Play shines light on legacy of Mayo founder of Land League

A NEW play on Land League founder Michael Davitt is coming to the stage in Belmullet.

Let Justice Rise Though the Heaven’s Fall, by author Tommy Cooke, is an effort to rekindle our memory and pride in this great worldwide figure's life, and inform and entertain audiences with the story that would be hard to imagine, believe or fathom in the Ireland of today.

The play, which has an important Belmullet connection, will be on stage at Aras Inis Gluaire in Belmullet Community Centre on Friday and Saturday, January 24 and 25, at 8 p.m.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh will open the play and tickets (€20) can be purchased at the Aras Inis Gluaire reception on (097) 81079, online at https://arasinisgluaire.ie/main/ or email info@arasinisgluaire.ie.

Though the seeds of a Land League movement had been sown by James Daly, the editor of The Connaught Telegraph, in Mayo and Matthew Harris in Galway, it was the invitation by Daly to Michael Davitt which was crucial to the development, in the first instance, of The Land League of Mayo.

Michael Davitt’s invitation to Charles Stewart Parnell and putting him at the head of the movement was a master stroke in expanding this movement to the National Land League, which at its height had 200,000 members and 1,800 branches in Ireland alone by the early 1880s. The Land League would spread throughout the world to wherever Irish men women had emigrated to in whatever circumstances.

What the Land League and the Ladies Land League achieved in just three years after 800 years of British rule and oppression is staggering.

It would result in 1914 in some 316,000 Irish tenant farmers and their families becoming land owners and would constitute over half the population of this country.

That this was pivotal, fundamental, to the foundation of the Republic of Ireland is clear. It seems a shame that this great Irish historical giant and the ground troops that were the Land League movement’s achievements were downgraded to a paragraph in the story of Irish freedom

The play is an effort to bring alive those dark days and shine a light on those great people, particularly Michael Davitt, who were instrumental in giving the ordinary people of this country hope for themselves and their families and a renewed pride in that joy of being Irish.

It is not a sad story but one that sparkles with unbounding inspiration.

The Land League and the Ladies Land League laid the ground work that would transport our country from the fourth world to the first world.

Michael Davitt, a cornerstone of the Land League movement, was born in Mayo and gives us good reason to be proud of our county. But his life outside the Land League movement is also exceptional in its width and depth.

Book your tickets for the Bemullet shows and renew your knowledge of the times and legacy of the Land League movement and your pride in the monumental historical giant that was and is Michael Davitt.