William O'Brien - All-for-Ireland League

All-for-Ireland League

As an outcome of the "Baton Convention" O’Brien felt himself again driven from the party. He foresaw that the IPP, undermined by the AOH, was on a fatal radical path which would frustrate any All-Ireland Home Rule settlement. As a counter measure he established a new League, which was to build on the success his combined "doctrine of conciliation" with "conference plus business" achieved during the 1902 Land Conference with landlords and the ensuing 1903 Land Purchase Act. Following his engagement with the Irish Reform Movement 1904-5, he firmly believed all moderate unionists could still be won over to All-Ireland Home Rule. For many nationalists on the other hand, the adoption of a conciliatory approach to the "hereditary enemy" involved too sharp a deviation from traditional thinking.

In March 1909 he inaugurated the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL) in Kanturk with James Gilhooly MP as Chairman and D. D. Sheehan Hon. Secretary. The AFIL’s political objective was the attainment of an All-Ireland parliament with the consent rather than by the compulsion of the Protestant and Unionist community, under the banner of the "Three Cs", for Conference, Conciliation and Consent as applied to Irish politics. The League was supported by many prominent Protestant gentry, leading landlords and Munster business figures. The political activist Canon Sheehan of Doneraile was also a founder member.

Ill-health striking O’Brien, he departed for Florence, Italy to recuperate, returning for the January 1910 general election, in which the Cork electorate returned eight "O'Brienite" MPs. Throughout 1910 his AFIL movement was opposed an Irish Party supported by the Catholic clergy. It returned eight independent AFIL MPs in the December 1910 general election to be O'Brien's new political party. From July 1910 until late 1916 O’Brien published the League’s newspaper, the Cork Free Press. Election results published by it showed Independents throughout Ireland had won 30% of votes cast.

O’Brien saw it opportune for a co-operative understanding with Arthur Griffith's moderate Sinn Féin movement, having in common – attaining objectives through "moral protest" – political resistance and agitation rather than militant physical-force. Neither O’Brien nor Griffith advocated total abstentionism from the Commons, and regarded Dominion Home Rule, modelled on Canada or Australia, as acceptable. Although Griffith favoured co-operation, a special Sinn Feín executive council meeting called to consider co-operation regretted it was not possible because its constitution would not allow it. In the following years O’Brien and his party continued to associate themselves with Griffith's movement both in and out of parliament. In June 1918 Griffith asked O’Brien to have the writ moved for his candidacy in the Cavan-east by-election (moved by AFIL MP Eugene Crean) to which Griffith was elected with a sizeable majority.

In 1911 O'Brien proposed Dominion Home Rule in a letter to Asquith as the only viable solution to the "Irish Question". Home Rule became technically assured after a new Home Rule bill was introduced in 1912 with the IPP holding the balance of power at Westminster. During the 1913–14 parliamentary debates on the Third Home Rule Bill, O'Brien, alarmed by Unionist resistance to the bill, opposed the IPP's coercive "Ulster must follow" policy, and published in January 1914 specific concession which would enable Ulster join a Dublin parliament "any price for an United Ireland, but never partition". William O'Brien resigned his seat as MP again for a fourth time in January and re-stood to test local support for his policies, after the All-for-Ireland League suffered heavy defeats in the Cork City municipal elections.

When the Ulster Volunteers armed in April to resist likely "Rome Rule", Redmond's Irish Volunteers armed likewise to ensure enactment of all-Ireland self-government. Rejecting O'Brien's initiatives, the Redmond-Dillon-Devlin hardline alliance remained uncompromising – "no concessions for Ulster". In May 1914 O'Brien and his followers abstained from the final vote passing the Home Rule Act 1914, denouncing it as a "partition deal", after Sir Edward Carson leader of the Ulster Unionist Party forced through an amendment mandating the partition of Ireland, the Nationalist's confrontation course with Ulster ending in fiasco.