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All-for-Ireland League
The All-for-Ireland League (AFIL), was an Irish, Munster-based non-sectarian political party (1909-1918). It was founded by Member of Parliament (MP) William O'Brien in order to establish a new national organisation to pursue a creed of political brotherhood and reconciliation between all Irishmen. It held its first inaugural meeting in Kanturk in March 1909.
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Reuniting the Party
The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) was long disrupted by internal dissensions originating from O'Brien's conciliatory initiation of the 1902 Land Conference which lead to agreement on the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903 as well as his alliance with D.D. Sheehan's Irish Land and Labour Association. Since 1904 O'Brien had been alienated out of the IPP. The country now called for reunion of the split party ranks. In November 1907 O'Brien's proposals for his and other Independent’s return to the Party were accepted.
With Irish Local Government, the land question and the housing of agricultural labourers settled, O'Brien was convinced that to achieve the final hurdle of Home Rule, the success of the approach he used to win the Land Act, the "doctrine of conciliation" together with "conference plus business", must also be applied to win All-Ireland self-government.
Hibernian Order
O'Brien had always been gravely disturbed by the Irish Parliamentary Party's involvement with what he called the worst calamity to befall the country -- "that sinister sectarian secret society", the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), also known as Molly Maguires , or the Mollies. AOH members were Catholic nationalists of a Ribbon tradition, their Ulster Protestant counter-part the Orange Order. The AOH Grandmaster was a young Belfast man of remarkable political ability, Joseph Devlin MP, who attached himself to the Dillonite section of the Irish Party, as well as being General Secretary of its adopted United Irish League (UIL) . Devlin was already known as "the real Chief Secretary of Ireland", his AOH spreading successfully eventually saturating the entire island. Even in Dublin the AOH could draw large crowds and stage impressive demonatrations. In 1907, Devlin was able to assure John Redmond, the Irish Party leader that a planned meeting of the AOH would be well attended because he would be able to get more than 400 AOH delegates to fill the hall[1].
Baton Convention
As prelude to O’Brien’s formation of the AFIL, Redmond called an UIL Convention at the Mansion House, Dublin, in February 1909, to win support for a House of Commons bill curtailing funding of tenant land purchase under the Birrell Land Act (1909). Over 3000 delegates attended. Redmond, who chaired the meeting, claimed it would burden the British Treasury and local ratepayers excessively. O’Brien argued that the curtailing Bill would kill land purchase by provoking refusal by landlords to sell and worsen relations between tenants and landlords. The convention was obviously loaded against O'Brien when delegates suspected of supporting him were excluded at the entrance
When he attempted to speak O’Brien was howled down by various groups of 400 militant Belfast Mollies and midland cattle-drivers, their presence pre-organised by Devlin's AOH organisation. Armed with batons, they attacked O’Brien’s follower who had gained entrance, to prevent any "Cork accent" getting near the platform. When Eugene Crean MP for Cork SE was attacked on the platform, it developed into a fight involving Devlin and James Gilhooly MP for north Cork, this in Redmond’s presence. Others targeted were members of the Young Ireland Branch, Frank Cruise-O’Brien and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, who called Devlin a brainless bludgeoner. [2]
New movement
Regarding himself as having been driven from the party by Hibernian hooligans, O’Brien’s subsequent move was to officially launch his new movement, the "All-for-Ireland League", its embryonic origins - the Land Conference of 1902, at a Cork public meeting on 12 April 1910, where its rules and constitution were formulated and endorced, announcing its Irish Home Rule manifesto and political policies to be
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- "the union and active co-operation in every department of our national life of all Irish men and women of all classes and creeds who believe in the principles of domestic self-government for Ireland.
- For the accomplishment of this object the surest means were to be a combination of all the elements of the Irish population in a spirit of mutual tolerance and patriotic goodwill, such as shall guarantee to the Protestant minority of our fellow-countrymen inviolable security for their rights and liberties, and win the friendship of the people of Great Britain without distinction of party"[3].
"Three C s" Banner
The application of the AFIL’s principles of "Conference, Conciliation and Consent" , were to win All-Ireland Home Rule, constitutional nationalism rather than an ultimately doomed path of militant physical force. Many prominent and leading Munster Protestants joined the League. Canon Sheehan of Doneraile, a founder member, spoke and wrote enthusiastically in favour of its doctrines. Honorary Secretary was D.D. Sheehan MP., with James Gilhooly MP. Chairman. Support came even from Ulster. Nationalists and Unionists were called upon to recognise "the un-wisdom of perpetuating a suicidal strife". A Central London branch wsa founded by Dr J. G. Fitzgerald (MP) as chairman, suggesting some disenchantment with his former Parnellite colleagues including John Redmond [4].
Election mandate
The Cork Free Press, published by O'Brien, appeared for the first time in June as the League’s official organ. In the second 1910 general elections in December O'Brien's candidates were earmarked for rejection by the Hibernians, but Cork vindicated his policies by returning eight AFIL MPs for what was to be O'Brien's new political party. It included Tim Healy who joined in a 1911 by-election. In other counties contested by AFIL candidates, O'Brien's hostility to the AOH was counter-productive in mobilising the Catholic clergy, with one or two exceptions, behind the official IPP candidates. O'Brien wrote despondently "We have to deal with a confederacy of the priests of this country to strangle the AFIL and to strike down its standard-bearers".
Parliamentary stand
The AFIL party was convinced that the success of an Irish Parliament must depend upon it being won with the consent rather than by the compulsion of the Protestant minority. It sought to associate itself with Arthur Griffith's moderate Sinn Féin movement. In a 1911 letter to the Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, the party specifically proposed that Dominion Home Rule would be the wisest and safest of all settlements to the Irish question. After the introduction of a new Home Rule Bill by Asquith in April 1912 , they declared whole-hearted support of the Bill, subject to three amendments:
- first, safeguards providing against the apprehensions (however imaginary) of Ulster;
- second, the completion of the abolition of landlordism by the use of Imperial credit;
- third, the empowering of the Irish Parliament to raise, as well as to spend, its revenue.
Home Rule Showdown
During the three readings of the Bill in 1913 and 1914, O’Brien and his AIL colleagues were adamant that there should be no limit to the concessions offered to Ulster to have it participate in an All-Ireland parliament. "Any price for a United Ireland, but partition never". In January 1914 both O’Brien in his Cork Free Press and D.D. Sheehan in the London Daily Express simultaneously published a list of concessions they ascertained as acceptable to Ulster, enabling its participation in a Dublin parliament. The proposals in brief were:
1. That the representatves of Ulster should have an exercisable veto right over Irish legislation;
2. Ulster should have sixty representatives in the Irish House of Commons, out of a total of 164;
3. All representatives of the Irish Civil Service should be by competitive examination;
4. North-East Ulster should have its own appointment of court judges, district magistrates, inspectors of education.
Instead, the uncompromising IPP/AOH stand taken by the Dillon-Devlin alliance killed All-Ireland Home Rule, by aiming to force Ulster’s acquiescence; "no Orange vetoes, no concessions, Ulster must follow", Ulster's Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson, proclaiming "Ulster can never be coerced, Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right", demanding from Redmond that he "listen to the Cork members". The spectre of civil war loomed when Ulster Volunteers bought arms from Imperial Germany, Redmond's Irish Volunteers following suit.
In May 1914, the AFIL resolutely resisted in Parliament the violation of Ireland's national unity and as a final protest before history, abstained in June 1914 from voting on the final Third Home Rule Act, which had been amended to provide for the temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties.
Calamities unfold
The outbreak of World War I in August saw the Act placed on the statute books in September, but suspended for the duration of the war. O’Brien and his party rallied in support of the Allied cause of a Europe free from oppression supporting Britain's war effort, as did the IPP in unison with most sections of Irish society. O’Brien perceived it as an opportunity for all Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic alike to unite and serve together in the long term interest of attaining independent Irish self-government. The initial recruiting response to enlisting in Irish regiments of the 16th (Irish) Division and the Royal Munster Fusiliers was considerable.
By 1915 with stalemate on the Western Front and the losses of the 10th (Irish) Division in the Dardanelles at Cape Helles, enthusiasm began to wane. O’Brien had warned a decade earlier of the resurgence of revolutionary nationalism evolving out of the sectarian basis of national action, subsequently erupting in the 1916 Rebellion. This was to have serious ramifications for Ireland's subsequent history.
O'Brien suffered closure of his newspaper, the Cork Free Press in 1916 soon after the appointment of Lord Decies as Chief Press Censor for Ireland. Decies warned the press to be careful about what they published. Such warnings had little effect when dealing with such papers as the Cork Free Press. It was suppressed after its republican editor, Frank Gallagher, accused the British authorities of lying about the conditions and situation of republican prisoners in Frongoch internment camp[5].
Irish Convention
Following the Easter Rising the Government attempted in July 1916 to have Redmond and Carson agree on immediately introducing Home Rule, which failed. The Prime Minister Lloyd George proposed therefore in June 1917 that an Irish Convention, composed of representative Irishmen from all parties, should assemble to deliberate upon the best means of governing their country.
The AFIL Party were asked to nominate representatives to the Convention. In reply O’Brien stated four essential conditions of success: 1) a Conference of ten or a dozen persons known to intend peace; 2) a prompt agreement, making every conceivable concession to Ulster, with the one reservation that partition in any shape or form was inadmissible and unthinkable; 3) the immediate submission of the agreement to a Referendum of the Irish people (never before consulted on a definite proposal); 4) if any minority still uttered threats of an Ulster rebellion, the Government to declare once and for all the claims of reason and justice and the incorrigibility of Ulster.
The panel of names submitted by O’Brien to the Cabinet at its request was: the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Protestant Primate, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, two prominent northern Unionists, two prominent southern Unionists, two members of the IPP and two Sinn Féin representatives. Instead of setting up a Conference of this character, which it was subsequently clear would not have separated without coming to agreement, O’Brien’s proposal was set aside. None of those he proposed were invited. Lloyd George appealed to O’Brien to attend, but under the circumstances he declined. Instead the Irish Convention was composed of nine-tenths representatives drawn from already elected representatives who had previously voted for the Home Rule partition settlement. The only positive outcome of the Convention was the acceptance of Dominion Home Rule by a minority.
Handing over
A final clash of the old parliamentary rivals ensued on the death of AFIL party chairman James Gilhooly in October 1916. The West-Cork by-election has a place in history as the first after the Rising and the last in which the Irish Party narrowly captured a seat and as the self-induced demise of the AFIL. At stake in the bitterly fought by-election was not just one of the 103 seats in the House of Commons, the great issue was William O’Brien’s AFIL versus John Redmond’s Irish Party. In November three candidates were nominated, the third also an AFIL member and strong supporter whom O’Brien had passed over as candidate and then in protest stood, thereby splitting the AFIL vote to the detriment of O’Brien’s party [6]. (At that time seats were won by "candidates first past the post", or uncontested as in 1918 by Michael Collins of Sinn Féin).
When Britain moved to introduce Home Rule in April 1918 as proposed by the Irish Convention, it unwisely did so when it linked its implementation with a conscription bill for Ireland after the collapse of the Allied, and Irish, divisions during the German Spring Offensive on the Western Front. This resulted in the ”Irish conscription crisis". At its height the AFIL withdrew from Westminster while making a final damning anti-conscription speech, joining forces with the Irish Party, Sinn Féin and Labour in mass protest demonstrations in Dublin. Although the act was never put into force its crisis caused an unprecedented rise in popularity for Sinn Féin, destroying all interest in Home Rule and constitutional nationalism.
Towards the end of 1918, as a consequence that both the Irish Party and Britain had failed to introduce Home Rule and as it became evident that constitutional political concepts for attaining independent All-Ireland self-government were being displaced by a path of militant physical-force, the AFIL MPs recognised the futility of contesting the December election. The party members issued a manifesto supporting Arthur Griffith's moderate Sinn Féin movement, putting its seats at the disposal of its candidates, all of whom were returned unopposed.
Resumé
The AFIL in its short life succeeded in exposing the incapacity of the Irish Parliamentary party to accommodate the fears and integrate the interests of the Protestant and unionist community into the process of an All-Ireland parliamentary settlement. The League succeeded in binding a small group of dissident independent nationalists from 1909 onwards into a dedicated party who fought untiringly for a non-sectarian solution to the "Irish question", thereby keeping alive a broader concept of nationalism and denying the party of John Redmond a universality of representation to which it thought itself entitled.
Just as all sides failed in maintaining an undivided Ireland, so too was the fate of the All-for-Ireland League. Supreme in Cork, its candidates in other constituencies in the 1910 election, Mid-Tipperary, East Kerry, East and West Limerick, South Wexford, West Mayo and Armagh, showed that a considerable percentage of the electorate, the Cork Free Press gave the total Redmonite vote in the country as 92,709, and the Independent Nationalist's vote, largely supporting the principles of the League, as 39,729 (30,46%), despite active Church opposition.
Its success lay in establishing an alternative course, basically that advocated by O’Brien, of a conscious effort to win unionist consent to participation in an independent and united Ireland, however long and apparently hopeless this effort might appear. The League's principles and aspirations reflect in the "Peace Pledge" of the 1998 erected Island of Ireland Peace Park.
League's Anthem
A L L - F O R - I R E L A N D
All for Ireland ! One and all !
Here we meet at Erin's call --
Meet, to pledge with heart and hand,
True fealty to our native land.
Many-minded though we be,
In this pact we all agree --
We must end the reign of wrong
That's wrecked our country's
life so long.
Hostile sections in the past,
We shall now be friends at last:
All our classes, clans and creeds
Rivals but in patriot deeds.
Here we come at Erin's call,
From cottage home, and
stately hall,
For her rights to stand or fall --
ALL FOR IRELAND ! ONE AND ALL !
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- T.D.S.[7]
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Notes
- ^ The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics Tom Garvin (1980), (2005), The Rise of the Hibernians pp 108
- ^ Patrick Maume The long Gestation p. 99 (1999)
- ^ William O'Brien, the Irish Nationalist Michael MacDonagh (1928), All for Ireland, and Ireland for All pp. 185
- ^ The Times, 6/7/1910
- ^ Peter Martin Censorship in the two Irelands 1922-39, Introduction p.9, Irish Academic Press (2008) ISBN 0-7165-2829-0
- ^ A bitter by-election in 1916: West Cork pivotal point in transition to new era; Southern Star Centenery Edition – 1889-1989
Article pp 89-90 by George D. Kelleher, Inniscarra, co. Cork - ^ Irish People, newspaper, published March 6th 1909: Cork City Library.
T. D. S. are the initials of the composer, Timothy Daniel Sullivan
Bibliography
- William O'Brien: The Downfall of Parliamentarianism (1918)
- William O'Brien: The Responsibility for Partition (1921)
- D.D. Sheehan: Ireland since Parnell (1921)
- Michael MacDonagh: William O'Brien, the Irish Nationalist (1928)
- Friedrich K. Schilling: William O'Brien and the All-for- Ireland League
(thesis TCD. 1956) - David Miller: Church, State and Nation in Ireland (1973)
- Joseph 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. - Frank Callanan: Tim Healy (1996)
- Tom Garvin: The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics Gill & Macmillan (2005) ISBN 0-7171-3967-0 : Page 105: The Rise of the Hibernians.
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