The story of James Daly and Land League
By Tom Gillespie
THE former owner and editor of The Connaught Telegraph, James Daly, along with Michael Davitt, was co-founder of the Land League.
Daly, who resided at Spencer Street, Castlebar, was a conservative Catholic from a comfortably, well off Mayo farming family. He served from 1869 on the Castlebar Board of Guardians and as a guardian for the Litterbrian Division in Ballina Union.
Daly took up the emerging political cause in the west to establish tenant farmers' rights against largely absentee landlords and participated in the meeting in Louisburgh in 1875, convened to establish a local tenants defence association.
In February 1876, together with Alfred O'Hea, he purchased The Mayo Telegraph, renamed The Connaught Telegraph in 1878, and became sole owner in 1879 on O'Hea's death.
The Connaught Telegraph became the early publicity vehicle for what was initially a Mayo-based land movement.
In 1879, for many months, the agriculture sector had been in recession due to bad harvests and cheap imports. The law as it stood was considered by many to unfairly favour landowners over struggling tenant farmers, leading to landowners evicting ‘unprofitable’ tenant farmers and turning the land over to grazing.
For Daly, by 1879 the time for action was right. He was expressing impatience in The Connaught Telegraph with achieving anything for the tenants, either through constitutional means or John Devoy’s ‘New Departure (an 'unholy alliance' between pragmatic Fenians, prepared to delay their resort to force, and radical Home Rulers). Delay could mean desperate men resorting to another failed uprising, which he abhorred.
Parnell was positioning himself to take over the Home Rule League after Isaac Butt died, and a growing land campaign would give him an issue for the coming election. Daly was not a Fenian but was prepared to accept any meaningful assistance short of violence from them.
A group of farmers from the Irishtown area had approached Daly in January 1879 during the Claremorris quarter-sessions about their treatment by landlords. To avoid libel, Daly refused to explicitly expose the landlords concerned but agreed to publish rent grievances in general.
Daly publicised the grievances and advertised a mass protest meeting on February 22, 1879, in The Connaught Telegraph.
The meeting had to be postponed until April. The day before the meeting, on Saturday, April 19, 1879, Daly's announcement in The Connaught Telegraph read:
Irishtown tenant-right meeting
On tomorrow (Sunday) a mass meeting of the tenant farmers of Mayo, Galway, and Roscommon will be held at Irishtown, a few miles outside Claremorris, for the purpose of representing to the world the many and trying ordeals and grievances the tenant farmers labour under. There will be several leading gentlemen present who will speak on the occasion, amongst whom will be John O'C. Power, Esq., M.P., John Ferguson, Esq., Glasgow, and J.J. Louden, Esq., Westport. The meeting, it is considered, will be one of the largest ever held in Connaught.
The Connaught Telegraph’s report of the meeting in its edition of April 26, 1879, began:
Since the days of O’Connell a larger public demonstration has not been witnessed than that of Sunday last. About one o'clock the monster procession started from Claremorris, headed by several thousand men on foot - the men of each district wearing a laurel leaf or green ribbon in hat or coat to distinguish the several contingents. At 11 o'clock a monster contingent of tenant-farmers on horseback drew up in front of Hughes's hotel, showing discipline and order that a cavalry regiment might feel proud of. They were led on in sections, each having a marshal who kept his troops well in hand. Messrs. P.W. Nally, J.W. Nally, H. French and M. Griffin, wearing green and gold sashes, led on their different sections, who rode two deep, occupying, at least, over an Irish mile of the road.
Next followed a train of carriages, brakes, cares, etcetera, led on by Mr. Martin Hughes, the spirited hotel proprietor, driving a pair of rare black ponies to a phaeton, taking Messrs. J.J. Louden and J. Daly. Next came Messrs. O'Connor Power, J. Ferguson and Thomas Brennan in a covered carriage, followed by at least 500 vehicles from the neighbouring towns. On passing through Ballindine the sight was truly imposing, the endless train directing its course to Irishtown - a neat little hamlet on the boundaries of Mayo, Roscommon and Galway. ‘Advanced’ land-reformer and Home-Ruler John Ferguson's resolution stated the goal of the Land War:
That as the land of Ireland, like that of every other country, was intended by a just and all-providing God for the use and sustenance of those of his people to whom he gave inclination and energies to cultivate and improve it, any system which sanctions its monopoly by a privileged class, or assigns its ownership and control to a landlord caste, to be used as an instrument of usurious or political self-seeking, demands from every aggrieved Irishman an undying hostility, being flagrantly opposed to the first principle of their humanity - self-preservation.
Daly sold The Connaught Telegraph to T.H. Gillespie in 1888 and became a full-time farmer. He continued in local government and served on Mayo County Council and Castlebar Urban District Council. He died on March 22, 1910, at the age of 74 and is buried in Castlebar Old Cemetery.