The Irish National League and the 'unwritten law': rural protest and nation-building in Ireland, 1882-1890

Past & Present, Feb, 1998 by Donald Jordan

II

The code had other components as well, such as strictures against participating in evictions, fraternizing with, or entering into, commerce with anyone who did; or working for, hiring, letting land from 3 or socializing with, boycotted persons. However, it was the economic core driving these regulations and prohibitions that was enforced most assiduously through the League courts and sanctions. Alternative courts or tribunals, even what Cornwall Lewis called `non-apparent' tribunals, established to provide justice when none could be expected from the courts of the state, have been part of Irish agrarian radicalism since at least the 1760s.(41) In 1825, the Cork administrator of the Insurrection Act of 1814 told the Select Committee of the House of Lords looking into Irish disturbances that previously there had been `committees sitting when there was some great work to be done, as the burning of a house, or the murder of a man; the matter was discussed and decided there'.(42) Seven years later, a Queen's County magistrate explained to another Select Committee on disturbances that while searching for arms the police found `a regular case ... drawn out, the same as a brief, stating the circumstances of the land that the man wished to lay claim to; in fact, the case was decided on by the committee, and Rockite notices were found in this man's possession to be served on the individual he wished to eject'.(43)

Following the Famine, various Select Committees heard similar testimony. For example, in 1852, Henry Brownrigg, Deputy Inspector-General of the Constabulary, read a threatening letter to the Select Committee on Outrages; it began: `This notice is to inform you that your trial went on, and you were found guilty'.(44) This point was dramatically reinforced by W. Steuart Trench, who provided the Committee with a detailed account of his 1851 trial before the Ribbon Society, based upon an interview with one of the men who had been appointed by the Ribbon Society to execute him, but had later informed upon his fellow conspirators.(45) Twenty years later, Captain George Talbot, Resident Magistrate, told the Select Committee on Unlawful Combinations in Co. Westmeath that such proceedings continued to occur and were `a mere farce of a trial' because the accused was never present.(46)

Similar courts, established in the belief that English courts could not be expected to bring justice for Ireland, continued to be part of the Irish nationalist tradition during the twentieth century. The `Sinn Fein' and `Volunteer' courts that sprang up after the declaration of the Republic in January 1919 and the `Republican' courts that were established in June 1920 in an attempt to replace locally based tribunals with courts sanctioned by the Dail Eireann were primarily concerned with questions of land use and purchase, and with preserving the peace and settling civil disputes, rather than with criminal activities. They based their decisions on Brehon and Roman law, as well as on that of continental Europe and England, and adopted formal procedures modelled on English legal practice.(47) The courts established by the Dail included Parish Courts, District Courts, a Supreme Court and special land courts, presided over by local men or women often chosen by either the local Sinn Fein clubs or the IRA, with the Republican police enforcing their decrees. As Mary Kotsonouris has noted, the people of Ireland had `long before the Treaty [ratified in January 1922] invested in ultimate nationalist victory by deserting the courts rightly considered the brightest jewel in the British tradition, whose decisions would be enforced by the Crown, and had taken their legal proceedings to various shabby halls, or outhouses, or rooms above shops to be decided by men -- and sometimes women -- as unremarkable as themselves'.(48)