1. Rural Development Abroad: WGE Adams
2. Building for the Future: Denis Byrne
3. Plunkett Economic Pattern: Louie Bennett
4. I Remember: Percy Gillespie
5. Influence of Horace Plunkett: WP Watkins
6. Co-operation: Rex Mac Gall
7. Excerpt from Letter of Theodore Roosevelt
8. The United Irishwomen: Lucy Franks
9. Unfinished Programme: Joseph Johnston
10. Horace Plunkett Foundation: Margaret Digby
11. Horace Plunkett in England: Desmond Flanagan
12. Co-operation for Adult Education: P Moran
13. A Headline: TS Husband

Ireland in the New Century appeared before I had reached an age in which I became interested in these matters, and it has long been out of print. It came into my hands for the first time a couple of nights ago, and I read it through with fascinated interest. In its penetrating analysis of our social, economic and political pathology, and in its kindly criticism of the defects of national character, which our sad history does much to explain but does not fully excuse, this book bears worthy comparison with Bishop Berkeley's Querist, from which, indeed, it draws many apt and topical quotations.

I had to keep constantly reminding myself that Ireland in the New Century was written more than fifty years ago, so many of the problems it deals with still plague us and so much of the work the author set before him still remains to be done.

Plunkett issued a clarion call to self help through mutual help. Irish farmers were, and still are. the principal wealth producers in Ireland. Their low standard of production and living was the central economic and social problem of the nation. Centuries of alien misrule had confirmed an instinctive belief that "the Government" was the principal cause of economic distress. The recent change in the attitude of Government from policies of mere repression to policies of conscious and conscience-stricken amelioration were creating the even more demoralising belief that Government was the only possible source of economic improvement.

"The conclusion was being forced upon me that whatever may have been true of the past, the chief responsibility for the re-moulding of our national life rests now with ourselves, and that in the last analysis the problem of Irish ineffectiveness at home is in the main a problem of character -- and of Irish character." (Ireland in the New Century, p32.) Quoting the Querist he writes (p6) "Whether it would not he more reasonable to mend our state than complain of it; and how far this may be in our own power."

The political parties of the time, both Nationalist and Unionist, were actively promoting a spirit of personal apathy by concentrating all attention on the necessity of effecting -- or resisting -- constitutional changes. Quoting Berkeley, the writer queries "Whether our parties are not a burlesque upon politics ?"

Of course, things are different now since we no longer have to do with an alien government (in most of the country), but perhaps the difference is only superficial. The habit of looking to the Government in the first instance for a tariff or a quota or a subsidy is deeply ingrained. The national state dominates our lives and circumscribes our energies more fully and intimately than did the United Kingdom Government of fifty years ago.

Sir Horace Plunkett was deeply concerted to bring the commercial and industrial interests of Belfast more fully into the current of the national life. Some of his closest associates in the Recess Committee and in the IA0S were prominent Ulster industrialists. Partition, of which the IA0S was also a victim, has effectively restricted this helpful co-operation between Northern industrialism and Southern agriculture. The fact of Partition even to-day operates in much the same way as the fact of alien Government in the past to promote a spirit of personal apathy, or at least to divert to political agitation energies that would be better employed in more constructive work.

Plunkett saw that the "work of reform must, of course, be primarily economic," but he insists that "economic remedies cannot be applied to Irish ills without the spiritual aids which are required to move to action the latent forces of Irish reason and emotion" (op cit P40). Miss Digby in her biography of Plunkett (p17) gives reason to believe that Plunkett, even in his student days in Oxford, was thinking deeply about the problems of the Industrial Revolution, and the social horrors of nineteenth century capitalism as experienced in England. What he had in mind was a philosophy of social organisation, based on a sound economic foundation, which would enable the rural community in Ireland to avoid the onset of capitalism in its cruder forms, and yet progressively adjust itself to the conditions of a rapidly changing world.

The Marxians hold that individual character is formed and dominated by economic environment. Sir Horace regarded individual character as of paramount importance. By free voluntary co-operation with his fellows the individual would learn to seek his own economic welfare only by methods which at the same time promoted the economic welfare of his fellows. A social organisation based on such an economic system could not fail to make its members better men and better citizens.

The essence of the matter is that the individual should freely choose to seek his own good through such association. An.outwardly similar organisation imposed by authority, however benevolent, could not have the same moral influence and psychological value.

It is possible that the social philosophy advocated by Sir Horace Plunkett has a wider application in the present era than even he could have foreseen. The agrarian conditions that prevailed in China up to recently recall the horrors of early nineteenth century landlordism in Ireland. A book recently published by two English missionaries (Through the Chinese Revolution by Ralph and Nancy Lapwood) relates the following incident (p130):"Two of us, Englishmen, had walked over the mountain west of Kuan-hsien, and in the. evening came down to a small town where fair-skinned people were a great curiosity. The magistrate regarded us with a good deal of suspicion and finally put us for the night under guard in a room in the 'yamen.' Throughout the night we heard a hoarse rhythmic screaming in the distance, but could do nothing about it. Next morning we were told what it was. A peasant up in the mountains had owed money to his landlord. He had said that he could not pay but the landlord believed that he really had the money. So the landlord bound the peasant and brought him before his friend the magistrate. The magistrate ordered the peasant to be strung up by his thumbs and beaten through the night to make him confess that he had the means to pay his debt."

This kind of thing in China accounts for the success of the Communist revolution in that country. Communism not only "liquidated" landlordism and gombeenism but also imposed a social and economic organisation which has sacrificed individual freedom to economic efficiency.

When Plunkett began his propaganda the tenants had already been liberated. But no social organisation had been imposed, or even conceived, which could bind the isolated units of the mass of peasantry into a coherent and self conscious rural community. "In Ireland the transition from landlordism to a peasant proprietary not only does not create any corporate existence among the occupying peasantry but rather deprives them of the slight social coherence which they formerly possessed as tenants of the same landlord". (Ireland in the New Century p49) .

Both Communism and Capitalism in its cruder forms sacrifice the individual to the material power of the State in the one case and the material gain of of the capitalist in the other. By organising the economic activities of farmers-on a co-operative system Plunkett sought to give the national economy as a whole a co-operative outlook, and permeate the national being with a social philosophy in which the individual would be exalted because he was part of a social structure wherein economic efficiency was promoted in an atmosphere of friendly co-operative association.

Co-operation, as envisaged by him, is simply the application of elementary Christian principles to economic relationships and social organisation. If two hostile worlds now confront each other in threatening hostility surely the Plunkett philosophy -- in action -- is infinitely preferable to a "cold war," or to a third "hot war" which must destroy us all. We in Ireland cannot claim to have made that philosophy fully articulate either in thought or action, but at least we owe it to his memory to make ourselves familiar with the full scope of his far-seeing wisdom, and to approach our everyday problems in the spirit of his inspiring message.

Even in the economic sphere we have failed to apply the principle of co-operation to the extent that Plunkett hoped and anticipated fifty years ago. In 1911 there were 97,000 "organised" farmers in all Ireland, more than half of them in the creamery districts of the southwest and northwest. Since then the six Ulster counties have been lopped off. There was in 1951 in the Republic a membership of 93,000, more than half of them in the creamery districts of the southwest and the three Ulster counties.

Though the economic conditions of the Irish farmer clearly indicated a need for the application of co-operative effort to all branches of his industry, it was necessary at the beginning to embrace a more limited aim." (op cit p187). Hence the concentration on the dairying industry.

Unfortunately the limited aim of fifty years ago is still the principal achievement. There are a few co-operative poultry societies, and a few bacon curing and meat processing establishments, but the great central plain is still largely a co-operative desert.

The Irish farmer is predominantly interested in the price of cattle though latterly the price of wheat and barley has played an increasing part in his consciousness. The great central plain and the counties like Louth and Leix, where tillage has always been relatively important, are practically destitute of o-operative societies, and these are the regions where cattle are bought for further feeding and sold as fat or forward stores.

Cooperation in grain processing, drying and handling is relatively undeveloped. Co-operation in the handling and processing of cattle can scarcely be said to exist. The pig processing industry is still largely outside co-operative control, and the periodic crises in it call aloud for a comprehensive co-operative remedy. Much the same might be said of the poultry business, now passing through a period of acute difficulty.

All in all it almost seems that we manufacture co-operative ideas and ideals "for export only", and this is a form of trade which, whatever its moral and intellectual merits, brings no grist to the national mill, and does little to stem the tide of emigration which Sir Horace Plunkett deplored in 1903 and we still deplore.

Some of the people concerned with this, I learned later, had had links with the 50s republican campaign in the North, and this seemed to the present writer to be an indication that the politicising process was again at work, and that those having rural roots could perhaps become the pioneers of a new wave of democratic economic organisation. I develop this theme in the 60s module.