It was always the ambition of J J Bergin, co-founder of the National Ploughing Association with Denis Allen, to stage the World Ploughing Contest in Ireland, and it looked as if his dream would come true in 1939.
He had a site earmarked for the event in Dundalk, County Louth, had a special award commissioned for the winner and raised £100 for prizes.
But the plans had to be put on hold because competing teams were not prepared to travel as the Second World War loomed.
After the hostilities ended in 1945, Bergin was among those who worked hard to set up the World Ploughing Organisation (WPO) to foster, preserve and improve the art and skill of ploughing the land.
As a vice-president, he travelled extensively as part of those efforts and was manager of the Republic of Ireland team of Thomas McDonnell, Readypenny, Dundalk, and Ronald Sheane, Kilbride, County Wicklow, at the first World Contest in Canada in 1952 Before leaving for the event, Bergin arranged that the trio would wear suits of Donegal tweed with a shamrock in the lapel.
Their tractors displayed Irish Tricolour pennants and identified their country as the Republic of Ireland. There was no need, he later recalled, for anyone to ask what country they represented. Few Canadians knew about the Republic of Ireland, but they were familiar with Northern Ireland because Queen Elizabeth II’s visits there had been reported in their media.
“By the time we left, however, people knew a lot about this part of the country [the Republic],” he said, adding that the Irish ploughmen were great ambassadors.
All was not well behind the scenes, however. Bergin, a strong nationalist, opposed the partition of Ireland.
But the first rule in the WPO constitution was that each country could enter only one team in the annual contest. The governing body accepted two teams from the island of Ireland. One represented the Republic and the other Northern Ireland.
Bergin was outraged. He lodged a vigorous objection before going to Canada, warning that he was not prepared to lead a team into a contest which implied Ireland was two countries. As efforts were made to resolve the crux, the team from the Republic took part under protest.
The NPA man offered to withdraw one of his ploughmen and give his place to a Northern Ireland competitor to ensure there was one united team from Ireland. But the issue was not resolved even as he was about to achieve his ambition to have the World Contest staged in Ireland.
Killarney, Co Kerry, with a competitive ploughing tradition stretching back over 100 years, was the venue for the 1954 contest on 8-9 October.
Although no record of those old local ploughing matches survives, journalist Maurice F O’Leary, writing in The Kerryman in 1961, explained that the tradition tells of hectic rivalry that existed, particularly between the old-time landlords who always sought laurels for their own estates.
“This tradition is surely a strange facet to the life of Killarney but if anyone possesses the courage to search back through their ancestry they will find, more than likely, that their grandfathers had to scrape the soil of the upturned sod from their boots before they entered the half-door to satisfy an appetite razor-sharp by the open air,” he wrote.
Teams from thirteen countries competed at the World Contest in Killarney, the first to be held in Europe. The top award was the Esso Golden Plough Trophy, bearing the inscription ‘Pax Arva Colat’ – ‘Let Peace Cultivate the Fields’, a quotation from the Roman poet Tibullus.
Jim Eccles travelled from Canada to defend his title. There was a lone competitor from the United States and two teams from the island of Ireland again competed. Hosting the World Contest was seen as a big morale boost for the country, especially the tourism industry.
Taoiseach John A. Costello and Minister for Agriculture James Dillon wrote welcoming articles in the programme and 100 Southern Command soldiers were deployed to help Gardaí, under Supt Batt Harte, who prepared a traffic plan that included a one-way system. Dozens of volunteers also helped out.
Special trains were organised to bring farm machinery to Killarney for a trade display. Huge marquees were erected in the grounds. A military pipe band from Collins Barracks in Cork led the pre-ploughing parade through the bunting-decorated town with large crowds lining the streets.
Shopkeepers decorated their windows with ploughing related displays and the Urban Council decided there should be all night public lighting in the town during the six days of the festivities. The cost of the additional lighting of 125 lamps was £15.15s.
The World Contest itself was an all-tractor affair but the national championships were also held at the same time and venue. These featured classes for both horse and tractor ploughing.
A diesel-powered train organised by Muintir na Tíre brought 600 people from Rosslare Harbour in Wexford.
Most of the competing countries sent journalists to the contest, which had a certain exciting status in the gloomy post war years.
Britain’s Pathé News filmed a segment for showing to cinema audiences. Canada’s Prime Minister Louis St Laurent sent a special message that in the battle for peace and justice the same qualities of skill and perseverance were needed as were required in cultivating the soil.
There was even an observer present from Pakistan. Sardar Mohammad Ghazanfari Allah Khan, who owned 10,000 acres and was looking for a man to go to his country to train local ploughmen in tractor ploughing.
There were no indications his invitation was taken up. Observers from Algiers, Germany, France, Norway, and Sweden also attended.
Killarney, a tourist destination since Queen Victoria visited the town in 1861, took great pride in hosting the contest and was not slow in promoting the attractions of the area.
Thousands of people attended each day. There was heavy overnight rain after the first day, creating the kind of ploughing conditions that would cause an Irish farmer to look up at the sky in the morning and decide if it would be a good day for cutting hedges.
But the standard of ploughing disappointed due mainly to the rough and stony nature of the site. Despite minor hiccups, outside the control of the local organising committee, headed by P. J. O’Shea, chairman, and Denis O’Leary, secretary, the event was deemed a big success.
It made £300 profit, which was allocated to four local voluntary committees catering for young farmers and ploughing, as well as Killarney Agricultural Show and the Fitzgerald Stadium, where the tractors for the World Contest were kept during the week of the event.
Hugh Barr, a wavy-haired 28-year-old farmer from near Coleraine, County Derry, won the first of his three World titles for Northern Ireland, using a Ransome plough with a Massey-Harris tractor.
The best of the Republic’s ploughmen was Willie Murphy from Tallaght, County Dublin, who was fifth with a Nuffield tractor and a Pierce plough.
There was an outpouring of good will for Barr, who was given a prolonged ovation at the awards banquet attended by 200 guests. Copies of a special publication, The Esso Reporter, were distributed by the main sponsors.
It carried the full results, as well as reports and photographs from the event and made a big impression on the visitors who said it would be a souvenir they would always treasure.
Hugh Barr went on to win the next two World Contests and received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth 11 in her 2015 birthday honours list.
One of the finest tributes paid to Barr was on the morning after the banquet when most of the 25 competitors went back to the field at Gortroe to examine the work of the man who had ploughed his way to the world title.
It was dubbed ‘Inquest Sunday’ and everyone conceded that the man who had thought he didn’t have a chance in the contest was a worthy winner. The French team had earlier sportingly presented him with a gift.
He also returned home with a pair of strong Kerry boots. Hilliards of Killarney presented them to the first three ploughmen in the different classes. He slipped away quietly the following morning because his father was ill, and he was needed for work on the family farm.
The world champion was unaware that a local band had planned to play him out of Killarney. He had just departed when it marched up to his hotel.
While great goodwill was shown to Barr and his colleagues in Killarney, the row over allowing two teams from the island of Ireland to compete in the World Contest was about to escalate.
The World Ploughing Organisation decided by 13 votes to 1 at a meeting in Cork on 12 October, three days after the Contest, to grant membership to Northern Ireland, or the Six Counties, as J. J. Bergin preferred to call it.
When it later met in Dublin to arrange for the 1955 World Contest in Sweden, Bergin held a press conference in the room next door and announced that the Republic would not be competing.
He said he felt he and the NPA had no option but to withdraw from the WPO, which he had worked so hard to establish. He travelled to Government Buildings in Dublin and informed the Minister for Agriculture of the decision.
The decision meant the Republic would not take part in the World Contest during the remainder of Bergin’s life. He died in 1958.
Following a rule change that allowed every WPO affiliated ploughing society to enter two competitors, the Republic re-joined in 1960.
Competitors from both jurisdictions have competed alongside each other ever since and their respective organisations get on well.
Each year a Cairn of Peace is erected at the location of the World Contest, as will happen at Ratheniska next week, but this did not take place in Killarney.
Sixty-five years later, on 12 May 2019, that omission was rectified with the unveiling of a monument designed by Bernard O’Sullivan on a site close to the town’s National Park.
A local organising committee headed by Tom Leslie with Kerry Ploughing and Kerry County Council involvement was responsible for bringing the project to fruition.
It was an emotional and joyful occasion as Anna May McHugh and Hugh Barr, the man who won the title in 1954, jointly unveiled the monument.
William Murphy and Ronald Sheane, the Republic’s team members from that World Contest all those years before, were also present.
The ceremony symbolised the mutual good will that had grown over the decades between competitive plough men and women on the island of Ireland.
David Gill, a former world champion from Hillsborough, Co Down, recalled in Valerie Cox’s 2017 book, A Ploughing People, that there is an amazing camaraderie between competitors from both sides of the border.
“The hospitality we get when we cross the border – that’s what attracts us all, the way we’re treated.
“We are now much more than just ploughmen, we are friends, we see one another in the summer, and we get invited to one another’s house and the weddings”, he said.
