Patrick was active in local politics, representing the Moyne Electoral Division on Longford County Council from 1915 until his death, as a member of the United Irish League. 

 

The UIL, founded in 1898 by William O'Brien and Michael Davitt, was the mass movement which supported the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster. In the early years of the century the IPP/UIL dominated nationalist politics.  The radical separatist nationalism later represented by Sinn Fein was a small minority with little influence compared to the UIL's 1,000 branches and 100,000 members in 1901. 

 

" The UIL'S highly developed organization, first centred round the land purchase issue and expressing a strong predisposition against 'land grabbers' used the new county councils to great effect...(it) represents the degree of political dynamism still mobilized by the 'old' political forms in the late 1890's" (Foster, 1988 p.432).

 

Though it declined somewhat over the next decade it was still the main focus of Nationalist activity until the 1916 Rising.  The constitutional nationalist movement had broadly achieved the goals it had set itself in the 1870's - land reform and home rule.  In 1870 less than 3% of land occupiers owned their land; by 1916 this had risen to 64% as a number of Land Acts enabled tenants to buy out their landlords.  Home Rule (devolution for Ireland) was on the Statute Books, awaiting the end of the Great War. 

 

Patrick Higgins would have felt some pride in what had been achieved in his own lifetime - from the degradation of the Famine to a degree of self-determination - and he had played a small part in that process.  But the 1916 rising and the subsequent emergence of Sinn Fein changed the political landscape irrevocably.

 

To some, the constitutionalists had become complacent and servile.  The 'advanced' nationalists, imbued with an idealistic view of Ireland and its destiny looked with disdain on what they saw as the materialism and vulgarity of the dominant political class as represented by the UIL:

 

"There are sides of all that western life, the groggy-patriot-publican general-shop-man who is married to the priest's half-sister and is second cousin once-removed of the dispensary doctor, that are horrible and awful.  This is the type that is running the present United Irish League anti-grazier campaign, while they are swindling the people themselves in a dozen ways and then buying out their holdings and packing off whole families to America.... a rampant double-chinned vulgarity I haven't seen the like of". (J.M. Synge, 1905, quoted in Foster, 1988 p.455).

 

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The effect of 1916 was to bring a new generation, young and impatient, into political activity.  These represented not so much a new class as a redefinition of the interests of the small farmer and tenant.  Nowhere was this more evident than in County Longford, which in 1913 had one of the highest rates of membership of the UIL in the country, but by 1919 had proportionately more Sinn Fein members than any other county.  In effect, Sinn Fein supplanted the UIL, and the take-over was remarkably swift and complete:

 

"Much of the early organization of Sinn Fein in towns and villages was in fact undertaken by former Irish Party adherents (United Irish League officials, local councillors and the like).  By mid- 1917 John Redmond, (the Irish Parliamentary Party leader) had to admit that in the Longford countryside "the young men had all gone over to Sinn Fein and they took their fathers to the poll and threatened that if they did not vote for the Sinn Feiner they would not work for them".  The Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary continued for some months to suggest that "persons of stake and influence" were still standing aloof from Sinn Fein. But by the end of 1918 most police inspectors were convinced that Sinn Fein had won the allegiance (whether forced or freely given) of the vast majority of nationalists of all ages".(Fitzpatrick, p.125)

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However, a few pockets of loyalty to the old leaders remained; a comment by a UIL member captures a forlorn sense of incomprehension in the face of change:

 

"Nationalists in Upper and Lower Dromard are staunch.  The centre, around Legga, has gone astray for a long time"

 

Legga indeeed may have 'gone astray'.  It was sufficiently well recognised as a republican centre to attract Michael Collins, the charismatic leader of the fight for independence, for it was here that he made a speech deemed 'likely to cause disaffection' for which he was later remanded to Sligo Gaol in April 1918. (Coogan p.85)

 

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