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William O'Brien ( 2 October 1852 – 25 February 1928 ) was an Irish nationalist, journalist, agrarian agitator, social revolutionary, politician, party leader, newspaper publisher and author. 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 decended from the century old 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 he was later to have a close political connection with, Canon Sheehan Of Doneraile . He enjoyed his secondary education at the local Anglican school, Cloyne Diocesan College, which resulted in him 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 inseperable 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 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 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 , 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 . Even in prison, O'Brien continued his protests, refusing to wear prison uniform in . Marriage, reorientation In 1890 he married Sophie Raffalovich, sister of 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 politcal pursuits. Their relationship added aa abiding love for France and attachment to Europe to his life, where he often retired to recuperate. By 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, 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'' ( 1899 - 1904 and 1905 - 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, 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 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. Severly 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, errecting most of the cottages, additional funding following under . 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 conciliation achieved with landlords under the 1903 Land Act, believing all moderate unionists could still be won over through conciliation 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 Fein 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, shown by Britain's both failed attempts to introduce Home Rule in 1916 and 1917. During the in April 1918 O'Brien and his AFIL joined Sinn Fein in the mass protests in Dublin. Seeing no future for his conciliatory political concepts in a future election, he believed Sinn Fein 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 Fein, 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, his bust overlooking the town's Council Chambers. 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:
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