High political burlesque: So what is the New Land League?

At one of Dublin’s most expensive addresses, a mansion with a swimming pool, tennis court and stone lions overlooking Killiney Bay, a motley group of businessman-activists erected a human barricade. Inside was Brian O’Donnell, a solicitor and developer who once controlled a €1 billion property empire but was declared bankrupt in 2013.

A bank-appointed receiver had the all-clear to repossess the house, Gorse Hill, and the activists had assembled to stop him. Journalists gathered for the spectacle, solemnly reporting on comings and goings. Vincent Browne posed for a photograph by the pool.

In an act of high political burlesque, the activists call themselves the New Land League, claiming to have taken up the cause of Michael Davitt, the 19th century republican who fought for tenant farmers and put up resistance against evictions.

The latter-day league was set up in 2013, its leader, Jerry Beades said, when he and others disrupted an Allsops auction in Dublin when property, including farms that had been seized because of unpaid loans, was being sold.

Boycott

They succeeded in shutting down the auction. Some sang the national anthem, others quoted from a speech

Charles Stewart Parnell

gave in Ennis in 1880 in which he called for the boycott of those who took possession of farms after a family had been evicted.

Beades is a former member of Fianna Fáil's ardchomhairle and was a close associate of Bertie Ahern when the former taoiseach was in politics.

Beades was himself challenging Ulster Bank at the time over loans it valued at €3.5 million. The New Land League’s focus is repossessions, but its website also contains sections on, or links to critical articles about, the banks, the legal system, dirty water, water charges, water fluoridation, the education system, fracking, the Lisbon treaty, corruption, the health system, the media and genetically modified food.

Notwithstanding acute sensitivities around repossessions and sympathy for those who lose their homes, the New Land League has struggled for broad appeal. Beades referred to the Killiney mansion as “bog-standard”.

Defence

Beades put up a stout defence, saying the issues at stake were the same whether someone owed €50,000 or €5 million. The group has the support of about “5,000 to 7,000” people, he says, and will assist anybody whose family home is being threatened by banks.

Its purpose is to force banks into sitting down with property owners and negotiating meaningfully, and it has come to the defence of smallholdings as well as high-profile properties such as Gorse Hill.

“We had a bit of discussion among ourselves, but felt it was a family home,” Beades said of their support for the O’Donnells. “As one of our guys said, we help big and small, we are not compiling a Schindler’s List of who stays and who goes.”