The Tenants' Movement to Capture the Irish Poor Law Boards, 1877-1886

There is a well-established notion among Irish and British historians that local self-government began in Ireland in 1898, when the Local Government Act created the system of elective county councils to replace the old grand jury system in the government of the counties. The grand juries, it is well-known, were instruments of the Irish “landed interest”—the gentry and aristocracy—whose dominance over these bodies was protected by a rigid system of property qualifications and appointing procedures that admitted only trustworthy landowners to the jury seats. Since only the juries were empowered to levy and expend the county tax known as the “cess,” they were therefore also able to dominate the lesser county authorities, the county and baronial presentment sessions, through control of the purse. When the 1898 act abolished this aristocratic system and replaced it with a new system of representative county and district councils, the result was a de facto transfer of power in local government from the old landowning class to the peasantry. This view, which was first promoted by the founders of the 1898 act, has been repeated by numerous historians since then, and for lack of evidence to the contrary it prevails today. Willian O'Brien, the nationalist M.P. and editor of the Parnellite newspaper United Ireland , might well have disputed this view if he were alive today. As a practicing politician who understood well the ways in which power can be exercised, he was more inclined to look at the practical operations of public bodies rather than their constitutions to determine which party held the real power. In his Recollections , which were published in 1905, O'Brien reminisced about the turbulent years of the great “land war” of 1879-1882 and recalled how, in 1882, that historic struggle between Irish landlord and tenant for control of the soil focused for a time in a struggle for control of the Irish boards of guardians, the 163 bodies which administered the Irish poor law in the localities

Archaeology · Aristocracy (class · Battle · Dominance (genetics · Gentry · Government (linguistics · Irish · Jury · Local government · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Irish and British Studies · History · Law · Public Administration

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