Local history: Mayo County Council held its first meeting in April 1899
By Tom Gillespie
THE first meeting of Mayo County Council was held 126 years ago - Saturday, April 22, 1899 - when the elected members of the new council filed into the Grand Jury room of Castlebar Courthouse at noon.
There was no formal handover of power, Joe McDermott of Mayo County Council wrote, from The Connaught Telegraph of April 29, 1899, in the publication ‘Public Spirited People - Mayo County Council 1899-1909’, which was published in 1999.
He went on: It was anticipated by the Local Government Board that the guiding hand of the three grand jury men, who retained their seats by right of the 1898 Act, to the new council, would give continuity to the deliberations.
In fact this did not happen. The new men were capable and competent. The first minutes demonstrate a robustness, an attempt to get to grips with county issues and indeed national issues immediately.
The political issues were foremost on the order of business and within a short period of time would bring the county council into conflict with the sheriff of the county, Lord Bingham.
The following attended the first meeting of the authority: elected county councillors Anthony Murphy (Achill), Henry Devaney (Ardnaree), Thomas Walsh (Balla), John Garvey (Ballina), Michael H. Feerick (Ballinrobe), Luke Dillon (Ballyhaunis), Peter Joyce (Bangor), John O’Malley (Belmullet), Dominick Murtagh (Ballyvary), James Daly (Castlebar, editor of The Connaught Telegraph), Conor O’Kelly (Claremorris), Thomas Hughes (Cong), John McHale (Crossmolina), W.F. Mulligan (Charlestown), John P. Lavan (Kilkelly), Anthony Maguire (Killala), Myles O’Donnell (Kiltimagh), William Doris (Louisburgh), Daniel Morrin (Mount Falcon), Patrick O’Donnell (Newport), Maurice C.J. Blake (Port Royal), John Davitt (Swinford), John McDermott (Urlaur) and John Walsh (Westport).
Grand Jury nominees: R. Powell, E. Thomas O’Donel, A. Knox-Gildea - (did not attend but sent apology).
Rural District Councils were represented by: P.J. Kelly, Westport, Bernard Egan, Ballina, John Ryan, Balinrobe, Edward McAndrew, Belmullet, H.M. Canning, Castlebar, Thomas Tighe, Claremorris, Major Saunders Knox-Gore, Killala, and M.C. Henry, Swinford.
Members co-opted at that first meeting: Patrick Tuohy and John O’Donnell.
Mr. Conor O’Kelly of Claremorris was elected chairman without opposition. A finance committee of 12 members was chosen next. Land League members such as Doris, Egan and Maguire were among its personnel.
The council then adopted its first political resolution, a long statement concerning the distress being experienced by the small farmer population of Co. Mayo in the face of large holdings of graziers.
The issues of the land war were not fully resolved at this time and William O’Brien, M.P., a Corkman, who had settled near Westport, instigated a new land agitation organisation, the United Irish League (UIL), in January 1898. The idea was to further the cause of the cotter against the grazier.
By 1901 there were over 1,000 branches countrywide. The effect of this organisation was strongly felt in Mayo - two members of the county council, chairman Conor O’Kelly and Michael Delaney, served jail terms arising from UIL activities.
The Wyndham Land Act of 1903 ended the grazier landlord dominance and over nine million acres passed into new ownership between 1903 and 1920.
Undoubtedly, the politics of local government in places such as Mayo blooded politicians, who continued to press for land reform. O’Kelly and Doris, county council members, were soon elected (1902 general election) MPs for Mayo, and they combined their roles as councillors with those of home rulers at Westminster.
The level of simmering unrest in the county was addressed in the request made by the council for an independent public inquiry into the rate added to the Murrisk area annual rate, arising from the alleged ‘malicious burning of property’.
The additional rate was imposed by the old grand jury in its final moments and the new council saw it as ‘vindictive tax’ by an irresponsible grand jury, upon a district which even County Inspector Milling confessed to Judge Johnston was far from ‘any overt act of outrage’.
The Congested Districts Board were the next to incur the wrath of the council - ‘paltry and ineffective operations’ were referred to as the council sought to be accorded a representation on that board.
From the minutes one can sense the underlying unease, the barely contained violence that continued to grow into the new century.
Disaffection with police conduct and Michael Davitt’s refused application for a sworn inquiry into police affairs was cited. Events of the moment, such as the Murrisk burning, the alleged shooting of Mr. Stoney, a Protestant clergyman, as well as police baton charge in Castlebar are all referred to in the minutes.
There was an interesting resolution adopted on the issue of home rule: ‘That in taking possession of the Local Government of Mayo on behalf of the people, it is the first duty of Mayo Council to declare the Local Government Act of 1898 is a measure which originated in the desire to kill Home Rule, which was carried by a class corruption worthy of the union days, and which imposes on the poor rate payers the whole burden of necessarily ever increasing local taxation in the future while exempting from all taxation as landlords the class of rich idlers who still take £9,000,000 a year off all the agricultural industry of the country ….”
The resolution continues in its manner to condemn ‘our English rulers’, ‘bungling legislation’ and calls for ‘national self government’.
The idea of holding an annual National Council was also aired. This was in a way to move towards installing home rule through the 1898 Act.
The National Council of County Councils did meet annually from early in the century and its work was interesting in coordinating and exchanging the views of various county councils and councillors.
Mayo County Council proposed a number of items for consideration: Control of police by representatives of the people; the transaction of an Irish private bill legislation in Ireland; give to the county councils the power to compulsory purchase land for cottage allotments; transfer to county councils singly or in groups of agricultural funds ‘and not to permit them to be squandered by ignorant and ineffective Dublin Castle Boards'; and pending home rule - transfer the consideration and solution of the education question and the land question entirely to an Irish board altogether free from English government influence, which might also deal with railways and other communications and would be invested with powers of taxation in Ireland.