Founder of the Irish Land League, born in Straid, Co Mayo,W Ireland. Before becoming a journalist, he worked in a cotton mill, where he lost an arm in an accident. In 1866 he joined the Fenian Movement, and was arrested in 1870 for sending guns to Ireland from the USA, and sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. Released in 1877, he began an anti-landlord crusade which culminated in the Land League (1879). During a further period of imprisonment, he was elected an MP (1882), but disqualifed from taking his seat. A strong Home Ruler and opponent of Parnell, he was twice more an MP (18923, 18959).
Michael Davitt (Irish name: Mícheál Mac Dáibhéid) (25 March 1846 – 30 May 1906) was an Irish social campaigner and nationalist politician who founded the Irish National Land League.
Early years
Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo, Ireland, at the height of the Great Famine, the second of five children born to Martin and Sabina Davitt. In 1855 Mrs. Davitt and her children finally joined her husband in the industrial town of Haslingden in Lancashire, joining the local Irish community.
The young Davitt began working in a cotton mill at the age of 9 but a month later when he argued with his boss he was fired.
Around the same time Davitt had started night classes at the local Mechanics Institute and used its library.
Fenians
In 1865, this interest led Davitt to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenians organization in Ireland.
Davitt was arrested in Paddington Station in London in May 1870 while awaiting a delivery of arms. He managed to get a covert contact to an Irish MP John O'Conner Power who begun to campaign against cruelty inflicted to political prisoners, reading Davitt's letters in the Parliament.
Davitt rejoined the IRB and became a member of its Supreme Council. The British Government had introduced a concept of "fair rents" in the year of his arrest, but he continued to hold that the common people of Ireland could not improve their lot without the ownership of their land, and frequently insisted at Fenian meetings that "the land question can be definitely settled only by making the cultivators of the soil proprietors".
In 1873 while Davitt was imprisoned his mother and three sisters had settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the late 1870s, Davitt travelled to United States in a lecture tour sponsored by Dr William Carroll, Irish-American Fenian, hoping to gain the support of Irish-American communities for his new policy of "The Land for the People".
IN 1886 Davitt married Mary Yore, of Oakland, California.
The Land War
Upon his return to Ireland in 1879, Davitt found that the West of Ireland was once again suffering near famine conditions.
On 16 August 1879, the Land League of Mayo was formally founded in Castlebar, with the active support of Charles Stewart Parnell.
One of the actions the Land League took during this period was the campaign of ostracism against the land agent Captain Charles Boycott in the autumn of 1880.
In 1881 Davitt was again imprisoned for his outspoken speeches when he had accused chief secretary of Ireland W.
In 1882 Davitt was elected Member of Parliament for County Meath but was disqualified because he was in prison. Upon his release in 1882, Davitt campaigned for land nationalisation and an alliance between the British working class, Irish labourers and tenant farmers.
Despite his differences with Parnell on the land question, he was a strong supporter of the alliance between the Liberal Party and the Irish Nationalist Party and maintained this position in 1890 when the party split over Parnell's divorce.
To further those ends Davitt initiated the Irish Democratic Labour Federation in 1890, an organisation which adopted an advanced social programme including proposals for free education, land settlement, worker housing, reduced working hours, labour political representation and universal suffrage, not least his conviction to which he adhered to all his life, that peasant land proprietorship must go hand in hand with land nationalisation.
Davitt left the Commons in 1896 with a prediction that "no just cause could succeed there unless backed by physical force."
Achievements
Michael Davitt's unceasing efforts were instrumental to future Land Acts after the Gladstone's First Land Act of 1870. The most important of these was the Land Act of 1881, which finally granted "the three Fs" under Davitt's "Irish Democratic Land Federation".
The next stage was the Wyndham Land Act (1903) of William O'Brien, a purchase act that offered generous inducement to the landlords to sell their estates to the tenants, the Irish Land Commission mediating to then collect land annuities instead of rents.
Finally the ownership of the land would be transferred from the landlords to the tenants and Davitt's ambitions had finally materialised.
In 1898 Davitt helped William O'Brien found his United Irish League and he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of the British Labour Party, as well as being an inspiration for D.D. Many years later Mahatma Gandhi attributed the origin of his own mass movement of peaceful resistance in India to Davitt and the Land League.
Davitt was a frequent visitor to Scotland where he was closely associated with the crofters' struggles in the Highlands and Islands.
Davitt supported himself with writing and lectures and as a journalist defended the disadvantaged.
Davitt died in Elphis Hospital, Dublin on 30 May 1906, aged 60, from septic poisoning. Train then took the remains to Foxford, County Mayo, and Davitt was buried in the grounds of Straide Abbey at Straide (near Foxford), near the town of Straide where he was born.
Memory
At Straide, Davitt's birthplaceis now a museum that commemorates his life and works.
The town of Haslingden has also commemorated Davitt's link with it by a public monument erected in the presence of Davitt's son. The inscription reads as follows:
"This memorial has been erected to perpetuate the memory of Michael Davitt with the town of Haslingden. It marks the site of the home of Michael Davitt, Irish patriot, who resided in Haslingden from 1853 to 1867. / Erected by the Irish Democratic League Club, Haslingden (Davitt Branch)."
Popular culture
Irish folk musician Andy Irvine's 1996 Patrick Street song, "Forgotten Hero", is a tribute to Davitt. In addition, Irish-born musician Donal Maguire has recorded an album of songs based on Davitt's life, entitled Michael Davitt: The Forgotten Hero?.
Writings
Michael Davitt, Collected Writings, 1868-1906 (2001) ISBN 1-85506-648-3 Michael Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland ISBN 1-59107-031-7 Michael Davitt, The "Times"-Parnell Commission: Speech delivered by Michael Davitt in defence of the Land League (1890)Institutions
Michael Davitt Museum, County Mayo, Ireland The Irish Democratic Club, (Davitt Branch) in Haslingden, the town where Michael Davitt was brought up|
Preceded by: Alexander Martin Sullivan |
MP for Meath 1882 |
Succeeded by: Edward Sheil |
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Preceded by: William O'Brien |
MP for North-East Cork 1893 |
Succeeded by: William Abraham |
|
Preceded by: Jeremiah Daniel Sheehan |
MP for Kerry East 1895 |
Succeeded by: James Boothby Burke Roche |
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Preceded by: John Francis Xavier O'Brien |
MP for South Mayo 1895–1899 |
Succeeded by: John O'Donnell |
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