Arson, boycotts and murder: Myles Dungan argues that the battle for land was more important than our fight for sovereignty

In his book Land is All That Matters, the RTÉ broadcaster gives us a magisterial study of our agrarian conflicts

Eviction: A family being thrown out of their home in the 1870s. Illustration by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Andrew Lynch

Gone with the Wind, according to some opinion polls, is the United States’ favourite novel of all time. It is also a profoundly Irish story. In the opening scene of its 1939 film adaptation, Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara sneers at the Georgian cotton plantation which her immigrant father has nostalgically called Tara. He promptly issues a stern rebuke.

“Land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts,” Gerald O’Hara declares. “To anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them, why the land they live on is like their mother… It will come to you, this love of the land. There’s no getting away from it if you’re Irish.”