1923 saw a new Land Act, with greater focus on the re-distribution of land as well as the Agricultural Commission which informed policy for what was the major industry of the new Irish Free State. This episode is on debates on agrarian policy within the Irish labour movement, particularly within the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, the main union for agricultural employees, and looks at it from the bottom-up - foregrounding the words of local activists by drawing on branch resolutions, a survey of the branches, and a essay competition which ran in the pages of the union's newspaper. There was strong support for continuing compulsory tillage, but divergences of opinion around land division, collective ownership and cottage gardens. There will also be a quick look at the agrarian writings of James Connolly.

The Land for the People?

In this episode after Truce &amp; Treaty Irish separatists have assumed control over much of the country and we go to Ireland's dairying heartland and to the winter farm strikes of the winter of 1921-'22. Very different conditions to the harvest farm strike we looked at in episode one of season one, not only seasonality we are now in an economic slump and things are getting more militant: kidnappings, sabotage, the take-over of Mallow Mills by its workforce and the role of the Irish Republican Army in policing industrial disputes.

Red Flag in Kilmallock

A taster of what is coming in future episodes on popular struggles as the British state slowly withdraws from much of Ireland and a new Irish Free State is established, a wave of workplace occupations and land conflicts resume in late spring &amp; early summer 1922 - a Third Revolution - a new cycle of revolt pushing back against the limitations of the revolutionary outcomes.

The Summer of 22 (Season Two Trailer) 

All about habitat destruction, simplified eco-systems, declining bio-diversity and how this ties in the spread of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola, AIDS, Avian Flu &amp; Swine Flu – looking not just at human impact on nature but at particularly capitalist forms of agriculture &amp; resource extraction and how that form of society determines environmental crises.

Ep 8: The Factory Farm and the Forest Frontier

All about landscape as a historic creation – how what we often think of as ‘nature’ has been shaped by generations of human activity – especially farming.&nbsp;Changing land uses impact on eco-systems and helps spread zoonotic diseases – that’s diseases that come to us from animals – like Covid, AIDS, Ebola, Avian Flu. This episode particularly focuses on lyme and the relationship between lyme and suburbanisation in the US.

Ep 7: Landscape of Lyme.

Starting in the summer just before the famous Lock-Out of 1913 was a movement of farm workers in the rural parts of Dublin – back then the countryside went in as far as Crumlin. So this is Dublin in 1913, but not the Dublin of trams and tenements— this is the Dublin of bullocks and brassicas. Dublin had its own particular agricultural industry with a strong presence of market gardening. The main centres of the movement included Clondalkin and Swords. Also coming into the story is the farmers’ leader Andrew Kettle, who was the father of Tom Kettle, and who had a long career in public life going back to the Tenants’ Right League of the 1850s.

Ep 6: In Dublin County In 1913.

The name comes from a draft document composed in 1914 by Colonel George O'Callaghan-Westropp, self-styled as The O’Callaghan, a county Clare landlord. O'Callaghan-Westropp was an activist in the British conservative-nationalist mobilisation against Home Rule and lost out through agrarian agitation and government intervention in the years running up to 1914 (that is the years of the Ranch War). He later re-invented himself as a leading activist in the Irish Farmers’ Union. This episode tells his story and also looks at the Farmers’ Union and its clash with the labour movement over attempts to control food prices through regulating food exports in 1920 (the Butter and Bacon Embargo).&nbsp;The Irish Farmers’ Union also had a political wing – the Irish Farmers’ Party and a proposed paramilitary wing – the Farmers’ Freedom Force.

Ep 5: Notes on the Defence of Irish Country Houses.

Where were the Irish regiments of the British Army in 1919‒21? This episode goes from Cairo and Constantinople to Iraq and India and puts the Irish revolution into its global context through some of the scribblings of Sir Henry Wilson - the Longford man who was Chief of the Imperial General Staff – the highest military position in the British Empire. From January 1919 onwards the Empire was beset by strikes, riots and protests and so the agenda shifted from the expansion of the Empire to its defence — even to the defence of London. In 1919-21 the Dirty Shirts – the Royal Munster Fusiliers - were in Cairo, and the Dubs – the Royal Dublin Fusiliers - were in Constantinople.&nbsp;Other Irish units were in Iran, Iraq, and India.

Ep 4: Dubs, Dirty Shirts and World Revolution.

In the Autumn of 1921 men of the 1st Battalion Leinster Regiment were in action against a rebellion in Malabar, in the south-west of what was then British India. This was the last combat of any of the southern Irish regiments which were disbanded in 1922.&nbsp;In this podcast there is some of the history of the Irish regiments and of Irish recruitment to the British Army, then something of the background to the rebellion itself, as well as the story of the actual fighting. The men of the Leinster Regiment played a pivotal role in the early days of the uprising.

Ep3: The Last Campaign Of The Leinsters

Rebel Tales From The Land

This is not a history podcast - this is a rebel story, rebelling against accepted wisdoms and prevailing views, overturning what we thought we knew and creating new understandings, delving beneath the surface appearance of things. This is a podcast about peelers and sheep. Sheep representing agricultural production – the form of production most obviously involving an interface with ecology. But this is not just farming heritage. The peelers, or the police, representing the violence of the state undergirding relations of power, conflict, and exploitation.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Peelers And Sheep

Share

The Land for the People?

More Episodes

VIEW ALL

The Summer of 22 (Season Two Trailer)

Ep 8: The Factory Farm and the Forest Frontier

Ep 7: Landscape of Lyme.