The Cork UIL Advisory Committee - an embryonic AFIL?

Having spent the last few months engaged in research into the embryonic AFIL (i.e. that existed in de facto form from 1903 - and more especially the 1904 Cork city by-election) a number of things become clear. One needs to bear in mind that the new organisation was still exisiting as a de jeure part of the United Irish League, albeit one that did not recognise the authority of governing National Directory in Dublin. The vanguard of the Cork UIL (as the embryonic AFIL were nominally called) had one major object: the effective working of the Wyndham Land Act, and the creation of a coterie of peasant farmers in the country. The establishment of an Advisory Committee in autumn 1904 provided a mechanism both for the effective implementation of the Wyndham Act, and also gave O'Brien's supporters a vehicle for advancing their views. The major figures in the Advisory Committee included the following:

1. DD Sheehan, MP for Mid-Cork and founder of the Irish Land and Labour Association, who acted as secretary to the Committee
2. Eugene Crean, MP for South-East Cork, a former ally of Michael Davitt, and a prominent advocate of Cork city labour movements.
3. Michael Murphy, a solicitor based on the South Mall, who acted as legal advisor to the Committee.
4. JC Forde, an insurance broker with Royal Insurance (Fire and Life), who later became an alderman on Cork Borough Council (Corporation), and was a trusted confidant of O'Brien.
5. Fr Denis M O'Flynn of St Finbarr's West, who regularly chaired the Committee meetings.
6. Dan O'Connor, an evicted tenant who chaired the Cork Evicted Tenants Association.

The Committee existed from late 1904 until the formation of the AFIL in 1909, and succeeded in mediating in many disputes on estates in Cork city and county, as well as championing the cause of evicted tenants and agricultural labourers, who were (through the intense organisational work of Sheehan) becoming a considerable political presence in local and national politics in Cork. Meetings were held fortnightly in the City Hall, and were open to any UIL branch in Cork city and county willing and able to agitate for purchase of estates in their locality. Any body of tenants who were unable to reach a satisfactory settlement with their landlord were entitled to bring their case before the committee.

The political power of the committee was clear in the city by-election of June 1905 (caused by the death of sitting MP JFX O'Brien, and resulting in the election of former Lord Mayor Augustine Roche) and the general election of January 1906 (where no contest was held in any of the eight Cork constituencies, and by the fact that any addresses by O'Brien to committee meetings were the subject of much extensive reporting in the local and national newspapers, as they invariably touched on both local and (more often than not) national political issues.

The success of the Committee is hard to quantify, both there can be no doubt that it played a key role in the social and political life of Cork during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Connections

Last month marked the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of one of the most unusual yet significant political groups in Irish political history. It has not been commented upon by the mainstream media (even in these times where the clamour for alternative news to the current saturation coverage of the fiscal crisis has been deafening), nor has its impact on Irish politics ever been truly examined. I wish in the remainder of this letter to sketch out a brief history of the All-for-Ireland League and to briefly examine its influence on Irish politics and society.

The All-for-Ireland League was officially founded at a meeting at Kanturk, Co. Cork, on March 21st 1909. The grouping consisted of all bar two of the nationalist Members of Parliament for Cork city and county and was headed by the charismatic yet erratic journalist and politician William O’Brien (1852 – 1928). A native of Mallow, O’Brien had been centrally involved in the land wars at the end of the nineteenth century and was a trusted lieutenant of Charles Stewart Parnell. Upon Parnell’s death in 1890, O’Brien was selected to replace him as MP for Cork city, thus beginning a thirty year relationship with the people of Cork. Founder of the United Irish League in 1898, he played a key role in the reunification of the Irish Party in 1900, under the chairmanship of John Redmond.

A parallel desire for settling the question of land ownership in Ireland led representatives of landlords and tenants meeting at the Mansion House Dublin, over December 1902 and early January 1903. The Land Conference, as the gathering was called, left an indelible impression on O’Brien; landed unionists were also apparently impressed by O’Brien’s practicality and desire to settle the question fairly. The report of the conference led to an important act of parliament, the Wyndham Land Act, being passed in August 1903. The fallout among nationalists in the Irish Party over the implementation of the act, allied to the reluctance of the majority of the leadership to alter the policies of the party to take cognisance of the apparent shift in the political landscape, thus scotching any real attempt to confer with and conciliate unionists with respect to both the land question and the thornier question of Home Rule, led to O’Brien tendering his resignation as a Party member in November 1903. From that point on can be traced the genesis of the AFIL.

The policies of the AFIL were clear: a return to “the spirit of the Land Conference” in settling questions of common concern among both Irish unionists and nationalists, and a determination to gain the consent of the minority groups, both in Ulster and in the rest of the island of Ireland, to any proposed Home Rule settlement. This set of policies attracted an unusual cross-section of support: from landless labourers in Cork county (attempting to profit from the repeal of the Birrell Land Act of 1909, which had heavily revised the terms of the Wyndham Land Act), to unionist advocates of a federal solution to the question of Home Rule (whereby Ireland would gain its own legislature, but be linked to Scotland, Wales and England by a relationship similar to that enjoyed by states in the USA). The unique and unusual schemes being proffered by these disparate groups deserve to be examined on their own merits and contrasted with the schemes of Home Rule laid down by the government of Herbert Asquith. In particular, the complete absence from the AFIL schemes of a physical division of the island of Ireland should be noted.

The AFIL was not a political party in the contemporary sense of the term. Rather, it seemed a throwback to the years of the Independent Irish Party of the 1850s, and, as O’Brien himself once argued, a direct descendant of the League of North and South, founded by Gavan Duffy in the mid-nineteenth century. Though it elected a president – James Gilhooly of Bantry - it had no whips, and member MPs had complete freedom to vote whichever way they chose in any issue outside the land and Home Rule questions. In addition, outside of the Land and Labour Association in Cork, it did not have a clear grassroots structure, though ‘clubs’ did spring up, particularly in Cork city, where one such club had a room at Emmet Place, opposite the site of the present Opera House. These clubs also functioned as social and cultural centres, and O’Brien addressed a large gathering of these clubs infrequently, mostly on topics ranging from ‘The influence of Thomas Davis’ to the Home Rule situation.

In 1918, the AFIL decided not to contest the general election, instead supporting the new Sinn Fein party. Many of its leaders retired from public life. O’Brien retired to his house at Bellevue near Mallow, but Tim Healy (who had been associated with the AFIL, though never formally, through his relationship with O’Brien, which had strengthened since the Home Rule Crisis of 1912 – 14) continued to appear in the public eye. When the Treaty was signed in 1921, many of the ex-AFIL members and supporters opposed the settlement (the second strand in a two-pronged solution, the first being the Better Government of Ireland Act in 1920) on the grounds of partition. These anti-Treatyites eventually joined the fledgling Fianna Fail party upon its foundation in 1926. In his last public utterance, before the general election of June 1927, O’Brien condemned the partition of the country and wholeheartedly endorsed the programme of Fianna Fail.

In a paper presented at the UCC History Department conference on Jack Lynch in late 2008, the political editor of the Irish Times, Stephen Collins, drew attendees attention to the political education of Lynch; his father, Daniel, a tailor originally from near Bantry, was an O’Brien supporter. Frank O’Connor, in his autobiography, mentioned his father as being an O’Brienite, though for reasons musical as well as political. The influence of the AFIL upon early Fianna Fail policy, particularly with regard to “the national question”, is a topic that deserves further exploration. The influence of the group on many aspects of Irish politics and society has yet to be uncovered. Indeed, one may – if one so wishes – argue that, with the demise of the Progressive Democrats and the advent of the Good Friday Agreement, it is only very recently that one half of the programme the AFIL advocated in embryo has been achieved. As for the other half, pertaining to social reform, it is the sole preserve of the people of Ireland to work to bring this about. Irish people should cease the incessant whining about the condition of the country, as they have done for so many decades, and bring themselves to a point where they can realistically aspire to the goals set – in theory at least – by the founders of this unique movement.

Feedback

Anyone have any comments on the material here? If so, please leave feedback here or email me at john_gc2@hotmail.com. Thanks!

OK, so having laid out my territory, now it's time to get down to brass tacks.

The Ireland of O'Brien is almost unrecognisable from today's Celtic pussycat that has just sloped off. For one thing, the British administration pervaded almost every facet of life, from business to culture. It is not that O'Brien set out to change the entire social structure of the country. On the contrary, there were aspects he wished would not change, such as the close interaction between Irish people and their British counterparts. His main thread of thought concerned the relations of the various classes with each other. The Irish people were not completely seperate from the British; on the contrary, many Irish people served with distinction in the British Empire. The question of Ireland's relationship with the commonwealth of countries that made up the Empire has long been an issue of contention, with both politicians and historians alike. Ireland was not a colony; it was an equal partner in the governing of the Empire, in much the same way as her Celtic cousins in Scotland and Wales. Sure, some important differences existed between the countries in the UK. But the sum was greater than the whole of the parts. It was this close connection that O'Brien wished to foster, albeit with the provisio of Ireland becoming a self-governing part of the Empire, while retaining her place in the centre of Empire business.

O'Brien's personal papers in UCC contain more than has been previously revealed. Anyone wishing to consult this collection should email specialcollections@ucc.ie . For a full catalogue of the papers, the following article is essential reading:

Philip Bull: "The William O'Brien Manuscripts in the Library of University College Cork", Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society vol. LXXV (1970), pp. 129-41

Please note that sequencing may have changed, but the box numbers still remain the same. Most boxes contain an average of four folders, with up to thirty items in each folder. Some of the material is almost illegible, but a good deal of it has been rewritten in a more legible hand before it was donated to the university, most likely by his wife Sophie.

The other collection of O'Brien papers is found in the National Library of Ireland, Dublin. A full catalogue of the papers shoudl be available on the website http://www.nli.ie/ . These papers have been recently microfilmed, and an order has been placed for these by UCC Library. Hopefully wtihin a few years all of O'Brien's personal papers should be available for consultation in UCC.

For anyone interested in the above, the following books are useful:

Patrick Maume: The Long Gestation (Dublin, 1999). A wonderful pot-pourri of titbits from the years 1891-1918, yet lacking a clear central argument. Massively researched but poorly presented.

Joseph V O'Brien: William O'Brien and the Course of Irish Politics 1881-1918 (Berkeley, California, 1976). Standard work on O'Brien, but dated.

Sally Warwick-Haller: William O'Brien and the Irish Land War (Dublin, 1990). Good on his early career. Suffers from a lack of objectivity in places, but otherwise a decent read.

Philip Bull: Land, Politics and Nationalism (Dublin, 1996). Great book. Very good on O'Brien's later career from 1898 to 1903. Has also published detailed articles in Irish Historical Studies on the United Irish League.

INTRO - WHAT THE HELL?

Hi,

Name's John. Postgrad student in the (wonderful) History Department in UCC. My topic? Well, I'm glad you asked..............
A Cork man, a hero to many, suddenly goes mad and tries to achieve the seeminlgy impossible with an eclectic band of misfits. No, I'm not talking about Roy Keane and a certain club in the north-east of England. What I seek to find out is the following (bear with me):

William O'Brien, born Mallow 1852. Peasant champion and co-leader of the wonderfully titled "Plan of Campaign" whereby Irish agricultural tenants would pressurise their landlords into either (a) reducing their rent or (b) selling them their holdings of land. Also one of a group of seven M.P's (Members of the British House of Commons) who considered themselves as lieutenants of the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell.

Arrested in 1890 for disturbance of the peace. Jumps bail and flees to America with his co-conspirator, Mayoman John Dillon. Whilst in America, Parnell's position becomes untenable as leader following divorce proceedings brought against his lover Katherine O'Shea by her husband Captain William O'Shea, who cites Parnell as the reason for his marriage becoming unworkable. Chaos follows (see Frank Callanan's wonderful but heavy going book The Parnell Split 1890-1891 for more details). O'Brien becomes disillusioned by the whole scene and retires from Parliament. Marries rich daughter of a Franco-Russian banker and settles down near Westport in Co Mayo.

Concern for the welfare of the peasant in the west of Ireland, as well as driven by a desire to reuinte the factions of the previously strong Irish Party,led O'Brien to found the United Irish League. Success of the League brings about re-union of the Party under the auspices of the League, which becomes its grassroots organisation. O'Brien turns down the chance to lead the new Party and instead recommends John Redmond, who becomes chairman in 1900. Influence of the Conservative British Government brings about conference on the land issue in Dublin in 1902. The resulting legislation, the Wyndham Land Act, brings about a shift in the pattern of Irish peasant socio-economic development, and also brings about a seismic shift in O'Brien's thinking.

O'Brien becomes convinced of the merits of co-operation with the landed unionist gentry, evenatually arguing that the solution to Irish problems of self-government would necessarily envisage co-opoeration amongst "all classes and creeds" of Irish people. This line of thinking does not sit easily with the other power-brokers in the Party (Dillon and Redmond) so O'Brien resigns from the Party in 1903. The next five years saw the zenith and collapse of government-sponsored plans for limited self-government for Ireland.

O'Brien returned to national prominence in late 1908 as he rejoined the Party. However, less than six months later, he quit the Party for good following the infamous 'Baton Convention' in February 1909. In response to what the saw as the unnecessary rough treatment handed down by the members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the new power source within the Party), and also to try and solidify his support, O'Brien founds the All-for-Ireland League in March 1909 at Kanturk, Co. Cork. Illness means the body is not formally consecrated until the following March, after good results in Cork city and county during the January 1910 General Election.

My research is a narrative of the period 1903-1910, when O'Brien struggles to find his niche, and an in-depth look at the two general elections in the Cork region during 1910. I hope to publish some of the more interesting titbits here. So stay tuned!