John O'Connor Power - The Land War

The Land War

However O'Connor Power retained credibility with small tenant farmers and addressed the Tenant-Right Meeting at Irishtown, County Mayo on 20 April 1879 which launched the protest movement that led to the Irish National Land League. He was 'the only member of Parliament invited to or who attended the historic Irishtown meeting.'

T. M. Healy writes of the Irishtown meeting:

'Power's presence there gave birth to the Land League and made history ... No reporters attended the meeting. Power called on me when he returned to London to give an account of it. From what he said I realised that a new portent had arisen out of a leaden sky. He related that footmen in legions, and horsemen in squadrons, gathered round him to demand reductions of rent. The horsemen, he declared, were organised like cavalry regiments. The police were powerless, and Power foreshadowed that Ireland was on the verge of a movement which would end a dismal chapter. Yet his meeting was unnoted, save by a local weekly The Connaught Telegraph, owned by James Daly.'

William O'Brien recounts:

'The whole countryside had flocked together, as at a word of command, including horsemen enough to form a regiment of cavalry, and Mr. Power, who had sounded all the subterranean depths of Irish disaffection, spoke very solemnly of what was coming. It was the first whisper I heard of the Land League movement, although even the name was not yet invented.'

After Parnell and Davitt addressed the follow-up meeting at Westport, County Mayo on 8 June 1879 they took control of the growing Land War. T. M. Healy gives his view of how O'Connor Power was frozen out of the Land League:

Stirrings of ambition and resentment may have been ingredients in Parnell's action in joining Davitt and cold-shouldering Power, but what can lessen admiration for the pluck with which he threw himself into a movement which involved him and his relatives in danger and loss? His rents in Co. Wicklow and those of his brothers in Armagh and Carlow were at stake. Towards the close of the session Power wrote me: House of Commons,
4 August 1879.
My Dear Healy,
Finegan told me you would be down to-night, but I have not been so fortunate as to come across you. If you have seen my article in the Fortnightly, I would feel obliged by your noticing it in your letter this week. The cynical Saturday Review noticed it fairly enough, but I have seen no notice of it in any Irish paper."
Ever sincerely,
J. O'Connor Power. I complied, but owing to his strained relations with Parnell and Biggar, he went to Dublin to examine the position, and wrote me: "... Davitt met me on my arrival here – a reception unexpected on my part. He is writing an appeal to the Irish at home and abroad, for funds to carry on the Land agitation, and working hard to abolish the Home Rule League. I am here just in time for Thursday's meeting, when the Home Rule League will be "tried for life" and perhaps condemned. Parnell's resolutions evidently tend in that direction." Power's letter was written from the lodgings of Tom Brennan, who three months later, became secretary to the Land League, when Davitt was made its chief organizer, and Parnell (with Dillon) was accredited envoy to the United States. Power, who started the movement, was left "festering outside-the breastworks," without control or influence in the new organization.

In 'The Irish Land Agitation', published in the Nineteenth Century, December 1879, O'Connor Power writes on the land question, on the cry for land reform and the demands of the Irish National Land League, 'it may be useful for one connected with the movement to lay before English readers a statement explaining its causes, and presenting for serious consideration its aims and hopes and possible results.' The evils of the Irish land system must be urgently addressed and resolved:

'More than three years ago I ventured during a debate in the House of Commons on the Irish land question, to predict that if the proposal then before the House to deprive the landlords of the power of eviction and rack-renting - that is to say the proposal in favour of fixity of tenure at fair rents - was not accepted, the Irish people would rise up and protest against the institution of landlordism, root and branch, and demand its abolition.'

Though originally a friend, Davitt changed his opinion of O'Connor Power, describing him in his 'Jottings In Solitary' of 1881-1882 as a "renegade to former nationalist principles: unscrupulously ambitious and untrustworthy". Davitt became close to O'Connor Power in later years. Michael MacDonagh wrote "O'Connor Power was above the suspicion of interested motives".