74 Facts About Michael Davitt

Michael Davitt was an Irish republican activist for a variety of causes, especially Home Rule and land reform.

Michael Davitt began his career as an organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which resisted British rule in Ireland with violence.

Michael Davitt travelled widely, giving lectures around the world, supported himself through journalism, and served as Member of Parliament for the Irish Parliamentary Party during the 1890s.

Michael Davitt's Georgist views on the land question put him on the left wing of Irish nationalism, and he was a vociferous advocate of alliance between the Radical faction of the Liberal Party and the IPP.

Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo, Ireland, on 25 March 1846 during the Great Famine.

Michael Davitt was the third of five children born to Martin and Catherine Davitt, tenant farmers of little means who spoke Irish as the family language.

In 1850, when Michael Davitt was four years old, his family was evicted due to arrears in rent.

Michael Davitt later claimed that this event, which he remembered, had brought about all of the family's ills.

Michael Davitt began working at the age of nine as a labourer in a cotton mill.

Michael Davitt joined the Mechanics' Institute and continued to read and study, attending lectures on various topics.

The Chartist movement lasted longer in Lancaster than elsewhere, and Michael Davitt later recalled that Chartist leader Ernest Charles Jones was the first Englishman Michael Davitt had heard denounce landlordism in Ireland.

Michael Davitt enjoyed the approval of his parents and was elected leader of the local Rossendale chapter of about fifty IRB members.

In February 1867, Michael Davitt led fifty Fenians on a failed raid on Chester Castle to obtain arms for the planned Fenian Rising that took place later that year.

Michael Davitt learned that the police had heard of the plan and were lying in wait and managed to extricate his men from the situation without being caught.

In 1869, authorities obtained a letter that Michael Davitt had written to IRB member Arthur Forrester, urging him not to go through with the execution of a suspected informer.

Michael Davitt believed that he had had neither fair hearing nor adequate defence counsel.

Michael Davitt was paroled on 19 December 1877, having served seven and a half years, following pressure from the Home Rule League for an amnesty for all Irish political prisoners.

Michael Davitt published a book about his prison experience, and began a campaign for the release of remaining Fenian prisoners.

Michael Davitt's popularity caused him to try his hand at writing and lecturing, which he discovered he had a talent for.

Michael Davitt rejoined the IRB, and became a member of its Supreme Council representing Northern England.

Shortly before his arrest, Michael Davitt had persuaded his family to emigrate to the United States.

In July 1878, Michael Davitt made a trip to visit them and raise money through a lecture tour to bring his mother and youngest sister back to Ireland.

In meetings with Irish-American Fenians, Michael Davitt developed the strategy called the "New Departure", an informal collaboration between the physical-force and parliamentary wings of Irish nationalism focusing on the land reform campaign.

Parnell was made its president and Michael Davitt was one of its secretaries.

In May 1880, following Parnell's tour of the United States, Michael Davitt travelled there to raise funds for the Land League, specifically for political action to free Irish peasants "from the humiliation of a beggar's position".

Michael Davitt attended the first convention of the Central Provisional Council of the American Land League, at which he was appointed secretary of the organisation.

Michael Davitt served most of his second term of incarceration at Portland Prison, under much better conditions than previously, owing to his fame and concern over his health.

Michael Davitt was allowed books and continued to study agrarian theory.

Michael Davitt became enamoured of the ideas of Henry George and abandoned the idea of peasant proprietorship in favour of land nationalisation.

In June and July 1882, Michael Davitt travelled to the United States on a lecture tour.

Michael Davitt denounced both the bombings and the British government's excesses.

Michael Davitt was a frequent visitor to Scotland, and became closely associated with the crofters' struggles in the Highlands and Islands.

Michael Davitt urged the Irish immigrant population to integrate into the politics of their adopted country and in particular the infant Labour movement.

Michael Davitt worked closely with John Ferguson, the Irish leader in Glasgow who had been involved in the Crofters' War agitation by Highland tenant farmers in the early 1880s and later in the Irish-Radical political alliance that was the forerunner of the Scottish Labour Party.

Michael Davitt married an Irish-American woman, Mary Yore, on 30 December 1886 in Oakland, California; he had met her on his 1880 tour.

The couple settled in a cottage in Ballybrack, County Dublin, the only gift that Michael Davitt ever accepted from his admirers.

One of their sons, Robert Michael Davitt, became a TD, while another, Cahir Michael Davitt, became President of the High Court.

From 1880, when he published his first pieces in Irish World, Michael Davitt made his income from journalism.

Michael Davitt had long aspired to edit his own paper, and founded the socialist penny weekly Labour World in September 1890.

Michael Davitt's paper covered a wide variety of topics, including foreign news, the plight of agricultural labourers, and women in the workplace.

When Parnell's extramarital affair with Katharine O'Shea was exposed in 1890, Michael Davitt asked him to step down.

When Parnell refused to step down, Michael Davitt sided with the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation and became one of Parnell's most vociferous critics, "reveal[ing] a rather unpleasant talent for personal invective" according to Boyce.

Michael Davitt believed that the IPP put too much stake in parliamentary politics and that it could accomplish more working outside of the system.

Michael Davitt had a visceral dislike for Westminster, which he referred to as "parliamentary pentitentiary", and was aware that entering into Parliament alienated his Fenian supporters abroad.

Michael Davitt was elected for North Meath in the 1892 general election, but his election was overturned on petition because he had been supported by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Michael Davitt stood unopposed for North East Cork at a by-election in February 1893, making his maiden speech in favour of the Home Rule Bill in April, which passed the House of Commons but was defeated in the Lords in September.

For seven months in 1895, Michael Davitt toured Australia and New Zealand to restore his finances.

Michael Davitt noted that Western Australia had gotten its own Parliament with a population of some 45,000, while the five million people in Ireland had been denied Home Rule.

On many issues, Michael Davitt supported the British Labour leader Keir Hardie and favoured the foundation of a Labour Party, but his commitment to the Liberal Party for the sake of Home Rule prevented him joining the new party, resulting in a breach with Hardie.

Michael Davitt then co-founded, with William O'Brien, the United Irish League, an organisation that advocated the redistribution of grazing land to small farmers.

At the time O'Brien was politically isolated due to the controversial nature of land redistribution and Michael Davitt was one of the only veterans willing to work with him.

Michael Davitt and John Dillon were touring the United States to raise funds when the 1902 Land Conference was held, and by their return the Land Purchase Act 1903, masterminded by O'Brien, was a fait accompli.

Michael Davitt criticised what he saw as the overly generous provisions for landlords to sell their estates to the tenants, the Irish Land Commission mediating to then collect land annuities instead of rents, on the grounds that the land rightfully belonged to the people.

Michael Davitt died in Elpis Hospital, Dublin on 30 May 1906, aged 60, of septicaemia arising from complications in a tooth extraction.

Michael Davitt believed that the landlord system was feudal in nature and had been imposed on Ireland by the British.

Michael Davitt's ideas were heavily shaped by his association with Henry George, and he cited thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett and Bonamy Price in his writings advocating radical land reform.

Michael Davitt came to agree with George that tenancy reform would not achieve "land for the people".

Michael Davitt foresaw that public funds spent on land purchases would never benefit landless labourers, and believed that the resulting smallholdings would eventually be consolidated into estates.

Michael Davitt pioneered a line of argument aimed at securing the support of the British working classes, which claimed that Home Rule for Ireland, by improving conditions there, would reduce Irish emigration to Britain and economic competition with British workers.

Michael Davitt was opposed to the influence of clergy in politics, and was determined to perpetuate the inclusive nationalism of the Young Ireland movement, rather than let Irish nationalism transmute into a sectarian Catholic movement.

Unlike many other Irish nationalist leaders, Michael Davitt was in favour of women's suffrage.

Moody, hatred of the British Empire and landlordism "was in his blood", but having grown up in England, Michael Davitt held positive views on English people and understood the priorities of the working class in England.

Michael Davitt opposed the random use of force, such as by the Ribbon societies.

In 1903, Michael Davitt travelled to Kishinev, Bessarabia in the Russian Empire as "special commissioner to investigate the massacres of the Jews" on behalf of Hearst's New York American, becoming one of the first foreign journalists to report on the Kishinev pogrom.

In 1898 at a meeting in Tonypandy, Michael Davitt launched what Biagini called an "anti-Semitic tirade" against George Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, arguing that he "represented that class of bond-holders, and usurers, and mostly money-lenders for whom that infamous Egyptian war was waged".

Michael Davitt opposed the 1904 Limerick boycott against the Limerick Jewish community organised by the Redemptorist priest John Creagh, stating in the Freeman's Journal that Limerick citizens would "not allow the fair name of Catholic Ireland to be sullied through an anti-Jewish crusade".

Henry Hyndman reported that Michael Davitt believed Russia would be better off without any Jews.

Michael Davitt's view of Irish history was deeply shaped by his family's experiences during the Great Famine, and Davitt subscribed to the popular view that it was an "artificial famine" which the British government chose not to alleviate.

Michael Davitt's version of the Land War, that it was an uncomplicated struggle between landlords and tenants, was widely accepted, but has been complicated by later scholarship.

Moody, who disagreed with Michael Davitt's conclusions, admitted that the book "contains a wealth of information", is reliable for facts, and far exceeds the work of his contemporaries.

The Michael Davitt Bridge connects Achill Island to the mainland.

Michael Davitt inaugurated the first bridge in 1887, and it was replaced in 1947 but retained the name.

The centenary of Michael Davitt's death saw the unveiling of a plaque at the Portree Hotel, Portree, Isle of Skye, commemorating his role in the Highland land agitation of the 1880s.

On 29 May 2019, Dearcan Media's Irish-language documentary, Michael Davitt: Radacach premiered on TG4.