Horace Plunkett

As visible testimony to his endeavours, he left as his main legacies the Irish cooperative movement, which grew to encompass vast creamery and food ingredient businesses such as Avonmore and Kerry Group, what is now Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the Plunkett Foundation and to some extent both the Irish Countrywomen's Association and the Women's Institutes of the UK.

[5] In 1891 he was appointed to the newly established Congested Districts Board and learned at first-hand about the wretched conditions of the rural population, especially west of the River Shannon.

The Congested Districts Board were a major plank of the ultimately failed Conservative policy of Constructive Unionism or "killing Home Rule with kindness".

[3] Plunkett took a leading part in developing agricultural co-operation in Ireland, of which he had learned from isolated American farmers, taking account of Scandinavian models of cooperation and the invention of the steam-powered cream separator.

[3] Public opinion, initially lukewarm, grew hostile in some sectors as the cooperative movement developed, and shopkeepers, butter-buyers and sections of the press led a campaign of virulent opposition.

Cooperatives and Plunkett were denounced for supposedly ruining the dairy industry but the movement caught hold, with the mass of farmers benefitting.

Plunkett and his colleagues including the poet and painter George William Russell ("Æ") made a good working team, writing widely on economic and cultural development, and on the role of labour.

As early as 1894, when his campaign reached a size too big to be directed by a few individuals, Plunkett founded the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), with Lord Monteagle, Thomas A. Finlay[9] and others.

He was apt to remind audiences that, even if full peasant proprietorship was achieved and Home Rule was implemented, rural underdevelopment would still have to be faced.

[16] Continuing his policy of conciliation, Plunkett suggested in a letter to the Irish press in August 1895 that a few prominent persons of various political opinions, both nationalist and unionist, should meet to discuss and frame a scheme of practical legislation for pursuing national development,[5] and to make recommendations on the Agriculture and Industries (Ireland) Bill of 1897.

[citation needed] The outcome of this proposal was the formation of the Recess Committee, with Plunkett as chairman and members of divergent views, such as the Earl of Mayo, John Redmond, The O'Conor Don, Thomas Sinclair,[5] Thomas Spring Rice, Rev Dr Kane (Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen), Father Thomas A. Finlay, Mr John Ross, MP, Timothy Harrington MP, Sir John Arnott, Sir William Ewart, Sir Daniel Dixon (after Lord Mayor of Belfast), Sir James Musgrave (Chairman of the Belfast Harbour Board), Thomas Andrews (Chairman of the Belfast and County Down Railway).

[17] In July 1896 the Recess Committee issued a report, of which Plunkett was the author, containing accounts of the systems of state aid to agriculture and technical instruction in foreign countries.

[citation needed] On the accession of the Liberal Party to power in 1906 James Bryce, the new Chief Secretary, asked Plunkett to remain at the head of the department he had created.

John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, turned against Plunkett for suggesting that anything but Home Rule might be the answer to Ireland's problems,[21] and other mainstream nationalists, led by John Dillon, rejected economic development, whether through Plunkett's agricultural cooperatives, William O'Brien's tenant land purchase or D. D. Sheehan's housing of rural labourers, in advance of "national development".

Ultimately the DATI ceased to work harmoniously with the IAOS, wrecking Plunkett's hopes, and the Irish Parliamentary Party made a determined effort to drive him from office, moving a resolution to that effect in the House of Commons in 1907.

[23] The Irish Homestead had frequently drawn attention to the status of women in rural Ireland (its assistant editor was Susan L. Mitchell), and in 1910 Plunkett helped to found the United Irishwomen to improve their domestic economy, welfare and education, with Ellice Pilkington and Anita Lett.

[24] During the war the cooperatives were severely hit as farmers avoided their high standards, supplying inferior produce directly to Britain, where food shortages led to a boom period for Irish agriculture.

After the Easter Rising of 1916, when he heard of executions, he sought clemency for its remaining leaders, including Constance Markievicz, except for anyone involved in regular crime.

When Lloyd George set up a convention of Irishmen to consider the suspended Third Home Rule Act 1914, and report their conclusions, there was great difficulty in finding a suitable chairman; but the first meeting unanimously chose Sir Horace for the post.

He was himself sanguine, and worked at his task with singular devotion until May 1918; but the absence of Sinn Fein from the gathering, and the impossibility of reconciling the views of the Ulstermen and the southern Unionists, prevented the adoption of any report with unanimity.

Plunkett wrote of his sorrow that "the healthiest house in the world, and the meeting place of a splendid body of Irishmen and friends of Ireland" had been destroyed.

Naomi Mitchison, who admired Plunkett and was a friend of Heard, wrote: "H.P., as we all called him, was getting past his prime and often ill but struggling to go on with the work to which he was devoted.

[35] Plunkett died at Weybridge on 26 March 1932 and was buried in St Mary's Churchyard in nearby Byfleet, where his gravestone survives.

First Irish Dairy Cooperative, erected and established 1889, in Doneraile, County Cork.
Plunkett in 1915
The Plunkett House nameplate