William O'Brien

Template:Otherpeople William O'Brien (2 October 1852-25 February 1928) was an Irish journalist, writer and politician, particularly associated with campaigns for land reform in Ireland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

O'Brien was born at Bank Place in Mallow, County Cork, and moved to Cork City as a young man where he worked on the Daily Herald and Freeman's Journal newspapers.

In 1878, he met Charles Stewart Parnell at a Home Rule meeting and subsequently became editor of the Irish Land League's journal, United Irishman. His association with Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party led to him being arrested and imprisoned with him in October 1881, when he helped draft the No Rent Manifesto.

In 1883, he was elected as MP for Mallow and later for Cork and North Cork, but amid the turmoil of Irish politics in the late 19th century was frequently arrested and imprisoned for his support for various Land League protests.

In 1887 O'Brien helped organise a rent strike at the estate of Lady Kingston near Mitchelstown. 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 1887, for example); ironically, 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, eventually serving four months in Clonmel and Galway gaols.

While in prison in 1889, O'Brien wrote a novel, a Fenian romance with a land reform theme set in 1860: When We Were Boys (published in 1890 and acclaimed by Bram Stoker, among others).

He then travelled to America and in 1891 became disillusioned with Parnell's political direction. In 1898, he helped found the United Irish League, trying to bring nationalists and unionists together. As MP for Cork City (elected in 1902), O'Brien campaigned strongly for the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903, which effectively ended landlordism.

He left the IPP for five years during the 1900s mainly due to differences with the Irish Party's leaders John Redmond and John Dillon over his 1904 alliance with D.D. Sheehan's Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), and the implementation and workings of the Wyndham Land Act (1903) and the Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906), both of which he had played a leading role in attaining. Republishes the Irish People newspaper from 1905-1909.

In 1909 founded together with D.D. Sheehan MP. as Hon. Secretary and other prominent figures, the All-for-Ireland League (AfIL). Its goal the establishment of a United Ireland parliament with the consent rather than than by the compulsion of the Protestant minority, Ulster fearing Home Rule would terminate in Rome Rule. The AfIL returned eight independent nationalist MPs (O'Brienites) in the December 1910 elections, Tim Healy following in 1911. O'Brien agrees a cooperative understanding with Arthur Griffith's Sinn Fein movement. Publishes the League's official organ, The Cork Free Press from 1910 up until 1916.

He and his League remained resolutely opposed to the partition of Northern Ireland, its MPs abstaining from voting for 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 ammending partition bill. The League proposed as early as 1911 Dominion Home Rule as the only possible alternative solution to achieving All-Ireland self-government.

At the outbreak of World War 1, O'Brien declared himself on the side of the Allies, standing on recruiting platforms. Stated that whether Home Rule was to have a future will depend upon the extent to which Nationalists, in combination with Ulster Covenanters, do their part in the firing line on the fields of France, for which ends he encouraged the formation of an Irish Brigade.

In the political climate after the 1916 Easter Rising , he felt unable to continue as a MP and together with the League's members did not contest the general elections in 1918, the All-for-Ireland League putting its seats at the disposal of Griffith's moderate Sinn Fein. Against popular opinion, O'Brien later opposed the establishment of a partitioned Irish Free State. He subsequently contented himself with writing.

His works include

• Irish Ideas (1893)
• A Queen of Men, Grace O'Malley (1898)
• 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)