Irish Parliamentary Party - Renewed Rift

Renewed Rift

The masterful strategy adopted by William O'Brien of bringing about agreement on land purchase between tenants and landlords under the Act, may almost be said to have been too great a success as it resulted in a rush of landlords to sell and of tenants to buy. Dillon, the deputy party leader, disfavoured the Act because he opposed any negotiations with landlords, Michael Davitt objected to peasant proprietorship, demanding land nationalisation. Together with Thomas Sexton editor of the party's Freeman's Journal, they campaigned against O’Brien, ferociously attacking him for putting Land Purchase and Conciliation before Home Rule. O'Brien's appeal to Redmond to suppress their opposition went unheeded. After stating that he was making no headway with his policy, he resigned his parliamentary seat in November 1903. It was a serious setback for the party, at the same time turning once intimate friends into mortal enemies. O'Brien subsequently engaged with the Irish Reform Association, equally condemned by his opponents.

O'Brien's UIL was taken over by Dillon’s protégé and ally, Joseph Devlin, a young Belfast MP, as its new secretary. Devlin had founded a decade earlier the Catholic sectarian neo-Ribbon Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), organising its rise first in Ulster and after he had control of the UIL, eventually across the south, largely displacing the UIL. The Irish Party came to have an increasing dependence on the AOH, though the party's attempts to crush out Healyite and O'Brienite 'factionism' were carried out through its national organisation, the UIL. The 1906 general election saw the Liberals back in power with 379 seats, an overwhelming majority of 88 over all other parties, after they had promised Home Rule. Redmond’s IPP now with 82 seats, at first delighted until the Liberals backed down on Home Rule, knowing it had no chance in the Lords. The IPP rift with O’Brien deepened after he guided the Bryce Labourers Act through parliament, which provided large scale government funding for a programme of extensive rural social housing. In the following five years over 40,000 labourer owned cottages standing on an acre of land and purchases at low annual annuities, were erected by Local County Councils. The Act, and the follow-on Birrell Labourers Act of 1911, housed over a quarter of a million rural labourers and their families and thereby transformed the Irish countryside.

In 1907 Richard Hazleton became the new party secretary. Outside the party at this time were the MPs William O'Brien, Sir Thomas Esmonde, T. M. Healy, Charles Dolan, John O'Donnell, Augustine Roche and D. D. Sheehan. Proposals to reunited the party were made by Redmond and a meeting summoned for the Mansion House, Dublin in April 1908. O'Brien and others rejoined the party temporarily for the sake of unity. But on his demand for further treasury funding for land purchase, O'Brien was ultimately driven out for good at a Dublin Convention in February 1909 by the party’s vigorous militant support organisation, Devlin’s "Hibernians". After which O’Brien founded his own political party in March 1909, the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL).