Horace Plunkett - Efforts Obstructed

Efforts Obstructed

He pressed ahead with agricultural co-operation, its future seemingly assured. But the next years told otherwise. Having sat in the House of Commons as a Unionist, Plunkett had incurred the hostility of the Nationalist party, whose resentment had been further excited by the bold statement of certain controversial opinions in his book, Ireland in the New Century (1904), in which he described the economic condition and needs of the country and the nature of the agricultural improvement schemes he had inaugurated, stating that the Irish cause was more a question of economics than of politics, and for making comments on the power of the Catholic priesthood. On the accession of the Liberal Party to power in 1906, Plunkett was requested by James Bryce, the new chief secretary, to remain at the head of the department he had created.

But John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party turned against him for suggesting that anything but Home Rule might be the answer to Ireland’s problems. And other mainstream nationalists, led by John Dillon, rejected economic development, whether Plunkett’s agricultural co-operatives, William O'Brien’s tenant land purchase or D. D. Sheehan’s housing of rural labourers, in advance of "national development".

Ultimately the DATI ceased to work harmoniously with the IAOS, wrecking Plunkett’s highest hopes. A determined effort was therefore made by the Nationalists to drive from office the man who by his immense efforts had probably done more than any one else of his generation to benefit the ordinary Irish people; and in moving a resolution in the House of Commons with this object in 1907, a Nationalist declared that his party took their stand on the principle that the industrial revival could only go hand in hand with the national movement.

The government gave way, and although re-elected president of the IAOS in the summer of 1907, Sir Horace Plunkett retired from office in the DATI. Since the year 1900 a grant of about £4,000 had been made annually by the Department of Agriculture to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society but the new vice-president, T. W. Russell, who had been himself previously a member of the Unionist administration, withdrew in 1907 this modest support of an association with which Plunkett was so closely identified, and of which he continued to be the guiding spirit. Nonetheless, many were inspired by his vision and established creamery cooperatives around the country, such as the Lee Strand Co-operative, still thriving in 2007, and which was established by Denis O'Donnell in 1920 in Tralee.