Tag: Irishtown

Irishtown, 20 April 1879

I read Shane Faherty’s excellent article, ‘Ghosts of Imagination: A Journey through Landscape, the Land League and the Search for Memory’ in the online journal, The Dustbin of History.

There is an evocative account of the Famine and the landscape of deserted homesteads in its aftermath, leading the reader to Irishtown, to ‘the starting point of one of the greatest and most effective social movements ever to manifest on Irish soil.’

Significantly, there was no police presence. O’Connor Power believed the meeting could police itself.

The illustrations include the Irishtown plaque and the field behind it, where thousands gathered in disciplined formation for the first meeting of the Land League movement. The plaque reads:

Cradle of the Land League

Site of the Tenant Right Meeting

20 April 1879

Which led to the foundation of the National Land League.

How the West won.

Today I met Padraig Daly, great-grandnephew of James Daly (1838-1911).  James Daly was owner and editor of the Connaught Telegraph and a leading  figure in the tenant-rights movement.  Daly  gave significant support to O’Connor Power’s campaign in the 1874 Mayo election. In April 1879,  he organised the Irishtown meeting, which launched the Land War. In the hotly contested 1880 election he  supported O’Connor Power.

A  founding member of the United Irish League, Daly was elected President of the Connacht ’98 Council