United Irish League - Background

Background

In 1895 William O’Brien retired from Parliament and the Irish Parliamentary Party (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 After O’Brien had withdrawn to the West of Ireland he experienced at first hand in his Mayo exile the plight of the peasant tenant farmers and landless labourers, their distressed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 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.