The Irish Farmers’ Association offered a masterclass in protest at its 60th-anniversary celebrations in Convention Centre Dublin, with a video of highlights over the years. Nearly every landmark moment involved a march or a sit-in, with thousands of farmers lining up.
There was the tractorcade when hundreds of tractors filled Merrion Square, the beef blockades, and the storming of Hotel Europe in Killarney during an EU summit in 1996.
The key protest came in 1966, when then IFA president Rickard Deasy led thousands on a walk from Bantry to Dublin to win the right to negotiate with the government. Charles Haughey, at the time minister for agriculture, refused to meet the protesters when they arrived, which led to a sitdown outside Government Buildings.
Later footage showed farmers being arrested and jailed, though roads and bridges stayed blocked until they won the right to sit down with the government.
Mr Deasy’s son Ruaidhrí marvelled at the logistics of organising that march in an era before Twitter, Facebook and even landlines for many.
“There were no mobile phones,” he recalled. “When you think back, how could they organise a march which was to start in Bantry and to co-ordinate it so it all came together at the one time [in Dublin]? Telegrams were about as fast as they had.
“It was a tribute to their ingenuity that they were able to do that.”
Another former IFA president, the late TJ Maher, once noted that the protest marked the “emergence of farmers as a new force”. Farmers had found their voice, and the IFA would go on to lead hundreds of thousands of its members to Dublin on a variety of issues, providing tea and sandwiches for protesters and black bags to gather their rubbish afterwards.
EU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan said the IFA was one of the most successful movements, "not just at Irish level, but in the whole of Europe . . . and in fact the way it has gently coaxed national governments and the EU institutions down the years could be held up as an example in how its citizens can organise and unite to advance their common goals".
He recalled how former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald once walked out of a European Council meeting discussing the allocation of milk quotas because Ireland wasn't getting enough.
“As a result of the hard bargaining,” he said, “Ireland got an almost 5 per cent extra quota when all other countries were taking less or at best stood still.
“That a man from Rathmines, who wouldn’t know a cow from a bullock, engaged in such hard bargaining to the benefit of Irish agriculture can in a large part be attributed to the persuasion of the IFA at the time.”
The fortunes of Irish farmers have waxed and waned since then. But the fact that four ministers, an EU commissioner, ambassadors and former ministers attended the celebrations highlights the power that the IFA still holds.
The group now has more than 88,000 members in 946 branches, an all-time high, according to its president, Eddie Downey.
“I believe our founding fathers, who fought so hard to give farmers a strong voice, would be immensely proud of our standing today,” he said, gesturing around the packed Convention Centre in Dublin.
Ruaidhrí Deasy recalled how his father could not get the parish priest to bless the farmers before they left Bantry for their march to Dublin. “But someone got the local rector, and they said that will do fine.”
The IFA has better luck nowadays, with three church leaders, including Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, leading ecumenical prayers before lunch.
The main dish was beef, of course.
