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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Agrarianism


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The Assassination of Alan Bell

Alan Bell, policeman and resident magistrate, is tasked by British Intelligence to track down Michael Collins’s war chest. By March 26, 1920, he has successfully confiscated over £71,000 from Sinn Féin‘s headquarters and by investigating banks throughout the country and is set to seize much more. On that day he is pulled off a tram in South Dublin and shot three times in the head.

Bell is born in Banagher, King’s County (now County Offaly), one of at least two sons of the Rev. James Adamson Bell, Church of Ireland clergyman. His mother’s name is unknown. Educated locally, he joins the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in September 1879 as a cadet, serving in the counties of Cavan, Galway, Roscommon, Westmeath, and Cork up to the rank of district inspector. During the Land War (1879–82) he investigates sources of Irish National Land League funds and in 1882 arrests the American land reformer and journalist Henry George in Athenry. He, along with District Inspector William Henry Joyce, compile evidence against the nationalist and agrarian agitation for the special commission of 1888–89 which investigates charges against the nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell and his associates. His actions make him popular with unionists but a marked man among nationalists.

After almost twenty years’ police service, Bell becomes a resident magistrate on November 12, 1898, a civil service post under the Constabulary Act, 1836. His districts included Athenry, Claremorris, Armagh, Belfast, and Portadown. With many years’ experience in criminal intelligence, he is transferred to Dublin Castle early in the Irish War of Independence as a special investigator and intelligence gatherer. In December 1919 he questions suspects for the attempted Irish Republican Army (IRA) assassination of the viceroy, Lord French, and place suspect premises under surveillance. His vulnerability is made evident by the shooting in January 1920 of Dublin Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner William C. Redmond, one of his informants. He remains in Dublin to investigate the “republican loan” raised by Michael Collins and Sinn Féin, believed to be hidden in suspect bank accounts. Refusing protective accommodation in Dublin Castle where other officials have already retreated, he opts to live with his wife at a private suburban residence, 19 Belgrave Square, Monkstown, County Dublin. He summons bank managers to his office in early March 1920 and progresses sufficiently to force Collins into taking action.

Carrying a pocket revolver for protection, Bell travels to work daily by tram until the morning of March 26, 1920. At the busy junction of Simmonscourt Road, Sandymount Avenue, and Merrion Road, Ballsbridge, a group of men immobilise the crowded vehicle and surround their target, declaring, “Come on, Mr. Bell, your time has come.” Bundling him on to the street, they shoot him dead in public view and run from the scene. In spite of vivid eyewitness accounts in the press, no killer is identified. His death comes amid almost daily violence and barely a week after the shooting of the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás Mac Curtain, allegedly by police assassins. He acts fearlessly, perhaps expecting a violent death as the outcome of his mission.

Bell is buried privately in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, Deansgrange, County Dublin. Some Irish republican prisoners at Gloucester during the influenza epidemic of 1918–19 may have been saved from infection by his brother, who as prison doctor there had advised that the jail be evacuated.

(From: “Alan Bell” by Patrick Long, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Michael Davitt, Founder of the Irish National Land League

Michael Davitt, Irish republican and agrarian agitator, dies in Elphis Hospital in Dublin from blood poisoning on May 30, 1906. He is the founder of the Irish National Land League, which organizes resistance to absentee landlordism and seeks to relieve the poverty of the tenant farmers by securing fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale of the tenant’s interest.

Davitt is born in Strade, County Mayo, on March 25, 1846, the son of an evicted tenant farmer. Following their eviction, the family emigrates to England. In 1856, at the age of 10, he starts work in a cotton mill, where he loses an arm in a machinery accident a year later. As is typical for the era, he does not receive any compensation.

In 1865, Davitt joins the revolutionary Fenian Brotherhood, an international secret society that seeks to secure political freedom for Ireland. He becomes secretary of its Irish analogue, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), in 1868. Arrested in Paddington Station in London for sending firearms to Ireland on May 14, 1870, he is sentenced to 15 years in Dartmoor Prison and there lays plans to link Charles Stewart Parnell’s constitutional reform with Fenian activism to achieve political-agrarian agitation.

Paroled from prison in 1877, Davitt rejoins the IRB and goes to the United States, where the Fenian movement originated. There he is deeply influenced by Henry George’s ideas about the relationship between land monopoly and poverty.

Back in Ireland, using funds raised by John Devoy and Clan na Gael in the United States, Davitt wins Parnell’s cooperation in organizing the Irish National Land League in 1879, which leads, however, to his expulsion from the supreme council of the IRB in 1880. He is also imprisoned for seditious speeches in 1881 and 1883. He is elected to Parliament representing North Meath in the 1892 United Kingdom general election, but his election is overturned on petition because he had been supported by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He stands unopposed for North East Cork at a by-election in February 1893, making his maiden speech in favour of the Home Rule Bill in April, which passes the House of Commons but is defeated in the House of Lords in September.

Because of his public championing of Henry George’s theories of land reform, Parnell repudiates him. Davitt actively defends the Nationalists before the Parnell Commission, which meets between 1887 and 1889. When the Irish party splits in 1890 over Parnell’s involvement in Capt. William Henry O’Shea’s divorce case, Davitt is among the first to oppose Parnell’s continuance as leader. He is elected again, for South Mayo in 1895, but resigns in 1899 in protest against the Second Boer War.

Davitt dies in Elphis Hospital, Dublin on May 30, 1906, at the age of 60, from blood poisoning. The fact that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland attends his funeral is a public indication of the dramatic political journey this former Fenian prisoner has taken. There is no plan for public funeral, and hence Davitt’s body is brought quietly to the Carmelite Friary, Clarendon Street, Dublin. However, the next day over 20,000 people file past his coffin. His remains are taken by train to Foxford, County Mayo, and buried in the grounds of Strade Abbey at Strade, near his place of birth.

Davitt’s book, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (1904), is a valuable record of his time.


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Birth of William Massey, New Zealand Prime Minister

william-ferguson-massey

William Ferguson Massey, New Zealand statesman, Prime Minister from 1912 to 1925, and founder of the Reform Party, is born in Limavady, County Derry in what is now Northern Ireland on March 26, 1856. He is a lifelong spokesman for agrarian interests and opponent of left-wing movements. His Reform Party ministries include leadership of the country during World War I.

The Massey family arrives in New Zealand on October 21, 1862, on board the Indian Empire as Nonconformist settlers, although William remains in Ireland for an additional eight years to complete his education. After arriving on December 10, 1870, on the City of Auckland, he works as a farmhand for some years before acquiring his own farm in Mangere, south Auckland, in 1876.

While managing his own farm, Massey assumes leadership in farmers’ organizations. He enters Parliament in 1894 as a conservative and from 1894 to 1912 is a leader of the conservative opposition to the Liberal ministries. He becomes prime minister in 1912 and promptly signs legislation enabling freeholders to buy their land at its original value. The first years of his ministry see labour strikes by miners in Waihi in 1912 and wharf workers in Wellington in 1913. His harsh repression of them give impetus to the formation of the Labour Party in 1916. He also improves federal administration by putting civil service positions under a nonpolitical commission.

A coalition with the Liberal Party led by Sir Joseph Ward enables Massey to continue his ministry in 1915. He participates in the Imperial War Cabinet (1917–18) and signs the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, making New Zealand a founding member of the League of Nations. He opposes separate sovereign status for dominions within the British Commonwealth.

Following the war, farmers are troubled by depressed prices resulting from the sharply reduced British demand for their products, and they also face inflation in land prices, aggravated by increased demand for land by returning servicemen. Massey responds to these problems by establishing the Meat Control Board (1922) and the Dairy Export Control Board (1923), but rural and urban unrest resulting from rising prices continue to mount in the final years of his ministry.

In 1924 cancer forced Massey to relinquish many of his official duties, and he dies on May 10, 1925, at Wellington, New Zealand. The Massey Memorial is erected as his mausoleum in Wellington, paid for mostly by public subscription. Massey University is named after him, the name chosen because the university had a focus on agricultural science, matching Massey’s own farming background.