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Michael Davitt (, 1846 - 30 May , 1906 ) was an Irish Social Campaigner and Nationalist politician who founded the National Land League . EARLY YEARS Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo , Ireland , at the height of the Great Famine , the second of five children born to Martin and Sabina Davitt. When he was 6 years old his family was evicted from their home in Straide and his father travelled to find work in England, while his wife and family, refusing shelter in the Workhouse , were offered accommodation by the parish priest in Straide, Fr. John McHugh. In 1855 Mrs. Davitt and her children finally joined her husband in the industrial town of Haslingden in Lancashire . The young Davitt began working in a Cotton Mill at the age of 10 but within two years an accident with a spinning machine caused the Amputation of his right arm. Because of this injury he subsequently attended a Wesleyan school for two years, after which he worked for a printing firm. It was around this time that he became interested in Irish History and the contemporary Irish social situation. FENIANS In 1865, this interest led him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood , the organization in Ireland of the Fenians ; two years later he left off mill work to devote himeself full time to the IRB, as organising secretary in Northern England and Scotland . He was arrested in London in 1870 while awaiting a delivery of arms, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to 15 years in Dartmoor Prison . Here he was kept in strict isolation during the unremitted portion of his term. In prison he concluded that ownership of the land by the people was the only solution to Ireland’s problems. After he had served seven years, he was released along with other political prisoners on 19 December , 1877 , on a " Ticket Of Leave ". Davitt remained defiant. He became a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB . The British Government had introduced a concept of "fair rents" in the year of his arrest, but he continued to hold that the common people of Ireland could not improve their lot without the ownership of their land, and frequently insisted at Fenian meetings that "the land question can be definitely settled only by making the cultivators of the soil proprietors". In 1873 (while Davitt was imprisoned) his mother and three sisters had settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , and in the late 1870s, he traveled to United States , hoping to gain the support of Irish-American communities for his new policy of "The Land for the People". In was not until late in life that Davitt married, his wife being Mary Yore, of Oakland, California whom he married in 1886. In 1887 the couple returned to Ireland and lived in the Land League Cottage in Ballybrack , Dalkey , County Dublin that was given to them as a wedding present by the people of Ireland. They had five children, three boys and two girls, though one, Kathleen, died of tuberculosis aged 7, in 1895. THE LAND WAR Upon his return to Ireland in 1879, Davitt found the West of Ireland was once again experiencing near Famine conditions. It was one of the wettest years on record and the Potato crop had failed for the third successive year. At a large meeting attended by Davitt in Irishtown, County Mayo on 20 April plans were made for a huge campaign of agitation to reduce rents. The target was a local Roman Catholic priest, Canon Ulick Burke, who reduced his rents by 25% after a campaign of non-payment. On 16 August , 1879 , the Land League of Mayo was formally founded in Castlebar , with the active support of Charles Stewart Parnell . On October 21 it was superseded by the national Land League , of which Parnell was made President and Davitt was one of the secretaries. This united practically all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements under a single umbrella and, from then until 1882, the "Land War" in search of the "Three Fs" (i.e. Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) was fought in earnest. One of the actions taken by the Land League during this period was the campaign of ostracism against the land agent Captain Charles Boycott in the autumn of 1880. This incident led to Boycott abandoning Ireland in December and caused the word '' Boycott '' to be Coined . In 1881 Davitt was again imprisoned for his outspoken speeches, later released and arrested yet again in 1883. Upon his release in 1882, he campaigned for land nationalisation and an alliance between the British working class, Irish labourers and tenant farmers. In 1882 he was elected Member Of Parliament for County Meath but was disqualified from taking his seat as he was in prison at the time. He was subsequently elected for West Mayo in 1895. Despite his differences with Parnell on the land question, he was a strong supporter of the alliance between the Liberal Party and the Irish Nationalist Party and maintained this position in 1890 when the party split over Parnell's divorce. Davitt sided with the anti-Parnellite faction in the House Of Commons at Westminster but he became increasingly impatient with what he saw as the inability or unwillingness of that institution to right injustice. To further those ends Davitt initiated the ''Irish Democratic Labour Federation'' in 1890, an organisation which adopted an advanced social programme including proposals for free education, land settlement, worker housing, reduced working hours, labour political representation and universal sufferage, not least his conviction to which he adhered to all his life, that peasant land proprietorship must go hand in hand with land nationalisation. He left the Commons in 1896 with a prediction that "no just cause could succeed there unless backed by physical force." Parliament alleviated this need by granting full democratic control of all local affairs, a form of "grass roots home rule", to County and District Councils under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 . ACHIEVEMENTS It was mainly through Michael Davitt's unceasing efforts that more Land Acts followed Gladstone 's First Land Act Of 1870 . The most important of these was the Land Act Of 1881 , which finally granted "the three Fs" under Davitt's "Irish Democratic Land Federation". This was later followed by the Wyndham Land Act (1903), crafted by William O'Brien , a purchase act which offered generous inducement to the landlords to sell their estates to the tenents, the Irish Land Commission mediating to then collect land annuities instead of rents. At long last ownership of the land would be transferred from the landlords to the tenants. Davitt's ambitions had finally materialised although he himself was opposed to the Wyndham Act, objecting strongly to the landlords receiving any compensation for land which he felt belonged to the state, never giving up his adherence to land nationalisation. In 1898 he helped William O'Brien found his United Irish League and he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of the British Labour Party, as well as being an inspiration for D.D. Sheehan 's Irish Land And Labour Association (ILLA). Many years later Mahatma Gandhi even attributed the origin of his own mass movement of peaceful resistance in India to Davitt and the Land League. His other travels and extended tours included Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa, The Holy Land, South America, Russia and most of continental Europe including almost every part of Ireland and Britain. Davitt died in Elphis Hospital, Dublin on 30 May , 1906 , aged 60, from septic poisoning. The Lord Lieutenant Of Ireland attended the funeral, a public indication of the dramatic political journey taken by this former Fenian prisoner. The plan had been not to have a public funeral, and hence Davitt's body was brought quietly to the Carmelite Friary, Clarendon Street, Dublin. However, the next day over 20,000 people filed past his coffin. The remains were then brought by train to Foxford , County Mayo , and Davitt is buried in the grounds of Straide Abbey at Straide (near Foxford), near the town (Straide) where he was born. MEMORY At Straide, his birthplace, a museum now commemorates Davitt's life and works. The bridge from Achill Island to the mainland is named after him. The town of Haslingden has also commemorated Davitt's link with the locality by means of a public monument erected in the presence of Davitt's son. The inscription reads as follows: ''"This memorial has been erected to perpetuate the memory of Michael Davitt with the town of Haslingden. It marks the site of the home of Michael Davitt, Irish patriot, who resided in Haslingden from 1853 to 1867. / He became a great world figure in the cause of freedom and raised his voice and pen on behalf of the oppressed, irrespective of race or creed, that serfdom be transformed to citizenship and that man be given the opportunity to display his God given talents for the betterment of mankind. / Born 1846, died 1906. / Erected by the Irish Democratic League Club, Haslingden (Davitt Branch)."'' Irish folk musician Andy Irvine 's 1996 '' Patrick Street '' song, Forgotten Hero, is a tribute to Davitt. WRITINGS
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