Davitt, Michael

Davitt, Michael (1846–1906), nationalist and labour leader. Son of an evicted tenant farmer of Straide, Co. Mayo, Davitt spent his childhood and youth in Haslingden, Lancashire, where he lost his right arm in a factory accident in 1857. He joined the Fenian movement in 1865 and was sentenced in 1870 to fifteen years' penal servitude for gun‐running. Released on ticket‐of‐leave, December 1877, Davitt became an architect of the New Departure, a founder of the Land League, and leader of the agrarian struggle of 1879–82. He became disillusioned, however, as the emphasis shifted from a general reform of the agrarian system to a defence of the vested interests of the larger tenant farmers. Imprisoned in Portland jail from February 1881 to May 1882, Davitt, under the influence of Henry George, used the time to reformulate his agrarian ideas in the direction of land nationalization, a policy predicated upon an alliance of nationalist and British working‐class interests. However, the policy produced an open breach with Parnell in 1884 and failed to attract popular support. Despite his differences with Parnell, Davitt vigorously supported the Liberal–nationalist alliance. Following the party split 1890, he became anti‐Parnellite MP for Meath 1892, and West Mayo 1895–99. He helped found the United Irish League 1898, but was unattuned to changes in the land question since the 1870s, and bitterly critical of the Wyndham Act, 1903. He published Leaves from a Prison Diary (1885), and The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (1904)

James Loughlin