The LEFT and Irish Farming

Dickie10

often wondered why the socialist party and other leftist groups never championed the cause of the rural poor and small farmers in ireland. the socialist party were the only political party absent from the ploughing championships, what message did that send out?

these people waiting for the revolution would do well to remember that most of the revolutions and reforms of ireland had their roots in rural ireland and the small farming community, im thinking of the 1798 rebellion, the land league and agrarian reforms of the wyndham act 1909 and earlier acts that moved land ownership from huge 100,000 acre estates to the birth of family farms. surely these movements must have seemed like a leftist revolution to the landlords of the day! just a thought.....

The various reforms you mention created a countryside populated by land owners (aka capitalists) - they suddenly had something to lose if another revolution came.

They were far more likely to rebel when they had nothing to lose.

Edit: I'm not sure what more someone like the AAA could offer on top of various subsidies, grants and tax reliefs already available - and I don't see how various wealth taxes and the ending of subsidies to business policies could be squared off with the above.

Dickie10

yes thats true alright you had a big cohort of labouring poor, i wonder how many of the middle class catholic landowners supported nationalism? brings to thinking of a section of irish population in the south who were catholic unionists, it was common enough in cities such as dublin and cork and the south east

visatorro

if the left got in we'd be in some ****e. I guarantee we would be landed with a land charge to pay for new houses for the like of the little bastards that were stoning emergency services the other night. talk about an absolute shower of bastards, have heard nothing good from anyone of them. they go on like they are robin hood.

patsy_mccabe

Hell No, We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay Cause You Must Pay !!!!!

pedigree 6

I'm a small farmer.
I want 160 acres, 20 cows, a plough, a mule and build me a house.
Where do I sign and I can get the pike out of the attic as well.:pac:

Nekarsulm

Along with SF, they are unable (or unwilling) to differentiate between income and the asset value required to earn the income.
So you get the usual "let's tax the rich" rallying call, aimed firmly at their traditional voter areas.
Going by their standards, a Labour voter worker in an factory should be taxed not only on earned income, but also pay a rate based on the market value of the actual factory building, land and machinery used to earn that said income.
Don't see that idea getting much support at the ballot box, somehow.

mahoney_j

visatorro wrote: »

if the left got in we'd be in some ****e. I guarantee we would be landed with a land charge to pay for new houses for the like of the little bastards that were stoning emergency services the other night. talk about an absolute shower of bastards, have heard nothing good from anyone of them. they go on like they are robin hood.

+100000

epfff

visatorro wrote: »

if the left got in we'd be in some ****e. I guarantee we would be landed with a land charge to pay for new houses for the like of the little bastards that were stoning emergency services the other night. talk about an absolute shower of bastards, have heard nothing good from anyone of them. they go on like they are robin hood.

+1000000

pedigree 6

If there's two things that shouldn't be discussed on F&F boards it's religion and politics.
You'd never know there was an election coming up. Ha.:D:D:D:cool:

boggerman1

Couldn't u imagine Ruth coppinger as minister for agriculture.first up nationalizing farms no doubt,like her idea for dell

farmerjj

pedigree 6 wrote: »

If there's two things that shouldn't be discussed on F&F boards it's religion and politics.
You'd never know there was an election coming up. Ha.:D:D:D:cool:

How true, politics should be banned from f and f, save three months of nonsense.

frazzledhome

farmerjj wrote: »

How true, politics should be banned from f and f, save three months of nonsense.

Actually very true

Dickie10

ha i thorughly agree the looney left! was just something i thought of a few times, although id say Labour are more centre than left now, i used to be a ff voter but i voted fg last time because i knew ff were not getting in. im happy with fg in relation to agri and young farmers i have to say. i went into the labour tent at the ploughing and got talking to lorraine higgins i asked her about ruari quinns idea of taking farm assets into account for third level grants. she told me there wasnt a hope of this ever happening and that most of the Labour politicains were delighted to see the back of ruari quinn. she said that they are trying to move away from a predominantly urban party and back to rural affairs. dunno how much id believe her but i couldnt belive when she said that ruari quinn was a crackpot! her words....

mf240

Socialism is fine untill you run out of other peoples money.


Humans are the only species on the planet where the less inteligent and sucessfull, are helped rear their offspring by the more sucessfull members.

mahoney_j

mf240 wrote: »

Socialism is fine untill you run out of other peoples money.


Humans are the only species on the planet where the less inteligent and sucessfull, are helped rear their offspring by the more sucessfull members.

Lol u should post that in the Irish water mega thread !!!!!!

boggerman1

Dickie10 wrote: »

ha i thorughly agree the looney left! was just something i thought of a few times, although id say Labour are more centre than left now, i used to be a ff voter but i voted fg last time because i knew ff were not getting in. im happy with fg in relation to agri and young farmers i have to say. i went into the labour tent at the ploughing and got talking to lorraine higgins i asked her about ruari quinns idea of taking farm assets into account for third level grants. she told me there wasnt a hope of this ever happening and that most of the Labour politicains were delighted to see the back of ruari quinn. she said that they are trying to move away from a predominantly urban party and back to rural affairs. dunno how much id believe her but i couldnt belive when she said that ruari quinn was a crackpot! her words....

You could see how disappointed he was and his advisor john Walsh was too when Quinn got dropped from cabinet.walsh wrote about it numerous times in the papers since.

kowtow

I thought that now Fine Gael allowed a reasonable amount of cocaine or marijuana for personal use, there was no longer a reason for voting for the left?

bogman_bass

During my student days I asked a member of the socialist workers party about their agricultural policy. He started going on about "peasant farmers" I, of course just wound him up more. I had a right giggle that day

Buford T. Justice XIX

Dickie10 wrote: »

ha i thorughly agree the looney left! was just something i thought of a few times, although id say Labour are more centre than left now, i used to be a ff voter but i voted fg last time because i knew ff were not getting in. im happy with fg in relation to agri and young farmers i have to say. i went into the labour tent at the ploughing and got talking to lorraine higgins i asked her about ruari quinns idea of taking farm assets into account for third level grants. she told me there wasnt a hope of this ever happening and that most of the Labour politicains were delighted to see the back of ruari quinn. she said that they are trying to move away from a predominantly urban party and back to rural affairs. dunno how much id believe her but i couldnt belive when she said that ruari quinn was a crackpot! her words....

There was always a big vote for Labour in rural constituencies and a lot of labour TDs from farming backgrounds, Willie Penrose and Michael D being just 2 that spring to mind. There was little separation in the principles that bound both rural and urban TDs.

The changing point, imo, was the take over of Labour by Democratic Left while much of traditional labour principles were abandoned and DL supporters like Quinn were favoured for his kite flying of issues like asset assessment for uni grants to please his smoked salmon fellow travellers.

I'm looking forward to the canvassing when Labour come around. I will be having one or two choice words with them.

ganmo

I wonder what would happen if this thread was moved to the politics cafe forum

Kovu

ganmo wrote: »

I wonder what would happen if this thread was moved to the politics cafe forum

It would get a round of applause from me as it would be out of my jurisdiction

CloughCasey1

mahoney_j wrote: »

Lol u should post that in the Irish water mega thread !!!!!!

Hahaha. signs up outside council estates saying "we have already paid for our water from our taxes".....that should really say "we have already paid for our water from other people's taxes"!!

CloughCasey1

Anyway talk is cheap before you win the majority and have to lead the dail. Once in they soon realise that they can change feck all and won't have the cahonays to make the changes and damage their reputations! Sure wouldn't the last two govermments probably have burnt the bond holders and devalued the punt to try and ride the crest of the wave if there was no Euro and if Europe didn't have them by the nut sack! They won't be long going from the left to smack bang in the centre where all governments seem to end up.

Dickie10

i dont know whether im fianna fail or fine gael they both seem to be fairly same to me , personally i wouldnt like anyone else leading a government

west79

Dickie10 wrote: »

i dont know whether im fianna fail or fine gael they both seem to be fairly same to me , personally i wouldnt like anyone else leading a government

When Fianna Fáil is mentioned in an agriculture thread don't forget Mary Coughlan

ganmo

west79 wrote: »

When Fianna Fáil is mentioned in an agriculture thread don't forget Mary Coughlan

"I asked if she knew the difference between liquid milk and creamery milk," said Michael Dunican. "She asked me if I thought she didn't know. I said back to her that if she knew it then she could explain it. Then she replied, 'Would you ever **** off'."

http://politico.ie/archive/not-just-mary

a real gem she was

frazzledhome

ganmo wrote: »

http://politico.ie/archive/not-just-mary

a real gem she was

Sweary Mary

White Clover

frazzledhome wrote: »

Sweary Mary

Completely out of her depth. Very incompetent

barnaman

Fianna Fail and others were in there day almost communist when it came to farming and farmers look at the Land Commission.It gave land and a land commission cottage to 10,000s of farm labourers. It destroyed alot of good farms and lots of Ireland in particular the West are almost unfarmable now through the fragmented, scattered and unviable farms that it created out of good farms. And it was not all big estates either that were targeted by the Land Commission any farm of a couple hundred acres was fair game to the Land commission back in the day and back in the day was up to the 1960s although last grants were in the 1980s. Farming in Ireland today is strongly the result of Socialism.

patsy_mccabe

Yes, but look at the way things are in the UK now. It's basically a continuation of the old system , with huge farms owned by absentee landlords who never farmed in their lives. Huge amount of land farmed by tenant agreements. At least in Ireland we own our own land. I don't think too many will complain about that here.
Apart from fragmentation, I wouldn't say that the land is farmed inefficiently. I do think we do rely too heavily on milk and beef, but a that's down to land type and climate, I guess.

lcwill

Small land owning farmers were amongst the first against the wall under Stalin. They stood in the way of collectivisation. Anyone who had so much as sold a pig in the previous year was on a train to the Gulags as a class enemy before they knew what was happening.

barnaman

Yeah but Patsy look at farming at the moment all the "farmers" are being told lease your land under a written lease its dead handy money no income tax etc. The farming/ag land ownership etc is reverting to what it was except with a load of smaller landlords rather than one big one. Whats really farcical is that some of the lads leasing land to farmers got it off the Land Comission in the first place. I think the land is often farmed inefficiently the current system means you are better off not farming just drawing down payments. One lad love to give his nickname but would be too well known has €100,000 of a BFP and not even own a tractor. Any industry that requires serious EU support through BFP and grants has a major efficiency issue.

Dickie10

i think the land commission was very short sighted in creating farms under 120-150 acres , anything smaller really doent give you a good income for a family without off farm employment. now that being said i mean 120-150 acre farms ran efficeintly and intensivley, it can be hard to do these things while working off farm. if part time farmers were to calculate there labour hours even at 13-15 euro an hour they would be unviable

Username John

Dickie10 wrote: »

i think the land commission was very short sighted in creating farms under 120-150 acres , anything smaller really doent give you a good income for a family without off farm employment. now that being said i mean 120-150 acre farms ran efficeintly and intensivley, it can be hard to do these things while working off farm. if part time farmers were to calculate there labour hours even at 13-15 euro an hour they would be unviable

But how long ago were the land commission around?
It's easy to say they were short sighted, it's 150 acres today, what size will be needed in 20 years time? 400acres?

barnaman

Land Commission still existing until the 1990s and made land grants until the 1980s. What it did was give people who were not farmers but labourers farms and cottages of c22acres. Then different "small farmers" were given fields etc all sorts of different criteria applied as to who got a grant of land. Whining paid off big time here is a real life example elderly farmer of 150 acres in 1950s son goes to America local small farmers start petioning local TDs etc for farm to be broken up and given to them as land not being used etc. Son had to return from america to just about save farm being taken and divided. Thats also why conacre exists if lease was longer then 11 months. People would petition the Land Comission TDs etc to say farm not being farmed and should be bought by Land Comission for redistribution. Payment for land was not even in cash but useless non tradable bonds that had a 1 to 2 percent intest rate. Totally useless. Thats the point about the left that the OP was making Ireland was totally shaped by radical Socialism for a long time. All full time farmers in my area are farming around 400acres (owned and rented). Nearest neighbour farming a 1000acres and thats the way is gone in farming like any other industry scale wins out.

patsy_mccabe

I was talking to a relative recently. Asked him how was the son getting on in Australia. Fine, he's working on a 16,000 acre tillage farm. :rolleyes:
No forgetting the vicegrips there.

einn32

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

I was talking to a relative recently. Asked him how was the son getting on in Australia. Fine, he's working on a 16,000 acre tillage farm. :rolleyes:
No forgetting the vicegrips there.

Yeah but you need a lot of land in oz to make a living. Of course it depends on where you are too. I'm in western Australia and tis not an easy place to farm.

selectamatic

There are too many variables to consider deciding which "side" to take when talking about the work of the land commission. Sure there were some questionable practices especially relating to land being in "use" but the main reasoning behind the formation of the land commission was noble and it was indeed needed. The notion that farmers who benefited from the land commission were whingers does a great disservice to their struggles. These were lower class "peasant" farmers who had nothing due to the occupation of their native lands, It's easy to say that these large estates shouldn't have been broke up but lets be honest the vast majority of them weren't bought in the first place they were forcibly taken. I know this is going back hundreds of years but these facts cannot be ignored when considering the actions undertaken by governments and national organisations of the last 100 years. The vast majority of the land commissions work was carried out pre 1960 so the perspective of acreage was way different to what it is now, most farms were still using horses or manual labor.
As said to question the methods of some of the actions taken by the land commission is understandable and indeed justified in some cases but to question the need for it's existence is madness. Sure the people who benefited the most from it could be perceived to be merely laborers and not farmers, but when you look back at the history of Ireland prior to the land commission it's clearly evident why these laborers didn't have farms of their own even though many of their ancestors were farming the lands of Ireland long before the "landlords".

patsy_mccabe

You're spot on Selectamatic. Over half our farm was the result of a land commission divide. People should go and look at Griffiths Valuation of circa 1850. All the large landlords and tenants are listed there. The local landlord in our area had an estate of over 11,000 acres. He don't get that through hard work.
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/cromwell_settlement.htm

mayota

Great post selectamatic, barnaman making very good points too. The land commission were eyeing up land here too but with the option of a move to Meath in exchange.

Stinicker

Our family farm came from the land commission and we had been tenants on it since the early 1800's from the original Protestant Landlords, unsurprisingly then that our family fought and died for the IRA against the British almost 100 years ago, the main thing was always about getting control of the land and of our own destiny.

I think that foreign ownership of land in Ireland should be banned as should fragmentation to prevent smaller farms being created. I personally think a new Land Commision should be established to give the state first refusal in all private property sales and regulate the price of farm land.

Farming should not be treated as a corporate business it should be for farmers the stewards of the land who live and work it. Corporate Business Farming is no different to the landlords where the profits are milked and the slaves work for nothing.

Larry Goodman, Fianna Fail, the factories and the IFA have always been the biggest threats to Irish farmers, we have seen the dairy sector almost destroyed by the removal of quotas; when it should have been tightly regulated. Also there should a state owned Agricultural Bank strictly for farming and ran as a non-profit to help farmers, especially disadvantaged farmers on marginal quality land.

Farm subsidy incomes should also be capped and if a person has a big farm and he can produce then good luck to him but he should then be getting little to no subsidys, subsidys should exist to protect the small working farmer and for to bring life into rural Ireland.

This is where the left should fit into Irish farming, to help farmers not work against them.

Cattlepen

the land commission activity in meath,kildare and Dublin was deliberately done with the intention of improving the Fianna Fail vote in these areas.It certainly wasn't for the good of the people. Farms were taken off people who were not the rich and landed, That had earned them themselves through hard graft, not by birthright. This should not be overlooked as just a few" questionable practices". There was favouritism in the dishing out of the best land also

pedigree 6

As I said before politics and religion should not be discussed on f&f boards.
Save yourselves while you still can. I'm not trying to do the mods job but this ain't going to end pretty. People have died for less. The past is the past and the future is what we have to look to.

Edit: I still think there's posters doing this because an election is coming up.

barnaman

As sure Politics and religion are what makes Irish History!

My own family here centuries and involved everything from 98, Land League, (which cost us alot of land as LL refused to rent to us tried to btibe us with extra land to stop activites) to the Tan War etc. My family bought out farm under the Land Acts while British were still here. My own gf was sentenced to death for IRA activiies but was commuted, took Republican side never recognised the State till day he died never took an old age pension let alone his IRA one. You could apply for LC grant based on IRA service which he held in high distain as a cheapened the cause to a cheap struggle for personal gain and b lots lads applying did nothing. Was complete favouritism in LC grants and can guarentee in our area lots of it was based pull and complaining, and stirring. THe Irish Water its my "Human Right" crowd did not appear from nowhere.

Personally I hate subisidies as its more of the same mentality noone should be subsidied to do anything. Agri bank would be great idea and hopefull will be an EU version of it soon.

mayota

pedigree 6 wrote: »

As I said before politics and religion should not be discussed on f&f boards.
Save yourselves while you still can. I'm not trying to do the mods job but this ain't going to end pretty. People have died for less. The past is the past and the future is what we have to look to.

Edit: I still think there's posters doing this because an election is coming up.

I lol' at your edit pedigree 6.

Dickie10

for a second their i thought "gf" stood for girlfriend!! my bad, !:P

BG2.0

What's yours is now everyone's, coming to a country near you!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/countryside/11988874/Landowners-could-be-stripped-of-well-managed-property.html

ganmo

theres been a phrase rattling around my head for the last week

"What's yours is everyone's but What's mine is my own"

freedominacup

ganmo wrote: »

theres been a phrase rattling around my head for the last week

"What's yours is everyone's but What's mine is my own"

Too much of this thread seems based on the premise I own land therefore I'm entitled to earn a living from it.

ganmo

freedominacup wrote: »

Too much of this thread seems based on the premise I own land therefore I'm entitled to earn a living from it.

I don't think you're entitled to a living but you should be allowed to choose how you utilise it.