Topic: The 'All for Ireland League' and the 'Irish Land & Labour League' - a uniquely Cork movement.
Speaker: Jack Lane of the Aubane Historical Society.
"The ‘All for Ireland League’ does not feature very much in the standard history of the country. Yet it was one of the most significant movements in our history. It was instrumental in nothing less than creating a social revolution in empowering the rural working class – the farm labourers – into a movement that satisfied their essential needs as a class. It is a very appropriate subject for this festival as it was always identifiable with Cork in its origins and successes. It has many monuments in the numerous Labourers’ Cottages that dot the local countryside." Jack Lane..
General Background note from Cork Mother Jones Committee:
The Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) was founded in the early 1890s in Munster to agitate for tenant farmers and rural labourers rights. Among its founders was
D.D.Sheehan (later an MP from 1901 - 1918) who became its chairman. He placed a particular focus on the rights of farm labourers who lived in poor housing conditions, very often in mud and stone cabins almost unchanged since the Great Famine times.
Demanding land and houses for people along with fair wages, education and pensions, the organisation quickly commanded widespread support from rural workers mainly in Co Cork, but also in Limerick and Tipperary. Growing in power and influence, Sheehan's ILLA demanded a housing programme for these long neglected rural labourers. Later, William O'Brien's All For Ireland League from 1909, both largely based in Cork supported these demands, This large cohort of rural workers and labourers had been largely ignored by the Irish Party in favour of the tenant farmers who were availing of favourable land purchase schemes.
The Labourers Acts of 1906-1914 were influenced by this agitation and their implementation utterly transformed the Irish countryside when the local County Council created a massive programme of large scale public house building of rural cottages with attached plots of land. Tens of thousands of these cottages were constructed over the next decade especially in County Cork and throughout Munster and upwards of a quarter of a million low income people were housed in decent comfort.
It represented an incredible achievement over a short period. The Government using the state institutions such as the County Councils to acquire the land,construct good quality and affordable houses to a number of designs and then house local families.
One is left to wonder why the modern Irish state today with vastly more resources cannot resolve our housing crisis based on the very effective and practical housing template across rural Cork and other counties. A template of public housing sourced and implemented by the ILLA and the All For Ireland League over one hundred years ago
