United Irish League - Paths Divide

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 1904-1905, then turned to and allied with D. D. Sheehan and his Irish Land and Labour Association, this becoming his new platform for renewed political activity. It aggravated the Dillonite section of the IPP to the extent that they were determined to destroy both "before they poison the whole country". and published regular denunciations of their conciliatory policies in the IPP's 'Freeman's Journal'. By 1907 there were seven MPs outside the parliamentary party. Proposals to reunited the party were made by Redmond and a meeting summoned for the Mansion House, Dublin in April 1908. In the interest of unity O'Brien and others rejoined the party, though a year later O'Brien left it for good. This time hounded out by Devlin’s Molly Maguire baton troops, a wing of the Hibernians Order, on the occasion of the rigged Dublin National Convention in February 1909, called the "Baton Convention", in a dispute over the financial arrangements for the next stage of the 1909 Land Purchase Act. As a consequence of which O’Brien next founded his new political movement, 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.