The co-operative movement had deep roots in Irish life and during JJ's youth it was thriving, under the leadership of Sir Horace Plunkett, RA Anderson, Father Finlay and others, after a major organising drive in the 1890s. Plunkett however decoupled himself from this process, and went on to work politically as a Unionist to set up the devolved Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, which he headed for a period. For the background to the co-operative movement, and its development during the first half of the century, see Patrick Bolger's book(1).

My father's first venture into the politics of radical economic change was via the consumer co-op in Trinity College, which was registered in 1913, on the initiative of WJ Bryan, an active promoter of consumer co-operation, who went on to found a similar society in Oxford University.

Bryan had developed a cohesive philosophy for the role of university-based consumer co-ops, based on the idea that the university-trained elite, once they had been sold on the utility of the concept, could play a leading role in generalising it. This philosophy he expounded in an article in Better Business, the Plunkett House Library quarterly, early in 1916.

JJ was in at the start of the DU Co-operative Society, becoming enthused by the concept, and he carried it with him during his Albert Kahn world tour, which he used to gain insight into the co-operative movement in India, writing this up subsequently in Better Business, in support of Bryan(2).

JJ treated the DU Co-op as potentially a training ground for the students in a School of Commerce, yet to be founded; he hoped that when it did get set up it would be in a position to promote co-operative trading. He also regarded it as a pilot project for what might have been if Ireland had remained unpartitioned, and the producer co-ops of Munster had learned how to add value and service the consumer co-ops of Belfast and Britain. He used it as a window into the politics of the co-operative movement, attending the 1914 Conference of the Co-operative Union, as TCD Co-op representative(3). It was thus a part of his consistent campaign for an all-Ireland perspective, which he waged successively via the Barrington Lectures, via the SSISI and then towards the end of the 30s via the Irish Association.

The 46th Annual Co-operative Union Congress was held in Dublin, on the Whit weekend, 1914. The Handbook of this conference contains a review of the consumer co-op scene in Ireland, which was quite undeveloped; it would have been matched by one of the smaller English counties. The Congress was held in Dublin as a gesture in the direction of strengthening the Irish district, and mending fences with the IAOS, with which they had been in dispute in the 1890s. The Co-operative Wholesale Society had attempted to establish creameries in Ireland, but these had mostly failed, being superseded by the IAOS creameries, which depended on local societies appointing their own managers. The emerging Irish movement had found the Co-operative Union structures too inflexible.

The embryonic Dublin consumer co-ops however remained with the Union; they existed in Rathmines, Inchicore, Thomas St, Dorset St and Fairview. The Inchicore one went back to 1859, and serviced the railway workshop workers; it was criticised in the Handbook for being exclusive. The Dublin meeting of the Union in 1914 was thus a false dawn; it seemed to open for JJ a window into Irish co-operative politics, for which he then had hopes, but these proved illusory.

During JJ's Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship, the co-op declined; it has obviously been dependent on his initiatives, and also the student population had been decimated by the war. At the meeting on November 22 1915, JJ came back, and took over doing the minutes; he wrote marginal notes on the earlier minutes, realising the extent to which things had fallen apart in his absence. The agreed to take some trial copies of the Irish Homestead. Then at the December 3 meeting, with 10 present, JJ's detailed minutes include a decision to try to capture the trade of the College Kitchen for the IAWS, with some aggressive marketing. This came up at the Board, and the latter agreed to leave it to the Bursar's discretion, a rebuff. The decision to cultivate relations with the IAWS, which was related to the IAOS rather than to the Co-operative Union, was an indicator of a turn towards Plunkett House.

At the meetings in the first months of 1916, with JJ as secretary, there was evidence of a major effort to get more business; there was an attempt made to do a deal with the Dublin Consumer Co-op secretary to encourage non-College Dubliners to shop in the College, making postal or phone arrangements; this looked somewhat like grasping at straws. Business was in decline because of the decimation of the College population due to the war. Then came the Easter Rising, and the shop was occupied by the Officers Training Corps, which was defending the College against the insurgents. JJ as secretary was reduced to writing letters to the military HQ looking for compensation, which by the end of the year they received. JJ's last 1916 minutes were of the meeting on October 16. He continued to attend the meetings, with the status of Secretary.

At a meeting on December 14 1916 it was decided unanimously to record a vote of sympathy with Lt-Col Bryan on the death at the front of his son WJ Bryan, founder of the Co-op.

During 1917 JJ's younger sister Anne was in College, and she attended meetings, alternating with JJ, who was otherwise engaged, working on a committee with James Douglas, George Russell and others producing documentation for the Irish Convention. The co-op had slipped down somewhat in his list of priorities, but the minutes are mostly in his hand. The Bursar was continuing to deal for the College Kitchen with the firm of Andrews, and, according to a letter from HMO White, would use a co-op tender document to beat Andrews down, rather than to take it up. Hostility to co-operative retailing was, it seems, deeply ingrained in the culture.

There were insights into co-operative politics: at a meeting on May 7 1917 the question came up of whom to vote for as the Irish representatives on the Board of the Co-operative Union (the all-UK body). It was agreed to vote for Smith-Gordon, Tweedy, Palmer, Adams and Fleming. Smith-Gordon had been encountered by JJ in Oxford, where he had shone as a socialist debater in the Union. RN Tweedy was an engineer who subsequently became a founder member of the Irish Communist Party. The co-operative movement in this period was a focus for those who wanted to democratise the economic system from the bottom up, and who identified with the politics of the Left in this spirit. At a subsequent meeting on February 26 1918 RN Tweedy was nominated to the Board of the Irish Section of the Co-operative Union.

There began to be echoes of the national struggle: on May 21 1918 JJ as secretary was absent; it was reported from the Chair that he had been detained at Baldoyle by the District Inspector of Police.

In 1919 business began to take up again, with student war-survivors trickling back. Roles of committee members were defined: there was a sub-committee to keep in touch with the needs of the junior years. Then at the end of 1919 they pulled off the deal that set them up viably for the long haul: they set up the Lunch Buffet, in the Dining Hall. This was an immediate success, and gave a good foundation to the wholesale purchasing operation, which they did via the IAWS. JJ then took over the Chair, which he occupied up to the end of 1922. He pulled out of active participation on co-op affairs once he saw it was on a sound business footing.

During this time Plunkett and the IAOS were inhabiting a different universe. The consumer movement, the Co-operative Union, was Manchester-based, and had not succeeded in making the bridge with the producers movement in Ireland. There is no record in the IAOS Annual Reports in the period 1913-1918 of any connection with consumer co-ops; they are classified as creameries, agricultural societies, credit, poultry and miscellaneous.

The Co-op Reference Library was started in Plunkett House in January 1914. The Annual Report in 1917 mentions the Library and its publication Better Business, but laments its lack of circulation. Then in June 1919 the Irish Statesman commenced, in its first existence; it incorporated the Irish Homestead, and attracted support from a galaxy of writers which included AE (who edited it), Stephen Gwynn, Henry Harrison (who had been Parnell's secretary), Paul Henry, JM Hone, Shane Leslie, Brinsley McNamara, Lord Monteagle, PS O'Hegarty, Horace Plunkett, Lennox Robinson, Lionel Smith-Gordon, James Stephens, WB and JB Yeats.

This continued up to June 1920, attracting additional writers like Erskine Childers, Captain JR White, Darrell Figgis, Aodh de Blacam and Bernard Shaw. There is no trace of any JJ contribution to this first Irish Statesman series, though he knew and socialised with many of the people concerned; he had been in Oxford with Smith-Gordon, and attended the AE soirées. I find this surprising, because JJ had been supportive of the Convention process in 1917, and had been promoting the Commonwealth solution, with James Douglas and AE; the Irish Statesman had emerged specifically with this politics. It is perhaps necessary to explore possible reasons for this; it could be that he felt he had to give priority to building on his French connection, with Garnier and the Albert Kahn Foundation. He did contribute later in the 1920s, to the second Irish Statesman series, which began in September 1923.

Decoupling himself from the detail of the DU consumer co-op project (he became Chairman for a while in the 1920s, after a long period as Secretary), JJ dedicated his 1920s Barrington lectures to the active promotion of the co-operative approach to economic development in the Free Trade environment, and there are pointers to this in his 'Groundwork of Economics'. JJ's written record specific to the co-operative movement in the 1920s (4) is however sparse; he had high hopes of the Irish Economist, the successor of Better Business, and when this folded he lacked a suitable outlet. He did, probably, contribute to the Plunkett Foundation year-book on Northern Ireland during the decade.

There may be evidence in support of this in the Plunkett House archives, if I can find it, and in the local papers of the time; the trouble is that the Barrington archive has no record of locations or dates, so it is a matter of a random search. This remains unfinished business.

My father wrote an article in the February 1921 issue of Better Business (vol 6 no 2) on 'The Trinity Co-op: Past Present and Future'. Better Business was an IAOS journal popularising economic concepts among the members of the co-operative movement. It was re-named The Irish Economist in February 1922, keeping the sequence numbering, but ceased publication at the end of 1923.

JJ did several reviews in the Irish Economist, and contributed a polemical article in favour of free trade. This journal circulated widely among the member co-operative societies of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) and it was clearly JJ's objective to try by example to help it promote the consumer aspect of the co-operative movement, complementing the primary producer aspect which had come into viable existence in the form of the co-operative creameries.

The first of JJ's reviews, in the February 1922 issue, was of The Consumers' Co-operative Movement by Sydney and Beatrice Webb (London, Longmans, 1921), followed in August 1922 by a review of Money and Credit by CJ Melrose (London, Collins, 1920), with an introduction by Prof Irving Fisher. Then in what proved to be the final issue in January 1923 JJ had a paper Free Trade or Protection for Irish Industries?(5).

In the 1930s JJ's economic writings, in the Economic Journal (edited by Keynes) and elsewhere, were used by analysts of the Irish scene in the Agricultural Co-operative Yearbook, published by the Plunkett Foundation in Britain(6).

In the 1940s JJ's main contributions were his attempt to influence Government policy, in the Commission on post-Emergency Agriculture, and some field-work in the late 40s which led to his book Irish Agriculture in Transition. The 1943-44 year-book of Agricultural Co-operation, published by the Plunkett Foundation in Oxford, contains an overview by HF Norman, entitled 'Agricultural Co-operation in Ireland'. Unlike the mid-30s overview, there is no direct reference to JJ or his work, so he must by this time have faded from Plunkett Foundation consciousness somewhat.

There was however a reference in the Norman review to the need for active managed linking of groups of large and small farms together, as a synergistic whole, a foreshadowing of the concept introduced in the Seanad around this time by Richards Orpen. Norman mentioned Drinagh co-op, in Co Cork, which was one of the several co-ops visited by JJ in the field-work for his 1951 book, as a potential focus for the development of a pilot version of the Orpen model.

Norman in his paper drew attention to the way in which the movement in Northern Ireland had been undermined by Ministry of Agriculture policy. It is noteworthy that the view from Plunkett House remained 'all-Ireland' despite Partition.

I think it probable that JJ's exploratory field work, looking at situations where creamery co-ops had bought farms and were using them as demonstration units for upgrading agricultural practice, was under the stimulus of the Norman review. He saw in this a possible focus for the development of the Richards Orpen 'economic farm unit' model, embodying a managed cluster of farms with a common service centre. He wrote this experience up in his Irish Agriculture in Transition, published in 1951(7).

My father JJ in the 1950s remained concerned about the co-operative movement(8); he had the opportunity to look back on the foregoing experience in a 1954 publication by the National Co-operative Council which celebrated the Plunkett centenary. In this he wrote a paper entitled 'Unfinished Programme', of which the present writer at the time was not aware, but of which he now appreciates the significance(9).

Co-operative Revival?

There is evidence in JJ's papers that he visited Mayo in the mid-1960s; he left notes of a visit to Cathal Quinn, whom he regarded as a 'live wire'. The stimulus for the visit could have been the Dermot MacManus correspondence at the time(12), and he probably visited the MacManus estate at Killeaden, in what could have been a nostalgia-trip to try to pick up echoes of the (sometimes Gaelicising like Chevasse), improving, socially responsible landlord tradition exemplified by Standish O'Grady, Sir Horace Plunkett, Lord Charlemont, Bobby Burke and others, on which he based his promotion of the Richards Orpen model for rural civilisation(13).

The Dublin University consumers co-op, which had served the living-in students since 1913, was wound up in the 1970s; it had become hidebound and anachronistic in its methods of work, and succumbed to competition from the Students Union(14).

Some of the 1970s techno-economic work by the present writer for Lough Egish Co-op, and for Bord Bainne, has philosophical links with JJ's 20s work, and his 1930s work on the 'winter milk' question(15). For example, the fact that Lough Egish, as a co-op organised by a group of 30-acre drumlin farms in Monaghan, were able to go for 'vertical integration' via leasing land in Meath to fatten their calves, would have pleased him.

The association of the present writer with the Green Party from the 1990s onwards has generated some re-examination of the Plunkett approach to the problem of organising agriculture for sustainability(16).

Epilogue: a Missed Centenary in 2004

This year Dublin will celebrate, and surely not quietly, the 100th anniversary of the Abbey Theatre in April, and of that famous day in the life of Dublin, Bloomsday, in June.

Yet, lost amid these celebrations is another centenary. A hundred years ago this month, Sir Horace Plunkett published a book that raised a storm of controversy, one that criticised the "national character" and urged Irishmen of every political and sectarian stripe to embark on a campaign of national regeneration. Plunkett's Ireland in the New Century was, like the author himself, as welcome as "a dog on a tennis court" and today both author and book are largely forgotten. Yet, as Ireland embarks upon its newest century, 1 think perhaps neither should be so readily dismissed.

Plunkett, as was his wont, tackled the host of economic, social and political problems that beset Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century head-on; he diagnosed the root of the problem as one of "character".

Plunkett called for a "dawn of the practical" in Ireland, and lamented the "functional derangement" of the Irish mind characterised by an unhealthy obsession with politics to the exclusion of practical works to improve the social and economic condition of the nation. He criticised his fellow Irishmen for lacking initiative, self-reliance, thrift, industriousness, and any conception of quality.

The implicit fatalism of his countrymen, and their concern with the hereafter to the detriment of the here and now, was a matter of continuing perplexity to him.

Such a diagnosis was strong medicine to a people still seeking nationhood, in the heady days of the Irish renaissance and with little appetite for self-criticism. Further, his ill-considered criticism of the Catholic Church cost him, and his co-operative movement, dearly.

Plunkett extolled the virtues of co-operative organisation as a vehicle for national social and economic regeneration, emphasised the necessity for widespread education and technical instruction, and preached the mantra of "Better Farming, Better Business, Better Living".

His ideal Ireland would be characterised by efficient and technically proficient agriculture, and co-operative organisations of small farmers, run on sound commercial principles. It would be a society that was not only competitive and productive, but also mindful of the value of rural community and with a vision of a national life that was distinctly Irish. Although Plunkett surely had difficulty articulating with any precision his vision of "better living", it was essential to his view of national regeneration.

This vision was echoed in subsequent years. In the decades after independence, Irish leaders, and probably most Irish people, did share a vision of the good life that was remarkably like Plunkett's. But de Valera had scarcely a hint of the capabilities needed to achieve that "Ireland Which We Dreamed Of".

Now, Ireland in this newest century has a different challenge. Capability, it seems, abounds. Ireland's public policymakers are fond of referring to Ireland's new "enterprise culture", a culture that perfectly mirrors the sort of character that Plunkett called for in his opus. Indeed, initiative, risk-taking, entrepreneurship, education, practicality, a global perspective and self-confidence are hallmarks of both. And such capability is welcome. To this extent, at least, Plunkett's prescriptions have been realised.

Yet one wonders if this capability has come at the price of a vision of that ideal Ireland, that it perhaps lacks the element of "better living" that Plunkett himself knew he had given too short shrift. As Ireland confronts the challenges of growth, and the imperative for truly sustainable development (socially, environmentally, and economically) one could do worse than to revisit the work of Horace Plunkett.

But you will not find him amid the pantheon of Irish heroes and patriots. Neither political hero, nor .rebel, nor martyr (although some might differ), Plunkett did suffer the fate of many prophets before him. He was denounced, mistrusted, excoriated, humiliated, burned-out of his home, and exiled from his country.

But his prescription for the social and economic betterment of his country was prescient then, and still relevant today.

It is a pity he is not remembered, more the pity he is no longer read, on the centenary of Ireland in the New Century.

Perhaps the words of the poet W.R. Rodgers offer Plunkett a fitting commemoration:

So God save Ireland from her heroes,
For what is needed is not heroism,
but normal courage.

Dr James J. Kennelly is associate professor of International Business at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. He is the author of The Kerry Way: The History of the Kerry Group, 1972-2000 (Oak Tree Press).

Notes and References

2. I have reviewed this material in the 1910s Plunkett module of the hypertext.

3. The souvenir handbook of the 1914 Conference contains a foundation photo of the TCD consumer co-op. Foundation details of the latter, and Bryan's Better Business article, are also on record in the 1910s Plunkett module of the hypertext.

4. I have made what I have found available in the 1920s Plunkett module.

5. The texts of these Irish Economist reviews are also accessible in the 1920s Plunkett module of the hypertext.

6. I have included in the 1930s Plunkett module a virtual reprint of The Importance of Economy in the Distribution of Goods, by J Johnston MA FTCD, published by the Co-operative Conference Association, August 1933. There is also, in the annual publication of the co-operative movement in Britain (1935 edition) on p67 an article by HF Norman headed 'The Irish Free State' in which JJ's analysis of the situation is quoted, based on his paper in the September 1934 issue of the Economic Journal. I have referenced this in the 'academic papers' stream, and given it in full in this 1930s Plunkett module.

7. The hypertext 1940s Plunkett module gives access to JJ's Post-Emergency Agriculture Commission work and to his Irish Agriculture in Transition where he develops the Orpen model.

8. JJ's expression of concern was via the Kells Ingram Farm, associated with the TCD Agriculture School, and there appeared to be an opportunity with the support of Marshall Plan money for the development of an Agricultural Research Institute. JJ hoped, vainly, that these might combine to show the positive socio-economic features of the Orpen model. I treat the background to this in the TCD Politics thread, which is accessible via the 1950s Plunkett module of the hypertext.

9. The Plunkett centenary paper by JJ is also in this 1950s module of the hypertext.

10. A note on a 1950s Mayo episode is also in this 1950s module of the hypertext.

11. I have embodied some of my own 1960s field-work experience in the 1960s Plunkett module of the hypertext, where it seems relevant.

12. This 1960s Dermot McManus contact was a result of a paper by the latter on the Irish literary revival, for the publication of which he sought JJ's support. JJ had been in political contact with MacManus in the 1920s and early 30s, but they drifted apart due to MacManus's Blueshirt politics.

13. The Richards Orpen model was outlined in some depth by JJ in his Irish Agriculture in Transition and also in a paper to the SSISI. Ideas similar to these had been previewed by Standish O'Grady in his 1912-13 articles for Jim Larkin's Irish Worker; see To the Leaders of Our Working People, Standish O'Grady, ed EA Hagan, UCD Press 2002, reviewed by the present writer in the December 2002 Irish Democrat.

14. I have recorded some notes on the demise of the DU Co-op in the 1970s Plunkett module of the hypertext.

15. I did some computer-modelling of possible winter milk scenarios when with the TCD Department of Statistics in the early 70s, and I have notes on this in the 1970s Plunkett module of this hypertext thread. I was aware of JJ's 1931 SSISI paper at the time, and referenced it.

16. See the Spring 2001 issue of the Teagasc periodical Farm and Food where I was invited to contribute an article on Biotechnology and Sustainability by the Editor Con O'Rourke. This is reprinted also in Organic matters the journal of the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2002