Boycotts in Ireland - Past and Present
Introduction
‘I said, “I'm bothered about a word.”
“What is it?” asked Father John.
“Well,” I said, “When the people ostracise a land-grabber we call it social excommunication, but we ought to have an entirely different word to signify ostracism applied to a landlord or land-agent like Boycott. Ostracism won't do―the peasantry would not know the meaning of the word―and I can't think of any other.”
“No,” said Father John, “ostracism wouldn't do.”
He looked down, tapped his big forehead, and said: “How would it do to call it to Boycott him?”’(1)
The coining of the term boycott by Father John O’Malley, a priest and local leader of the Lough Mask, Co. Mayo, branch of the Irish National Land League is relayed to us by James Redpath—an American journalist who travelled to Ireland to cover the famine and land war in the west. Redpath was delighted with the term, and agreed to propagate it in his articles and speeches.
The land-agent in question was Captain Charles Boycott, who had been transferred to Ireland with the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot before falling ill and quitting the British army. Remaining in Ireland, Boycott found employment as the land-agent of the absentee landlord John Crichton, 3rd Earl of Erne. It was in this employ that his name became infamous.
Late Nineteenth Century Ireland
At the time of the first boycott, in late 1880, agriculture was the largest industry in Ireland. Irish farmers had to rent their land from landlords. Some of the estates owned by these landlords were colossal, just 750 landlords owned half of the land in Ireland. Many of these landlords were absentee, living either elsewhere in Ireland or in Britain, and employed agents to handle their business on their behalf. The landlords divided their estates into smaller holdings and rented these to farmers. The majority of farmers rented small plots of land, less than 50 acres, from the landlords. These tenant-farmers usually had one-year leases and could be evicted at any time, even if rent had been paid.
Irish tenant associations had been agitating for the ‘three Fs’ since at least the 1850s. The ‘three Fs’ were: Free Sale, Fixity of Tenure, and Fair Rent. ‘Free Sale’ meaning the tenant could sell interest to an incoming tenant without interference from the landlord. ‘Fixity of Tenure’ meaning a tenant could not be evicted if rent had been paid. ‘Fair Rent’ meaning that fair rents would be decided by courts and not by landlords.
The Fenians, seeing that the land question would be an avenue by which to pursue their desired separatism, had begun to organise farmers to oppose evictions and rent increases. Michael Davitt, recently released from prison for gun-running, founded the Irish National Land League in Dublin, 21st October 1879, and appointed Charles Stewart Parnell as its President.
In Ennis, Co. Clare, September 19th, 1880, Parnell gave the speech that would inspire the beginning of the boycott as a political strategy. The relevant extract is quoted:
‘I have seen that the more independence the Irish Party showed, the more respect it gained for itself and for Ireland… Now what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another tenant has been evicted?
(Several voices―“Shoot him.”)
‘I think I heard somebody say, “Shoot him.” I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another man has been evicted you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him; you must shun him in the streets of the town; you must shun him in the shop; you must shun him in the fairgreen, and in the marketplace, and even in the place of worship by leaving him alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his country as if he were the leper of old―you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed. If you do this you may depend on it there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men in the country and transgress your unwritten code of laws…’(2)
The First Boycott
The people of Co. Mayo were critical in leading the Land War fight. In Castlebar, on 26th October 1878, the Mayo Tenants Defence Association had been founded, and in Irishtown a monster meeting had been held on 20th April 1879 at which an estimated 20,000 people had attended. The Irish National Land League which superseded the Mayo Tenants Defence Association was founded by Davitt, himself from Mayo.
Lough Mask was an active Land League area, and led by the aforementioned Father John O'Malley. The year of 1880 had seen a poor harvest and Lord Erne had agreed on a ten per cent reduction in rent for his tenants. His tenants, however, demanded a twenty-five per cent reduction. Boycott wrote to Erne who refused to reduce the rents further, and, with the tenants holding firm, obtained eviction notices for eleven of the tenants.
The process of eviction required a process server to serve the head of the household or his wife with the eviction notice within a certain amount of time. The process server arrived with seventeen members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and began to serve notices. When he got to the Fiztmorris household, Mrs. Fitzmorris refused to accept the eviction notice and began to wave a red flag, alerting the people of the area to the ongoing process. The local women arrived and began to attack the process server and his bodyguard and drove them away. The following day they again attempted the evictions and again they were repelled.
The State of Ireland
On the 14th October, Boycott wrote a letter to The Times to draw attention to his situation, wherein he describes how the boycott was enacted against him:(3)
Sir,
The following detail may be interesting to your readers as exemplifying the power of the Land League. On the 22nd September a process-server, escorted by a police force of seventeen men, retreated to my house for protection, followed by a howling mob of people, who yelled and hooted at the members of my family. On the ensuing day, September 23rd, the people collected in crowds upon my farm, and some hundred or so came up to my house and ordered off, under threats of ulterior consequences, all my farm labourers, workmen, and stablemen, commanding them never to work for me again. My herd has been frightened by them into giving up his employment, though he has refused to give up the house he held from me as part of his emolument.
Another herd on an off farm has also been compelled to resign his situation. My blacksmith has received a letter threatening him with murder if he does any more work for me, and my laundress has also been ordered to give up my washing. A little boy, twelve years of age, who carried my post-bag to and from the neighbouring town of Ballinrobe, was struck and threatened on 27th September, and ordered to desist from his work; since which time I have sent my little nephew for my letters and even he, on 2nd October, was stopped on the road and threatened if he continued to act as my messenger.
The shopkeepers have been warned to stop all supplies to my house, and I have just received a message from the post mistress to say that the telegraph messenger was stopped and threatened on the road when bringing out a message to me and that she does not think it safe to send any telegrams which may come for me in the future for fear they should be abstracted and the messenger injured. My farm is public property; the people wander over it with impunity. My crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities, and destroyed wholesale. The locks on my gates are smashed, the gates thrown open, the walls thrown down, and the stock driven out on the roads. I can get no workmen to do anything, and my ruin is openly avowed as the object of the Land League unless I throw up everything and leave the country. I say nothing about the danger to my own life, which is apparent to anybody who knows the country.
CHARLES C. BOYCOTT
Following the publication of this letter, Boycott was interviewed by the Daily News where he described the conditions of his ostracism. The story was reprinted in the Belfast News-Letter and Daily Express, which also published a call to action to save Boycott’s crops. £2,000 was raised to fund a relief expedition to save Boycott’s crops. The Boycott Relief Fund, as it was called, asked for an armed expedition from Ulster to Lough Mask. The Freeman’s Journal asked:
‘How is it that this Government does not consider it necessary to prosecute the promoters of these warlike expeditions?’
The expedition did eventually proceed to Mayo—unarmed—after the Chief Secretary for Ireland, William Forster, made it clear that an armed expedition numbering in the hundreds would not be allowed. Boycott himself requested only a dozen unarmed labourers. The Land League made it clear that there would be no trouble if the expedition’s aims were only to harvest the crops. Forster, however, insisted that the expedition be protected. The expedition consisted of fifty Orangemen from Cavan and Monaghan protected by the 19th Royal Hussars and more than 1,000 members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. While there was no violence, the expedition and its armed bodyguard did face protests en route to Lough Mask House. The total cost of harvesting Boycott’s crops was estimated to be £10,000. The crops themselves were worth about £500.
The Aftermath
The Land League had placed enough pressure on Boycott to make life impossible for him in the country. Failing to evict the tenants, he chose to flee Ireland. He was unable to secure anyone local to drive a carriage that had been hired to effect his departure. A British army ambulance and driver had to be sent instead. He was delivered to Claremorris train station and from there he took a train to Dublin. He had to cut his stay in Dublin short as the hotel had been threatened with boycotting if he remained. He promptly left for Britain.
The boycott had proven to be a successful strategy and by the end of that year, 1880, there were boycotts being put into action across Ireland. The Land League had found a weapon to be used against the landlords and their agents.
William Gladstone, the English Prime Minister, worried by the strength of the Land League, brought about discussions of land reform. In April 1881 the Land Law Act was passed, which established a principle of dual-ownership and implemented the ‘three Fs’.
This was a significant victory but it was not without costs. Parnell and other Land League leaders were brought to trial on charges of conspiracy to prevent the payment of rent. The jury was hung with ten to two in favour of acquittal. Later a new Coercion Act, the Protection of Persons and Property Act 1881, was passed, which legalised internment without trial for persons suspected of engaging in Land War activity. Parnell, Davitt, and other Land League leaders were again arrested under this new act and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol. The act lasted until 1894 and in total 953 people were interned.
The significance of the boycott strategy should not be underestimated. Parnell had tamed the agrarian violence that followed in the wake of the evictions of that period, and with his non-violent tactic of boycotting, had successfully brought the British government to concessions, although, at a significant cost.
The Anti-Convict Association in Cape Town
Decades prior to the first boycott at Lough Mask, in 1848, John Mitchel—the famous Irish Republican—was, in his own words, kidnapped. He had been arrested and prosecuted under a new law, Treason Felony, and sentenced to transportation. He was first transported on the Dromedary to Bermuda. His health failing in the Bermuda climate, he was transported instead to South Africa, aboard the convict vessel Neptune. Mitchel described the following events(4) in his Jail Journal.
The colonists of the Cape in South Africa had been under the impression that no colony would be made a penal settlement, due to assurances from the British press and the Colonial Minister. These assurances were entirely fraudulent, as the colonists found out, but the Neptune was already sailing for the Cape. Mitchel describes how the colonists responded to the news that their colony was to be made a dumping ground for the British empire’s felons:
‘So, during the whole of our five months’ voyage, a most vehement excitement has been growing and spreading all over South Africa. The people have forced the Legislative Council to dissolve itself—the Governor, Sir Harry Smith, was compelled a month ago to promise that when the Neptune should arrive, he would not suffer one convict to land; and the colonists themselves, tradesmen, merchants, butchers, bakers, inn-keepers and all, have combined to a man in an universal “Anti-Convict Association”, vowing that they will neither employ any convict, sell anything to any convict, give a convict a place to lay his head, or deal with, countenance, or speak to, any traitor who may so comfort or abet a convict, from the governor down to the black coolies and boatmen. As we were so long at sea, the excitement and effective organisation had time to grow strong—newspapers, public meetings, pulpits, had been loud and furious; and so, when we, all unconscious, sailed up False Bay to-day, the Cape was fully ready for us.’
As it so happens, the colonists had made an exception for Mitchel:
‘Dr. Stewart, “health-officer” of the port; gave me some newspapers which he had brought for me, and told me, that so far as I am concerned there is no objection to my landing on the part of the people—that they understand quite well how I happen to be here, that none of this agitation, “of course,” has reference to me and so forth—adding somewhat of an apologetic nature about the popular violence. I told him I was delighted to find the colonists so determined to resist the abominable outrage attempted by “Government”—that they were completely in the right, and hoped they would stand out to the last extremity—that as to myself, though everybody indeed knew I was no felon, yet I could not expect the people here to make distinctions in my favour: they were engaged in a great struggle, involving the very existence of their society, and could not afford to attend to particular exceptions.’
The society that the Dutch farmers had created for themselves in the Cape was seen as simple and idyll. The Boers were fanatical and resolute—and armed. More from Mitchel:
‘When the matter was explained to them, how that a shipload of convicted criminals, Bandieten, from England and Ireland were sent by Graaf Grey to be let loose upon their country, and when the orators enlarged upon the circumstances and way of living of these colonists, dwelling on lonely farms, the men often from home for weeks together—often traversing unfrequented plains and mountain passes with their bullock-waggons as they carry their produce to the seaports—and when they reminded them that heretofore they have never needed lock or bar by day or night, nor felt a moment’s uneasiness when absent from their families—and then pictured the horrors of this bandit invasion, and told them terrific stories of the atrocities of Australian bush-rangers, until their imaginations were excited to the utmost, and they thought of Lord Grey’s “exiles” as a band of preternatural desperadoes, coming with an express mission to rob, ravish, burn, and murder—Donner en blitzen! the worthy farmers, in hot Dutch wrath, not only adopted the pledge by acclamation, and signed it on the spot, but swore, gutturally, lifting their hands to heaven, that they never would submit to this wrong—would renounce their allegiance rather, and take up their rifles to repel the felon invasion with more hearty goodwill than ever they had marched against Caffirs. And the stout Boers are like to be as good as their word: I trust they are—one would gladly fall in upon some corner of the world where men who threaten loud have some notion of putting their threats into execution.’
A number of prominent citizens thereafter signed their names to a press announcement(5), declaring their intent not to waver in the face of Britain’s imperial agenda:
‘The Undersigned Inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope having learned that in violation of the pledge given by Lord Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies, conveyed to the Colonists, through His Excellency the Governor, his Lordship has resolved to convert this Colony intoa Penal Settlement, on the worst and most dangerous principles, in defiance of the petitions and remonstrances of Her Majesty’s faithful subjects, presented to Her Majesty, in 1842—and said to have been graciously received—and also to both Houses of Parliament:—
‘We hereby declare and solemnly promise to each other, and to all our fellow Colonists, that we will not employ in any capacity, or receive on any terms into our establishments, anyone of the Convicted Felons, whom the Secretary of State for the Colonies has ordered to be transported to our shores and turned loose among us, under the designation of “Exiles”, or Convicts holding Tickets of Leave.
‘And we hereby call upon his Excellency the Governor, in the exercise of that discretionary power with which the Governor of every distant Colony is virtually vested, for the protection of his province against sudden or unforeseen dangers—to prohibit and prevent the landing at any port or place within the Colony of any such convicted Felons, and to convey to Her Majesty, by the first opportunity, this expression of the grief, shame, and indignation with which this breach of faith, on the part of the Secretary for the Colonies, has filled every loyal heart.’
Six months after landing in Simon’s Bay, the Neptune was ordered to sail for Van Diemen’s Land. The Anti-Convict Association was victorious.
While the term boycott is not often applied to the Anti-Convict Association’s activities, its pledge to entirely ostracise the convicts or anyone who might facilitate or aid the Neptune in lodging its convicts at the Cape, is by every means a boycott in practice.
The Modern Boycott
The descriptions of boycotts above are at odds with how boycotts are conceived of in the present. The boycott as it is applied now may be better described as ‘moral purchasing’ given that it entails encouraging consumers to avoid purchasing products produced or handled by the boycotted entity.
The most prominent boycott movement of this kind at present may be the pro-Palestine BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement. Boycotters are encouraged to completely refrain from purchasing goods which are in any way associated with Israel.
This form of moral purchase is at odds with the boycotting mode that was applied in the past, the object of the tactic is now a consumer good, and the target a corporation or a state.
Parnell described boycotting as ‘putting him into a moral Coventry’. To send someone to Coventry is a British idiom meaning to ostracise someone, and therefore his addition of ‘moral’ to the idiom provides a better view into a divergence in boycotting methods: moral purchasing versus moral ostracising.
Moral purchasing boycotts predate the origin of the term boycott, consider the boycotting of British goods in the Thirteen Colonies which later became the United States. Davitt(6), in The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, claims that the inspiration for social ostracism originates with the Americans of Massachusetts.
The Return of Ostracism
In East Wall, in late 2022, a protest movement began—impromptu—initially in opposition to asylum centres being placed in deprived communities. What began as isolated gatherings of concerned residents grew in the intervening years into a nation-wide protest movement. Town after town sprang up to defy the state’s immigration policy. Tens of thousands marched in Dublin in protest.
The movement has been mostly peaceful, consisting of public demonstrations against state policy or blockades of to-be asylum centres. On occasion the movement has not been peaceful. Prospective refuges were burnt; migrants were forced into communities by the baton of the Public Order Unit; Dublin, Coolock, and Newtownmountkennedy rioted.
All of the above has received much attention already. One thing that has gone almost entirely unremarked upon is the floating of ostracism as a political weapon in Ireland again.
Following the disorder in Newtownmountkennedy a caller-in to the Niall Boylan Show commented—in relation to the disproportionate violence of the Public Order Unit—that people should begin to ostracise Gardaí in their communities(7).
A few days later in Aughrim, Darren McGovern—at the time a candidate for Derek Blighe’s Ireland First party—led a group in convincing a contractor to stop work on an asylum centre. The contractor was reasoned and bargained with and threats were also issued(8).
The next year, at a protest in Carrickmacross, Monaghan, Cllr. Seamus Treanor compared the landlords who profit from state asylum accommodation contracts to the English landlords of the Famine, and the crowd demanded to know the names of said landlords(9).
The next day a protest took place in Letterkenny, Donegal. One of the speakers at the protest spoke: ‘The greedy landlords and the traitors in this country: these people need ostracised in this community. They shouldn’t get a cup of coffee, they shouldn’t get a drink in the bloody bar. These people need to be brought out as the absolute traitors to this country that they are.’(10)
And later a report from Carrickmacross declared: ‘A landlord that has brought terror to our town was told to get out of a certain business in town yesterday and would not serve him.’(11)
While nothing approaching the scale of the Land War’s boycotts has yet been implemented, the trend is beginning to emerge in the psyche of the movement. Tentative probes are being made towards ostracism.
It has been remarked that history does not repeat, but that it does rhyme. Echoes of the past are visible in Ireland today. Wealthy landholders receiving millions in state contracts brings to mind the Famine, and the depositing of unwanted men into heretofore calm and idyll towns without consultation brings to mind the Cape.
It remains to be seen if this looming threat will ever manifest, but as Irish people across the country continue to organise in opposition to the state’s policies, and the state shows no sign of backing down, time will tell whether ‘moral ostracism’ or Irish boycotting has life.
Footnotes
Marlow, J. (1973). Captain Boycott and the Irish. New York, Saturday Review Press, p. 145.
Parnell, C. S. (1880) 'Ennis Speech', Cartlann. Available at: https://cartlann.org/authors/charles-stewart-parnell/ennis-speech/ (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
Boycott, Charles Arthur. (1997). Boycott: the life behind the word; the life and times in England and in Ireland and the unusual family background of Charles Cunningham Boycott. Ludlow: Carbonel. p. 232
Mitchel, John (1913). Jail Journal, Cartlann. Available at: https://cartlann.org/authors/john-mitchel/jail-journal/chapter-xi/ (Accessed: 8 May 2025).
Immelman, R. F. M. (2013). Hercules Crosse Jarvis (1803-1889)—A Biography. Available at: https://www.moltenofamily.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hercules-Jarvis-a-draft-biography-pdf.pdf (Accessed: 9 May 2025).
Dungan, Myles. (2024). Shunned. Ostracised. Excommunicated … Boycotted. The tribulations of Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott. Available at: https://www.theirishstory.com/2024/05/03/shunned-ostracised-excommunicated-boycotted-the-tribulations-of-captain-charles-cunningham-boycott/ (Accessed 9 May 2025).
Boylan, Niall. (2024). 'What's Happening at Newtownmountkennedy Part 2'. The Niall Boylan Show at 38 minutes. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/hr/podcast/whats-happening-at-newtownmountkennedy-part-2/id1545083123?i=1000653708666 (Accessed: 9 May 2025).
Murphy, Gearóid . (2024). Available at: https://x.com/gearoidmurphy_/status/1784951407264563411 (Accessed: 9 May 2025).
The Burkean. (2025). Carrickmacross and Letterkenny: Ulster Takes a Stand Against Mass Immigration. Available at: https://www.theburkean.ie/articles/2025/05/06/carrickmacross-and-letterkenny-ulster-takes-a-stand-against-mass-immigration (Accessed: 9 May 2025).
@latestageireland. (2025). 6 May 2025. Available at: https://www.tiktok.com/@latestageireland/video/7500285584112356630 (Accessed: 9 May 2025).
Archive. Available at: https://archive.ph/wIiyM (Accessed: 9 May 2025).