Constructive
XIII Unionist Policy in Relation to Rural Development in Ireland
By the Right Hon. Gerald Balfour
“For the last two and twenty years, at first a few and now a goodly company of rural reformers with whom I have been associated, and on whose behalf I write, have been steadily working out a complete scheme of rural development, their formula being better farming, better business, better living.”—SIR H. PLUNKETT, letter to the Times, December, 1911.
“Ireland would prefer rags and poverty rather than surrender her national spirit.”—MR. JOHN REDMOND, speech at Buffalo, September 27, 1910.
It should never be forgotten that the maintenance of the legislative Union between Ireland and Great Britain is defended by Unionists no less in the interests of Ireland than in that of the United Kingdom and of the Empire. That the ills from which Ireland has admittedly suffered in the past, and for which she still suffers, though in diminished measure, in the present, are economic and social rather than political, is a fundamental tenet of Unionism. Unionists also believe that economic and social conditions in Ireland can be more effectively dealt with under the existing political constitution than under any form of Home Rule. Ireland is a poor country, and needs the financial resources which only the Imperial Parliament can provide. She is, moreover, a country divided into hostile camps marked by strong racial and religious differences. As Sir George Trevelyan long ago pointed out, there is not one Ireland, there are two Irelands; and only so far as Ireland continues an integral part of a larger whole can the antagonism between the two elements be prevented from forming a dangerous obstacle to all real progress.
Nationalist politicians, of course, diagnose the situation very differently. Apply suitable remedial measures, say the Unionists, to the social and economic conditions of the country, and it is not unreasonable to hope that political discontent—or, in other words, the demand for Home Rule—will gradually die away of itself. Give us Home Rule, say the Nationalists, and all other things will be added to us.
The main object of the present paper is to give a bird’s eye view of Unionist policy in relation to rural development in Ireland during the eventful years 1885-1905. It does not pretend to deal with the larger issue raised between Unionism and Nationalism; but incidentally, it will be found to throw some interesting side lights upon it.
The Irish Question in its most essential aspect is a Farmers’ Question. The difficulties which it presents have their deepest roots in an unsatisfactory system of land tenure, excessive sub-division of holdings, and antiquated methods of agricultural economy.
Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to deal with the system of land tenure in the two important Acts of 1870 and 1881; but the system of dual ownership which those Acts set up introduced, perhaps, as many evils as they removed. It became more and more evident that the only effectual remedy lay in the complete transference of the ownership of the land from the landlord to the occupying tenant. The successful application of this remedy with anything like fairness to both sides absolutely demanded the use of State credit on a large scale. The plan actually adopted in a succession of Land Acts passed by Unionist Governments, beginning with the Ashbourne Act of 1885, and ending with the Wyndham Act of 1903, is broadly speaking as follows:—The State purchases the interest of the landlord outright and vests the ownership in the occupying tenant subject to a fixed payment for a definite term of years. These annual payments are not in the nature of rent: they represent a low rate of interest on the purchase money, plus such contribution to a sinking fund as will repay the principal in the term of years for which the annual payments are to run. The practical effect of this arrangement is that the occupier becomes the owner of his holding, subject to a terminable annual payment to the State of a sum less in amount than the rent he has had to pay heretofore.
The successful working of the scheme obviously depends on the credit of the State, in other words, its power of borrowing at a low rate of interest. In this respect the Imperial Government has an immense advantage over any possible Home Rule Government: indeed, it is doubtful whether any Home Rule Government could have attempted this great reform without wholesale confiscation of the landlords’ property. Here then in Land Purchase and the abolition of dual ownership, we have one of the twin pillars on which, on its constructive side, the Irish policy of the Unionist party rests. But to solve the problem of rural Ireland—which, as I have said, is the Irish problem—more is required than the conversion of the occupying tenant into a peasant proprietor. The sense of ownership may be counted on to do much; but it will not make it possible for a family to live in decent comfort on an insufficient holding; neither will it enable the small farmer to compete with those foreign rivals who have at their command improved methods of production, improved methods of marketing their produce, facilities for obtaining capital adequate to their needs, and all the many advantages which superior education and organised co-operation bring in their train.
Looking back to-day, the wide field that in these directions was open to the beneficent action of the State, and to the equally beneficent action of voluntary associations, seems evident and obvious. It was by no means so evident or obvious twenty years ago. At that time the traditional policy of laisser faire had still a powerful hold over men’s minds, and to abandon it even in the case of rural Ireland was a veritable new departure in statesmanship. The idea of establishing a voluntary association to promote agricultural co-operation was even more remote; and, as will be seen in the sequel, it was to the insight and devoted persistence of a single individual that its successful realisation has been ultimately due.
So far as State action was concerned, a beginning was naturally made with the poorest parts of the country. Mr. Arthur Balfour led the way with two important measures. One of these was the construction of light railways in the most backward tracts on the western seaboard. These railways were constructed at the public expense, but worked by existing railway companies, and linked up with existing railway systems. The benefits conferred on those parts of the country through which they passed have been great and lasting.
Mr. Balfour’s second contribution to Irish rural development was the creation of the Congested Districts Board in 1891. The “congested districts” embraced the most poverty-stricken areas in the western counties, and the business of the Board was to devise and apply, within those districts, schemes for the amelioration of the social and economic condition of the population comprised in them. For this purpose, the Board was invested with very wide powers of a paternal character, and an annual income of upwards of £40,000 was placed at their free disposal, a sum which has been largely increased by subsequent Acts.
The experiment was an absolutely novel one, but no one who is able to compare the improved condition of the congested districts to-day with the state of things that prevailed twenty years ago can doubt that it has been amply justified by results.
Every phase of the life of the Irish peasant along the whole of the western seaboard has been made brighter and more hopeful by the beneficent operations of the Board. Its activities have been manifold, including the purchase and improvement of estates prior to re-sale to the tenants; the re-arrangement and enlargement of holdings; the improvement of stock; the provision of pure seeds and high-class manures; practical demonstration of various kinds, all educational in character; drainage; the construction of roads; improvement in the sanitary conditions of the people’s dwellings; assistance to provide proper accommodation for the livestock of the farm, which too frequently were housed with the people themselves; the development of sea fisheries; the encouragement of many kinds of home industries for women and girls; the quarrying of granite; the making of kelp; the promotion of co-operative credit; and many other schemes which had practical regard to the needs of the people, and have contributed in a variety of ways to raise the standard of comfort of the inhabitants of these impoverished areas.
It will be noticed that among the other activities of the Congested Districts Board, I have specially mentioned the work of promoting co-operative credit by means of village banks managed on the Raffeisen system. The actual work of organising these co-operative banking associations has not been carried out directly by the Board, but through the agency of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (generally known by the shorter title of the I.A.O.S.), to which the Board has for many years past paid a small subsidy—a subsidy which might well have been on a more generous scale, having regard to the immense advantages which co-operation is capable of conferring on the small farmer.
The I.A.O.S. is a voluntary association of a strictly non-political character. “Business, not politics,” has been its principle of action; and partly, perhaps, for this very reason it may claim to have contributed more than any other single agency towards the prosperity of rural Ireland. To its work I now turn.
The I.A.O.S.
The movement which the I.A.O.S. represents was started by Sir Horace Plunkett, and he has remained the most prominent figure in it ever since. Sir Horace Plunkett bears an honoured name wherever the rural problem is seriously studied; but, like other prophets, he has received perhaps less honour in his own country than elsewhere. At all events, in the task to which he has devoted his life, he has had to encounter the tacit, and indeed at times the open opposition, of powerful sections of Nationalist opinion. Happily he belongs to the stamp of men whom no obstacles can discourage, and who find in the work itself their sufficient reward.
Sir Horace Plunkett’s leading idea was a simple one, and has become to-day almost a commonplace. He compared the backward state of agriculture in Ireland with the great advance that had been made in various continental countries, where the natural conditions were not dissimilar to those of Ireland, and asked himself the secret of the difference. That secret he found in the word organisation, and he set himself to organise. The establishment of co-operative creameries seemed to afford the most hopeful opening, and it was to this that Sir Horace Plunkett and a few personal friends, in the year 1889, directed their earliest missionary efforts. The difficulties to be overcome were at first very great. “My own diary,” writes Sir Horace, “records attendance at fifty meetings before a single society had resulted therefrom. It was weary work for a long time. These gatherings were miserable affairs compared with those which greeted our political speakers.”
The experiences70 of another of the little band of devoted workers, Mr. R.A. Anderson, now Secretary of the I.A.O.S., throw an interesting light upon the nature of some of the obstacles which the new movement had to encounter.
“It was hard and thankless work. There was the apathy of the people, and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians. It would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the Conservative Cork Constitution, or that of the Nationalist Eagle of Skibbereen, was the louder. We were ‘killing the calves,’ we were ‘forcing the young women to emigrate,’ we were ‘destroying the industry.’ Mr. Plunkett was described as a ‘monster in human shape,’ and was adjured to ‘cease his hellish work.’ I was described as his ‘man Friday,’ and as ‘Roughrider Anderson.’ Once when I thought I had planted a creamery within the town of Rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor, who, having elicited the fact that our movement recognised neither political nor religious differences—that the Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her Nationalist-Catholic sister—gravely informed me that our programme would not suit Rathkeale. ‘Rathkeale,’ said he pompously, ‘is a Nationalist town—Nationalist to the backbone—and every pound of butter made in this creamery must be made on Nationalist principles, or it shan’t be made at all.’ This sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated.”
Eventually, however, the zeal of the preachers, coupled with the economic soundness of the doctrine, prevailed over all difficulties. By 1894 the movement had outgrown the individual activities of the founders, and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was established in Dublin in order to promote and direct its further progress. That progress has been rapid and continuous, and to-day the co-operative societies connected with the I.A.O.S. number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2-1/2 millions. They extend over the length and breadth of the land, and include creameries, agricultural societies (whose main business is the purchase of seeds and manure for distribution to the members), credit societies (village banks), poultry keepers’ societies (for the marketing of eggs), flax societies, industries societies, as well as other societies of a miscellaneous character.
In 1892 the Liberal Party came into power. During their three years’ tenure of office a Home Rule Bill was introduced and passed through the House of Commons, but little or nothing was attempted by the Government for the economic regeneration of the country.
The Unionist Party came back with a large majority in 1896, and the attention of the new Irish Government, in which the post of Lord Lieutenant was held by Lord Cadogan and that of Chief Secretary by the present writer, was from the first directed to the condition of the Irish farmer. The session of 1896 was largely devoted to the passing of a Bill for amending the Land Acts, and for further facilitating the conversion of occupying tenants into owners of their holdings. Time, however, was also found for a new Light Railways Act, under the provision of which railway communication has been opened up at the expense of the State in the poorest parts of North-West Ireland.
It was in the following year that the first attempt was made to establish an Irish Department of Agriculture. The Bill was not carried beyond a first reading, because it was ultimately decided that a Local Government Act should have precedence of it. But the project was only put aside for a time, and it was always looked upon by me as an integral part of our legislative programme. In framing the Bill of 1897, and also the later Bill of 1899, which passed into law, we received the greatest assistance from the labours of a body known as the Recess Committee, concerning which a few words must now be said.
The Recess Committee
To be the founder of agricultural co-operation in Ireland was Sir Horace Plunkett’s first great achievement; the bringing together of the Recess Committee was his second. He conceived the idea of inviting a number of the most prominent men in Ireland, irrespective of religious or political differences, to join in an inquiry into the means by which the Government could best promote the development of the agricultural and industrial resources of Ireland. This idea he propounded in an open letter published in August, 1895. The proposal was a bold one—how bold no one unacquainted with Ireland will easily realise. Amongst Nationalist politicians the majority fought shy of it. Mr. Justin McCarthy, the leader of the party, could only see in Sir Horace’s letter “the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out, the Irish people would cease to desire Home Rule.” “I do not feel,” he added, “that I could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a substitute for that which I believe to be Ireland’s greatest need—Home Rule.” Fortunately, then as now, the Irish party was divided into two camps, and Mr. Redmond, at the head of a small minority of “Independents,” was at liberty to take a different line. “I am unwilling,” he wrote, “to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation in Ireland.”
Ultimately, Sir Horace Plunkett’s strong personality, his manifest singleness of purpose, and the intrinsic merits of his proposal carried the day. A committee, truly representative of all that was best in Irish life, was brought together, and commissioners were despatched to the Continent to report upon those systems of State aid linked with voluntary organisation which appeared to have revolutionised agriculture in countries not otherwise more favoured than Ireland itself. A large mass of most valuable information was collected. In less than a year the committee reported. The substance of the recommendation was
“That a Department of Government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to Parliament at its head. The Central Body was to be assisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned. The Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland upon principles which were fully described.”71
With the general policy of these recommendations the Irish Government were in hearty sympathy, and the Bill of 1897, already referred to, was a first attempt to give effect to it. But in the absence of popularly elected local authorities an important part of the machinery for carrying out the proposals was wanting.
Irish Local Government Act
A reform of local government in Ireland had long been given a place in the Unionist programme, but the magnitude of the undertaking and the pressure of other business had hitherto stood in its way. It was now decided to take up this task in earnest, on the understanding that other measures relating to Ireland should be postponed in the meantime. The Irish Local Government Bill was accordingly introduced and passed in the following session (1898).
Of this Act, which involved not merely the creation of new popular Authorities, but also an entire re-arrangement of local taxation, and some important changes in the system of poor relief, I will only say here that it must be counted as another of the great remedial measures which Ireland owes to the Unionist Party, and which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to carry out in a satisfactory manner without assistance on a generous scale from the ample resources of the Imperial Exchequer.
Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction
The way was now open for the measure to which I had looked forward from the first moment of my going to Ireland, and which was to constitute the final abandonment of the old laissez faire policy in connection with Irish agriculture and industries. Great care and labour were devoted to the framing of the new Bill, and I was in constant touch throughout with members of the Recess Committee. It contained clauses dealing with urban as well as rural industries, but these lie outside my present subject, and I shall not refer to them further here. On the side of rural development the Bill embodied a novel experiment in the art of government—novel at all events in British or Irish experience, though something like it had already been tried with conspicuous success in various countries on the Continent. It was the continental example which had inspired the Report of the Recess Committee, and it was the recommendations of the Recess Committee which in their turn suggested the main features of the Bill of 1899.
There was indeed one body in Ireland whose functions corresponded in some degree with those of the Authority it was now proposed to set up. This body was the Congested Districts Board; and it might be said with some approximation to the truth that the object we had in view was to do for the rest of Ireland, mutatis mutandis, what the Congested Districts Board was intended to do for the poverty-stricken districts of the West. But there was this very important difference. The operations of the Congested Districts Board were carried out, and necessarily carried out, on strictly “paternal” lines; the dominant note in the new departure was to be the encouragement of self-help. This difference carried with it an equally important difference in the constitution and methods of the administering Authority.
Out of a total endowment of £166,000 a year, a sum of over £100,000 was placed at the disposal of the Department to be applied to the “purposes of agriculture and other rural industries.” These “purposes” are defined in the Act as including—
“the aiding, improving, and developing of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, dairying, the breeding of horses, cattle, and other live stock and poultry, home and cottage industries, the preparation and cultivation of flax, inland fisheries, and any industries immediately connected with and subservient to any of the said matters, and any instruction relating thereto, and the facilitating of the carriage and distribution of produce.”
This part of the Endowment Fund was, in short, a grant to the Department to be applied to what may be described as rural development in the widest sense of the term. As to the methods, little or no restriction was imposed upon the scope of its powers; and in the expenditure of the money it was to be as free from Treasury control as the Congested Districts Board itself.
On the other hand, the Congested Districts Board was not only free from Treasury control, it was free from any control whatever. It was an unpaid Board, and it could spend its money where it pleased and how it pleased, and there was nobody to say it nay. True, its members were appointed by Government, and the Chief Secretary was ex-officio a member of the Board; but he had no greater authority given to him than any of his colleagues, and in case of any difference of opinion the decision was that of the majority of the Board. No single member of the Board could be held responsible for any of its acts; and accordingly, although the vote for the Board came annually before Parliament, of real Parliamentary responsibility there was none.
Such an arrangement was not without its disadvantages even as regards the Congested Districts Board itself: its adoption in the case of the Authority to be created under the Agriculture and Industries Bill would have been open to yet greater objection.
A further point was this. The Congested Districts Board was an unpaid body. An unpaid body consisting of busy men cannot be in perpetual session. The Congested Districts Board, as a matter of fact, met only once a month; and in the intervals of its meeting there was no one with full authority to act on its behalf.
The problem, then, in connection with the expenditure of the Endowment Fund was to provide for its administration by an efficient and promptly-acting executive, responsible to Parliament on the one hand, and on the other hand brought by the very nature of its administrative machinery into the closest possible touch with the new local Authorities, as well as with the voluntary organisations which were now springing up all over the country.
In order to satisfy these requirements, the Bill provided that the control of the Endowment Fund should be vested not in a Board attached to the new Department, but in the Department itself; that is to say, in a Minister appointed by the Government of the day. The Chief Secretary was to be the titular head of the Department, but it was not intended that he should intervene in its ordinary administrative business. The real working head was to be the Vice-President, a new Minister with direct responsibility to Parliament. So far as related to certain powers and duties transferred from existing departments of the Irish Government, and similar to the powers and duties of the English Board of Agriculture, the new Minister was to have complete executive authority. But as regards the administration of the Endowment Fund, a different arrangement was proposed—an arrangement without precedent, so far as I know, in any previous legislation in this country.
In order to bring the Department into close touch with local bodies, the Bill attached to it a “Council of Agriculture” and an “Agricultural Board.” One-third of the members of each of these bodies were to be nominated by the Department, and the intention was that in making these nominations due regard should be had to the representation of voluntary organisations. The remaining two-thirds were to be elected in the case of the “Council of Agriculture” by the newly created County Councils, in the case of the “Agricultural Board” by the “Council of Agriculture,” divided for this purpose into four “Provincial Committees.” In addition to the functions of an electoral college thus entrusted to its four provincial committees, the business of the “Council of Agriculture” as a whole was to meet together, at least once a year, for the discussion of questions of general interest in connection with the provisions of the Act; but its powers were only advisory. The “Board,” on the other hand, was more than an advisory body; for it was given a veto on any expenditure of money out of the Agricultural Endowment Fund. The application of the Endowment Fund was thus made dependent on the concurrence of the “Agricultural Board” and of the minister in charge of the Department—an entirely novel plan which, although it might clearly result in a deadlock as regards any particular application of money from the fund, has nevertheless, I believe, worked extremely well, and answered the purpose for which it was devised of reconciling ministerial and executive responsibility with a reasonable power of control given to local bodies.
Finally, with a view to stimulating local effort and the spirit of self-help, a provision was inserted in the Bill to which I attached the greatest importance. Power was given to the Council of any county or of any urban district, or to two or more public bodies jointly, to appoint committees composed partly of members of the local bodies and partly of co-opted persons, for the purpose of carrying out such of the Department’s schemes as were of local rather than of general interest. But in such cases, it was laid down that
“the Department shall not, in the absence of any special considerations, apply or approve of the application of money... to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of money provided by local authorities, or from other local sources.”
To meet this requirement, the local authorities were given the power of raising a limited rate for the purposes of the Act.
That the Act of 1899 has in the main answered the expectations formed of it by those who were responsible for its introduction there can, I think, be no doubt. The Act itself, as well as the methods of administration adopted in carrying out its provisions, have been the subject of a full inquiry by a Departmental Committee which reported in 1907. Their report must be regarded as on the whole eminently favourable. In one point only has any important change been recommended. The Committee suggest that the post of Vice-President of the Department should not be held by a Minister with a seat in Parliament, nor yet by a regular civil servant, but should be an office sui generis tenable for five years with power of reappointment. No effect has so far been given to this proposal by legislation.
The Unionist Attitude
In this brief sketch of the measures passed by Unionist Governments since 1886 with the object of promoting the material prosperity of Ireland, many points of interest have been necessarily omitted; but what has been said will suffice to show how baseless is the assertion, so frequently urged as an argument for Home Rule, that the Imperial Parliament is incapable of legislating successfully for Irish wants.72 Nothing could be more futile than to represent Irish problems, and especially the problems of Irish rural life, as so unique that only a Parliament sitting in Dublin can hope to solve them satisfactorily. As a matter of fact, the rural question in Ireland is, in most of its essential features, very similar to the rural question in other countries, of which Denmark is perhaps the best example; and the methods which have been successful there are already proving successful here. Single ownership of the land by the cultivator; State aid, encouraging and supplemementing co-operation and self-help; co-operation and self-help providing suitable opportunities for the fruitful application of State aid—these are the principles by which Unionist legislation for Ireland has been guided, and they are the principles which any wise legislation must follow, whether it emanate from an Irish or from the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, if there is anything “unique” in the Irish case, it is the deep division of sentiment inherited from the unhappy history of the country and reinforced by those differences of race and creed to which I have already alluded as making two Irelands out of one. But the remedy for this is not to cut Ireland adrift and leave the two sections to fight it out alone, but rather to maintain the existing constitution as the best guarantee that the balance will be held even between them.
Sir Horace Plunkett has well summed up the real needs of rural Ireland in the formula “better farming, better business, better living.” He has himself done more than any other single man to bring the desired improvement about. I am not ashamed to acknowledge myself his disciple, and in the measures for which I was responsible during my time in Ireland, I ever kept the practical objects for which he has striven steadily in view. In a speech which I made shortly after taking office I used the phrase “killing Home Rule with kindness.” This phrase has been repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the part of the incoming Irish Government that to “kill Home Rule” was the Alpha and the Omega of their policy. What I really said was that we intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill Home Rule with kindness, so much the better; but that the policy stood on its own merits, irrespective of any ulterior consequences.
In my view that is the only true attitude for a Unionist Government to take up. But in our efforts to improve material conditions and to remove grievances, how small is the encouragement or help that we have received from leaders of the Nationalist Party! “Their aim,” said Goldwin Smith long ago, “has always been to create a Nationalist feeling, which would end in political separation, not the redress of particular wrongs and grievances, or the introduction of practical improvements.” I should imagine that there has seldom, if ever, been an important political party which has exhibited so little constructive ability as the Irish Parliamentarians. Their own legislative proposals during the last thirty years have been a negligible quantity; and I think I am justified in saying that there is not one of the great measures passed by Unionist Governments since 1886 which has not been either opposed by the accredited leaders of the Party, or, at best, received with carping and futile, rather than helpful, criticism. I must personally acknowledge—and I do so gladly—that I received useful assistance and valuable criticism from the Messrs. Healy in conducting the Local Government Bill through the House of Commons; and credit must also be given to Mr. John Redmond for the part he took in aiding to bring together the Recess Committee. But the Messrs. Healy have always acted independently; and Mr. John Redmond was, at the time referred to, leader of only a small minority of the Irish Nationalists. The feeling of the majority, and certainly of the leaders of the majority, was reflected, as we have seen, in the refusal of Mr. Justin McCarthy to have anything to do with the movement.
Mr. Dillon in particular has shown a disposition to regard minor political grievances, and even poverty and discontent, as so much fuel wherewith to stoke the lagging engine of Home Rule. Remedial measures short of Home Rule seem to take in his eyes the character of attempts to deprive the Irish Party of so many valuable assets. Nor is this spirit of tacit or open hostility confined to acts of the legislature. Of all the social and economic movements in Ireland during recent years, the spread of agricultural co-operation has been without doubt among the greatest and the most beneficial. It has never found a friend in Mr. Dillon. In the movement itself and in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, founded expressly to promote it, he can only see a cunning device of the enemy to undermine Nationalism. In this matter Mr. Dillon’s attitude is also the official attitude of the Irish Party. Thus Mr. Redmond (now reconciled with Mr. Dillon and become leader of the main body of Nationalists), in a letter to Mr. Patrick Ford, dated October 4, 1904, does not scruple to say of Sir Horace Plunkett’s truly patriotic work:—
“I myself, indeed, at one time entertained some belief in the good intentions of Sir Horace Plunkett and his friends, but recent events have entirely undeceived me; and Sir Horace Plunkett’s recent book, full as it is of undisguised contempt for the Irish race, makes it plain to me that the real object of the movement in question is to undermine the National Party and divert the minds of our people from Home Rule, which is the only thing that can ever lead to a real revival of Irish industries.”
Those who have read Sir H. Plunkett’s “Ireland in the New Century” will hardly know which most to wonder at in these words, the extraordinary misdescription of the whole spirit of his book, or the total failure to realise the absolute necessity to Irish farming of a movement which not only has its counterpart all over the Continent of Europe, but has since inspired similar action in the United States, in India, and quite recently in Great Britain as well.
Nationalist Hostility
Nationalist hostility to the I.A.O.S. has not been confined to words. When the Agriculture and Technical Instruction Bill was passing through the House of Commons, Mr. Dillon endeavoured to secure an undertaking from me that public moneys should not be employed to subsidise the work of the Society. I naturally refused to give any such undertaking.73 I had followed the efforts of the Society very closely; I was deeply impressed with the value of the results which it had accomplished; but its field of activity was limited by the narrowness of its resources. In my opinion, a subsidy to the Society from the Endowment Fund of the Department would be a useful and proper application of public money. At the same time I pointed out that if the Agricultural Board, which in the main represented the popularly-elected local authorities, thought differently, they had a power of veto and could use it in this case.
Sir Horace Plunkett held the position of Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction from 1899 to 1907, and during his tenure of office, as I had always expected and intended, there was close co-operation between the Department and the I.A.O.S. During that period a sum amounting in all to less than £30,000 was paid by the Department to the I.A.O.S., of which more than half was for technical instruction, while the balance represented contributions to the work of co-operative organisation.74
When Sir H. Plunkett was replaced by Mr. T. W. Russell, the pressure of the Irish Parliamentary Party immediately began to make itself felt. The new vice-president informed the Council of Agriculture that he had made up his mind to withdraw the subsidy, but he undertook to continue a diminishing grant for three years, £3000 for the first year, £2000 for the second, and £1000 for the third. The I.A.O.S. were not seriously opposed to the gradual withdrawal of the subsidy, the loss of which they hoped to be able to cover in course of time by increased voluntary subscriptions.
The opposition of the Nationalist Party was, however, not yet exhausted. In the Freeman’s Journal of January 21, 1908, there appeared a letter from Mr. John Redmond enclosing a copy of a letter from Mr. T. W. Rolleston to a correspondent at St. Louis. Mr. Rolleston accompanied his letter with a copy of a speech by Sir Horace Plunkett. In his letter he remarked plainly upon the antagonism displayed by the Irish Nationalists to the co-operative movement. Although Sir Horace Plunkett declared that he had nothing whatever to do with the letter, the Irish Parliamentarians professed to find in it abundant proof of an intention to destroy Nationalism. “That correspondence,” said Mr. T. W. Russell,”75 compelled me to take action. Mr. John Redmond made it imperative upon me by his letter—I mean a public letter to the Press—and as so much was involved, I took the precaution of convening a special meeting of the Agricultural Board.” The Board decided that the subsidy should be withdrawn at the end of the year 1908.
The last act in this drama of hostility to Sir Horace Plunkett and all his works is still in the course of being played. Under the provisions of the Development Fund Act of 1909, the Development Commissioners were empowered to make advances for the organisation of co-operation, either “to a Government Department or through a Government Department to a voluntary association not trading for profit.” During the Report stage of the Development Fund Bill, Mr. Dillon tried to get a ruling from the Solicitor-General that the I.A.O.S. would be excluded from receiving grants from the fund, thus repeating the manoeuvre which he had already unsuccessfully attempted in connection with the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Bill of 1899.
In accordance with this provision, the three Agricultural Organisation Societies for England, Scotland, and Ireland, each applied for a grant in aid. The applications were referred in due course for report to the Government Departments concerned—that is to say, to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for the English and Scottish applications, and to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for that from the I.A.O.S. The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries reported favourably, and the British and Scottish Organisation Societies are to have their grant. But the I.A.O.S. had to reckon with Mr. T. W. Russell, behind whom stood Mr. Dillon and the politicians. The report of the Irish Department on the Irish application was adverse, but the Commissioners do not appear to have found the reasons given convincing. Much delay ensued, but, ten months after the application was sent in, the matter was submitted to the Council of Agriculture.
The machinery of the United Irish League was brought into action to influence the votes of this body. Mr. Russell delivered an impassioned harangue, and eventually the Council was induced to endorse his action by a majority of 47 to 33.
Any grant in aid of agricultural co-operation is to be administered, if Mr. Russell has his way, not by the society which has already been instrumental in establishing nearly a thousand co-operative associations in Ireland, and has served as a model on which the corresponding English and Scottish Organisation Societies, now in the enjoyment of a State subsidy, have been founded, but by the Department, which has hitherto had no experience whatever of such work. Moreover, the co-operation promoted by the Department is to be “non-competitive,” by which I suppose is meant, that it is not to affect any existing trading interest. It is safe to say that agricultural co-operation, which has no effect upon any trading interest, will have very little effect upon the farmers’ interests either. So far as I know, the Development Commissioners have not decided what course to take in this strange situation. It may be that Ireland will lose the grant altogether; but in any case I can well believe that they must hesitate to reverse the policy already approved for England and Scotland, and in the face of all experience commit the work of organising agricultural co-operation to a State Department rather than to a voluntary association possessing such a record as the I.A.O.S. has placed to its credit.
If now we ask what are the grounds of the hostility of the Nationalist Party to the most hopeful Irish movement of recent years, the answer appears to be twofold. The first is economic, or purports to be economic: the second is frankly political.
1. Co-operation, it is urged, injures the middleman and the small trader.
To encourage farmers to do well and economically for themselves what is now done indifferently and expensively for them by the middleman, must of course act injuriously on some existing interests. This is not disputed. But the change is absolutely necessary for the regeneration of rural Ireland, and this objection cannot be allowed to stand in the way. Looked at in its broader and more enduring aspects, co-operation is bound to stimulate and improve general trade by increasing the spending power of the farmers. The Chambers of Commerce of Dublin and Belfast have not been slow to perceive this, and have warmly endorsed the Society’s application for a grant from the Development Commissioners.
2. The political objection to the movement, so far as it takes the definite form of charging the I.A.O.S. with being a propagandist body aiming under the mask of economic reform at the covert spread of Unionist opinions, will not stand a moment’s examination. There is not a particle of evidence in support of such a charge, and the presumption against it is overwhelming. To mix political propagandism with organisation would be the certain ruin of the movement. The Committee of the I.A.O.S. consists of men of all shades of political faith. These men could never have joined hands except on the basis that politics should be rigidly excluded from the work of the Society. The members of the co-operative societies founded by the I.A.O.S. number nearly 100,000. Probably at least three-fourths of these are Nationalists.
In order, however, that all doubt on the subject might be finally removed, the I.A.O.S. issued a circular to all its societies, in which the following question was directly put:—
“Has the I.A.O.S., as a body, or the Committee acting for it, done, in your opinion, any act in the interest of any political party, or any act calculated to offend the political principles of any section of your members?”
The answers received have been published and form very interesting reading. Not a single society, of the many hundreds that have replied from all parts of Ireland, has been found to assert that politics have ever been mentioned by the agents of the parent association.
The hostility of the politicians to the co-operative movement rests, it is safe to surmise, upon some other foundation than these flimsy charges against the I.A.O.S.
In itself the movement is vital to the prosperity of rural Ireland. The disfavour shown to it arises from apprehensions respecting its indirect bearing upon the great issue between Unionism and Nationalism. Home Rulers who oppose the co-operative movement find themselves in this dilemma: either they hold that nothing in the way of material improvement could affect the demand for Home Rule, or else they are really afraid lest “better farming, better business, and better living,” should weaken the attractions of their own political nostrum. In the former case, they are left without a shadow of justification for their attitude towards the I.A.O.S.; in the latter, they tacitly admit that the interests of the farming classes must suffer in order that the cause of Home Rule may be promoted.
Unionists are in no such difficulty. Our policy is clear and consistent. Improvement in the social and economic condition of the people must be our first object. It is an end to be pursued for its own sake, whatever the indirect consequences may be. But the indirect consequences need cause us no anxiety. Increased material prosperity, and the contentment which inevitably accompanies it, whatever their other effects may be, are not likely to strengthen the demand for constitutional changes. Successful resistance to Home Rule at the present crisis may well mean the saving of the Union for good and all.
Footnotes
70 Originally published in the Irish Homestead, and quoted in Sir Horace Plunkett’s “Ireland in the New Century,” p. 190.
71 “Ireland in the New Century,” p. 220.
72 In this connection attention may be called to the remarkable increase of wealth in Ireland in the past twenty years. The deposits in the Joint Stock Banks have increased from £33,700,000 in 1891 to £56,011,000 in 1911, the balances in the Post Office Savings Banks in Ireland from £3,878,000 in 1891 to £12,253,000 in 1911, and the number of accounts from 261,352 in 1891 to 662,589 at the end of 1910. Irish investments in Government Funds, India Stocks, and Guaranteed Land Stock have increased from £26,609,000 in 1891 to £41,363,000 in 1911. But more noteworthy still, perhaps, is the increase in Irish trade. Figures are only available since 1904, but in that period Irish imports have increased from £54,078,399 to £65,044,477—an increase of £10,966,078 in seven years. Irish exports have increased in the same period from £49,712,400 to £65,844,255, or an increase of £16,131,155. Or, if we take the aggregate trade, there has been an increase from £103,790,799 in 1904 to £130,888,732 in 1910, an increase of £27,097,933. In other words, the aggregate import and export trade in Ireland in the year 1910 amounted to nearly £28 sterling per head of population, while the corresponding figure for Great Britain is just over £20. These figures are, I submit, eloquent testimony that the general policy of the Imperial Parliament in relation to Ireland during recent years has been wisely conceived, and that the successful solution of the “Irish Problem” is to be found in the steady pursuit of methods which have already achieved such striking results.
73 It appears that Mr. Dillon was under a misapprehension on this point. He thought he had obtained an amendment to the Bill which prevented the I.A.O.S. from getting a subsidy. This, however, was an entire mistake. See App. B. to the Report of the Committee on the Dept. of Agriculture. Cd. 3573 of 1907.
74 The voluntary contributions to the I.A.O.S. for the work of organisation amounted to no less than £100,000.
75 See his evidence before the House of Lords Committee on the Thrift and Credit Bank Bill (Paper 96 of 1910).