Patrick Doyle's study of the co-operative movement in Ireland is a welcome addition to the historiography of rural development in Ireland, and builds upon existing work by Liam Kennedy, and more recently Eoin McLaughlin. The first chapter sets out the origins of co-operation in Ireland, in what was a highly fractious political period in the nation's history. While highlighting the complex internal Irish situation, Doyle does not lose sight of the importance of international influences.
Exploring Horace Plunkett's reasons for establishing the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (I.A.O.S.), to remedy the ‘deep crisis of Irish agriculture’, a number of familiar Irish historical themes naturally appear – famine, continued rural decay and emigration. What is worthy of note here is Irish agriculture in the context of international competition. Competition with Danish farming innovation showed the need for urgent reform of farming technologies in Ireland, and is shown as a major factor for organising rural Ireland. Further to this, the author shows the origins of Plunkett's Co-operative Reference Library initiative as coming from the United States.
In terms of the political backdrop, the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party with the Parnell split, created something of a groundswell where all ideas seemed up for grabs. The failure of constitutional politics left a void which was filled by various Irish cultural revival groups, and the co-operative movement, all of which, according to Doyle contributed to ‘the most dynamic arena in which to articulate Irish values’. Immediate Irish social conditions, history and legacy provided a rich and complex melding of ideas which helped shape the movement. Nevertheless, it is the Irish co-operative movement's establishment within an international context which is extremely interesting, and which Doyle draws our attention to at various stages of this book.
The international sources used help the reader to situate Ireland's place within the broader international context of co-operative movements, and like-minded organisations. Further to this, they show that despite trends among their cultural nationalist contemporaries to look inward, and indeed backward to Ireland's past for national renewal, international themes and influences, positive and negative, were important in realising the co-operative movement's goal of Irish rural renewal. It reveals myriad interested parties Plunkett had to placate in order to gain traction for this organisation. Walking a metaphorical tightrope, Plunkett attempted to include landlords, tenants, industrialists, unionists and nationalists. With the scars of the Land War still raw, this was an unenviable task.
Perhaps the most important organisation Plunkett had to court was the Catholic church. Doyle rightly frames this in terms of a post-Rerum novarum Irish society. Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical engaged Catholics in social and economic issues around the importance of private property and co-operation, thus awakening them to wider social issues. Therefore, for Plunkett, the timing was fortuitous in gaining the ear of influential members of the Catholic hierarchy.
Although recognising the importance of the encyclical to Catholic social thought in Ireland, Plunkett perhaps misjudged the impact it had in terms of bringing the church and lay Catholics closer in social matters. He undid most of his good work in building relationships, with the publication of Ireland in the new century (London, 1904), in which he criticised the church's role in Irish society. This led to attacks from clergy and the nationalist press that Plunkett's organisation was one of ‘continental socialism’. Such attacks were arguably a forerunner to the more familiar stifling period of Catholic action in mid-twentieth century Ireland.
Chapters on the first decades of the twentieth century, through war and revolution, portray an organisation holding ground in the middle of upheaval. Doyle forcefully argues that the movement emerged as a real state-building force in the first decade of the century, and that real societal change was happening at a mundane level. This, he states with justification, has been overlooked in favour of the more eye-catching political and military developments of the period. Wider political events certainly impacted upon the movement, yet that is not Doyle's only concern here. Tensions within international co-operative alliances are shown to have had an impact upon the Irish situation, specifically between the consumer-focused Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the producer-centred I.A.O.S. Doyle suggests what began as a ‘philosophical impasse’ grew into an ‘irresolvable economic conflict’.
The scope of the study is wide, from the second half of the nineteenth century, through to an independent Free State. The author expertly weaves the bread and butter issues with those of high politics and constitutional questions, both of which had a profound impact upon the fortunes on the movement at various points. Indeed, there is much within this work which helps us to understand the glue which held Irish society together during those turbulent decades.
