Housing Acts
Britain had two bills to pay for past wrongs. After financing tenant land purchase, tenant farmers were now proud proprietors largely in control of local government. The next bill to pay was for extensive rural housing of the tens of thousands of migrant farm labourers struggling to survive in stone cabins, barns or mud hovels. A long standing demand by the ILLA branches and D.D. Sheehan.
O'Brien saw its prime importance and during 1905 pressed and negotiated for what was to become, after the January 1906 general election, the Bryce Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906), which during the course of the next five years financed the erection of over 40,000 commodious cottage homes, each on an acre of land. This unique social housing programme unparalleled anywhere in Europe brought about an unprecedented agrarian revolution, changing the face of the Irish countryside.
Renewed publication of O'Brien's newspaper The Irish People (1905–1909) exalting the cottage building, its editorials equally countermanding the IPP's Dublin "bosses" attempts to curtail the program, fearing settled rural communities would no longer be dependent on Party and Church. Munster took full advantage, erecting most of the cottages, additional funding following under Birrell's Labourers (Ireland) Act 1911 .
In the interest of united, O'Brien and others rejoined the Parliamentary Party when Redmond summoned a unity meeting in the Mansion House, Dublin in April 1908. Later that year, during negotiations for additional funding of land purchase under an amending bill, Redmond called a further UIL National Convention for 9 February 1909 in Dublin to regulate the issues, claiming the bill over-burdened the British Treasury and the rate payers. Over 3000 delegates attended. Devlin had the hall filled in advance with forces of his militant Mollies, so that when O'Brien and his followers tried to speak in favour of the bill, they were battoned into silence. The convention then dubbed the 'Baton' Convention by O'Brien. It was in "probably the stormiest meeting ever held by constitutional nationalists".
The bill eventually passed into law as Birrell's Land Purchase Act (1909), but falling far short in its financial provisions.
Read more about this topic: William O'Brien
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