian Catholic exploited / Protestant exploiter conflict – it was a class conflict based on exploited labourer / exploiting Irish Catholic tenant farmer / Catholic merchant.

When I have more time I will come back and address some of the other issues.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

No, I disagree only with your points when they are biased to the point of being incorrect.:) Under the early Land Acts the tenants obviously benefitted as they were the primary focus. Under the later Acts the labourers got a look-in.

Not the case - some of the later legislation, specifically the Labourers Act 1893, was focussed on assisting the labourers - however, the tenant farmers who had argued 'labour must wait' during the Land War flouted the new laws and drove labourers out of employment and off of conacre in order to avoid being responsible for providing land to build a labourers cottage. This was a source of major rural conclict in the 1890s and continued to be a source of tension between the classes right up to independence.