Edition Bobbett2. Speeches and statements by Elizabeth F. Bobbett
1939 Gorey, Meeting of the Irish Farmers’ Federation
Source: Free Press, 08.07.1939
Miss Elizabeth Bobbett, Wicklow, General Secretary of the Federation, said that it was her third visit to Gorey to try and start the Federation in the district. Hitherto the farmers of Wexford were not as strongly organised as they should be; most of them were afraid or ashamed to let on that they were not able to pay their way. But many of them were glad to organise now and she hoped that they would all follow the lead given to them by Kilmuckridge and start branches in every parish. A fight was being made for the relief of agriculture and as they would reap the benefits resulting from it they should help the good cause along.
The Federation, she explained, was organised as a Trade Union and was absolutely non-political. Whatever party a man might belong to, so long as he was a farmer or an agricultural worker, he was welcome in the Irish Farmers’ Federation. Their immediate aim and what concerned them most was the relief without delay of the farming industry. Complete de-rating and a moratorium on land annuities were necessities because of the extraordinary losses suffered in the economic war during which export trade to the value of 112 million pounds was lost. When industrial Trades Unions formulate their demands and declare a strike to enforce them, they don’t worry about the farmers and it was now up to everyone to look after himself. When she visited Letterkenny on the previous Thursday banners were floating in the streets and special trains and buses were run for the occasion and that spoke well for the keen spirit of the Donegal farmers.
They complain, and with reason, that the high cost of living and the high cost of production are killing farming. Millions were being spent on the Volunteers, gas masks, etc., while the farming industry was fast going out of production. The food producers of the countryside were flying to the towns and farmers should raise their voices and demand fair play or they might get ready to emigrate.
If they studied carefully the Land Bill recently introduced in the Dail by the Government they would find that the last remnant of their security of tenure was gone. Fixity of tenure would soon be a thing of the past and the way paved to a Communistic State. Anyone could then claim their land. They would have a second Russia here in Ireland if they were not careful.
One of their aims was to get compensation for the losses of the economic war years; to get compensation assessed as pound for pound of their valuation, which would help to tide them over the difficult times they were in. Another was to get a subsidy of ten shillings a week for agricultural labourers employed. The prices of the British markets governed their prices at home and they could not compete in the export market unless their costs of production were reduced. Their overhead charges would have to come down and all hands, the ten acre man and the five hundred acre man, should pull their weight together to bring that about.
Life on the land was hard. Men and women, mothers as well as fathers, had to work from daylight to dark, Sunday and Monday, every day of the year, without holidays, while the workers in the towns had their annual holiday and qualified for free medical attendance and pensions – there were pensions now for practically everybody. She appealed to the women to put spirit into their mankind, make them join the Farmers’ Federation and not be the down-trodden slaves in the future that they were today. (Applause).