Programme
The passing of the revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, a "grass roots home rule" Act, totally reorganised the old aristocratic landlord "Grand Juries", eliminating their power by transferring it to Local County Councils elected by tenant farmers, town traders and labourers. This coincided with William O'Brien founding the United Irish League (UIL), the wide expansion of the agricultural co-operative movement established earlier by Horace Plunkett and Sheehan becoming both President of the ILLA and editor of the Skibbereen based Cork County Southern Star newspaper.
The Act was immediately recognised by the labourers, who for the first time held both active and passive electoral franchise, as a means to achieving their interests and facilitating those who desired to help them on local county councils. The prospects offered by the Act of radically overhauling the socio-economic distribution of political power in the countryside was not lost on the labourer movement. The ILLA took resolute steps to both organise the voting power of the labourers and to see to the 'proposal of labour candidates'.
Modelling themselves on Davitt’s concepts, the ILLA platform included demands for:
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- - land for the people
- - houses for the people
- - work and wages for the people
- - education for the people
- - state pensions for old people
- - all local rents shall be paid by the ground landlords.
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Its strategy was to achieve these through political and parliamentary leverage, pressure of the press and public agitation rather than by physical-force means or trade union action.
Read more about this topic: Irish Land And Labour Association
Famous quotes containing the word programme:
“The idealist’s programme of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.”
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