Ireland's first successful experiment in Communism began in a murder 190 years ago
What remains of Ralahine commune in Clare is an intriguing look at what might have been for Irish society and politics.
This month marks the 190th anniversary of the collapse of Ireland's first successful experiment in Communism.
Begun on 7 November 1831, it was all over by 23 November 1833.
Brainchild of landowner John Scott Vandeleur and his assistant, Edward Craig, the settlement once occupied a 600-acre site at Ralahine, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare.
Around nine o'clock on the evening of Saturday 23 April 1831, Daniel Hastings, Vandeleur's estate manager, was bolting his door, when suddenly two shots were fired through a window opposite.
The bullets entered the back of his skull and passed through to his forehead, killing him instantly.
A £200 reward was offered by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for information leading to the arrest of those who perpetrated such a “cruel and daring murder”.
That same night, the Terry Alts and Lady Clare's Boys visited other houses in the area. Windows were smashed, furniture broken up, haystacks burned, weapons seized, money demanded.
Rural conditions worsened in 1830 when potato blight led to increased rents, tenant evictions, and violent unrest.
On the land, estate stewards, like Hastings, traditionally decided what work should be performed.
Craig says they were much despised, and tenants did as little as they could.
Vandeleur, who fled with his family to Limerick, needed a way of cooling tempers and placating his workers.
In 1823 he had attended a lecture in Dublin by social reformer Robert Owen who spoke in favour of self-sustaining workers’ co-operatives. The time was now ripe for him to develop such a plan – a “win, win” scheme his workers would find irresistible, yet would safeguard his own profits.
Twenty-seven-year-old Craig, who arrived from Manchester with his wife, already had experience of working for Robert Owen in New Lanark, and managed to convince deeply sceptical men and women in Ralahine to accept his ideas.
At present those workers hadn't a shilling to their name. Under a co-operative system members would be guaranteed fixed prices, cheap food and an all-year job: “such as is agreeable to his or her feelings”.
They would receive sick pay, a pension, free schooling for their children, and the opportunity to accumulate “common capital” and deposit money in the community Savings Bank.
Any worker interested in joining was personally vetted by Vandeleur, and had to pass Craig’s phrenology test. Large-headed men were excluded, being judged unreformable, too easily influenced by their “lower feelings” and difficult to manage.
Fifty-two applicants were successful: 7 married couples, 21 single men, 5 single women, 5 children under the age of five, and 7 orphans under seventeen. Numbers rose to 81 the following year.
If a member married someone outside the community, their partner had to undergo a ballot by members, with women as well as men being entitled to vote. When the new husband of infant schoolmistress Mrs O’Dea was rejected, both had to leave.
Workers were not the only ones to benefit. Vandeleur himself greatly gained from the scheme. He’d achieved a motivated, non-militant and sober workforce – alcohol being banned.
His financial risks were minimal: the workers would be paying higher rent and he would retain full ownership should things fail.
Besides, he never needed to live in the community himself: he could stay put with his family in the Mansion House, set inside a 250-acre walled estate, containing stables for sixteen horses.
Craig was a very good manager, and for a couple of years the project was a modest success. Drawn from a common geographical and social background, members bonded easily.
In winter 1832, for instance, they protected their community by closing the gates on a local foxhunt, surprising huntsmen with worries about their “young crops” and “damaged fences”.
At harvest time 1833 a grand celebration with a dinner, speeches and dancing was held.
But all along, the community possessed a fatal flaw that would ultimately lead to its destruction.
The co-operative's Rule 29 stipulated: “no gaming of any kind be practised by any member of the society”.
Ironically, Vandeleur himself was a compulsive gambler, and would spend many an evening at his Dublin Club, frittering away the profits, and notching up huge debts.
In autumn 1833 he faced a particularly bad run of luck at the card table. Members of the commune met for the last time on 23 November 1833, when they acknowledged “the contentment, peace and happiness they had experienced for two years... through no fault of the Association, was now at an end”.
Failing to obtain money from the bank to pay off his debts, Vandeleur vanished. When he did not show up before the commissioners for bankruptcy in January 1834, he was declared an outlaw.
Family tradition has it that he escaped to the USA and became a train driver. Others maintain he headed to Australia, after having forged a cheque in the name of a certain “David Wilson”. The enraged Wilson supposedly traced him to Sydney.
In March 1834 Vandeleur’s family sold the Ralahine estate. Members were evicted and the colony destroyed.
The shock and sadness still resonated almost fifty years later in Edward Craig’s account of the venture, An Irish Commune: The History of Ralahine (1882).
News of the collapse, he says, “came upon our happy community like an unexpected thunderbolt”. Craig went back to England. Workers returned to their old ways.
