An appreciation of the full life of Irish Fenian, Land War veteran, and agrarian socialist Michael Davitt on his death at sixty.

‘Michael Davitt’ from The Worker (New York). Vol. 16 No. 12. June 23, 1906.

A Sketch of the Life and Work of the Irish “Rebel and Traitor” Lately Deceased–One of the Greatest Agitators of His Generation.

[The following article was published in the London Labor Leader, organ of the Independent Labor Party, a few days before Mr. Davitt’s death.]

Michael Davitt is reported to be sinking fast. We hope the news may be falsified by the recovery of our brave friend. Meanwhile, all our readers will, we feel sure, be full of sympathy with the patient lying so close to death, and their minds will turn with interest to the career of one of one of the greatest agitators of our day, and one of Ireland’s noblest and most faithful sons.

It is difficult for the younger generation of Socialists to realize what a dreaded name that of Michael Davitt once was in this country. Twenty-six or twenty-seven years ago it was never mentioned in the press or upon the platform but as that of a dangerous conspirator and traitor to the peace and honor of this country. None but the boldest democrats dared refer to it even in working class circles except as a name of infamy. For Michael Davitt was a Fenian and a rebel released on ticket-of-leave from penal servitude. Yet only a few years later, with the virtual triumph of the Lund League agitation and the adoption of Home Rule by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Davitt became recognized among Radical workingmen at least as an Irish patriot of the purest motives, and one of the most genuine friends of labor in this country.

Michael Davitt springs from the poorest class of Irish peasants. He was born in 1846–just on the eve of the great famine years–in the village of Straide, County Mayo. His infancy was one of terrible memory. When only five years old his parents were evicted from their home, and the wild agony of a famishing mother with famishing children imprinted its horror of Landlordism on all his after life. The family emigrated to Lancashire, where he got employment as a child in a cotton mill, and at the age of eleven years the little fellow lost bis right arm thru a machinery accident. He then attended school until 15 at Haslingden, when he obtained work in a printing office, where he served for seven years.

Needless to say that by this time his nature was deeply stirred by the revolutionary feeling which the Fenian movement had aroused in Ireland and among Irishmen abroad. He joined the movement in 1866, and was active in it during the attempt of the Fenians to capture Chester Castle in 1867, and the events that culminated in the execution of the Manchester martyrs a few months later. He himself was arrested on a charge of treason in 1870, and sentenced to 15 years’ penal servitude. As the result of the amnesty agitation, he was released on ticket-of-leave after having suffered seven and a half years in prison. The effects of this imprisonment told permanently on his constitution, and all his remarkable work and battle of after years were performed with the use of practically only one lung.

After a tour in America he returned to Ireland, where, together with John Ferguson of Glasgow, he, unfurled the banner of the Irish Land League in Irishtown in 1879. The League was at first viewed with suspicion, not only by the extreme Fenian party, but by Mr. Parnell and his parliamentary colleagues. So bitter for a time was the feeling of many of the “Old Guard” against him for diverting attention from revolutionary conspiracy to the land agitation, that in one of the Lancashire towns where he was addressing an Irish meeting the platform was stormed by the Fenians, and he had to protect himself by drawing a revolver.

We need not here attempt to recite the stirring incidents of the great Land League campaign. He was arrested again in November,1879, but released after a week’s imprisonment; and again in February, 1881, when his ticket-of-leave was recalled, and he suffered 15 months’ further imprisonment. In February, 1883, he was once more arrested for a speech against rent and landlordism, and kept in goal four months. When in prison on this occasion he wrote “Leaves from a Prison Diary”, a book which reveals the re- markable depth of his Insight into the land question and his remarkable lack of any feeling of personal rancor against his oppressors.

His career henceforth was one of incessant agitation for the abolition of landlordism. Unlike Mr. Parnell and the majority of the Irish members, he advocated land nationalization outright. On this point he divided the convention which was called to constitute the Irish National League when the Land League was disbanded in 1884. T.P. O’Connor led the opposition against him, and his resolution was lost by a large majority. Davitt, always eager for the unity of the party, accepted the decision, but personally never ceased to urge his own views.

Davitt was first elected a member of Parliament when in Portland Prison in 1882. for Meath, but was disqualified by a vote of the House of Commons. He afterwards sat in Parliament for many years.

One of the most interesting events in his life was his establishment of the “Labour World” in London in 1890. By this time Davitt had virtually accepted the Socialist position, and was almost as enthusiastic for the labor cause in England as the land cause in Ireland. The Parnellite split, however, wrecked his paper, and depressed him for many years. He took the view that Parnell had alike by his divorce incident and by what Davitt regarded as violation of his plighted word to his colleagues on the subject rendered himself impossible as the leader of a united party.

It will be remembered that Mr. Davitt took up the cause of the Boers in the recent war with all the impassioned fervor of his nature. He resigned Parliament, and went to the Transvaal, though he took no part in the actual warfare.

His latest campaign was appropriately enough, in connection with the Labor Party in this country during the late general election. He addressed many meetings in behalf of the trade-union and Socialist candidates–including, despite the disapproval of the Irish party, Mr. Hyndman at Burnley, with whom he had long been on terms of friendship.

Nor must we omit to notice that Mr. Davitt, also in opposition to the Irish party, supported Shaw Maxwell in the Land Restoration fight in Glasgow in 1885, and Kier Hardie in his Mid-Lanark contest in 1888.

He is a man of singular amiability, of disposition and of remarkable width of view, considering the narrow patriotic school of politics in which he was reared. Undaunted and fierce in the midst of battle, filled all his life with a stern, almost melancholy, zeal for his country, he is nevertheless by nature endowed with all the geniality and humor of the Irish race.

The Worker, and its predecessor The People, emerged from the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party of America led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit, who published their own edition of the SLP’s paper in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their ‘The People’ had the same banner, format, and numbering as their rival De Leon’s. The new group emerged as the Social Democratic Party and with a Chicago group of the same name these two Social Democratic Parties would become the Socialist Party of America at a 1901 conference. That same year the paper’s name was changed from The People to The Worker with publishing moved to New York City. The Worker continued as a weekly until December 1908 when it was folded into the socialist daily, The New York Call.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/060623-worker-v16n12.pdf