Lismore: How The British Empire Never Left Ireland

Originally published in the Tribune.

In the nineteenth century, most of Ireland’s countryside was owned by a small number of absentee landlords. The people working the land often had little to no security as the landlords had the power to raise rent however often and by however much they liked. Tenants had little incentive to improve or properly maintain the land. If they worked it well and increased its value, landlords could simply respond by raising the rent. This system was one of the factors that contributed to the Great Hunger in Ireland, also known as the Irish Famine. Between 1845 and 1849, around one million people died and another million emigrated. During these years, mass evictions by absentee British landlords intensified the devastation. The famine left a permanent scar on Ireland and became a defining force in the country’s national identity and struggle for independence.

During the Land War of the 1870s and 1880s, tenant farmers across Ireland organised to demand fair rents and fixity of tenure. Irish socialist republican James Connolly later framed the system in more explicitly political terms. For Connolly, landlordism was one of the mechanisms through which Britain maintained its control over Ireland. In one of his most famous passages, he argued:

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers. . . .

When the Irish Free State gained partial independence in 1922, it only partly heeded Connolly’s warning. Through a series of land acts and state-backed purchase schemes, the new state weakened some of the grip British aristocrats had maintained over Ireland’s countryside — but it did not break their hold entirely.

In Ireland, these issues are often discussed as matters of history. But today, a dispute in the Knockmealdown Mountains is reviving many of those old grievances. Sixteen sheep farmers are in conflict with the Lismore Estate, owned by the Duke of Devonshire, over proposed rent increases of up to 900 percent over the coming years.

Some of these farming families have worked the land since the seventeenth century. Historically, they paid around €5 per hectare, but they have now been told this will rise to approximately €15—17.50. Under a phased rent review proposed by the Lismore Estate, that figure could increase to around €50 per hectare by 2029.

Very few people could absorb a rent increase on that scale. Farming in Ireland operates on extremely tight margins and is heavily dependent on state agricultural support. According to Teagasc figures, many hill sheep farms generate only modest returns and often rely on off-farm income or subsidy payments to remain viable. The farmers argue that they are not running highly profitable commercial enterprises, but rather maintaining a traditional form of farming where relatively small increases in annual costs can determine whether a family can remain on the land at all. For many of them, these proposed rises amount to a form of mass eviction.

A growing campaign, led by the farmers themselves, has emerged in opposition to the proposed rent hikes. Some have engaged in a rent strike, while others have focused on building public pressure through protests and media campaigning. The image of an aristocratic British landlord threatening the livelihoods of small Irish farmers has provoked understandable outrage, leading to demonstrations both in the town of Lismore and outside the British embassy in Dublin.

For the graziers refusing to pay the increased rents, the consequences have been severe. Several farmers have reportedly faced delays or threats to vital Department of Agriculture payments to which they are entitled because of the ongoing dispute. This has placed even greater financial pressure on already precarious farms. Irish parliamentarian Conor McGuinness accused the system of leaving farmers ‘held over a barrel’ while the dispute continues.

Thomas Fitzgerald has emerged as one of the most outspoken farmers involved in the campaign. His family, he says, has farmed the mountain since the seventeenth century. ‘We’re getting nowhere with it and we want to negotiate on it,’ Fitzgerald said earlier this spring, as frustration among the farmers intensified. He has repeatedly warned that farmers are being ‘hunted off the hill’ by rent increases they believe bear little relation to the economic reality of upland sheep farming.

Another local farmer, Michael Morrissey, described the dispute in deeply personal terms:

In living memory, this is the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced. Sheep farming will never make you rich, but it’s our way of life.

Protesters in London staged a sit-in at Heywood Hill, the Duke of Devonshire’s Mayfair bookshop, in an effort to draw wider attention to what had begun as a local rent dispute. Thomas Fitzgerald says supporters in London approached the farmers asking what they could do to help.

The strategy adopted by both the farmers and their supporters has been to make enough noise that what is happening on a mountain in County Waterford can no longer be dismissed as a private disagreement between landlord and tenant. Instead, they argue, the dispute has become symbolic of how Ireland has never fully shaken off the economic and social shackles of colonial rule.

The Lismore Estate itself carries a long and deeply colonial history. During the plantation era, it passed through figures such as Walter Raleigh and Richard Boyle, before later becoming associated, through inheritance, with the Cavendish family, the Dukes of Devonshire, who continue to own and manage the 800 acre estate today.

Representatives of the estate have argued that the proposed rents are based on an independent review conducted in 2023 and remain below open-market rates. They have also pointed out that rents on the mountain had not undergone a major revision since 2017, and that the increases are being phased in over several years rather than imposed immediately. In public statements issued during the dispute, the estate said it remained committed to engagement and was seeking ‘constructive dialogue’ with the graziers.

Junior Agriculture Minister Michael Healy-Rae agreed to meet with representatives of the farmers. But the general position taken by the government has largely been that the conflict remains a private dispute between landlord and tenant.

The dispute is still ongoing, and representatives of the Lismore Estate are expected to meet the farmers again in an effort to reach an agreement. Yet the intensity of the public reaction in Ireland has revealed how deeply these historical wounds still run. For many, the controversy appears to confirm James Connolly’s argument that transferring political power without fundamentally transforming economic and social structures has simply reproduced the same system in a more palatable form.

Ethan Rooney is an Irish freelance journalist based in Berlin. He writes on countercultural movements and extremist groups across Europe.