United Irish League - Estrangement

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 Journal, 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 affecting 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 a young MP of remarkable political ability 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 (AOH), but also because he was the outstanding representative of Ulster Nationalism.

O'Brien had always been gravely disturbed by the Irish Parliamentary Party's involvement with "that sinister sectarian secret society", the Ancient Order of Hibernians, often known as the Molly Maguires, or the Mollies, -- what he called "the most damnable fact in the history of this country", and was bitterly resentful and unsparing in his attacks upon it. AOH members represented Catholic-nationalism of a Ribbon tradition, their Ulster Protestant counter-part the Orange Order. 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. Devlin was already known as "the real Chief Secretary of Ireland", his AOH spreading successfully and eventually saturating the entire island. Even in Dublin the AOH could draw large crowds and stage impressive demonstrations. 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.