THE WORD BOYCOTT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 27, 1 August 1939, Page 10

THE WORD BOYCOTT

ITS IRISH ORIGIN

LAND TROUBLES IN MAYO

In 1879 a sturdy, short, heavily- j moustached, ex-military officer, Charts'; Cunningham Boycott, had^e"misfortune to be the agenj^or Lord Erne's estates in M^^ Ireland, says a writer in th /e ' Melbourne "Age." He had fcfeen in the post for five or six year., without experiencing more than t'-a'e normal troubles of an agent for ?i landlord in distressful Ireland. A-captain who had held a commission & the 39th Foot Regiment after education at Woolwich, Boycott was just an ordinary conservative Englishman, the son of an East Anglican vicar in Norfolk. He was, however, destined to be a central figure in a bitter Irish drama in the agrarian campaign, and to add his name to the English language in circumstances which influenced the whole course of English and Irish politics for the best part of a generation. On August 1, 1879, a notice was posted on Boycott's gate threatening him with death if he collected the full rents on the farms in the estate without making deductions which would be in addition to a 10 per cent. I reduction already granted by Lord I Erne. Boycott did not comply, and collected the bulk of the rents due. Next year, for refusing to receive rents j at a figure decreed by the Irish Land I League, Boycott's life was again threat- j ened; his servants left him; his fences \ were torn down; his letters were in- i tercepted. and his food supplies were j so seriously interfered with that the j ordinary necessaries of life had to be | conveyed to him from a distance by steamers. He was insulted when he appeared in the public roads and villages. AID FROM AUTHORITIES. Lord Erne at once, and the authorities after some delay, came to the support of what was deemed to be the law of the land and public order. He tried to collect rents under police protection, but failed. The tenants were under the spell of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Parliamentary j Leader, who in a speech at Ennis in; September, 1879, had, in effect, told them to take action in the event of failure to obtain large reductions in rent, which amounted to detailed intimidation, yet which stopped short of physical violence. This kind of action came to be known as "boycotting."

The word was first used in a newspaper by the "Daily News" (now merged into the "News Chronicle"). On December 13, 1880, the Liberal organ printed "Boycott" in large capital letters at the top of an article on Ireland's troubles. The new term at once struck the public imagination. It is now used throughout the British Commonwealth of Nations and the United States to designate all kinds of passive action against nations and individuals, such as a refusal to purchase the goods of a nation or the seeking to isolate, socially, a detested person or group.

It is pleasant to record that Captain Boycott survived unscathed the unpopulEvlty and civil commotion which surrounded the stormy stages of his career, though he was mobbed in 1881 at Westport on his return from a visit to America, and his effigy was hanged and burnt. In February, 1886, he left County Mayo and became agent for Sir H. Adair's Suffolk estates. The Irish tenantry so far left him undisturbed that he was able to take his holidays in Ireland. In 1888 he gave evidence before the famous "Times" Royal Commission. He died at Fiixton, Suffolk, in June, 1897, at the age of sixty-five.