Athenry News & Views Spring 2026

Athenry News & Views

Extracts from the diary of Peter Broderick By: John Flatley (Connacht Tribune) One of the unsung heroes of the Land League’s campaign of passiveness getting underway in 1880 was Peter Broderick of Ivymount House, Athenry. A farmer and merchant and elected member of the Loughrea Board of Guardians, Peter’s career was put out-of-joint on his being lodged in Galway Jail

annihilation and ever recurring disputes about land”, Peter P. Broderick, Athenry 1881) was that the people should disobey or ignore the law or its agents. Chief Secretary Forster was digging an even deeper hole for British rule in Ireland than he imagined. His use of over- awing force to counteract legitimate opposition to his agents- the landlords was to swell the ranks of the disaffected at Galway Gaol. The people of Ireland, it appeared to him at that time, were not to be given the opportunity of showing their fitness for equality before the law. He could not bring himself to trust in the loyalty and good sense of the Irish people. Passive disloyalty to his agents, though neither an open resistance to faw nor part of the repertoire of crime in the general disorder of the time, had to be eradicated by the use of the law. In 1881 the British Government passed an Act ‘For the Better Protection of Person and Property in Ireland’. It became an offence to be suspected of incitement to boycotting. Could that effectively remedy the unsettled condition of the land question in Ireland? Would a stretch in jail alter the sentiments and convictions of people advancing the cause of tenant farmers? Secretary Forster was naive. In Athenry at the time there was a man who believed the injustices would not succeed. Peter Broderick, a shopkeeper and farmer, kept a diary. He wrote: “This year dawned upon our country with the hope that the next session of Parliament would devise means to alleviate the distress then prevailing. Men deep in knowledge and full of economic science asked in amazement how it was that one bad harvest could almost annihilate a nation and deeply and sadly the vison came before their minds that the disease above arose from the unsettled condition of the Land Question in Ireland.” Broderick recognised the futility of waiting for Secretary Forster to satisfactorily deal with the Irish question. He wrote: “Mid all the chaos and uncertainty then existing, a man who had played an humble part in a previous movement for his country appeared, and like a voice on the hilltop, like a beacon on a stormy ocean gave the people hope, bade them lift their drooping spirits that their emancipation was in their own hands, and like he proverbial man clinging to the straw, the voice of this prophet of a new doctrine, Michael Davitt was heard and from end to end of the land of Ireland was raised the сrу—’The Land for the people who till it’. Peter Broderick was himself an appointed Secretary, Secretary of the Athenry Branch of the Land League

on suspicion of promoting boycotting in 1881. In a meticulously kept account of each day from November to March, he recorded the rigours of his arrest and incarceration; his dealings with prison staff, fellow prisoners and visitors, his thoughts on the developing political situation, and details about the gaol. His diary is a revelation of the deprivations of body and mind in prison; the effects of news about life outside on prisoners; the concern shown by newspapers, politicians and friends and a relatively humane regime at Galway Jail. The cursive handwriting and cogent sentences made for very pleasant reading. Peter Broderick and his wile Julia ran the post office and shop in Athenry. One son, James, joined the Jesuits and based at Farm Street, London, published several books. The other son, Martin, became a professor at Nottingham University. The daughter, Mother Finbarr of the Sisters of Charity and Jesus and Mary, founded many convents in Ireland. Peter’s brother, John, was father of Sean Broderick, Fine Gael T.D., and Chris Broderick, MPSI, Athenry. In the popular song ‘The Fields of Athenry’ there’s a line ‘Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay, meaning Galway Bay, the depressing sentence for non-compliance with the handling of Ireland’s political economy in 1845. Thirty-five years later nothing had changed except that the prison was in Galway town. Charles Trevelyan was unimpressed by the fact that one-third of the population those about to be hardest hit by the famine- could hardly afford bread at any price, nevertheless, this permanent Head of the Treasury, the top civil servant, had dictatorial powers of life and death. He was the guardian of the principles the State could not give people food. W.E. Forster, appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1880, displayed a similar unshakeable conviction that the enforcement of law would solve the agrarian problem in Ireland. Forster was not to duly concerned that laws weak in themselves require large bodies of men to enforce them. His main concern was that non- acceptance of the law had to be confronted with forces large enough to over-awe any attempt at violence. William Forster was dominated by a sense of personal responsibility to solve the disorder prevalent in Ireland in the 1880s. To satisfy his conscience he had to keep the country quiet. The worst harm for Ireland (in contrast to the “disease of famine, political

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