Irish HistoryThree years ago, Terence Dooley's scholarly The Decline of the Big House in Ireland became an unexpected best-seller in this country. His new book, in many respects complementary to its predecessor, deserves to enjoy similar success, although it will probably not do so as the subject holds less overt appeal. Despite that, The Land for the People should be highly recommended for once more demonstrating the author's unique ability to take over a mine seemingly worked to exhaustion and then proving that it still holds a great deal of valuable ore.
On this occasion, as his book's subtitle makes plain, Dr Dooley's interest has been caught by the Irish State's dealings with the land question during the first 50 years of its existence. The great majority of historians, he proposes, have imagined that there was no land question once independence had been achieved. They have, in effect, concluded that the Irish struggle for land ownership was intricately and irrevocably tied up with the struggle for self-determination and that, following the latter's accomplishment, the former lost much, if not all, of its validity. On the contrary, Dooley argues, land and its ownership remained a matter of enormous concern to the population long after the seat of government had shifted from London to Dublin. He notes, for example, that between 1923 and 1939 an average of 312 parliamentary questions were tabled annually in the Dáil on matters specifically relating to the acquisition and division of lands across the country.
At the heart of his premise is the Land Act of 1923 and the reconstitution of the Land Commission in the same year. Dooley provides ample evidence that the combination of act and institution helped to ensure nationwide peace and stability in the post-Civil War period although he could perhaps be accused of exaggeration with the declaration that the commission, which in a somewhat different guise had originally been established in 1881, "became the most important state institution of the twentieth century . . . and the most important vehicle of social engineering in modern Ireland". Nevertheless, for much of its existence the Land Commission wielded enormous power, at the peak of operations in the mid-1930s employing some 1,350 full-time civil servants and its secretariat receiving around 400,000 pieces of correspondence per annum. Continuing a task which had received its principal momentum from the 1903 Wyndham Act, by the late 1980s the commission established in 1923 had acquired and redistributed over 1.5 million acres of land in this country, to the benefit of 248,000 families. Given these impressive statistics, Dooley is right to marvel that the Land Commission has received scant attention from historians; it does not even merit an entry in last year's much-trumpeted Encyclopaedia of Ireland.
However, as he shows, the authority of the Land Commission was once very much understood. Larger farmers feared its attention, their smaller brethren and those who owned no property pinned their hopes on its support. A constant theme of Dooley's book is the unrealistic expectations that the commission attracted - and the way in which politicians were inclined to exploit these. Prior to independence and during the struggle for its achievement, one of the simplest and therefore most alluring proposals put forward by leaders of the revolutionary movement was that the land of Ireland ought to be returned to the people of Ireland. As Dooley observes with amusement, this action was always cited as "reversing Cromwell's policy" and never that of the Elizabethan, Jacobean or Williamite governments. Unfortunately, however attractive the concept of restitution, there has always proven to be more people than land, with disappointment being the inevitable outcome. Moreover, a worthy desire to satisfy as many requests as possible turned out to have disadvantages both in the short and long term. Many historic houses, once the greater part of their surrounding estates were removed, became economically unsustainable and were lost. Not everyone who acquired land was capable of employing it to best advantage, especially since the size of plots was often small (frequently no more than 20 acres) which is why this country continues to suffer from a ludicrously high number of farmers who struggle to survive on an income below subsistence level but who refuse to let go of the meagre property their forbears so proudly obtained from the Land Commission. And, as already mentioned, the Irish hunger for land was shamelessly exploited by politicians, particularly whenever an opportunity to gain votes appeared; Dooley quotes the TD Oliver J. Flanagan announcing in the Dáil in May 1965 "I am given to understand that in practically every constituency in Ireland during the last general election campaign, practically more land was promised to the people than there is land in the country". It was only after Ireland became a member of the EEC in 1973 that circumstances began to change, agriculture ceased to play such a dominant role in the state's economic life and land ownership became somewhat less important, eventually leading to the dissolution of the Land Commission in the last decade of the 20th century. What remains of that once-mighty institution are its archives, seemingly running to some 11 million records that date back at least to the 15th century. The word "seemingly" must be employed because, inexplicably, the commission's documents remain unavailable to the public. That Terence Dooley has managed to produce such a superb piece of work without access to this material reflects even greater credit on his abilities.
Still, as he wryly comments, had he been able to study the Land Commission's enormous records, "this book might not have been written at all".
Robert O'Byrne is a writer and critic
The Land for the People: The Land Question in Independent Ireland By Terence Dooley UCD Press, 306pp. €50