- William O'Brien (Irish Parliamentary Party) should not be confused with his contemporary William X. O'Brien (ITGWU) or with William Smith
O'Brien (Young Irelanders). For other people of the same name, see William O'Brien (disambiguation).
William O'Brien (2 October 1852–25 February 1928) was an Irish nationalist,
journalist, agrarian agitator, social revolutionary, politician, party leader, newspaper publisher, author and Member of Parliament (MP.) in the Parliament of the United Kingdom . He was particularly associated with the
campaigns for land reform in Ireland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as his conciliatory approach to attaining Home Rule.
Family, education
William O'Brien was born at Bank Place in Mallow, County Cork, as second son of James O'Brien, a solicitor's clerk, and his wife Kate, the daughter of James
Nagle, a local shopkeeper. On his mother's side he was descended from the distinguished Norman
family of Nagles, long settled in the vicinity of Mallow giving their name to the nearby Nagle Mountains. He was also linked
through his mother with the statesman Edmund Burke's mother's family, as well as with the
poet Edmund Spencer's family. The Nagles however, no longer held the status or prosperity
they once had. In the same month thirty-eight years earlier Thomas
Davis was born in Mallow. O'Brien's advocacy of the cause of Irish Independence was to be in the same true tradition of
his esteemed fellow-townsman.
O'Brien shared his primary education with a townsman with whom he was later to have a close political connection,
Canon Sheehan of Doneraile. He enjoyed his secondary education at the Cloyne
diocesan college, which resulted in his being brought up in an environment noted for its religious tolerance. He greatly valued
having had this experience from an early age, which strongly influenced his later views for the need of such tolerance in Irish
national life.
Early journalism
Financial misfortune in 1868 caused the O'Brien family to move to Cork City. A year later his father died, and the illness of his elder and younger brother and his sister
resulted in him having to support his mother and siblings. Always a prolific writer, it quickly earned him a job as newspaper
reporter, first for the Cork Daily Herald. This was to be the primary career which first attracted attention to him as a
public figure. He had began legal studies at Queen's College, later University College Cork, but
although he never graduated, he held a lifelong attachment to the institution, to which he bequeathed his private papers.
Political origins
From an early age O'Brien's political ideas, like most of his contemporaries, were shaped by the Fenian movement and the
plight of the Irish tenant farmers, his elder brother having participated in the rebellion of 1867.
It resulted in O'Brien himself becoming actively involved with the Fenian brotherhood, resigning in the mid-1870s, because of
what he described in 'Evening Memories' (p.443-4) as "the gloom of inevitable failure and horrible punishment inseparable from
any attempt at separation by force of arms".
As a journalist his attention was attracted in the first place to the suffering of the tenant farmers. Now on the staff of the
Freeman's Journal, after touring the Galtee Mountains around Christmas
1877 he published articles describing their conditions, which later appeared in pamphlet form. With
this action he first displayed his belief that only through parliamentary reform and with the new power of the press that public
opinion could be influenced to pursue Irish issues constitutionally through open political activity and the ballot box. Not least
of all, responding to the hopes of the new Home Rule movement.
United Ireland Editor
In 1878 he met Charles Stewart Parnell at a
Home Rule meeting. Parnell recognised his exceptional talents as a journalist and writer, influencing his rise to becoming a
leading politician of the new generation. He subsequently appointed him in 1881 as editor of the
Irish National Land League's journal, The United Irishman. His
association with Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) led to his
arrest and imprisonment with Parnell, Dillon, William Redmond and other
nationalist leaders in Kilmainham Gaol that October.
During his imprisonment until April 1882 he drafted the famous Land War No Rent Manifesto
-- a rent-withholding scheme personally led by O'Brien, escalating the conflict between the Land League and Gladstone's government. He was
persecuted nine times in the course of years.
Agitator and M.P.
From 1883-1885 O'Brien was elected MP for Mallow. Following the abolition of that constituency he represented Tyrone South from 1885 to 1886, North East Cork from 1887-1892, and Cork City from 1892-1895 and from 1901-1918, in the House of Commons. There
were three periods of absence: 1886-7, from 1895-1900, and eight months in 1904. Amid the turmoil of Irish politics in the late 19th century he was frequently arrested and imprisoned for his
support for various Land League protests.
In 1887 O'Brien helped to organise a rent strike at the estate of Lady Kingston near
Mitchelstown, County Cork. On 9 September, after an 8,000-strong demonstration led by
John Dillon, three estate tenants were shot dead, and others wounded, by police at the
town's courthouse where O'Brien had been brought for trial on charges of incitement. This event became known as the
Mitchelstown Massacre. Later that year, thousands demonstrators marched in London to demand
his release from prison, and clashed with police at Trafalgar Square on
Bloody Sunday (November 10).
Even in prison, O'Brien continued his protests, refusing to wear prison uniform in 1887. Being
left without cloths, a Blarney tweed suit was smuggled in. He occasionally wore this much
publicised suit in the Commons when confronting his incarcerator, Arthur Balfour. His
imprisonment also inspired protests – notably the 1887 'Bloody Sunday' riots in
London. In 1889 he escaped from a courtroom but was sentenced in absentia for conspiracy. He
flew to America accompanied by Dillon who was on bail, then to France where both held negotiations with Parnell at
Boulogne over the leadership of the party. When these broke down, both return to
Folkestone giving themselves up, subsequently serving four months in Clonmel and Galway gaols. Here O'Brien began to reconsider his political
future, using the time to write an acclaimed novel, a Fenian romance with a land reform theme set
in 1860: When We Were Boys, which was published in 1890.
Marriage, reorientation
In 1890 he married Sophie Raffalovich, sister of poet and socialite Marc André Sebastian Raffalovich and daughter of the Russian Jewish banker, Hermann Raffalowich, domiciled in
Paris. It was to mark a major turning point in O'Brien's personal and political life. His wife brought considerable wealth into
the marriage, enabling him to act with political independence and providing finances to establish his own newspapers. His wife
(1860-1960) who survived him by over 30 years, gave him considerable
moral and emotional support for his political pursuits. Their relationship added an abiding love for France and attachment to
Europe to his life, where he often retired to recuperate.
By 1891 he had become disillusioned with Parnell's political leadership, although emotionally
loyal to him he tried to persuade him to retire after the O'Shea divorce case. On
Parnell's death that year and the ensuing IPP split, he remained aloof from aligning himself with either side of the Party,
either the rump pro-Parnellite Irish National League (INL) led by John Redmond or with the anti-Parnellite Irish National
Federation (INF) group under John Dillon, although he saw the weight of strength in
the latter. O'Brien worked hard in the 1893 negotiations leading to Parliament passing Gladstone's
Second Home Rule Bill , which the Lords however rejected. (Gladstone's speech on the
First Home Rule Bill had beseeched parliament not to reject it).
United Irish League
Distancing himself from the party turmoils, he retired from parliament in 1895, settling for a
while with his wife near Westport, co. Mayo, which enabled him to experience at first hand from
his Mayo retreat the distressed hardship of the peasantry in the West of Ireland, trying to eke out an existence in its rocky
landscape.
Believing strongly that agitational politics combined with constitutional pressures were the best means of achieving
objectives, O'Brien established on the 16. January 1898 the United Irish League
(UIL) at Westport, with John Dillon present for the occasion. It was to be a new
grass-roots organisation with a programme to include agrarian agitation, political reform and Home Rule. It coincided with the
passing of the revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
which broke the power of the landlord dominated "Grand Juries", passing for the first time absolute democratic control of local
affairs into the hands of the people through elected Local County Councils.
The UIL was explicidly designed to reconcile the various parliamentary fragments existing since the Parnell split, which
proved very popular, its branches sweeping over most of the country organised by its general secretary John O'Donnell , dictating to the demoralised Irish party leaders the terms for
reconstruction, not only of the party but the nationalist movement in Ireland. The movement was backed by O'Brien's new newspaper
The Irish People (Sept. 1899 -Nov. 1904 and Sept. 1905 -Mar. 1909).
Around 1900 O'Brien, an unbending social reformer and agrarian agitator, was the most
influential and powerful figure within the nationalist movement, although not formally its leader. His UIL was by far the largest
organisation in the country, comprising 1150 branches and 84,355 members. The result of the rapid growth of his UIL as a national
organisation in achieving unity through organised popular opinion, was to effect a quick defensive reunion under John Redmond of the discredited IPP factions of the INL and
the INF, largely fearing O’Brien’s return to the political field. This unity
disturbed O’Brien as it resulted in most of the ineffective party candidates being re-elected in the 1900 election, preventing
the UIL from using its power in the pre-selection of candidates. Within a few years the IPP was however, to tactically adjunct
the UIL under its wing manoeuvering it out of O'Brien's control.
Land Act architect
O'Brien next intensified the UIL agitation for land purchase by tenant farmers, pressurising for compulsory purchase. It
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. After six sessions all tenant’s demands were conceded, O’Brien having guided the official nationalist
movement into endorsement of a new policy of conciliation. 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, though
supported by Redmond, was condemned by a Dillon led campaign against O’Brien, ferociously attacking him for putting Land Purchase
and Conciliation before Home Rule, Michael Davitt on the grounds that the Act did not
espouse land nationalisation. Severely in disagreement with all adversaries, O’Brien left the Irish Parliamentary Party in
November 1903 for five years, retiring his parliamentary seat. His Cork electorate however, insistently pushed through his
re-election eight months later. O’Brien’s intention of shocking the party to its senses, failed.,
He then embarked on advancing full scale implementation of the Act in alliance with D.D.
Sheehan M.P.’s Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), which
by 1904 had become the new organisational base for O’Brien’s political activities. This aggravated
the Dillonite section of the IPP further. Determined to destroy both "before they poison the whole country", they published
continual denunciations in the party’s newspaper, the Freeman Journal , then coupéd the UIL by means of its new sectrtary,
Dillon’s chief lieutenant, Joseph Devlin M.P., Grandmaster of the Ancient Order of
Hibernians, Devlin eventually gaining organisational control over the entire UIL and IPP organisations.
Housing Acts
Britain had two bills to pay for past wrongs. After financing tenant land purchase, tenant farmers were now proud proprietors
largely in control of local government. The next bill to pay was for extensive rural housing of the tens of thousands of migrant
farm labourers struggling to survive in stone cabins, barns or mud hovels. A long standing demand by the ILLA branches and D.D.
Sheehan.
O'Brien saw its prime importance and negotiated during 1905 what was to become the Bryce Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906), which during the course of the next five
years financed the erection of over 40,000 commodious cottage homes, each on an acre of land. This unique social housing
programme unparalleled anywhere in Europe brought about an unprecedented agrarian revolution, changing the face of the Irish
countryside,
Renewed publication of O'Brien's newspaper The Irish People (1905-1909) exalting the cottage building, its editorials
equally countermanding the IPP's Dublin "bosses" attempts to curtail the program, fearing settled rural communities would no
longer be dependent on Party and Church. Munster took full advantage, erecting most of the cottages, additional funding following
under Birrell's Labourers (Ireland) Act 1911 .
In the interest of united, O'Brien rejoined the Parliamenatry Party in 1908. During negotiations
that year for additional funding of land purchase under an amending bill, Redmond called an UIL convention for December in
Dublin, claiming the bill over-burdened the British Treasury and the rate payers. Over 3000 delegates attended. Devlin had the
hall filled in advance with 400 of his militant Mollies , so that when O'Brien and
his followers tried to speak in favour of the bill, they were battoned into silence. The bill eventually passed as Birrell's
Land Purchase Act (1909) , falling far short in its financial provisions.
All-for-Ireland League
As an outcome of the "Baton-Convention" O’Brien felt himself again driven from the party. He foresaw that the IPP, undermined
by the AOH, was on a fatal radical path which would frustrate any All-Ireland Home Rule settlement. As a counter measure he
established a new League, which was to build on the success his combined "doctrine of conciliation" with "conference plus
business" achieved during the 1902 Land Conference with landlords and the ensuing 1903 Land Putchase Act, believing all moderate
unionists could still be similarly won over to All-Ireland Home Rule. For many nationalists on the other hand, the adoption of a
conciliatory approach to the "hereditary enemy" involved too sharp a deviation from traditional thinking.
In March 1909 he inaugurated the All-for-Ireland
League (AFIL) supported by many prominent and leading Munster figures, founder members the political activist
Canon Sheehan of Doneraile and D.D. Sheehan as Hon. Secretary. The AFIL’s
political objective was the attainment of a United Ireland parliament with the consent
rather than by the compulsion of the Protestant and unionist community, under the banner
of the “three Cs”, for Conference, Conciliation and Consent as applied to Irish politics.
Ill-health striking O’Brien, he departed for Florence, Italy
to recuperate, returning in January 1910 after his electorate in Cork re-elected him in absence.
The AFIL contested both 1910 elections opposing a Church backed IPP, returning in December eight independent "O'Brienite" MPs,
O'Brien's new political party. From July 1910 until late 1916 O’Brien published the League’s newspaper, the Cork Free
Press. Election results published by it showed Independents won 30% of votes cast.
In 1911 O'Brien proposed Dominion Home Rule in a letter to Asquith as the only viable
solution to the "Irish Question", now that the IPP held the balance of power at Westminster.
Home Rule was technically assured after its Bill was introduced in 1912 . O’Brien saw it opportune
for a co-operative understanding with Arthur Griffith's moderate Sinn Féin movement, having in common attaining objectives through "moral protest", agitation and political
resistance rather than militant physical-force. Neither O’Brien nor Griffith advocated total abstentionism from the Commons, and regarded Dominion status for Home Rule, modelled on Canada or
Australia, as acceptable.
During the 1913-14 parliamentary debates on the Third Home Rule Bill, O'Brien opposed the IPP's coercive "Ulster must follow"
policy, and published in January 1914 specific concession which would enable Ulster join a Dublin parliament "any price for an
United Ireland, but never partition". The Ulster Volunteers had already armed to
resist likely "Rome Rule" , Redmond's Irish
Volunteers arming likewise. The Redmond-Dillon-Devlin hardline alliance remained uncompromising "no concessions for
Ulster".
In May O'Brien and his followers abstained from the final vote passing the Third Home
Rule Act 1914 , denouncing it as a "partition deal", after Sir Edward
Carson leader of the Ulster Unionist Party forced through an amendment
mandating the partition of Ireland , the
Nationalist's confrontation course with Ulster ending in fiasco.
Changing Tides
O'Brien saw the outbreak of World War I in August as an opportunity to undertake a last
crusade to preserve at any price the unity of Ireland, by uniting the Green and Orange in a common cause, declaring himself on
the side of the Allies and Britain's European war effort. He said that if Home
Rule was to have a future, it would depend upon the extent to which the Irish
Volunteers, in combination with the Ulster Volunteers, did their part in the
firing line on the fields of France. He spoke out in favour of the formation
of an Irish Brigade and stood on recruiting platforms encouraging voluntary enlistment in
the Royal Munster Fusiliers.
O'Brien had warned of the danger of a potential republican eruption, culminating in the IRB 1916 Rebellion , in which Sinn Féin were not involved. He accepted the Rising and the ensuing changed
political climate in 1917 as the best way of ridding the country of IPP and AOH stagnation. Home Rule had been lost in 1913, an
inflexible IPP long out of touch with reality, reflected by Britain's two failed attempts to introduce Home Rule in 1916 and
again in 1917. O'Brien refused to participate in the Irish Convention after
southern unionist representatives he had proposed were turned down. The Convention
ended as he predicted in failure when Britain attempted to link the enactment of Home Rule with conscription.
During the anti-conscription crisis in April 1918 O'Brien and his AFIL
left the House of Commons and joined Sinn Féin and other prominentaries in the
mass protests in Dublin. Seeing no future for his conciliatory political concepts in a future election, he believed Sinn Féin in
its moderate form had earned the right to represent nationalist interests. He and the other members of the AFIL stood aside
putting their seats at the disposal of Sinn Féin, its candidates returned unopposed in the 1918
general elections.
O'Brien disagreed with the establishment of a southern Irish Free State under the
Treaty, still believing that partition was too high a price to pay for partial
independence. Retiring from political life, he contented himself with writing and declined De
Valera's offer to stand for Fianna Fáil in the 1927 general election. He died
suddenly on 25. February 1928 while on a visit to London with his wife at the age of 75. His
remains rest in Mallow, and one of the principal streets in the town bears his name to this day. His head-bust overlooks the town
Council's Chamber Room and one of his finest portraits hangs in University College Cork.
Publications
O'Brien's books, a number of which are collections of his journalistic writings and political speeches, include:
- Christmas on the Galtees (1878)
- When we were boys (1890)
- Irish Ideas
(1893)
- A Queen of Men, Grace O'Malley (1898)
- Recolections (1905)
- An Olive Branch in Ireland (1910)
- The Downfall of Parliamentarianism (1918)
- Evening Memories (1920)
- The Responsibility for Partition (1921)
- The Irish Revolution (1921)
- Edmund Burke as an Irishman (1924)
References
- D.D Sheehan Ireland since Parnell (1921)
- Michael MacDonagh The Life of William O'Brien (1928)
- Joseph V. O'Brien William O'Brien and the course of Irish Politics (1976)
- Brendan Clifford Cork Free Press An Account of Ireland's only Democratic
Anti-Partition Movement (1984), Athol Books, Belfast.
- S. Warwick-Haller William O'Brien and the Irish land war (1990)
- Patrick Maume The long gestation (1999)
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