Ask Brian Hanley how his family weaving business John Hanley and company got started in Tipperary

and the answer is a slice of Irish history.

We can go back to somewhere around the mid-1800s with the family weaving in different parts of the county. By the time the year 1890 rolled

around, Ireland's land war was in full swing. We've talked about this period before on the podcast.

It saw a campaign of resistance to the exploitation of tenant farmers by landlords that led to massive

redistribution of land. When the Hanley weavers of Lacken

were issued with an eviction noticed in the midst of it, the founder of the Land League, Michael

Davitt, saw an opportunity. They were kicked out essentially of the premises that they were in there.

So there was quite a big hoo-ha, Michael Davitt, who was one of the chief organizers of that movement,

used the eviction, the movement of the machinery as a kind of a demonstration.

Local people from Lacken helped move the machinery halfway,

and people from this area went the other half to meet them and bring them back.

As the decades rolled on, John Hanley Weavers grew in strength. Handley fabrics furnished the

drapery shops of Killarney and Macroom and were soon being shipped to the gentleman's

tailors of Italy and London. But modern times didn't always bring prosperity.

When this country was going through that terrible phase that they called the Celtic Tiger,

2004 and onwards, we found those quite difficult years. It was a struggle in some ways to keep going.

The whole country was on an upward curve, but we were going in the opposite

direction. And I suppose you start to doubt yourself and you wonder, like, are you in the right

game and should you be doing what you're doing? Textile manufacturing in Western Europe aren't

two phrases that really go together. Everybody is producing in China. Everybody's producing in Vietnam.

Low-cost countries, make it cheap, sell it high.

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