Horace Plunkett

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Success and opposition

Public opinion, initially lukewarm, grew hostile in some sectors as the cooperative movement developed, and shopkeepers, butter-buyers and sections of the press led a campaign of virulent opposition. Cooperatives and Plunkett were denounced for supposedly ruining the dairy industry but the movement caught hold, with the mass of farmers benefitting. Plunkett and his colleagues including the poet and painter George William Russell ("Æ") made a good working team, writing widely on economic and cultural development, and on the role of labour.

As early as 1894, when his campaign reached a size too big to be directed by a few individuals, Plunkett founded the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), with Lord Monteagle, Thomas A. Finlay and others. Robert A. Anderson acted as secretary, with Æ and PJ Hannon his assistants. IAOS soon became the powerhouse of cooperation, with 33 affiliated dairy cooperative societies and cooperative banks, introducing cooperation among Irish farmers by proving the benefits obtainable through more economical and efficient management. The following year he and Russell began publishing its journal The Irish Homestead to spread information on farming. Four years later there were 243 affiliated societies. Within a decade, 800 societies were in existence, with a trade turnover of three million pounds sterling (over 300 million sterling in today's money, and the turnover of the resulting companies is in excess of a billion euro).

Plunkett's task was frustrating. He was a pioneer of the concept of systematic rural development, who, in spite of his role in Irish affairs being often overlooked, influenced many international reformers, and can be credited as one of the few who had a long-term vision for the development of rural Ireland. He was apt to remind audiences that, even if full peasant proprietorship was achieved and Home Rule was implemented, rural underdevelopment would still have to be faced. But class conflict between farmers and shopkeepers intervened to frustrate much of what he aimed to do.

Expanding cooperation

Continuing his policy of conciliation, Plunkett suggested in a letter to the Irish press in August 1895 that a few prominent persons of various political opinions, both nationalist and unionist, should meet to discuss and frame a scheme of practical legislation for pursuing national development, and to make recommendations on the Agriculture and Industries (Ireland) Bill of 1897.

The outcome of this proposal was the formation of the Recess Committee, with Plunkett as chairman and members of divergent views, such as the Earl of Mayo, John Redmond, The O'Conor Don, Thomas Sinclair, Thomas Spring Rice, Rev Dr Kane (Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen), Father Thomas A. Finlay, Mr John Ross, MP, Timothy Harrington MP, Sir John Arnott, Sir William Ewart, Sir Daniel Dixon (after Lord Mayor of Belfast), Sir James Musgrave (Chairman of the Belfast Harbour Board), Thomas Andrews (Chairman of the Belfast and County Down Railway). T. P. Gill acted as Honorary Secretary to the committee.

In July 1896, the Recess Committee issued a report, of which Plunkett was the author, containing accounts of the systems of state aid to agriculture and technical instruction in foreign countries. This report, and the growing influence of Plunkett, who became a member of the Irish Privy Council in 1897, led to the passing in 1899 of an Act establishing the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI) for Ireland, of which the Chief Secretary for Ireland was to be President ex officio. Plunkett was appointed vice-president, a position of de facto leadership. He guided the policy and administration of the DATI in its first seven critical years.

The DATI worked:

to improve the quality of crops and livestock

to deal with animal and plant disease

to encourage fishing and planting of forests

to collect statistics on many aspects of Irish life.

By 1914 the DATI had 138 instructors travelling the country, informing farmers about new methods in agriculture, horticulture and poultry-keeping. The start of the 20th century saw the high water mark in Plunket's achievements. The IAOS was flourishing and vigorous. In 1903 there were 370 dairy societies, 201 cooperative banks and 146 agricultural societies under the auspices of the IAOS, and by 1914 there were over 1,000 societies and nearly 90,000 members. However, most unionists considered Plunkett too conciliatory and their hostility cost him his seat at the 1900 general election, when they put up a candidate to split the unionist vote.

It had been intended that the vice-president should be responsible for the DATI in the House of Commons, but an extensively signed memo, supported by the Agricultural Council, prayed that Plunkett might not be removed from office, and at the government's request he continued to direct the policy of the DATI without a seat in Parliament. He was created Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1903 at Queenstown, on the personal initiative of the King.

On the accession of the Liberal Party to power in 1906 James Bryce, the new Chief Secretary, asked Plunkett to remain at the head of the department he had created.

Efforts obstructed

Having sat in the House of Commons as a Unionist, attitudes among the nationalist party were exacerbated by the opinions in his book, Ireland in the New Century (1904). Here he described the economic condition and needs of the country, and the nature of the agricultural improvement schemes he had promoted. Plunkett put forth the view that economics was more important than politics for the future of Ireland, classed the huge sums invested in the building of Catholic churches as "uneconomic" and remarked negatively on the power of the Catholic hierarchy.

John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, turned against Plunkett for suggesting that anything but Home Rule might be the answer to Ireland's problems, and other mainstream nationalists, led by John Dillon, rejected economic development, whether through Plunkett's agricultural cooperatives, William O'Brien's tenant land purchase or D. D. Sheehan's housing of rural labourers, in advance of "national development".

Ultimately the DATI ceased to work harmoniously with the IAOS, wrecking Plunkett's hopes, and the Irish Parliamentary Party made a determined effort to drive him from office, moving a resolution to that effect in the House of Commons in 1907. The government gave way, and although Plunkett was re-elected president of the IAOS in the summer of 1907, he retired from office in the DATI. From the year 1900 the DATI had made an annual grant of about £4,000 to the IAOS, but in 1907 the new vice-president of the DATI, T.W. Russell, who had previously been a member of the Unionist administration, withdrew it. Nonetheless, many continued to be inspired by Plunkett's vision and to establish creamery cooperatives around the country.

In 1908 public appreciation of Plunkett's service was marked by the purchase and gift to him of 84 Merrion Square, Dublin, which became the headquarters of the IAOS under the name The Plunkett House.

The Irish Homestead had frequently drawn attention to the status of women in rural Ireland (its assistant editor was Susan L. Mitchell), and in 1910 Plunkett helped to found the United Irishwomen to improve their domestic economy, welfare and education, with Ellice Pilkington and Anita Lett. This would develop in the 1930s into the powerful Irish Countrywomen's Association. It also inspired the foundation of the Women's Institutes in the UK.

Political reorientation

Having previously focused his attention pragmatically on economic factors, Plunkett now began to reorient to political and social issues. The failure of the Irish Council Bill in 1907 made him realise the critical importance of self-government and by 1912 he was a convinced Home Ruler. He spent the first half of 1914 in negotiations intended to prevent partition and the exclusion of Ulster, to no avail.

Hitherto he had been regarded as a moderate Unionist, but this suggestion rendered him suspect in Ulster eyes, and the suspicion was confirmed when he published in the third week of July a pamphlet entitled The Better Way: an Appeal to Ulster not to Desert Ireland, in which he announced his conversion to Home Rule and appealed to Ulster to give Home Rule a chance, re-stating the arguments of his previous letter, and suggesting a conference of Irishmen on the bill. This was his attempt to avert civil war; but the situation was revolutionized by the outbreak of the First World War.

During the war the cooperatives were severely hit as farmers avoided their high standards, supplying inferior produce directly to Britain, where food shortages led to a boom period for Irish agriculture.

Much of Plunkett's time was spent as an unofficial envoy between Britain and the United States. After the Easter Rising of 1916, when he heard of executions, he sought clemency for its remaining leaders, including Constance Markievicz, except for anyone involved in regular crime.

Once again, in 1917, he took the lead in an attempt to solve the Irish question. When Lloyd George set up a convention of Irishmen to consider the suspended Third Home Rule Act 1914, and report their conclusions, there was great difficulty in finding a suitable chairman; but the first meeting unanimously chose Sir Horace for the post. He was himself sanguine, and worked at his task with singular devotion until May 1918; but the absence of Sinn Féin from the gathering, and the impossibility of reconciling the views of the Ulstermen and the southern Unionists, prevented the adoption of any report with unanimity. He may have lost what would have been a historic deal in January 1918 by diverting the debate to the issue of land purchase.

Until 1922 Plunkett worked to keep Ireland united within the British Commonwealth, founding the Irish Dominion League and a weekly journal, the Irish Statesman, to advance that aim, for which he was rejected by those working for an Irish Republic. Plunkett had proposed that if Home Rule for all of Ireland was implemented that Ulster should have the right to vote itself out after 10 years.

He met Michael Collins, whom he described as "simple yet cunning".

Horace Plunkett

Horace Plunkett

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Family and background

Career

Early political career

Agricultural reform

Work with Roosevelt

Success and opposition

MP for South Dublin

Expanding cooperation

Efforts obstructed

Political reorientation

Marginalisation and departure from Ireland

Later years and the Plunkett Foundation

Personal life

Last years

Writings

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