Protesting farmers following in the footsteps of history
Led by John Dillon, the president of the 85,000-member Irish Farmers Association, the tractorcade followed the route taken by Rickard Deasy, who headed a famous 217-mile farmer’s rights march from Bantry to Dublin in 1966. That march led to a celebrated 21-day sitdown protest on the steps of the then offices of the Department of Agriculture because Charles Haughey refused to meet with the farm leaders.
A similar outcome is unlikely this week as Minister Joe Walsh has promised to meet with farmers and urged them to negotiate rather than protest.
But relations between Mr Walsh and the IFA have deteriorated into a war of statistics on the farm incomes issues. And it was given an even more focused edge yesterday when the tractorcade from Bantry arrived in Clonakilty and passed through Emmet Square, where Mr Walsh lives.
Yesterday also happened to be the 48th anniversary of the founding of the National Farmers Association, predecessor of the IFA, organisers of this week’s protests. It was not a day for the ceremonial cutting of birthday cakes, but there was some cutting criticism of both the farmers and the minister on the airwaves. A cold breeze and a hail shower earlier swept across Bantry Bay, as Mr Dillon halted the lead tractor he was driving for a photo shoot beside two miniature cannon in the town centre. With 200 tractors behind him on the street, it sent out a silent but symbolic message that the farmers of Ireland are indeed in a militant mood.
On a church holiday known in the countryside as “Little Christmas”, the farmers drove through towns where seasonal decorations carried good wishes for a prosperous new year.
As the convoy moved towards Bandon, it passed by Ballinascarthy, ancestral birthplace of Henry Ford, whose tractors farmers have driven for years on land and road.
Travelling along at average speeds of around 20 mph, the farmers kept their tractors largely to the hard shoulder and kept gaps between some of them to facilitate other motorists wishing to overtake. But there was not a song to be heard as they went through a region that has bequeathed to folk music, the Land League ballad, “The Wife of the Bould Tenant Farmer”. There were also reminders of the trek 401 years ago of O Suilleabahin Bere and his followers from Glengarriff to a safe haven in Leitrim. That was a march for human survival, while the start of yesterday’s five-day protest was described by the IFA as a campaign for the survival of family farms.
