United Irish League

[5] After O'Brien had withdrawn to the West of Ireland he experienced at first hand in his Mayo exile the plight of the peasant tenant farmers and landless labourers, their distressed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 counties Mayo, Roscommon and Galway were in the hands of local town shopkeepers, retired policemen, and other middle-class Irish elements.

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 Board, established by Balfour in 1891, for redistribution among the tenants of smaller agricultural holdings.

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.

[13] By September 1899 the League had spread to the extent that all six Connacht bishops expressed approval of attempts "to create peasant proprietorship with enlarged holdings in the west of Ireland".

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.

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".

Organised by John O'Donnell MP as its general secretary the UIL performed extremely well and threatened the position of the divided Irish Parliamentary Party.

The county and the sub-county District Councils created a political platform for proponents of Irish Home Rule, displacing Unionist influence in many areas.

[3] In some areas such as county Cork, where long standing trade union and labour traditions existed, the electorate tended to adhere to representatives of their allegiances.

The depth of support for labour was particularly displayed in Mid-Cork, no doubt due to the growth of another organisation, the Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), assiduously cultivated by D. D. Sheehan the then editor of the Skibbereen based newspaper, The Southern Star, who assured that UIL and ILLA branch reports were given weekly press coverage, crucial for the expansion and growth of the UIL in Cork.

[19] The existence of these two organisations, the UIL centred on popular broad-nationalism, the ILLA based on 'labour nationalism' at first apparently corroborative of one another, would within a decade ultimately lead to self-destructive class-tensions, schisms and divisions.

[20] The UIL tactic at the time 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.

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 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.

[31] 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.

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.

[34] 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".

[35] With the National Convention in January 1902 claiming 1230 branches,[36] 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.

[37] 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.

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.

[41] 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.

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.

[42] 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.

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".

Joseph Devlin, the AOH Grandmaster had attached himself to the Dillonite section of the Irish Party, was now additionally General Secretary of O'Brien's adopted UIL.

In 1907, Devlin was able to assure John Redmond, the Irish Party leader, that a planned meeting of the UIL would be well attended because he would be able to get more than 400 AOH delegates to fill the hall.

[56] 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.

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.