James Daly (Irish Land League)

James Daly (1838, in County Mayo, Ireland – 21 January 1911, at his residence on Spencer St., Castlebar, County Mayo) was an Irish nationalist activist best known for his work in support of tenant farmers' rights and the formation of the Irish National Land League.

Daly was a conservative Catholic from a comfortably-off Mayo farming family. He served from 1869 on the Castlebar Board of Guardians and as a guardian for the Litterbrick Division in Ballina union.

Daly took up the emerging political cause in the West to establish tenant farmers' rights against largely absentee landlords and participated in the meeting in Louisburgh, County Mayo in 1875, convened to establish a local tenants defence association.

From May 1876, Daly and Alfred O'Hea supported Matt Harris's Ballinasloe Tenants Defence Association.

In February 1876, together with Alfred O'Hea, he purchased the Mayo Telegraph, renamed the Connaught Telegraph in 1878, and became sole owner in 1879 on O'Hea's death. The Connaught Telegraph became the early publicity vehicle for what was initially a Mayo-based land movement.

On 26 October 1878, the Mayo Tenants' Defence Association (or Mayo Farmers' Club) was formed at Castlebar, with Westport barrister J. J. Louden as chairman and Daly as secretary. The local MP, John O'Connor Power, attended, giving the support of the "advanced" faction of the home rule movement to the growing land movement. This support was reinforced by Parnell himself when he joined Daly, O'Connor Power, James Kilmartin and Matt Harris at the Ballinasloe Tenants' Defence Association meeting on 3 November 1878.

The immediate trigger for the 20 April 1879 Irishtown mass meeting is disputed. According to one commonly quoted theory, in January 1879 local Irishtown tenant farmers asked Daly to take up their cause against a landowner variously referred to as 'Canon Ulick Burke' or Bourke, or 'Canon Burke' or 'Father Burke', who had inherited a property with 22 tenants, all in arrears, had increased rents and had taken legal steps to evict them. Burke is then said to have backed down after the mass meeting and decreased rents.

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