Ireland's OWN: History
Midnight Legislation: Class Struggle in Ireland 1760 – 1840.
During the years 1788-1868, 2,249 political prisoners were transported from Ireland to exile in Australia. Of that number, less than 20% belonged to the well-commemorated nationalist rebellions and conspiracies of 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867. Who were the rest?
From the 1760s to the 1840s successive revolts of the rural poor broke out across Ireland. These were led by a variety of underground movements with varying names but common characteristics. They are now called after the first such movement, the Whiteboys. These were movements of the rural poor, that is wage labourers, both agricultural and those working in minor industries, and cottiers — which were largely the one category, as labourers would rent (or have in part as wages) small pieces of land and the smallest tenant farmers would supplement their income with labouring. Whiteboys were almost exclusively male and young, often teenagers.
Their organisation was secretive and underground, and also fairly libertarian, with independent groups in each town networked with others to form an entire movement across several counties. Of at least one group, it is said that all it's members had "equal command". There was extensive use of ritual — initiation oaths, elaborate pseudonyms, and uniforms, costumes or special insignia.
Direct action was the method of these movements. Typically a proclamation or "law" would be issued, to the effect that rents, priest dues or tithes were to be reduced, wages were to be increased or "land grabbing", by which the middle class forced the rural poor from their land, was to cease. If ignored, the laws would be enforced by violence and intimidation. Destruction of property, mutilation of animals, warning shots fired through windows, and assaults, rape, and murder, as these movements became progressively more violent after the 1790s (as did their opponents). The enclosure of previously common land was resisted by the levelling of fences and grasslands were dug up to produce more conacre — the potato plots on which the labouring population relied. Such was Whiteboy tradition, on at least two occasions, the Tithe war of the 1830s, and the 1798 rebellion, this tradition was subsumed into a middle class campaign against the crown, gentry and established church. In this essay I'm going to be concentrating on what we might call 'pure' whiteboyism, so will only be briefly addressing these events.
The Class Structure.
Irish history is portrayed as a series of nationalist uprisings and movements against Anglo-irish rule. In fact most rural violence and agitation was class-based, of Catholic Irish vs Catholic Irish. The structure of Irish society was of a small number of rich farmers (about 3% of the population), a larger group of well-off farmers and extended families (about 21% of the population) and a very large class of cottiers and labourers (1.3m, or 76% of the population) enduring a precarious and downtrodden existence. Society was made up of about 10,000 landlords who owned the land and thereby dominated it, farmers who rented it on long leases, and the virtually landless labourers. The employer and landlord of the rural poor was not the Anglo gentry, but the Irish Catholic middle class of farmers of two distinct types. In less economically-developed areas, like most of Connaught, 'middlemen' (tenants on a long, stable lease, Catholic/Irish, relics of the deposed aristocracy and who were declining) still collected rent from subsistence peasants, profited through subletting and stood between the rural gentry and the poor. The second group were the farming middle class that arose in this period via commercial agriculture for an international market and who were the main employers of labour.
Living Standards of the Rural Poor.
There were localised famines in 1800, 1817, 1822, 1831, 1835-37 and 1842. Prior to 1838 there was no state welfare system. In 1841 two fifths of Irish homes were one roomed mud walled cabins. In the words of a contemporary observer: "The hovels which the poor people were building as I passed, solely by their own efforts, were of the most abject description; their walls were formed, in several instances, by the backs of fences; the floors sunk in ditches; the height scarcely enough for a man to stand upright; poles not thicker than a broomstick for couples; a few pieces of grass sods the only covering; and these extending only partially over the thing called a roof; the elderly people miserably clothed; the children all but naked." (Campbell, The Great Irish Famine)
Commercialisation of Agriculture.
Whiteboyism existed in the context of and was a response to the growth in market relations, the development of capitalism and the commercialisation of agriculture. This was not universally true: under-developed Clare was an insurrectionary hotbed for instance. However typically the centres of Whiteboyism were the most fertile, and thus most commercialised areas, and movements arose as a reaction to what the market was inflicting upon labouring and cottiers classes. Analysed in this way, the world of the Whiteboys was not so far removed from the world we live in today. From the 1720's onwards Irish agriculture was increasingly commercialised and orientated towards export, firstly to French and British colonies and after to an increasingly urban Britain. People's lives were now subject to the dictates of the market. Increased profitability in agriculture produced higher land values, which led to increased rents and the expansion of tillage or pasture for export at the expense of land for subsistence farming (and the people engaged in subsistence farming).
Counter-Culture.
Viewed from the perspective of 200 years later one of the most remarkable things about the society of this period is the extent to which popular culture was beyond elite control. Religion was not ordered and structured under the control of Rome until after the Famine, and various folk, pagan and magical practises remained popular. The Catholic Church, only gradually becoming a legal institution, was far from being the established force it was to become. Likewise for most of these decades there was no state education system, and children were educated in 'hedge schools' under the control of the community (i.e. not the state or gentry). This freedom from cultural institutions controlled by the ruling class had a positive impact on the persistence of Whiteboyism. Some of the communities that nurtured Whiteboyism also had a collective economic base, through 'rundale', a form of communal land tenure and farming. This was more often found in economically back ward areas but also could be found on poor lands in generally fertile South Leinster and East Munster.
Early Whiteboyism.
In the 1750s the growing market demand for pastoral products led to an expansion of dairy farming and grazing (which required the enclosure of common lands). As agriculture became more profitable, land values rose, and so did the price of conacre. The rural poor faced ruin. Beginning in Tipperary, a county which was a fertile producer of agrarian unrest, and then expanding into east Munster and south Leinster, the Whiteboy movement fought back by tearing down the fences and hedges over what had been common land, and digging up pasture so that it could not be used for grazing and could be turned back to conacre. Grasslands were exempt from religious tithes in Ireland and this tax too became the target for Whiteboy resistance as it fell hardest on those engaged in subsistence farming.
Ulster, 1763 — 1772.
Two Whiteboy type movements developed in Ulster, although such movements were rare in that province in comparison to elsewhere. The first, known as the Oakboys or Hearts of Oak, from their wearing of oak twigs, arose against the cess, a tax and forced labour for road building. Beginning in North Armagh in 1763 and spreading to the rest of South Ulster, the Oakboys differed in their methods from the other movements. Rather than being a secretive and nocturnal organisation they paraded openly in military formation complete with fife and drum up to the homes of the gentry and clergy (tithes were a grievance here too) in order to 'persuade' them to reduce the cess and tithe. Unsurprisingly, given their more open tactics, the Oakboys fell easy victim to a military expedition.
The next movement in Ulster, the Steelboys or Hearts of Steel (1769 — 1772), took up the more effective tactics of threatening notices, secretive organisation and raids under the cover of darkness. On occasion they also employed the methods of the Oakboys, openly marching to Belfast in 1772 to free six of their members from prison. The grievances motivating the Steelboys were increased rents, evictions, and again the cess.
Ulster was different from the other areas of Whiteboyism, in that society was not so stratified and a tradition of emigration had already been established, operating as a safety valve for rural discontent. There were also more economic "opportunities", due to the development of the textile industry . Later, in the 1780's and 90's, secret societies similar to the Whiteboys developed but as sectarian political movements: the Peep O' Day Boys (which became the Orange Order) and The Defenders (the main organisation involved in the 1798 rebellion).
Whiteboys and Rightboys
The period up to the end of the 1780s was characterised by anti-clerical actions in addition to the standard Whiteboy activities. Catholic priests were targeted for denouncing the rebels from the pulpit. In Tipperary "the parish priest of Kilsheelan, Fr. Nicholas Phelan, vigorously condemned the Whiteboys and had to flee for his life from his parish. Tradition also states that a Fr. Darcy of Kilmurry, preached against them in Grangemockler, was attacked by a mob and had to flee also from the district." (Power, Carrick-on-Suir & Its People). The aim was also to reduce the fees priests charged for presiding at various religious services.
The Caravat Whiteboys
The most class conscious and violent of the Whiteboy movements, the Caravats, arose in Tipperary as a result of the agricultural boom created by the Napoleonic Wars. Rising land values and higher prices, coupled with an increasing population that prevented any rise in wages or employment, squeezed the rural poor. The Caravats demanded that wages rise, rents to be lowered, "land grabbing" to cease, also inflationary practises such as hoarding food, all "by order of Sir John Doe, Governor of Munster", as the notices of these Whiteboys read. Failure to comply with Caravat demands after three warnings meant a degree of violence greater than that previously used by Whiteboy groups. There were also numerous raids for arms and robbery of mail coaches and such like, as well as a concerted effort to drive migrant workers from Kerry and Cork out of the Tipperary area, and so reduce the supply of labour. Organisers were sent into the adjoining counties of Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork and Limerick to stir things up there. The Caravats began to move in a less pragmatic day-to-day direction, and according to some reports had as their ultimate goal a re-division of the land.
This episode was unique in the response of the middle class. From 1806 an organised violent retaliation, in the form of the Shanavests — a remnant of the nationalist United Irishmen-Defender organisation of the 1790's, and held in readiness for a French landing that never came — was directed against the Caravats. Apart from individual assassination, this conflict consisted of fights at fairs and other public gatherings (where both organisations tried to recruit), involving hundreds and even thousands of participants armed with traditional wooden clubs, home made swords or spears and sawn off shotguns. This was the most pronounced expression of the struggle between labourers and the farming middle class. By 1811 the area was flooded with troops and a "special commission" sent to investigate. The Whiteboy-Shanavest conflict appears to have persisted until the Famine period.
Rockites 1821 — 1824.
Whiteboyism, principally in Clare and Munster, with the addition of Catholic sectarian millenarianism, derived from prophecies claiming the imminent downfall of Protestants. It was also more specifically anti-state violence than the other movements (excepting the Defenders). Its sectarianism was not inspired or manipulated by the Catholic middle class and it's church. In fact it was detrimental to them given that they, and the Church in particular, needed the goodwill of a Protestant government to achieve their aims.
Also it did not serve to make these Whiteboys any less likely to advance their interests against the Catholic middle class. Unlike the situation in the south of Ulster, this sectarianism was the expression of class conflict rather than the suppression of it. In a county like Clare, 'Protestants' could easily mean the state, the gentry, the police and the yeomanry, as there was no population of labouring Protestants. This seems to have been another ripple from South Ulster in the 1790's, as Orangism had made its way south within army regiments.
The promised Armageddon not forthcoming, discontent was channelled into the Catholic Association, a middle class organisation aiming to end the remnants of the Penal Laws which discriminated against Catholics, specifically the ban on Catholics sitting in the House of Parliament. Led by the right wing nationalist Daniel O'Connell, upon whom the millenarian hopes now lay, and employing the 'moral pressure' of 'monster meetings', i.e. mass rallies, this body saw it's goal achieved in the 1829 'Catholic Emancipation'.
People soon became disillusioned, as expectations fell, aptly described by one priest: "I have often heard their conversations, when they say, 'What good did Emancipation do for us: Are we better clothed or fed, or our children better clothed or fed?' " As a Whiteboy put it: "Emancipation has done nothing for us. Mr O'Connell and the rich Catholics go to Parliament. We die of starvation just the same." Hoppen, Ireland since 1800: Conflict & Conformity
A new wave of Whiteboyism broke out, with the Terry Alts and Lady Clares in Clare, Galway and Roscommon, and the Whitefeet in Leinster. This is the first outbreak of Whiteboyism for which there are police statistics, which record for Clare and Connaught (and most of this was happening in the single county of Clare) the following 'outrages' in 1831: Administering Oaths (952), Assaults connected with Ribbonism (566), Attacks on houses (1,684), Homicides (72), Cattle Maiming (125), Illegal Notices (875), Levelling (244), Robbery of Arms (571) and Demand of Arms (135).
Simultaneous with this was the "Tithe War", a middle class dominated movement against the tax for the Church of Ireland, which had recently been extended to apply to grasslands. Ostensibly a movement of 'passive resistance', such as refusing to pay and collective boycott of goods seized in lieu of payment, there was also a fair number of violent riots.
Whiteboys and History.
The social class that produced Whiteboyism was devastated by the Great Hunger at the end of the 1840's, and by the emigration that followed. Whiteboyism continued in some of the more backward areas, those untouched by commercialisation and which had not seen Whiteboyism before, e.g. West Ulster. But the Famine can be said to have been it's end, and just a shadow persisted. The rural working class was silent for decades afterward until a brief adoption of syndicalism in the early 20th century. Equally silent has been history on the topic of the Whiteboys. There are appears to be only one book specifically on the Whiteboy phenomenon and to a great extent the matter is ignored totally. The only Whiteboy band remembered is the Molly Maguires, who made the transition to the mining communities of Pennsylvania in the 1860's and 1870's. They are part of the typical labour history of the United States and have even been represented in a 1970 film starring Sean Connery. The class nature of the Whiteboys cuts across the nationalist version of history but being a rural movement made them likely to be overlooked by Marxist-influenced labour historians.
From the pages of Organise#60, magazine of the Anarchist Federation, now available in html and PDF formats at: http://www.af-north.org
Page updated 7 Sep 2008
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