United Irish League
Encyclopedia
The United Irish League (UIL) was a nationalist political party
in Ireland
, launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People" . Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform
, compelling larger grazier
farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution amongst the small tenant farmer
s. Founded and initiated at Westport, County Mayo
by William O'Brien
, it was supported by Michael Davitt
MP, John Dillon
MP, who worded its constitution, Timothy Harrington MP and the Catholic clergy of the district. Miller, David W.: Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898-1921 pp.19-28, Gill & Macmillan (1973) ISBN 0 7171 0645 4 By 1900 it had expanded to be represented by 462 branches in twenty-five counties.
(IPP) in the wake of the Parnell split, by which the party became fragmented into three separate networks of local organisation -- the Parnellite Irish National League
, the Dillionite anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation
and the Healyite
Peoples Right’s Association. O’Brien had become disillusioned with the internal party quarrels and its failure to rouse the people to a new sense of involvement with national goals. After O’Brien had withdrawn to the West of Ireland he experienced at first hand in his Mayo exile the plight of the peasant tenant farmer
s and landless labourers, their distressed hardship trying to eke out an existence in its rocky landscape. In contrast, the grazier ranches on the rich plains of Mayo, Roscommon
and Galway
were in the hands of local town shopkeepers, retired policemen, and other middleclass Irish elements. They were the real infernal evils, the so-called grasslands-grabbers, from whom the small tenant farmers were obliged to rent land for their needs. O’Brien saw the necessity to tackle the owners of these grazing ranches. He wanted to have the lands redistributed, a new idea at the time.
The land agitations
during the 1880s saw the introduction of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885, also known as the Ashbourne
Act which helped to eliminate the old cry of “land-grabbers” but since the 1890s the cry was supplemented by “grass-grabbers”. O’Brien thus began to take the first steps in his new campaign of agrarian agitation that would ultimately establish peasant proprietorship. This prompted him to call for the introduction of a Land Bill with a provision for the compulsory purchase of untenanted grazier-ranches for distribution amongst tenants. The failure of the Conservative Government to provide for compulsory purchase under Balfour’s
1891 Land Act, convinced O’Brien that something more than Parliamentary oratory was needed to encourage official circles to attend to the needs of the people.
, established by Balfour in 1891, for redistribution amongst the tenants of smaller agricultural holdings. It was largely welcomed even amongst some of the clergy whilst the authorities on the other hand kept the new movement under close observation. Actually, O’Brien put more life into the country in the first six months of the League than the Nationalist party had aroused in years, after widespread agrarian agitation recommenced in 1898.
The clergy in the district around Westport and Newport, County Mayo
promoted the League with considerable zeal, one parish priest called for a branch to hunt the grabbers and Scottish graziers out of the country . Elsewhere the clergy were in no hurry to sanction the League’s agitation. Except for Archbishop McEvilly
of Tuam
, who expressed sympathy for the goals of its agitation. By September 1899 the League had spread to the extent that all six Connaught bishops expressed approval of attempts "to create peasant proprietorship with enlarged holdings in the west of Ireland". The Tuam provincial hierarchy’s accommodation of the League up to 1900 reflected predominantly the genuine congruence of their social ideals with the stated aims of the movement.
The League was equally and explicitly designed to reconcile the various parliamentary fragments by bringing them together in a new grass roots organisation around a programme of agrarian agitation, political reform, settlement of the Irish land question
and pursuit of Irish Home Rule
. William O’Brien was the prime mover, and the difficulty of the project can be gauged from the fact that the parliamentary leaders had very different opinions on the land question. Dillon regarded the unresolved land issue as an essential motor for the nationalist home rule movement. O’Brien championed the smallholders against the large graziers while Davitt, whose original idea had been state ownership and agrarian socialism, was not particularly enamoured by peasant proprietorship. Garvin, Tom: The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics: The Reconstruction of Nationalist Politics, 1891-1910 p.102, Gill & Macmillan (2005) ISBN 0-7171-3967-0
Though O’Brien claimed that his organisation had no political objective, he became intrinsically aware that to further their cause the three split factions of the IPP needed to be re-united. He strongly believed that only agitational politics combined with constitutional pressures, rather than physical force, were the best means of achieving its goals. It was O’Brien’s and Davitt’s hope that reunion could be forced on the party from the outside, by organising the country and transforming the Irish representation in Parliament through the election of "good men". Dillon became ambivalent about the new association, believing that it would lead to confrontation with the government and endanger the alliance with the Liberals
. This marked the first significant strain in the O’Brien-Dillon relationship.
MP as its General Secretary the UIL performed extremely well and threatened the position of the divided Irish Parliamentary Party. As a consequence, it quickly gained popular support amongst tenant farmer, its branches sweeping over most of the country, dictating to the demoralised Irish party leaders the terms for reconstruction, not only of the party but the nationalist movement in Ireland. The UIL platform included commitments to such themes as language revival and industrial development. The movement was backed by O'Brien's new newspaper The Irish People
(Sept. 1899 - Nov. 1903). In it he declared that the new League was the people’s organisation and that the people, and not the politicians, should be its base. Its organisation included an elaborate representative structure linked to a National Directory. This threat to the divided factions of the IPP began a reunification amongst MPs, led from above, to counter the UIL threat growing up from below.
The League immediately took up the issue of land redistribution, which the Irish Land League had campaigned on two decades earlier, but had been sidelined after the IPP split into the declining Irish National League and the Irish National Federation. The League's first electoral target was the county council
elections under the new revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
. The Act broke the power of the landlord ascendancy
dominated "Grand Juries", for the first time passing absolute democratic control of local affairs into the hands of the people through elected Local County Councils. Next to full Home Rule a no more remarkable concession to popular rights and economic reconstruction. The first local government elections were held in the spring of 1899 when the Leagues’ candidates swept the field and Nationalist county and district councillors began to conduct the local administrative functions hitherto performed by landlord-dominated grand-juries.
The tactic of setting the have-nots against the haves naturally appealed to the self-interest of the simpler peasants and was the main reason for the rapid spread of the movement. By April 1900 the League’s listing showed 462 branches, representing between 60,000 and 80,000 members in twenty five counties. Within two years O’Brien’s UIL was by far the largest organisation in the country, comprising 1150 branches and 84,355 members.
The result of the rapid growth of his UIL as a national organisation in achieving unity through organised popular opinion, was to effect a quick defensive re-union of the discredited IPP factions on 6 February in London under the unanimously agreed leadership of John Redmond
MP, largely fearing O’Brien’s return to the political field. The National League and the Irish National Federation, representing the two wings of the IPP, both merged with the UIL, which actually became accepted by the parliamentarians as the main support organisation of the parliamentary nationalists. The UIL resembled the old INL, however, in its organisers; many of them were old INL cadre whom O’Brien had recruited for a repeat performance, and it thrived in those areas where land-hungry men were particularly dominant.
The League organisers worked furiously during the months following the reunion to spread the UIL organisation into the eastern and southern parts of the country, the sharp rise during 1900 probably reflected the absorption of old National League and National Federation branches, the new organisation possessing a dynamism which had long been lost by the older bodies. The ill-feeling between the League and many clergymen transcended the political conflicts within the Irish party. The dominance of the Church in Irish rural life made almost inevitable a sense of frustration on the part of young men of ambition among the lower classes. A generation earlier such men had gravitated into pathetic secret protest movement. Now they found a place in the United Irish League.
One crucial problem had yet to be faced – the question of who should be president of the League. O’Brien, now at the pinnacle of national popularity, had created the League primarily to promote land purchase through vigorous agitation. This had been crippled earlier by Parnell in the National League. To avoid this in the future he saw the only way was by retaining control of the UIL through individuals who were agrarian agitators. A National Convention of the League was called and held in Dublin on 19 and 20 June 1900. It registered the triumph of the League as the national organisation with elaborate rules and a constitution drawn up by O’Brien. Redmond was elected chairman. He himself had no doubt as to the future action to be taken. Redmond intended to capture O’Brien’s organisation and subordinate it to party Parliamentarian interests. He assumed the role of president in December. Within two years he and Dillon were to tactically adjunct the UIL under the wing of the IPP, manoeuvring it out of O'Brien's control.
In the September general election
. O’Brien swept back to Parliament again for his old Cork constituency as the only begetter of the League and as a senior member of the inner circle of party managers. He could feel proud of his achievement after the reunited party fought its first election on the program of the United Irish League. The unity disturbed O’Brien however as it resulted in most of the ineffective party candidates being re-elected, preventing the UIL Directory from using its power in the pre-selection of candidates. The task facing the united Irish Party’s new leader Redmond was now to create a unified political organization, effectively grounded in the realities of Irish society. By 1901 revolutionary nationalism was moribund, though it was, of course, to undergo a miraculous recovery.
With the National Convention in January 1902 claiming 1230 branches, the scene was thus set for a clash between a strong government, which was in no mood to allow an Irish land war to deflect it from its own constructive ideas, and a League pledged to attack landlordism, turning more and more to the traditional weapons of boycott and outrage. The attitude of the Dublin Castle administration
hardened to such a degree that O’Brien moved a parliamentary amendment in January 1901 condemning a resort to the methods of Arthur Balfour
. A steady stream of proclamations and arrests continued so that between 1901 and 1902 amongst others, thirteen Irish MPs were imprisoned under the Crimes Act and by the Spring of 1902 the counties of Cavan, Clare, Cork, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary and Waterford were proclaimed to fall under the Act.
The UIL agitation focused attention on the fact that many families lived on patches of land too small to provide a decent livelihood even without rent. Agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase, but the four years of almost ceaseless activity that O’Brien put into the League had not brought the benefits for the tenants he had hoped for, apart from giving the Parliamentary party a new lease of life. Nevertheless, the Chief Secretary for Ireland
Wyndham
came to recognise the dire situation of the starved population of the west of Ireland. The existence of the United Irish League, the conversion of the Ulster
Protestant tenant leader T. W. Russell to compulsory land purchase, O’Brien whipping up enthusiasm for his winter program of boycotting and agitation together with the cost of maintaining a huge police force to quell agrarian unrest, influenced Wyndham to recognise that the time had come to construct a Land Bill for Ireland.
When letters of approval by Redmond and O'Brien were published in response by the press at the end of September there was no turning back. It resulted in Wyndham calling for a Land Conference
to strive for a settlement by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant. It was to be among four landlord delegates to be led by Lord Dunraven on the one hand and William O'Brien MP, John Redmond MP, Timothy Harrington MP and Ulster's T. W. Russell MP representing tenant farmers on the other hand. Thus after considerable internal deliberations on both sides, the eight delegates met in Dublin on 20 December 1902 in a conference publicly hailed by Redmond as "the most significant episode in the public life of Ireland for the last century". After only six sittings, the conference report as framed by O'Brien was published on 4 January 1903, making eighteen recommendations. The report was received favourably by people holding most shades of public opinion.
After O’Brien and Redmond had met the head of the Civil Service in Dublin Castle, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, for informal talks on 6 February, the National Directory and the Parliamentary party gave approval to the Land Conference terms on 16 February. The bill to achieve social reconciliation in Ireland was finally introduced by Wyndham on 25 March, 1903. The Irish Landowners’ Convention which met in April acclaimed the bill as “by far the largest and most liberal measure ever offered to landlords and tenants by any Government in any country”. A League Convention on 16 April saw 3,000 Nationalist supporters applaud the bill and O’Brien’s resolution which "pledged the Irish nation . . . . . to the vital principle of the policy of national reconciliation". He followed this by orchestrating the greatest and widest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, the Land (Purchase) Act (1903) through Parliament. The Act provided generous bonus-subsidy terms to landowners on sale, the Irish Land Commission
overseeing the new landowner’s low interest annuities. O'Brien saw his achievement as having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of "conference plus business" and of having set in motion events of decisive importance in reversing the consequences of centuries of alien domination. In the period 1903 to 1909 over 200,000 peasants became owners of their holdings under the Act. There is no reason to doubt O’Brien’s sincerity in viewing the settlement of the land question as the first step in the attainment of Home Rule. Unfortunately few others would have the same outlook, for which he was yet to suffer.
, Dillon denounced the legislation and the "doctrine of conciliation". This divergence, was in a few short weeks to turn the two old and once intimate friends into mortal enemies. Davitt condemned both peasant land proprietorship and that land was being purchased rather than confiscated from the landlords. O'Brien requested from his conciliatory friend Redmond that they be disciplined, which to O’Brien’s consternation he refused to do, fearing a renewed party split.
Seeing himself thus alienated from the party O'Brien informed Redmond on 4 November 1903 that he was resigning from Parliament, leaving the UIL Directory, ceasing publication of his newspaper, the The Irish People and withdrawing from public life. Despite appeals from friends and allies he refused to reconsider. O’Brien’s resignation was a very serious matter for the party, throwing it into a state disarray not experienced since the Parnell crisis in 1890. It had repercussions at home and abroad. Laurence Ginnell
of the central office reported 22 lapsed divisional bodies by December, 489 lapsed branches by the spring of 1904. The League was wholly dead in the west and in Dublin. Particularly younger men turned from any support whatever for the parliamentary movement. Davitt reported that it was also virtually dead in United States. The League continued to decline nationwide over the next years seriously effecting the funding of both the party and the League.
At the November 1904 National Convention, the General Secretary of the League, O’Brien’s loyal John O’Donnell MP, was replaced by Dillon’s close protégé and Belfast
ally Joseph Devlin
MP who in time gained complete control and leadership of the entire party organisation. It deprived O'Brien of all authority. Devlin was devoted to Dillon, who had helped him greatly in his rise to eminence, and Dillon in his turn had come to heavily rely on him, not only for control of the United Irish League and the Catholic organisation, the Ancient Order of Hibernians
, but also because he was the outstanding representative of Ulster Nationalism.
O'Brien subsequently became involved with the Irish Reform Association
1904-1905, then turned to the Irish Land and Labour Association
as his new political platform. Acting in the interest of unity he rejoined the IPP briefly in 1908, left it finally in 1909, this time hounded out by Devlin’s Molly Maguire
baton troops, a wing of the Hibernians Order, during the Baton Convention. As a consequence of which O’Brien founded his new political party, the All-for-Ireland League
which returned eight independent MPs in the December 1910 general elections
.
The United Irish League remained politically active as Devlin’s support organisation for the Parliamentary party, becoming largely infiltrated by members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians
, up until the rise of Sinn Féin
after the outbreak of World War I
in 1914. From 1918, the UIL was restricted to Northern Ireland
, and was defunct by the mid-1920s.
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People" . Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform
Land reform
[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...
, compelling larger grazier
Grassland
Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants . However, sedge and rush families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica...
farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution amongst the small tenant farmer
Tenant farmer
A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying...
s. Founded and initiated at Westport, County Mayo
Westport, County Mayo
Westport is a town in County Mayo, Ireland. It is situated on the west coast at the south-east corner of Clew Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean....
by William O'Brien
William O'Brien
William O'Brien was an Irish nationalist, journalist, agrarian agitator, social revolutionary, politician, party leader, newspaper publisher, author and Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
, it was supported by Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt was an Irish republican and nationalist agrarian agitator, a social campaigner, labour leader, journalist, Home Rule constitutional politician and Member of Parliament , who founded the Irish National Land League.- Early years :Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo,...
MP, John Dillon
John Dillon
John Dillon was an Irish land reform agitator from Dublin, an Irish Home Rule activist, a nationalist politician, a Member of Parliament for over 35 years, and the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party....
MP, who worded its constitution, Timothy Harrington MP and the Catholic clergy of the district. Miller, David W.: Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898-1921 pp.19-28, Gill & Macmillan (1973) ISBN 0 7171 0645 4 By 1900 it had expanded to be represented by 462 branches in twenty-five counties.
Background
In 1895 William O’Brien retired from Parliament and the Irish Parliamentary PartyIrish Parliamentary Party
The Irish Parliamentary Party was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons at...
(IPP) in the wake of the Parnell split, by which the party became fragmented into three separate networks of local organisation -- the Parnellite Irish National League
National League (Ireland, 1882)
The Irish National League was a nationalist political party in Ireland. It was founded in October 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell as the successor to the Irish National Land League after this was suppressed...
, the Dillionite anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation
Irish National Federation
The Irish National Federation was a nationalist political party in Ireland. It was founded in March 1891 by former members of the Irish National League who had left the Irish Parliamentary Party in protest when Charles Stewart Parnell refused to resign the party leadership as a result of his...
and the Healyite
Healyite Nationalist
The Healyite Nationalists were Irish Nationalist politicians who supported Timothy Healy MP.Healy was the most outspoken member of the anti-Parnellite majority in the Irish Parliamentary Party...
Peoples Right’s Association. O’Brien had become disillusioned with the internal party quarrels and its failure to rouse the people to a new sense of involvement with national goals. After O’Brien had withdrawn to the West of Ireland he experienced at first hand in his Mayo exile the plight of the peasant tenant farmer
Tenant farmer
A tenant farmer is one who resides on and farms land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying...
s and landless labourers, their distressed hardship trying to eke out an existence in its rocky landscape. In contrast, the grazier ranches on the rich plains of Mayo, Roscommon
County Roscommon
County Roscommon is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the town of Roscommon. Roscommon County Council is the local authority for the county...
and Galway
County Galway
County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...
were in the hands of local town shopkeepers, retired policemen, and other middleclass Irish elements. They were the real infernal evils, the so-called grasslands-grabbers, from whom the small tenant farmers were obliged to rent land for their needs. O’Brien saw the necessity to tackle the owners of these grazing ranches. He wanted to have the lands redistributed, a new idea at the time.
The land agitations
Plan of Campaign
The Plan of Campaign was a stratagem adopted in Ireland between 1886 and 1891, co-ordinated by Irish politicians for the benefit of tenant farmers, against mainly absentee and rack-rent landlords. It was launched to counter agricultural distress caused by the continual depression in prices of dairy...
during the 1880s saw the introduction of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885, also known as the Ashbourne
Baron Ashbourne
Baron Ashbourne, of Ashbourne in the County of Meath, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1886 for Edward Gibson, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His grandson, the third Baron , was a Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy...
Act which helped to eliminate the old cry of “land-grabbers” but since the 1890s the cry was supplemented by “grass-grabbers”. O’Brien thus began to take the first steps in his new campaign of agrarian agitation that would ultimately establish peasant proprietorship. This prompted him to call for the introduction of a Land Bill with a provision for the compulsory purchase of untenanted grazier-ranches for distribution amongst tenants. The failure of the Conservative Government to provide for compulsory purchase under Balfour’s
Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...
1891 Land Act, convinced O’Brien that something more than Parliamentary oratory was needed to encourage official circles to attend to the needs of the people.
Objectives
The decline in population since the Great Famine had been accompanied by the conversion of previously cultivated land into large grazing ranches, so that in many areas most of the local population was still crowded on tiny, uneconomical holdings within sight of open, untilled fields. At the very place in Westport where in 1879 Parnell once launched the Irish Land League, and in response to the near-famine of 1897-8, O’Brien established a new organisation, the United Irish League (UIL) in January 1898 under the banner of ‘’The Land for the People’. The League had as its prime declared object the breaking up of the large grassland farmers, by compelling them to surrender their lands voluntarily to the Congested Districts BoardCongested Districts Board
Congested Districts Board may mean or refer to:*the Congested Districts Board for Ireland*the Congested Districts Board...
, established by Balfour in 1891, for redistribution amongst the tenants of smaller agricultural holdings. It was largely welcomed even amongst some of the clergy whilst the authorities on the other hand kept the new movement under close observation. Actually, O’Brien put more life into the country in the first six months of the League than the Nationalist party had aroused in years, after widespread agrarian agitation recommenced in 1898.
The clergy in the district around Westport and Newport, County Mayo
Newport, County Mayo
Newport, historically known as Ballyveaghan , is a small picturesque town in the Barony of Burrishoole County Mayo, Ireland with a population of 590 in 2006. It is located on the west coast of Ireland, along the shore of Clew Bay, north of Westport. The N59 road passes through the town. The...
promoted the League with considerable zeal, one parish priest called for a branch to hunt the grabbers and Scottish graziers out of the country . Elsewhere the clergy were in no hurry to sanction the League’s agitation. Except for Archbishop McEvilly
John McEvilly
John McEvilly was an Irish Roman Catholic archbishop.Born in Louisburgh, County Mayo, he was ordained in 1842 and became priest of Tuam...
of Tuam
Archbishop of Tuam
The Archbishop of Tuam is an archiepiscopal title which takes its name after the town of Tuam in County Galway, Ireland. The title was used by the Church of Ireland until 1839, and is still in use by the Roman Catholic Church.-History:...
, who expressed sympathy for the goals of its agitation. By September 1899 the League had spread to the extent that all six Connaught bishops expressed approval of attempts "to create peasant proprietorship with enlarged holdings in the west of Ireland". The Tuam provincial hierarchy’s accommodation of the League up to 1900 reflected predominantly the genuine congruence of their social ideals with the stated aims of the movement.
The League was equally and explicitly designed to reconcile the various parliamentary fragments by bringing them together in a new grass roots organisation around a programme of agrarian agitation, political reform, settlement of the Irish land question
Irish Land Acts
The Land Acts were a series of measures to deal with the question of peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909...
and pursuit of Irish Home Rule
Irish Home Rule Movement
The Irish Home Rule Movement articulated a longstanding Irish desire for the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 by a demand for self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The movement drew upon a legacy of patriotic thought that dated back at least to the late 17th...
. William O’Brien was the prime mover, and the difficulty of the project can be gauged from the fact that the parliamentary leaders had very different opinions on the land question. Dillon regarded the unresolved land issue as an essential motor for the nationalist home rule movement. O’Brien championed the smallholders against the large graziers while Davitt, whose original idea had been state ownership and agrarian socialism, was not particularly enamoured by peasant proprietorship. Garvin, Tom: The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics: The Reconstruction of Nationalist Politics, 1891-1910 p.102, Gill & Macmillan (2005) ISBN 0-7171-3967-0
Though O’Brien claimed that his organisation had no political objective, he became intrinsically aware that to further their cause the three split factions of the IPP needed to be re-united. He strongly believed that only agitational politics combined with constitutional pressures, rather than physical force, were the best means of achieving its goals. It was O’Brien’s and Davitt’s hope that reunion could be forced on the party from the outside, by organising the country and transforming the Irish representation in Parliament through the election of "good men". Dillon became ambivalent about the new association, believing that it would lead to confrontation with the government and endanger the alliance with the Liberals
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
. This marked the first significant strain in the O’Brien-Dillon relationship.
Expansion
Organised by John O'DonnellJohn O'Donnell (politician)
John O’Donnell was an Irish journalist, Nationalist politician and Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom House of Commons from 1900 to 1910....
MP as its General Secretary the UIL performed extremely well and threatened the position of the divided Irish Parliamentary Party. As a consequence, it quickly gained popular support amongst tenant farmer, its branches sweeping over most of the country, dictating to the demoralised Irish party leaders the terms for reconstruction, not only of the party but the nationalist movement in Ireland. The UIL platform included commitments to such themes as language revival and industrial development. The movement was backed by O'Brien's new newspaper The Irish People
Cork Free Press
The Cork Free Press was a nationalist newspaper in Ireland, which circulated primarily in the Munster region surrounding its base in Cork, and was the newspaper of the dissident All-for-Ireland League party...
(Sept. 1899 - Nov. 1903). In it he declared that the new League was the people’s organisation and that the people, and not the politicians, should be its base. Its organisation included an elaborate representative structure linked to a National Directory. This threat to the divided factions of the IPP began a reunification amongst MPs, led from above, to counter the UIL threat growing up from below.
The League immediately took up the issue of land redistribution, which the Irish Land League had campaigned on two decades earlier, but had been sidelined after the IPP split into the declining Irish National League and the Irish National Federation. The League's first electoral target was the county council
County council
A county council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a county. This term has slightly different meanings in different countries.-United Kingdom:...
elections under the new revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
The Local Government Act 1898 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that established a system of local government in Ireland similar to that already created for England, Wales and Scotland by legislation in 1888 and 1889...
. The Act broke the power of the landlord ascendancy
Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy, usually known in Ireland simply as the Ascendancy, is a phrase used when referring to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of great landowners, Protestant clergy, and professionals, all members of the Established Church during the 17th...
dominated "Grand Juries", for the first time passing absolute democratic control of local affairs into the hands of the people through elected Local County Councils. Next to full Home Rule a no more remarkable concession to popular rights and economic reconstruction. The first local government elections were held in the spring of 1899 when the Leagues’ candidates swept the field and Nationalist county and district councillors began to conduct the local administrative functions hitherto performed by landlord-dominated grand-juries.
The tactic of setting the have-nots against the haves naturally appealed to the self-interest of the simpler peasants and was the main reason for the rapid spread of the movement. By April 1900 the League’s listing showed 462 branches, representing between 60,000 and 80,000 members in twenty five counties. Within two years O’Brien’s UIL was by far the largest organisation in the country, comprising 1150 branches and 84,355 members.
Party re-united
Around 1900 O'Brien, an unbending social reformer and agrarian agitator, was the most influential and powerful figure within the nationalist movement, although not formally its leader. The period was marked by considerable political development in which Davitt had been of great help during the crucial years of the League’s existence, but in February, worn out and ill, he left for abroad. The settlement of the party leadership question now focused on the two most important men in Irish politics, O’Brien and Redmond. The initiative seemed to lie with O’Brien, yet Redmond had the prestige of being the Irish party leader. O’Brien was not in the true sense a politician, he possessed great popular gifts, but lacked that will to power which is the hallmark of the politician.The result of the rapid growth of his UIL as a national organisation in achieving unity through organised popular opinion, was to effect a quick defensive re-union of the discredited IPP factions on 6 February in London under the unanimously agreed leadership of John Redmond
John Redmond
John Edward Redmond was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918...
MP, largely fearing O’Brien’s return to the political field. The National League and the Irish National Federation, representing the two wings of the IPP, both merged with the UIL, which actually became accepted by the parliamentarians as the main support organisation of the parliamentary nationalists. The UIL resembled the old INL, however, in its organisers; many of them were old INL cadre whom O’Brien had recruited for a repeat performance, and it thrived in those areas where land-hungry men were particularly dominant.
The League organisers worked furiously during the months following the reunion to spread the UIL organisation into the eastern and southern parts of the country, the sharp rise during 1900 probably reflected the absorption of old National League and National Federation branches, the new organisation possessing a dynamism which had long been lost by the older bodies. The ill-feeling between the League and many clergymen transcended the political conflicts within the Irish party. The dominance of the Church in Irish rural life made almost inevitable a sense of frustration on the part of young men of ambition among the lower classes. A generation earlier such men had gravitated into pathetic secret protest movement. Now they found a place in the United Irish League.
One crucial problem had yet to be faced – the question of who should be president of the League. O’Brien, now at the pinnacle of national popularity, had created the League primarily to promote land purchase through vigorous agitation. This had been crippled earlier by Parnell in the National League. To avoid this in the future he saw the only way was by retaining control of the UIL through individuals who were agrarian agitators. A National Convention of the League was called and held in Dublin on 19 and 20 June 1900. It registered the triumph of the League as the national organisation with elaborate rules and a constitution drawn up by O’Brien. Redmond was elected chairman. He himself had no doubt as to the future action to be taken. Redmond intended to capture O’Brien’s organisation and subordinate it to party Parliamentarian interests. He assumed the role of president in December. Within two years he and Dillon were to tactically adjunct the UIL under the wing of the IPP, manoeuvring it out of O'Brien's control.
In the September general election
United Kingdom general election, 1900
-Seats summary:-See also:*MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1900*The Parliamentary Franchise in the United Kingdom 1885-1918-External links:***-References:*F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987**...
. O’Brien swept back to Parliament again for his old Cork constituency as the only begetter of the League and as a senior member of the inner circle of party managers. He could feel proud of his achievement after the reunited party fought its first election on the program of the United Irish League. The unity disturbed O’Brien however as it resulted in most of the ineffective party candidates being re-elected, preventing the UIL Directory from using its power in the pre-selection of candidates. The task facing the united Irish Party’s new leader Redmond was now to create a unified political organization, effectively grounded in the realities of Irish society. By 1901 revolutionary nationalism was moribund, though it was, of course, to undergo a miraculous recovery.
Renewed agitation
Throughout the early months of 1901 agitation was limited, merely thirty-five cases of boycotting reported, due to O’Brien’s weak health and Davitt being in America for most of the year. Despite this the Nationalists felt the old sting of League meetings being outlawed, the traditional reaction of the Administration to the least sign of popular unrest. In August 1901 the UIL reached nearly 100,000 members, when its Directory issued a resolution calling for active agitation throughout Ireland. O'Brien now at the height of his prestige, dominated the UIL machine and in a vigorous speech on 15 September called for “a great national strike against ranching and grabbing” as its winter program. What he wanted was boycotting and the filling of Irish jails. Dillon also made several fiery speeches against the government, and to tenants encouraging them to demand rent reduction and "for the purpose of driving every landlord out of the country".With the National Convention in January 1902 claiming 1230 branches, the scene was thus set for a clash between a strong government, which was in no mood to allow an Irish land war to deflect it from its own constructive ideas, and a League pledged to attack landlordism, turning more and more to the traditional weapons of boycott and outrage. The attitude of the Dublin Castle administration
Dublin Castle administration in Ireland
The Dublin Castle administration in Ireland was the government of Ireland under English and later British rule, from the twelfth century until 1922, based at Dublin Castle.-Head:...
hardened to such a degree that O’Brien moved a parliamentary amendment in January 1901 condemning a resort to the methods of Arthur Balfour
Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...
. A steady stream of proclamations and arrests continued so that between 1901 and 1902 amongst others, thirteen Irish MPs were imprisoned under the Crimes Act and by the Spring of 1902 the counties of Cavan, Clare, Cork, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary and Waterford were proclaimed to fall under the Act.
The UIL agitation focused attention on the fact that many families lived on patches of land too small to provide a decent livelihood even without rent. Agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase, but the four years of almost ceaseless activity that O’Brien put into the League had not brought the benefits for the tenants he had hoped for, apart from giving the Parliamentary party a new lease of life. Nevertheless, the Chief Secretary for Ireland
Chief Secretary for Ireland
The Chief Secretary for Ireland was a key political office in the British administration in Ireland. Nominally subordinate to the Lord Lieutenant, from the late 18th century until the end of British rule he was effectively the government minister with responsibility for governing Ireland; usually...
Wyndham
George Wyndham
George Wyndham PC was a British Conservative politician, man of letters, noted for his elegance, and one of The Souls.-Background and education:...
came to recognise the dire situation of the starved population of the west of Ireland. The existence of the United Irish League, the conversion of the Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
Protestant tenant leader T. W. Russell to compulsory land purchase, O’Brien whipping up enthusiasm for his winter program of boycotting and agitation together with the cost of maintaining a huge police force to quell agrarian unrest, influenced Wyndham to recognise that the time had come to construct a Land Bill for Ireland.
Achievement
Balfour gave Wyndham the go-ahead to prepare for a Land Purchase Bill early in 1902, which when introduced in spring turned out to be a half-hearted abortive Bill, its terms, as urged by O'Brien, rejected by the party, so that the measure was withdrawn. There then arose one of the most striking and richly complex initiatives in the entire political history of modern Ireland. Jackson, Alvin: Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000 p.104, Phoenix Press (2003) ISBN 0-75381-767-5 In June a landlord of moderate views, Lindsay Talbot Crosbie, wrote to the press calling for an agreed settlement between representatives of the proprietor and tenant interests. On 3 September a similar letter was published by another Galway landlord, Captain John Shawe-Taylor setting out proposals for a landlord-tenant conference. They were important because they articulated the desires of a small but influential group of moderate landlords, who, encouraged by the Administration in Dublin Castle, heralded an era of landlord-tenant rapprochement in Ireland. What saved Taylor's letter from being branded, as Crosbie’s scheme was by O'Brien's Irish People, as “a stale and rotten red-herring across the path of the National movement” was its endorsement by the Chief Secretary Wyndham, who grasped the chance to salvage his Land Bill for reintroduction on terms agreed to in advance by both interested parties.When letters of approval by Redmond and O'Brien were published in response by the press at the end of September there was no turning back. It resulted in Wyndham calling for a Land Conference
Land Conference
The Land Conference was a successful conciliatory negotiation held in the Mansion House in Dublin, Ireland between 20 December 1902 and 4 January 1903. In a short period it produced a unanimously agreed report recommending an amiable solution to the long waged land war between tenant farmers and...
to strive for a settlement by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant. It was to be among four landlord delegates to be led by Lord Dunraven on the one hand and William O'Brien MP, John Redmond MP, Timothy Harrington MP and Ulster's T. W. Russell MP representing tenant farmers on the other hand. Thus after considerable internal deliberations on both sides, the eight delegates met in Dublin on 20 December 1902 in a conference publicly hailed by Redmond as "the most significant episode in the public life of Ireland for the last century". After only six sittings, the conference report as framed by O'Brien was published on 4 January 1903, making eighteen recommendations. The report was received favourably by people holding most shades of public opinion.
After O’Brien and Redmond had met the head of the Civil Service in Dublin Castle, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, for informal talks on 6 February, the National Directory and the Parliamentary party gave approval to the Land Conference terms on 16 February. The bill to achieve social reconciliation in Ireland was finally introduced by Wyndham on 25 March, 1903. The Irish Landowners’ Convention which met in April acclaimed the bill as “by far the largest and most liberal measure ever offered to landlords and tenants by any Government in any country”. A League Convention on 16 April saw 3,000 Nationalist supporters applaud the bill and O’Brien’s resolution which "pledged the Irish nation . . . . . to the vital principle of the policy of national reconciliation". He followed this by orchestrating the greatest and widest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, the Land (Purchase) Act (1903) through Parliament. The Act provided generous bonus-subsidy terms to landowners on sale, the Irish Land Commission
Irish Land Commission
The Irish Land Commission was created in 1881 as a rent fixing commission by the Land Law Act 1881, also known as the second Irish Land Act...
overseeing the new landowner’s low interest annuities. O'Brien saw his achievement as having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of "conference plus business" and of having set in motion events of decisive importance in reversing the consequences of centuries of alien domination. In the period 1903 to 1909 over 200,000 peasants became owners of their holdings under the Act. There is no reason to doubt O’Brien’s sincerity in viewing the settlement of the land question as the first step in the attainment of Home Rule. Unfortunately few others would have the same outlook, for which he was yet to suffer.
Estrangement
The passing of the Land Act in August 1903 precipitated a full scale attack on O’Brien and the Act. The conciliatory approach and achievement in solving the land question aggravated Dillon who generally detested any negotiations with landlords. Together with Thomas Sexton and his Irish party's Freeman's JournalFreeman's Journal
The Freeman's Journal was the oldest nationalist newspaper in Ireland. It was founded in 1763 by Charles Lucas and was identified with radical 18th century Protestant patriot politicians Henry Grattan and Henry Flood...
, Dillon denounced the legislation and the "doctrine of conciliation". This divergence, was in a few short weeks to turn the two old and once intimate friends into mortal enemies. Davitt condemned both peasant land proprietorship and that land was being purchased rather than confiscated from the landlords. O'Brien requested from his conciliatory friend Redmond that they be disciplined, which to O’Brien’s consternation he refused to do, fearing a renewed party split.
Seeing himself thus alienated from the party O'Brien informed Redmond on 4 November 1903 that he was resigning from Parliament, leaving the UIL Directory, ceasing publication of his newspaper, the The Irish People and withdrawing from public life. Despite appeals from friends and allies he refused to reconsider. O’Brien’s resignation was a very serious matter for the party, throwing it into a state disarray not experienced since the Parnell crisis in 1890. It had repercussions at home and abroad. Laurence Ginnell
Laurence Ginnell
Laurence Ginnell was an Irish nationalist politician, lawyer and Member of Parliament of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party for Westmeath North at the 1906 UK general election, from 1910 he sat as an Independent...
of the central office reported 22 lapsed divisional bodies by December, 489 lapsed branches by the spring of 1904. The League was wholly dead in the west and in Dublin. Particularly younger men turned from any support whatever for the parliamentary movement. Davitt reported that it was also virtually dead in United States. The League continued to decline nationwide over the next years seriously effecting the funding of both the party and the League.
At the November 1904 National Convention, the General Secretary of the League, O’Brien’s loyal John O’Donnell MP, was replaced by Dillon’s close protégé and Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
ally Joseph Devlin
Joseph Devlin
Joseph Devlin, also known as Joe Devlin, was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician...
MP who in time gained complete control and leadership of the entire party organisation. It deprived O'Brien of all authority. Devlin was devoted to Dillon, who had helped him greatly in his rise to eminence, and Dillon in his turn had come to heavily rely on him, not only for control of the United Irish League and the Catholic organisation, the Ancient Order of Hibernians
Ancient Order of Hibernians
The Ancient Order of Hibernians is an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. Members must be Catholic and either Irish born or of Irish descent. Its largest membership is now in the United States, where it was founded in New York City in 1836...
, but also because he was the outstanding representative of Ulster Nationalism.
Paths divide
From the founding of the UIL, O’Brien held the view, that Ireland’s problems were caused by the manoeuvrings of the parliamentary politicians, who were out of touch with popular opinion. Under the new arrangements after 1900, O’Brien proclaimed that the party should be subordinated to the League, which represented the true feeling of the country. But what in fact happened was that party members soon dominated the councils of the League and its administrative machinery. Redmond never attempted to hide the necessity for the party to be dominant in policy-making. Once O’Brien began to campaign against party policy, he was treated as a “factionist”. In 1900 the leadership of the UIL had consisted of O’Brien and Dillon. In 1905, it consisted of Redmond, Dillon, and to a lesser extent, Joseph Devlin and T. P. O’Connor. O’Brien, by refusing to play the game according to the unwritten rules, forfeited his place in the leadership of the League.O'Brien subsequently became involved with the Irish Reform Association
Irish Reform Association
The Irish Reform Association was an attempt to introduce limited devolved self-government to Ireland by a group of reform oriented Irish unionist land owners who proposed to initially adopt something less than full Home Rule...
1904-1905, then turned to the Irish Land and Labour Association
Irish Land and Labour Association
The Irish Land and Labour Association was a progressive movement founded in the early 1890s in Munster, Ireland, to organise and pursue political agitation for small tenant farmers' and rural labourers' rights. Its branches also spread into Connacht. The ILLA was known under different names—Land...
as his new political platform. Acting in the interest of unity he rejoined the IPP briefly in 1908, left it finally in 1909, this time hounded out by Devlin’s Molly Maguire
Molly Maguires
The Molly Maguires were members of an Irish-American secret society, whose members consisted mainly of coal miners. Many historians believe the "Mollies" were present in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania in the United States from approximately the time of the American Civil War until a...
baton troops, a wing of the Hibernians Order, during the Baton Convention. As a consequence of which O’Brien founded his new political party, the All-for-Ireland League
All-for-Ireland League
The All-for-Ireland League , was an Irish, Munster-based political party . Founded by William O'Brien MP, it generated a new national movement to achieve agreement between the different parties concerned on the historically difficult aim of Home Rule for the whole of Ireland...
which returned eight independent MPs in the December 1910 general elections
United Kingdom general election, 1910 (December)
The United Kingdom general election of December 1910 was held from 3 to 19 December. It was the last British election to be held over several days and the last to be held prior to the First World War ....
.
The United Irish League remained politically active as Devlin’s support organisation for the Parliamentary party, becoming largely infiltrated by members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians
Ancient Order of Hibernians
The Ancient Order of Hibernians is an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. Members must be Catholic and either Irish born or of Irish descent. Its largest membership is now in the United States, where it was founded in New York City in 1836...
, up until the rise of Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
after the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1914. From 1918, the UIL was restricted to Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and was defunct by the mid-1920s.