A New Ranch War?: Cattle Driving and Civil War Agrarian Disorder, 1922–23

A New Ranch War?:Cattle Driving and Civil War Agrarian Disorder, 1922–23* James S. Donnelly Jr. (bio) Emboldened by the military and judicial weaknesses of the new state and its truncated apparatus of repression in the early 1920s, and highly impatient for comprehensive new land-purchase legislation, large elements of Irish rural society became deeply engaged in a many-sided land war of almost national scope and extremely wide dimensions—a dramatic upsurge in multifaceted rural conflicts and collective action perhaps rivaling in their intensity (if not their duration) the great agitations of the 1880s under the Land and National Leagues as well as the Ranch War of 1907–12.1 Greatly elevated levels of agrarian violence and intimidation deeply marked the revolutionary [End Page 174] period of 1919–23, influenced to some extent by the impact of events in Russia from 1917 through the early 1920s.2 There were both immediate and underlying causes of this blitz of agrarian disorder. One major cause that prompted extremely widespread dissatisfaction and even anger was the more or less complete stoppage in the land-division and redistribution work of the Congested Districts Board and the Irish Land Commission throughout the Great War of 1914–18.3 A second reason was the nearly total interruption in the river of emigration for much the same years owing largely to governmental restrictions and fear of conscription in Britain. From a high of 31,000 emigrants in 1913, the exodus greatly narrowed to fewer than 1,000 in 1918, and even in 1920 it was little more than half the 1913 figure.4 This situation undoubtedly exacerbated the land hunger of the greatly enlarged number of rural young men and deepened postwar unemployment.5 In addition, the normal peacetime migration of mostly young Irish harvest workers to England and Scotland—"an essential supplement of income to the miserable holders of uneconomic holdings and to the young landless men"—was cut off for as long as four years during wartime.6 Yet another major factor was the enormous inflation of prices (including the cost of land) that accompanied the First World War. By the end of this conflict, with its staggering human losses [End Page 175] and enormous wartime expenditures, the cost of purchasing land had skyrocketed. The bank accounts of graziers and large farmers had swelled in almost unprecedented fashion from 1914 to 1918 as a result of expanded livestock and grain exports to Britain, greatly facilitating their ability and disposition to enter the land market and to enlarge their holdings, thus leading to runaway land prices.7 As former land commissioner Kevin O'Sheil later emphasized, there was an uncontrolled surge at this point in the prices of acquiring land. "At this period," he declared, "it was not unusual for a small parcel of land to be sold for more than twenty times its pre-war value, and such transactions had naturally the effect of rousing the land hunger, particularly in the congested areas" all along the Atlantic seaboard.8 Moreover, by the end of the Great War there had been an "astonishing intensification of deep national feeling" among the nationalist people of southern Ireland owing to intense wartime Sinn Féin propaganda, resulting in a fixed determination at the coming of peace, particularly among the younger generation, to remain at home and to purchase at least a modest farm.9 Lastly, there was the severe agricultural depression of 1919–23. In considering the causes of the agrarian disorders of these years, scholars have not paid nearly enough attention to this depression following the end of World War I. Irish farmers had benefitted enormously between 1914 and 1918 from the boom in agricultural prices of all kinds in response to the strength of wartime demand and the persistent shortages in supplies. But then the bust that succeeded the wartime boom beginning in 1919 staggered the Irish farming community. Hardest hit were livestock producers, who by 1921 were reeling from the plunging cattle prices of the last two years. Figures for the sale of livestock at the Dublin market (mostly for export) demonstrate that cattle sellers there, who had pocketed as much as 78s...