The anti-annuity payment campaign, 1934–6

Abstract

The retention by the Fianna Fáil government of the land annuities in 1932 and the consequent trade dispute with Great Britain, the ‘economic war’, is a subject extensively covered in the existing historiography, both in terms of the diplomatic and economic facets of the dispute. Opposition by the opponents of Fianna Fáil to the collection of land annuities has been well documented in the context of the political conflict between supporters and opponents of the treaty. Another trend in the historiography has emphasised, as the central characteristic of the anti-annuity payment campaign, the opposition by farmers to the payment of annuities on economic and social rather than on political grounds. Paul Bew and others have argued that large farmers supported the Blueshirts during the ‘economic war’ for material reasons; Mike Cronin has argued that the crisis of the ‘economic war’ encouraged opposition to de Valera’s policies among farmers, rather than pro-Treaty political considerations; and Andrew Orridge has also argued that the anti-annuity payment campaign included both a political element, in the form of Blueshirt hostility to Fianna Fáil, and a non-political element, on the part of farmers protesting at how their dependence on agricultural exports to Britain was threatened by Fianna Fáil policies.