William O'Brien - Land Act Architect

Land Act Architect

O'Brien next intensified the UIL agitation for land purchase by tenant farmers, pressurising for compulsory purchase. He formed an alliance with constructive unionists which resulted resulted in the calling of the December 1902 Land Conference, an initiative by moderate landlords led by Lord Dunraven for a settlement by conciliatory agreement between landlord and tenant. The tenant representation was led by O'Brien, the others were John Redmond, Timothy Harrington and T. W. Russell for the Ulster tenants. After six sittings all eight tenant’s demands were conceded (one with compromise), O’Brien having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of "conference plus business". He followed this by campaigning vigorously for the greatest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, orchestrating the Wyndham Land Purchase Act (1903) through parliament, which effectively ended landlordism, solving the age old Irish Land Question.

This masterful strategy of bringing about agreement on land purchase between tenants and landlords under the Act, resulted in a rush of landlords to sell and of tenants to buy. Though the Act was approved by Redmond, his deputy Dillon disfavoured the Act because he opposed any co-operation with landlords and Michael Davitt objected to peasant proprietorship under the Act, demanding land nationalisation. Together with Thomas Sexton editor of the party's Freeman's Journal, all three campaigned against O’Brien, fiercely attacking him for putting Land Purchase and Conciliation before Home Rule. O'Brien appealed to Redmond to suppress their opposition but it went unheeded. Declaring that he was making no headway with his policy, he resigned his parliamentary seat in November 1903, closed down his paper the Irish People and left the party for the next five years. It was a serious setback for the party. It also turned once intimate friends into mortal enemies. His Cork electorate however, insisted on pushing through his re-election eight months later in August 1904. O’Brien’s intention of shocking the party to its senses, failed.

During 1904 O'Brien had already embarked on advancing full scale implementation of the Act in alliance with D. D. Sheehan MP and his Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), when they formed the Cork Advisory Committee to help tenants in their negotiations. Their collaboration became the new organisational base for O'Brien's political activities. This new alliance aggravated the Dillonite section of the IPP further. Determined to destroy both of them "before they poison the whole country", Dillon and the party published regular denunciations in the Freeman's Journal, then coupéd O'Brien's UIL with the appointment of its new secretary, Dillon’s chief lieutenant, Joseph Devlin MP, Grandmaster of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Devlin eventually gaining organisational control over the entire UIL and IPP organisations. O'Brien had in the mean time engaged with the Irish Reform Association, equally condemned by his opponents.