United Irish League - Achievement

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out to be a half-hearted abortive Bill, its terms, as urged by O'Brien, rejected by the party, so that the measure was withdrawn.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. 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 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.