Lalor, James Fintan

Lalor, James Fintan (1807–49), nationalist writer. Son of a Catholic Middleman farmer in Queen's Country (Laois), Lalor injured his spine in infancy and suffered from recurrent ill health. Influenced by the agrarian radical William Conner, Lalor rejected his father's repeal politics. However, the formation of the Irish Confederation and the worsening of the Great Famine stimulated him to contribute a series of letters to the Nation in 1847 calling for a rent strike by small farmers followed by a popular social and political revolution. His attempt to organize a Tenants' Association at Holycross, Co. Tipperary, in 1847 failed, but his idea of agrarian‐led revolt was taken up by Mitchel. Following Mitchel's conviction, Lalor wrote a seroes of militant articles for the Irish Felon, was involved with the confederate clubs, and was imprisoned for five months in 1848. He was involved in unsuccessful attempts to revive the clubs in 1849. Lalor was later appropriated by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse as the forerunner of socilist repunlicanism, although his objective of peasant proprietorship fell short of real agrarian socialism.

Peter Gray