MIchael Davitt

Michael Davitt

Michael Davitt (Irish name: Mícheál Mac Dáibhéid) (March 25, 1846 – May 30, 1906) was an Irish republican and nationalist agrarian agitator, a social campaigner, labour leader, journalist, Home Rule constitutional politician and Member of Parliament (MP), who founded the Irish National Land League.

In 1865, this interest led Davitt to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) which had strong support among working-class Irish immigrants . He soon became part of the inner circle of the local group. Two years later he left the printing firm to devote himself full time to the IRB, as organising secretary for Northern England and Scotland, organising arms smuggling to Ireland using his new job as "hawker" (travelling salesman) as cover for this activity.

Davitt was involved in a failed raid on Chester Castle to obtain arms on 11 February 1867 in advance of a Fenian rising in Ireland, but evaded the law. In the Haslingden area, he helped to organise the defence of Catholic churches against Protestant attack in 1868. Having come to the attention of the police, he was arrested in Paddington Station in London on 14 May 1870 while awaiting a delivery of arms. He was convicted of treason felony and sentenced to 15 years of penal servitude in Dartmoor Prison; Davitt felt that he had not had a fair trial or the best of defence. The trial is documented online.

He was kept in solitary confinement and received very harsh treatment during the un-remitted portion of his term. In prison, he concluded that ownership of the land by the people was the only solution to Ireland’s problems. He managed to get a covert contact to an Irish Parliamentary Party MP, John O'Connor Power, who began to campaign against cruelty inflicted on political prisoners. He often read Davitt's letters in the House of Commons, with his Party pressing for an amnesty for Irish nationalist prisoners. Partially due to public furore over his treatment, Davitt was released (along with other political prisoners) on 19 December 1877, when he had served seven and half years, on a "ticket of leave". He and the other prisoners were given a hero’s welcome on landing in Ireland.

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 1878 Davitt travelled to the United States in a lecture tour organised by John Devoy and the Fenians, hoping to gain the support of Irish-American communities for his new policy of "The Land for the People". He returned in 1879 to his native Mayo where he at once involved himself in land agitation.

At Straide, Davitt's birthplace is now a museum that commemorates his life and works. A life-sized bronze statue stands before it. The bridge from Achill Island to the mainland is named after him. Over Davitt’s grave a Celtic Cross in his memory bears the words ‘’Blessed is he that hungers and thirsts after justice, for he shall receive it’’.

The town of Haslingden has also commemorated Davitt's link with it through 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. / He became a great world figure in the cause of freedom and raised his voice and pen on behalf of the oppressed, irrespective of race or creed, that serfdom be transformed to citizenship and that man be given the opportunity to display his God given talents for the betterment of mankind. / Born 1846, died 1906. / Erected by the Irish Democratic League Club, Haslingden (Davitt Branch)."

Haslingden also organised a 'Exile & Exiles' Festival in 2006 which did much to celebrate the life of Michael Davitt, as well as place it in the context of other immigrants to the community. This included 'The Jail Bird', a performance about Davitt, created by Horse and Bamboo Theatre with local school students.

Of the people cited as inspirations by northwest Mayo's Shell to Sea campaign, such as Ken Saro-Wiwa, Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, Davitt is the sole Irish person. On their release from prison, the Rossport Five laid a wreath at his grave in Straide.

A debate has also started on the extent to which Davitt altered his recall of the events in his remarkable life. One of Michael Davitt’s biographers, Professor Moody, remarked in 1982 that Davitt’s habit of: "..reinterpreting his past actions and attitudes in accordance with altered conditions was partly the outcome of a longing for integrity in his political conduct".