The Irish Land War: Cows, Cannabis and Conifer forests

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Like many a historic tale regarding land troubles and Ireland, we must first cross the sea to begin the journey. For this story starts in our neighbour’s garden. Brexit was many things to many different people. The shock-waves of it still reverberate around Ireland and Europe. Without wishing to regurgitate years of bitter debate and fall-out let me just pass remark on one thing about the result. A very simple truth.

Brexit was a populist revolt.

Now, whether you believe that revolt was warranted or unwarranted is in many ways irrelevant. The main point to record here is an uprising of ordinary people occurred and it was populist in nature. Over many years elected politicians listened too much to non governmental agents, whether they be the European policy makers in Brussels or narrow multi-national interests from further afield and too little to the serfs at the bottom of the globalist pyramid scheme.

The Conservative Populists

If we fast-forward six years to today and cast our gaze over the current Tory party leadership battle, as it goes down to the wire, we can make another observation. Liz Truss is going to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I don’t say this as some expert of UK politics or the inner workings of the Tories, I simply look at the odds and the current odds are overwhelmingly in her favour.

Now the question to ask yourselves here is:

Why Liz Truss?

Well, the answer to that question is pretty simple too. The populist revolt and the people at the centre of it still hold sway over the Conservative party. She is the populists choice. I will go one step further and say it’s probably a very good thing she will be their choice as a world with Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister is a guaranteed game, set and match situation to the globalist elites of Wimbledon Lawn Tennis club and the World Economic Forum. I won’t pretend to know much about Liz Truss other than to say many of her critics describe her as uncontrollable and a maverick. The other notable point to note here is that she is unafraid to push back against the progessive woke agenda engulfing the politics of the west. She talks the talk on that subject and I guess we’ll soon find out if she walks the walk. For the moment though, based on the most recent opinion polls, the populists are satisfied with Liz Truss as front-runner and this is reflected in the latest YouGov poll which shows a 2 point rebound in Tory support and 4 point drop off for Labour.

When you broach the subject of politics in a piece of writing people immediately worry that the author is about to push an agenda of his or her own. All I can say on that front is that if there was an election in Ireland tomorrow morning I would put a giant X through the ballot paper to spoil my vote and register my discontent with the distinct sameness of the Irish options. Ireland has never had a seismic populist revolt at the ballot box and more’s the pity. All our main political parties inside and outside of the government tent are globalist in nature. Globalist in the extreme and they in need of massive jolt.

The problem the traditional conservatives in the UK have is the same problem the good ole boys of the Republican party in the United States face with Trump supporters. Can’t live with them and sure as hell can’t live without them. The grass-roots of both parties are now filled to the brim with disenfranchised working class populists. They are not easily fooled by soft words in public while dastardly deals play out in private - gifting their sovereignty away. Now, of course we already have a problem. The minute you utter the word populism the progressive left and their billionaire backers begin to salivate. Populism means Trump and Trump means a copy-book full of labels they can start applying to any person or group starting to think for themselves out-loud. However, if we go back, back to Brexit and the initial populist break-through moment it was not a volcano eruption borne out of the cult of personality. It was a populism piping hot with frustration and anger about the ground beneath their feet.

In simple terms the land beneath British citizens feet was becoming racist to adore. I say that as an Irishman with not so favorable an attitude to the political class of the UK, either now, or as part of our history. But it would be willfully ignorant to overlook that I have much more in common with an unemployed dock worker in Glasgow or a painter & decorator in Newcastle than I do with most of the population of Dublin 4. For these UK citizens and for us too in Ireland now, pride of place and history, are fast becoming racist or fascist to celebrate or whatever other reducing magic word progressives choose to apply to describe people like this. Add to this fact that ordinary people are sick to death of governments casually tossing away their individual freedoms to people, places and things not directly answerable to the population.

Take your pick from a list of entities that include the European commission, WHO, NATO, WEF, World Bank or the plethora of NGOs that utilise a bastardization of the words “ Common Good ” to get their wicked way. The fight back in the UK is much more prevalent and the politicians there are more sensitive to it than in Ireland for a simple reason. The populist anger found a place to go and in this moment resides mostly in the Conservative Party. As we wrap up this section we must ponder the answer to a question. Irish anger has no similiar, safe political haven to rest its feet at the moment, not even one as imperfect as the Conservative party of Great Britain.

The Irish Question and 2020 General election

Well then, where do we start the Irish story. Let’s try 30 months ago and the early spring of 2020. On a day when the full violence of Storm Ciara swept into Ireland on the eve of our general election. It brought with it heavy rain, high winds and a gale of frustrated populism. The problem though was that populism had nowhere to land in a country so embedded in the globalist ethos. Finally, it settled for Sinn Fein and independents where it still uneasily resides today. However no party, then or now, including Sinn Fein, are prepared to embrace Irish populism preferring to pretend this angst with globalism represents something else. Because they play this pretend game politicians and media alike miss the hissing from the Irish volcano. Like the backlash of ordinary people on the Joe Duffy show recently calling halt to the erasure of the word “woman” or most recently when government parties decided to attack our farmers by committing to a 25% reduction in agricultural gas emissions. Yes, Farting cows. It is here that we edge closer to the land and the central point of today’s piece.

As Sinn Fein prepare for government and a final assault on a 32 county Ireland they overlook a huge point. Irish populist anger wants them to reclaim the sovereignty and freedoms of the 26 counties first and not create a 32 county globalists wet-dream. Sadly, Sinn Fein seem as globalist in nature as the two parties that have been in power since the foundation of this State. Farmers and fishermen on this island are met with the bizarre situation of a government incentivizing them to NOT produce food on the land they own and toil on. Our political classes, media classes and state agencies are missing the rising anger because they ignored that breeze of populism that blew into Ireland in 2020. Again, willfully ignored it. As the globalists attack our farms and our agriculture many Irish people want their land back. Both metaphorically and physically speaking. They want the sovereignty of their country back too.

That 2020 election seems like a life-time ago now. Neither coronavirus nor indeed climate change were election issues of much significance in February 2020. Nobody particularly freaked out about Storm Ciara either besides a few in the media. Sure, the Green party made gains but largely drew their support from the young, urbane and wealthy. The millionaire environmentalists I like to call them. A world of solutions where a shiny new Tesla, twenty grand of solar panels and a wind-farm in your backyard solves all the world’s environmental problems. It seems lost on the Greens and every single other political party that the number of people who don’t own a backyard is growing, month by month, and year by year. Now they seem hell-bent on risking the food production of the country as well. Woke decisions and global trade-offs made by the political classes over a generation is the reason for these outcomes. The Irish state owns between 1.3 million and 1.7 million acres of land. I never hear any Green minister volunteer to give a half an acre of it per Irish family, to enable them to grow their own food sustainably. Funny that.

In Ireland there are many battle-grounds to choose from in the war against unrestricted globalism. Take your pick from: WHO pandemic treaty, vaccine mandates, digital passports, unfettered inward migration, housing, inflation, food production, woke social ideologies, privacy rights or digital currency. I have thought about where the weakest chink in the globalists Irish armour resides and I come back to our long suffering history and land. Their weakest link is our privately owned land. Our almost umbilical historic attachment to the ground beneath our feet.

Michael Davitt and the Irish Land League.

For those that don’t know, Michael Davitt was a man born of famine in the 1840s and he launched this elemental land movement in Castlebar, County Mayo during another, lesser known famine in the late 1870s. In the UK, the 19th century is celebrated as the age what saw the pinnacle of their Industrial revolution. In Ireland, it was a century best remembered for famine. A famine exacerbated by decisions made by our nearest neighbour I might add.

The Irish Land League adopted the slogan "the land for the people", which was vague enough to be acceptable to Irish nationalists across the political spectrum. The runaway popularity of the Land League among Irish Catholics worried British authorities. On the other hand, Davitt's cooperation with Charles Stuart Parnell angered the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which expelled Davitt from its Supreme Council in May 1880, although he continued to be a member of the organisation. A sign that the power and growth of a great idea attracts criticism from both friends and enemies alike.

All of you reading this have heard of the word Boycott. However, what you may not know, if you’re not Irish is that the word originated from a piece of land and a landlord’s estate about fifteen miles from where I sit typing these words.

One of the most successful and resonating actions the Land League took during this period was the campaign of ostracism against the English land agent Captain Charles Boycott in Lough Mask House outside Ballinrobe in the autumn of 1880. Boycott worked as a land agent for Lord Erne, a landowner in the Lough Mask area of County Mayo. This crusade against Boycott saw him abandoning Ireland soon after its implementation. An 1880s populist revolt against the globalist superpower living and profiting off our land.

Land agitation was successful in the 1880s and it can be successful again today in 2022.

As the Bull McCabe famously said: It’s all about the Land, Tadhg.

The History of the Field

The Field is a 1990 Irish drama film written and directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Richard Harris, Brenda Fricker and Tom Berenger. It is one of the landmark Irish films. The impact of the film’s release prevaded our collective consciousness. I use the helping verb “is” rather than its past tense equivalent “ was ” on purpose. Great art and drama lives and breathes through the ages. The film is set in the early 1930s and was shot almost entirely in the Connemara village of Leenaun. Again, a place about one hours drive from my keyboard.

However, what is all too easily forgotten is that this was a film adapted from John B. Keane's 1965 play of the same name. As I revisit that seminal work today it is a tiny detail of difference between the play and the film that consumes my thinking and bears talking about here. The pivotal role of Peter or the “Yank” as the Bull McCabe refers to him in the film.

Peter, is an American whose ancestors are from the area, and parachutes into the village. He has plans to build a hydro-electric plant in the area and quarry stone for new roads. And central to his plans is McCabe's rented field. A field into which he’s put a life’s work of blood, sweat and tears.

In John B’s play there is no “Yank” character. There is no soft face of globalism and progress. No, instead you have a William Dee character - a young Galway man, who has been living in England for twelve years. Considered an "outsider", it is William who decides to bid against the Bull McCabe for Maggie Butler's field. The changing of this pivotal character from original play to Hollywood film is almost like globalism itself - so subtle you’d barely even register it 40 years removed from the date. Yet, important to remember all these decades later. To make the Bull’s violent and sinister character shine like a diamond you need a sympathetic foil. To put a modern term on what happened here is to say the character of William Dee wasn’t woke enough for Hollywood screens. An Irishman returning to Ireland with English money might get the London emigrants thinking of doing the same. Much better then, a rich Irish American, a generation or two removed from the bog, returning with the power of American money, ideals and exceptionalism. There is a popular quotation that often does the rounds in American politics from time to time:

If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and If you are not a Conservative when old, you have no brain

In today’s terms and for Irish people facing wave after wave of pervasive globalism maybe a better one applies to an Irish mind:

If you don’t reject the violent nature of the Bull McCabe in your youth, you’ll never live long enough to truly grasp the wisdom of his hatred of the Yank into your old age.

There is a beauty and a darkness trapped in the Bull’s character and the darkness stems from the ancient struggle to own our own little patch of farmland. The people who cheerlead our global changes have one thing in common. They didn’t grow up scrubbing films of dirt from beneath their fingernails at the end of a day’s labour or play.

The 21st Century Land Wars

The first flash-point and knee-jerk kick-back in Ireland’s 21st century land-wars was the recent announcement of the Irish government parties agreement to an in effect 25% cut in Irelands national herd. The original Green Party - bonkers proposal - was looking for a 50% reduction. As this played out over the last couple of weeks I watched and observed. The Irish Farmers Association did their usual window dressing muttering. Everyone, in the Irish globalist bubble, more or less congratulated themselves on a bank robbery well done. The getaway drivers in the media were soon out championing new farming methods while simultaneously taking a none too environmentally friendly dump on old Irish ways. The language of the globalists, as always, is apocalyptic and urgent in nature. As an aside, I doubt I could find a farmer within a 30 mile radius of my front door that would leave Fintan O’Toole or any Irish newspaper man in charge of a field of thistles over a bank holiday weekend. Never mind the future direction of Irish agricultural policy. The immaculately manicured fingernail class tut-tutting at the land owners and the Irish soil - packed and pressed -tightly beneath Irish farmers own field-hardened fingertips.

My attention as always in these eruptions was to scour the landscape searching for the hidden story. The papers were filled with articles about the large sally rod of emission reductions.

Where was the carrot?

There is always a globalist carrot in these instances. I must admit it took me a few days to locate it. The reason I missed it was a valuable lesson. Don’t look for a bribe or any other type of Irish root vegetable in the mainstream Irish press. That was my mistake. The place to go looking was the Irish Farmers Journal and in amongst its 300,000 weekly readers. The carrot was splashed across the front page of its weekly edition. A proposal to compensate farmers 5,000 euro for every cow they cull from their herd.

Here lies the quick-step of how EU environmentalists and EU & Irish agricultural policy makers dance their merry dance. One provides the carrot and another the stick. It will be very difficult for a small land-holder to refuse 50,000 euro to get rid of say 10 cows especially when the EU will further bribe them with EU grant funding to herd farmers off into forestry or some other endeavour that the woke are championing as the next big environmental thing.

Now, if there ever was a case to be made, to cull cattle on a global basis, and I am pretty sure there isn’t one, but if I’m wrong and there is - Ireland is certainly not the country to go culling them in first. We have the perfect climate and lengthy growing season for the farming of livestock. The perfect conditions to produce high quality meat. There are few things this country is world-class at but rearing cattle and producing quality meat is certainly one of them. This is absolutely not the environmental sacrificial lamb Ireland should be committing to first, second or last. There are many more, less risky, sacrifices to make and yet no-one inside or outside of our globalist government is calling for them. Curious that.

I’ll tell you one sacrifice I’d be happy to make though. If Leo Varadkar or Micheal Martin announced tomorrow that Ireland was getting rid of every single data-centre in the country by 2030. I’d support that initiative and happily take back 15% of our electricity grid. The consumption of electricity in this sector has trebled over the last seven or eight years. This was noted in a recent Irish Times article which I will now quote.

Data centres consume 14 per cent of Ireland’s electricity supply. According to May figures from the Central Statistics Office, that’s more than all rural housing, at 12 per cent, and is an incredible 265 per cent increase since 2015.

Link to full article here

Alternative Irish Farming Proposals

So what do our clean-living environmentalist friends propose to replace cows with ?

Well to answer that question I again steer off the mainstream dual carriageway and drive down into a little known public laneway. If you want to ascertain what globalists want from this country one of the most important websites in Ireland is www.lobbying.ie.

What are big business and non governmental agencies lobbying our government about over the last few years?

What kind of questions and meeting requests are the consulting firms fielding from these entities and setting up zoom calls with our government about as a matter of urgency. The short answer is Cannabis and Forestry. As a simple registry activity check of one prominent consulting firm below can reveal. This company are by no means the only people doing this by the way.

I suppose the future looks bright if you’re staring up at a forest of imported Norwegian conifer trees and smoking a joint grown from an extract of a Mexican cannabis plant. And if you’re dreaming of a nirvana of Irish fields filled with Irish Cannabis plants then nod off back to sleep. What companies are lobbying for is multinational control of its production and obviously sale & export post any change in the legislation.

The key to this control is Industrial hemp production - in my opinion. Teagasc (the Irish Food and Agricultural Authority) have invested a lot of time and energy in recent years researching and promoting the industrial production of hemp. Industrial hemp is pretty much the same as cannabis, but without the narcotic effects of the active ingredient — tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). This may not exceed 0.2% in industrial plants. Hemp is very traditional in terms of how you sow it, and it grows surprisingly well in an Irish maritime climate. It is called weed because it grows like one — very quickly and easily. It is legal to grow industrial hemp in Ireland with a license from the Department of Health. It remains to be seen who will benefit in the long-run small farming class or big business.

Of course, none of our agricultural policy extends to a mass plantation of deciduous Irish trees. Those pesky things take too long to grow and profit from I guess. The roots extend deep and pervade the Irish earth too. Difficult to remove. Can’t have too many of them around the place in the brave new global world.

You’ll probably forget you don’t own a house, a Tesla or a wind farm soon enough. And soon enough thereafter you might even be kind enough to forget that you’re Irish.

Who needs land when your head is stuck in the clouds right?

Why is the Irish Fightback so muted?

I suppose in this writing journey of mine I’ve come to a seminal moment of sorts. The traction of some of the things I’m writing about, or more accurately, some of the questions I’m asking is starting to get noticed outside of my own tribe of freedom lovers. By people who probably don’t like the writing, or persons who shift uncomfortably in their seats listening to the questions. My social media accounts have started to hum at a faster rhythm in the last couple of weeks. A couple of back-to-back tweets of mine went viral. A researcher from some national radio program sent me a message about “a sandwich tweet” of all bloody things. I bring this up, I hope, not in an egoic sort of way but rather to highlight that there is trouble ahead for me and my ramblings. As you can see from the below screenshot.

Obviously, if supporters of this user’s twitter account amplify the outrageous price of sandwiches in Ireland it is a sin of the mortal as opposed to the venal variety. But the message is also rather instructive. In the world of extreme ideologies, both left & right, it is vital that no emerging voices, ones that don’t fit with an extreme ideology are allowed to gather momentum. Even on a subject as mundane as 13 euro sandwiches. It is also indicative of the problem any grass-roots movement not welded to an ideology faces trying get off the ground and fight back. There are people dedicated to making sure they stay mired in the gutter.

The “fascist event” highlighted above was to be an independent media discussion panel about the state of Irish mainstream media. I mainly invited people publishing work on here on Substack and one or two other independent platforms. What this supposed LBGTQI+ warrior carefully forgot to mention though is that she actually managed to get two location venues shutdown. Not one.

Often, it is what people scrupulously omit that is most revealing. The second venue was owned by a wonderful man running a delightful and forward looking not-for-profit accommodation business. There is both a regenerative spiritual and health aspect to what this guy is doing with his life. I loved the venue because it was in touch with the land and the building structure was sympathetic to the surrounding country-side. When I drove up the narrow laneway to visit the man’s property as all this “ fascist event “ drama was playing out - a family of hens and chicks were waddling up the pathway in front of me. Almost a quiet admonishment from them to slow down not just my car but perhaps my life too.

The owner was also an invited panel speaker to the proposed discussions as well as the host. He was about as far removed from a fascist as an Orthodox Jew in other words. I have never been one to get caught up much in peoples sexual orientation, politics or even religion. If I have a bias, it’s probably that my nose and attention gets drawn towards people I find living alternative, interesting lives and who look at the world from a slightly different angle to my own. It’s a sign of the times that living off the fruits of Irish land is considered alternative in the Ireland of 2022. So, to that end, this documentary film-maker, with an accommodation business, living off the grid in the heart of the Irish country-side fit the bill exactly as to the type of person I wanted at my event and to host a discussion like this - I was delighted when he agreed to take part.

Now, having said all that, and in this instance only, it bears mention that this interesting man is also an interesting Gay man. A Gay man hounded with phone calls over a number of days by a small group of LGBTQI+ activists threatening him if he held this alternative media discussion on his premises. The irony of rabid LBGTQI+ activists whose raison d’etre is supposedly the protection of men and women like this business owner seems lost on these foolish people. So, from my perspective, if there is a moral to this whole sorry episode it is this:

If you get in the way of an ideology it doesn’t matter a damn to ideology fanatics who or what you identify as. They’ll come for you too.

I’m not writing about them to shut them down or to even shut them up. Merely, to point out their hypocrisy. Anyone that sticks their head above the parapet on any woke subject needs to duck quickly or risk having it removed clean from their shoulders. This is as true for the Land question as any other.

The land is a battle-front we can win in this country. We’ve won it before living under a much harsher climate with less technological tools at our disposal. If you stand up, do so knowing there will be resistance. But remember too that most of them don’t have the requisite build up of dirt beneath their nails for a long land war.

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