‘Every creed and party’: town tenant protest in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland

Abstract

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Irish society was intensely radicalized by the drive for Home Rule and the creation of a distinct national identity and politics. The symbolic centre of this movement was provided by the struggle for control of land. Although ultimately successful in gaining fixity of tenure, fair rents and free sale of improvement for rural tenants, the legislation failed to grant similar rights to town tenants who began to mount an increasingly vociferous campaign of their own. However, in common with other expressions of class and sectional interest, this campaign was eventually subsumed within the nationalist–unionist schism that deepened and widened after 1885. The paper examines the gestation of town tenant protest and the campaign for urban tenurial rights. It shows how the nationalist issue swallowed and ultimately negated this axis of political protest despite the idealistic hopes of its leaders that it might offer a common cause to unite small town tenants throughout the island. As with the land legislation, unionists backed the landlords rather than admit any mutuality of interest.