Anti-conciliationist
He was invited in 1917 to take part in talks during the Irish Convention which was called to agree terms for the implementation of the suspended 1914 Home Rule Act. However he discovered that John Redmond was negotiating agreeable terms with Unionists under the Midleton Plan to avoid the partition of Ireland but at the partial loss of full Irish fiscal autonomy. This infuriated Murphy who criticized the intention in his newspaper, which severely damaged the Irish Parliamentary Party. However, the Convention remained inconclusive, and the ensuing demise of the Irish party resulted in the rise of Sinn Féin, whose separatist policies Murphy also did not agree with.
Murphy died in 1919. His family controlled Independent Newspapers until the early 1970s, when the group was sold to Tony O'Reilly.
Read more about this topic: William Martin Murphy