Review of Bew

8/2/2019 Review of Bew

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Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858-82 by Paul BewReview by: Donald JordanSocial History, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Oct., 1981), pp. 390-393Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4285118 .

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390 Social History VOL 6: NO 3very means by which state officials destroyed the republicanism of 1848. By callingattention to the burgeoning role of the bureaucratic state and in uncovering the innerworkings of its underground republican opposition, Margadant has produced what islikely to be considered the definitive work on the French insurrection of I i.

Edward BerensonUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland, i858-82 (I978), 307 (Gilland Macmillan, Dublin, ?i1.2o).It has long been one of the curious features of Irish historiography that historians havebeen content to view the land war of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, arguablyone of the most important rural protest movements in recent European history, primarilyas a feature of the larger nationalist struggle. As a result, analyses of the land movementhave been auxiliary to analyses of the Irish nationalist movement and its leaders. In theirdetermination to break down the nationalist myths and provide 'objective' studies oflate-nineteenth-century Irish politics, Irish historians have, until recently, allowed themyth of the land war as the 'militant consensus of a risen people' (Bew, 220) to gorelatively unchallenged. Far from representing an anti-landlord or anti-English consensusamong rural people, the land agitation was often conditioned by serious divisions betweensmall and large farmers and between farmers and agricultural labourers which gave theland war the appearance of being a civil war amongst the Irish themselves. This conflict,leading to the eventual political and economic victory of the large farmers, had aconsiderable impact on the nationalist movement and on post-treaty Irish politics.Consequently, careful studies of the social base and political goals of the land agitationare long overdue.

Appropriately 1979, the centennial of the beginning of the land war, saw theappearance of two substantial studies of the agrarian agitation (the first since thepublication of N. D. Palmer's, The Irish Land League Crisis (Yale University Press, NewHaven, Conn.) twenty-nine years ago): Paul Bew, Land and the National Question inIreland, I858-82 and Samuel Clark, The Social Origins of the Irish Land War (PrincetonUniversity Press, Princeton, N.J.). It is fitting that Bew's study was the first to appear.In it Bew bridges the gap between the concerns of traditional political historians suchas F. S. L. Lyons with nationalist politics and the interests of social historians such asSamuel Clark in the social base of the agitation and in the politicization of rural society.On the one hand, Bew's meticulous exploitation of familiar sources and his care fordetailed analysis of the complexities of the 'Irish question' within the Liberal and Irishparties places him well within the tradition of Irish political historians. Yet he pushesthat tradition into new territory with his belief that 'the policies of the leadership canonly be understood by reference to the nature of the Land League as a mass movement'(219) which was based on a fragile rural 'class alliance'.Bew's book revolves around two theses. The first is that the land agitation, far frombeing dominated by the violent and illegal actions of a united peasantry, was in fact a'class struggle' in which 'highly legalistic strategies' were employed. These strategieswere altered several times in response to 'the class struggle within the Land Leaguealliance' (I 90), most significantly to accommodate the prosperous farmers as they


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OctoberI98I Reviews 39Ientered the agitation. The second thesis is that Parnell was significant not as a 'majorpolitical strategist' but as 'a catalyst in the movement which he led' (228). Bew arguesthat Parnell was 'wrong' in seeing land reform as a means of removing the remainingobstacle to landlord participation in the Home Rule movement. But by his purposefulambiguity, his unwillingness to make 'an accurate statement when there was a suitableexaggeration available' (143) Parnell prevented the movement from splitting wide open,allowing for a reduction in the mutual antagonism between neo-Fenians and HomeRulers.

The first of these theses is the more provocative and has the greatest potential forchallenging the accepted views of the land war, while the second, given the nature ofBew's sources and documentation, is more convincingly demonstrated.

Irish social history remains in its infancy and as a consequence we do not yet havesufficient understanding of social organization to provide a base for diagnosing thepolitical significance of rural class divisions. Bew adopts the expedient of dividing theisland along rural class lines: the west for smallholders, the south for agriculturallabourers and the east and south-east for large and middle-sized farmers. While thesebroadly accurate divisions may be useful for understanding the spread of the movementfrom west to south and east, they do little to aid our understanding of the regional 'classalliances' which gave the movement much of its vigour or of the class divisions whichweakened the movement as the prosperous farmers gained the upper hand in influencingLand League policy. For example, in explaining the importance of the small tenantryof Connaught in initiating the agitation, Bew argues that the 'relative absence of themedium-sized tenant... meant that antagonisms between the small farmers and the large'ranchers' were... much more open and direct' (87). He goes on to argue that thesmallholders of Connaught were capable of initiating militant action because 'relationsof dependence' between smallholders and the 'dominant classes' did not exist 'as faras the smallholders of the West were concerned' (90). This suggestive argument for thepolitical potency of smallholders is pivotal to Bew's thesis, but by posing the classtensions in Connaught in terms of the extremes he ignores the complex alignments ofclass, kinship, economic relations and religious sentiment which Eric Wolf, among others,has demonstrated have a profound impact on the nature of rural protest (Peasant Warsof the Twentieth Century, Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1973). Unfortunatelythere are similar instances elsewhere in the book where Bew's case falters when a clearunderstanding of the mechanism of social organization and class tension in rural Irelandis required.

He is more successful in his effort to shift the focus of historical attention away fromoutrage and boycotting and towards the 'legalistic strategies' of the Land League. ForBew outrage and boycotting, while visible and dramatic forms of protest, were relativelyinsignificant as strategies of the Land League. Far more important were the legal tactics:the use of the courts to exploit loopholes in the I870 Land Act to thwart ejectments,and employment of all legal obstructions in order to delay the payment of rent and forcethe landlord to 'collect rent at the point of the bayonet'. The first of these tactics wasassociated with Connaught during the first six months of I88o and was, Bew argues,particularly suited to the needs of the smallholders. It afforded them an opportunity toavoid ejectment while often compelling their landlords to postpone or reduce their rents,all at the expense of the League. This plan had the disadvantage of confining the mostimportant battles of the agitation to the inside of a courtroom - hardly the kind ofdramatic activity thought necessary for the expansion of the movement outside


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392 Social History VOL 6: NO 3Connaught - while also being very expensive, especially when the requests to the Leaguefor legal defences surged in the wake of the early successes. It had the furtherdisadvantage of not being attractive to the large farmers of the east and south-east whoby Spring I 88o were clamouring for a substantial role in League affairs. They were moreconcerned with lowering their rents to levels commensurate with the decline in theirincomes than with being evicted for inability to pay rent at all. Nor were they willingto risk their sizeable farms and investments on appeals to 'English' courts.

The second 'legalistic strategy', 'rent at the point of the bayonet' which wasinaugurated in Leinster and Munster in late i 88o was, Bew argues forcefully, the strategyof the large farmers and reflected their growing importance in the movement. Bew claims,on rather slim evidence, that this strategy was in keeping with 'the spontaneous localpractice of the stronger peasantry' (122). More persuasively he argues that this tactic'with its low level risk and easy martyrdoms' was 'perfectly suited ... to the ruralbourgeoisie' (122). Bew concludes that 'rent at the point of the bayonet' was the'dominant strategy' of the agitation. 'It is the conflict around the validity and politicalnature of this policy which, in conjunction with the better-known coercion-concessiondialectic, punctuated the rhythm of the land war in the crucial period from Februaryto October i 88 i' (222).

By identifying the class base of these strategies Bew has provided a compelling theoryof the way in which the large farmers captured the initiative in the land agitation anddii-ected it towards ends of which they were the primary beneficiaries. This wasaccomplished against the will and the interests of the smallholders and over the protestof western-based radicals such as Matt Harris and Michael Davitt. The 'rural bour-geoisie' was the chief beneficiary of Parnell's success as a 'catalyst' since by holding themovement together he partially muted the dissatisfaction with the change in the classbase of League policy. As Bew puts it, 'even at their most radical his (Parnell's) ideasnever appeared to be incompatible with the opportunism of the rural bourgeoisie' (143).

In his determination to emphasize the 'legalistic' nature of Land League strategiesBew displays an insensitivity to the specifically local traditions of protest. Boycotts,outrage, harassment of process servers and the operation of Land League courts werevehicles through which local grievances and traditions of protest infused vitality intothe national agrarian movement. Boycotting, as Joseph Lee has argued, 'which demandedremarkable self discipline and total communal participation fostered a widespread senseof personal involvement in the struggle.' (The Modernization of Irish Society, I848-I 9I 8,Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1973, 94.) Similarly, the Land League courts whichprovided an alternative justice system in which offences and punishments were definedby the local branch of the League stimulated participation in the agitation. By discountingthe importance of these activities Bew weakens his case for the relationship between socialdivisions and the forms of agrarian agitation.

This is an important but not completely successful book. It is important because itasks long overdue questions about the social base of power in rural Ireland. Byacknowledging that 'class warfare' was a vital aspect of the land and national agitationBew has provided a thesis which will stimulate some much needed controversy on socialorganization and class structure in Ireland. Yet while his thesis is often compelling itis not adequately demonstrated or documented in this book. His sources - newspapers,private papers of political leaders, memoirs and speeches - provide excellent documen-tation for detailed discussions of political events, but little material for analysing the socialbase of political thought and action. Bew has not provided the thorough exposition of


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October I98I Reviews 393the complexities of Irish society which his thesis demands. Instead he ascribes a causalrelationship to rather simple class divisions which are geographically rather thanhistorically defined. Donald Jordan

University of California, Davis

John Clarke, Charles Critcher and Richard Johnson (eds), Working ClassCulture. Studies in History and Theory (1979), 301 (Hutchinson, ?8.95; paper-back ?.3-95).This is a valuable and timely work. The enterprise of the Centre for ContemporaryCultural Studies in making working-class culture the object of serious study is hererendered more serious and productive still by a very necessary theoretical engagement.The ground of this theory is history, and one of its implied aims the dissolution ofunproductive intellectual specialisms. That the book will raise hackles seems clear, notleast in some Marxist circles. This, however, is testimony to how little, not how far, theconcerns of this volume have entered upon the terrain of the academy, especially thehistorical academy. One wishes the collection well, though in terms of its own ambitioustheoreticalagenda, and especially the alignment of this and the substantive studies, thereis much cause for critical commentary. The collection is comprised of two review articleson historical and sociological approachesto working-class culture, six studies of differentaspects of this culture and two theoretical pieces. The presence of one contributor,Richard Johnson, is especially apparent, usually in the most interesting parts of thevolume.The theoretical position taken up involves a synthesis of orthodox Marxism, what ishere dubbed 'culturalism', and Marxist structuralism. A critical distance from all thesepositions is maintained, though in the attempt to restore the mode of the production tothe centre of cultural analysis it is the middle term of the three - chiefly represented inthe work of E. P. Thompson - that elicits the most critical comment. The positionadopted recognizes the complex articulation of economy, cultureand ideology, andbringsin its train recognitions of British popular culture of great importance, especially the bynow long overdue refusal to collapse this culture into some primordial, unitary essence.Instead, we are alertedto the reproductionof popular culture as radicallyheterogeneousand contradictory. Differentiation by region, occupation, gender and so on has beenaccompanied by differentiation in the domain of cognition; the reconstitution undercapitalism of commonsense, the knowledge of what seems 'natural' in the world.Unfortunately, this area is little developed in the collection and the due scepticism thatmight issue from a mode of production analysis minutely inspecting, say, Foucault's'historyless history' (on knowledge as power) is not forthcoming. This absence issymptomatic, but to this reviewer's mind the book's great virtue is that it redirectsattention to economic relations, and especially the labour process, as the problematiccentre of cultural formation, and thus to what a Marxist history might be.

The difficulties are addressed most directly in Johnson's theoretical piece. The draw-backs of an excessive concentration on 'experience' and 'culture' are real. The eclecticMarxism that glues so much 'social history' together today tends to conflate the con-ceptually distinct categories of economy and culture, leading often to an excessiveemphasis on human agency and will, and sometimes to a romantic veneration of popularculture. What is lost to view in this is the subordination of labour to capital. This is

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