Irish Parliamentary Party - Reconstruction

Reconstruction

The outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899 was condemned by both Irish factions, their combined opposition helped to bring about a measure of understanding between them. By 1900 the threat of O’Brien swamping and outmanoeuvring them at the upcoming elections forced the two divided parties, the INL and the INF, to re-unite. He was the prime mover in merging them under a new programme of agrarian agitation, political reform and Home Rule into a new united Irish Parliamentary Party. Redmond, leader of the smaller INL group, was chosen as its leader mainly due to the personal rivalries between the INF's Anti-Parnellite leaders. After the party returned 77 MPs in the September 1900 general election a period of considerable political development followed.

The UIL, explicitly designed to reconcile the fragmented party, was accepted as the parliamentary nationalist’s main support organisation, with which O’Brien intensified his campaign of agrarian agitation. Encouraged by the Chief Secretary George Wyndham and initiated by moderate landlords led by Lord Dunraven the December 1902 Land Reform Conference followed, which successfully aimed at a settlement by conciliatory agreement between landlord and tenant. O'Brien, Redmond, T. W. Russell (who spoke for Ulster tenant-farmers) and Timothy Harrington represented the tenant side. Its outcome became the basis for O’Brien orchestrating the unprecedented Wyndham Land Purchase Act (1903) through parliament, which abolished landlordism, enabling tenant farmers buy out their landlord’s land at favourable annuities, settling the age-old Irish land question.