Edition Bobbett2. Speeches and statements by Elizabeth F. Bobbett
1937 Rathdrum, Meeting of the Irish Farmers’ Federation
Source: Irish Independent, 21.10.1937
Miss Elizabeth Bobbett, secretary, gave some recent instances of the methods employed by the armed Flying Squad to enforce the payment of rates and annuities. They went to a young farmer in a mountainous district, with a wife and young family, and in no position to pay. They told him that if he did not produce the money – £40 – the lorries were outside to take his stock. He said he could not pay, that he had not got the money. They told him he could borrow it, and they so terrorised him and his wife that he allowed them to take him in their car to Aughrim and borrow the money from a shopkeeper. “If that man is hungry, if his wife and family are hungry and need a sack of flour for bread, or a stone of meal this winter, do you think he can hold up his head to go in and ask that shopkeeper from whom he has borrowed £40 for credit?“ demanded the speaker.
“They brought another man into Wicklow, but the shopkeepers were not so soft-hearted, and he was unable to borrow the money. They went to a farmer who was in bed with blood-poisoning and they would not leave until they got into his bedroom, and they got out of him all he had, about a quarter of the amount. I knew a farmer in County Wicklow who got a stroke on receiving the second Sheriff’s letter, and he was dead in two days. A widow of one of our best old families, whose father and grandfather were in the National movement, has received six days‘ notice and is expecting the Flying Squad any day. I have known in many instances that the people are hungry, but they have to put up cow houses fit for President de Valera to come down and spend his holidays in, but there’s no one to see if there are slates on the farmer’s roof, or blankets on the beds,“ declared Miss Bobbett.
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Miss Bobbett said the Irish Farmers‘ Federation was never at any time intended to hamper the Government, they only wanted to be helpful. She referred to the position of farmers like herself who could not let grazing land because the cattle were liable to be seized. She had fields of rape that she could not graze because she could get no guarantee that the sheep would not be seized. She cited a recent case where this had occurred. It meant that she could not crop that land next year. The Government, and the people in their offices, did not seem to realise the situation. “Many of us are cleared out of stock. What good is derelict land to anyone? They put you out and they put someone else in.“ She understood the Banking Commission’s report, when it came, would be favourable to the farmers. It had been long enough in coming: they ought to have it well hatched by this. A banker had said that farmers were the most honourable people he ever did business with.