United Irish League
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United Irish League
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| Founded | 1898 |
| Dissolved | 1920s |
| Ideology | Land Reform |
The United Irish League (UIL) was a nationalist political party in Ireland, launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People" . Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform, compelling larger grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution among the small tenant farmers. Founded and initiated at Westport, County Mayo by William O'Brien, it was supported by Michael Davitt MP, John Dillon MP, who worded its constitution, Timothy Harrington MP, John O'Connor Power MP and the Catholic clergy of the district. By 1900 it had expanded to be represented by 462 branches in twenty-five counties.
In 1895 William O'Brien retired from Parliament and the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in the wake of the Parnell split, by which the party became fragmented into three separate networks of local organisation—the Parnellite Irish National League, the Dillionite anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation and the Healyite Peoples Right's Association. O’Brien had become disillusioned with the internal party quarrels and its failure to rouse the people to a new sense of involvement with national goals. After O’Brien had withdrawn to the West of Ireland he experienced at first hand in his Mayo exile the plight of the peasant tenant farmers and landless labourers, their distressed hardship trying to eke out an existence in its rocky landscape. In contrast, the grazier ranches on the rich plains of Mayo, Roscommon and Galway were in the hands of local town shopkeepers, retired policemen, and other middleclass Irish elements. They were, according to O'Brien, the real infernal evils, the so-called grasslands-grabbers, from whom the small tenant farmers were obliged to rent land for their needs. O'Brien saw the necessity to tackle the owners of these grazing ranches. He wanted to have the lands redistributed, a new idea at the time.
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