History shows the vultures are on cusp of sparking revolution
■ We have seen history repeating itself with the sale of distressed properties to the vulture funds as happened in 1849 with the encumbered Estates Act 1849. The major question is will the political outcomes that were subsequent to the 1849 Act occur again in Ireland?
Following the sale of the large estates to the purchasers of the distressed properties, the ‘new landlords’ were very conscious of their new tenants – particularly as the tenants now had votes.
The establishment needed their tenants’ votes, unlike the earlier landlords who effectually appointed the politicians to represent them in London. The landlords now controlled the tenants by offering them noncontractual privileges and other benefits. So they achieved the same results.
After 1880, the control drifted from the landlords to the tenants due to the influence of Parnell, Davitt and the Irish Catholic Bishops, who refused to obey the decree from the Pope condemning the Plan of Campaign, which was backing a move to withhold rents and to boycott anybody who took over the property of an evicted tenant. For his part in the Plan of Campaign, Parnell spent time in Kilmainham Jail.
There was a series of local disputes, disputes with the local Boards of Guardians.
On a national scale, there was the Home Rule question and the land league. All of this agitation was not co-ordinated.
There is a circular relationship between power and collective action, each begets each other. We have seen the power of the water demonstrations, add to this the
100,000 families on the waiting list for social housing, add the half-a-million or so waiting to see a consultant or to have a procedure carried out, add the 30,000/50,000 awaiting their new masters – the vulture funds – and approximately 500,000 young graduates in good jobs who cannot afford to purchase a home because of Central Bank regulations and are forced to pay exorbitant rents to the vulture funds who gradually will replace Irish landlords.
Authorities fail to see the probable connectivity between groups that may appear to have nothing in common to amalgamate. This happened in the 1918 election with the emerging Sinn Féin (only formed in 1905), who wiped out the Irish Parliamentary Party (the party of Parnell).
The emergence of Macron in France with a party that did not exist two years before it swept into an overall majority is another example. Could it happen again here in Ireland that a party that does not exist sweeps into power when the various communities all with different problems coalesce? Hugh Duffy
Cleggan, Co Galway