111 years ago today, on 31 March 1910, William O'Brien MP established the Munster Ireland based non-sectarian political party, All-for-Ireland League.

Founded by William O'Brien MP, the All-for-Ireland League generated a new national movement to achieve agreement between the different parties concerned on the historically difficult aim of Home Rule for the whole of Ireland.

The AFIL established itself as a separate non-sectarian party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, binding a group of independent nationalists MPs to pursue a broader concept of Irish nationalism, a consensus of political brotherhood and reconciliation among all Irishmen, primarily to win Unionist consent to an All-Ireland parliamentary settlement.

Following the success with the Land Purchase Act, the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) was long disrupted by internal dissensions after it had alienated O'Brien from the party in November 1903. He was condemned by party leader John Dillon for allegedly making former tenant farmers less dependent on the party and for the manner in which he secured a new political base in Munster through his alliance with D. D. Sheehan and the Irish Land and Labour Association. In addition, forging further alliances with T. M. Healy and unionist devolutionists during 1904–05 in his engagement with the Irish Reform Association and ensuing support for the Irish Council Bill. By 1907 the country called for reunion of the split party ranks and in November O'Brien's proposals for his and other Independent’s return to the Party were accepted. Their return to the Nationalist fold in mid-January 1908 was however to be short lived, as conflict ensued from the government’s intention to amend the Land Act of 1903.

O'Brien had always been gravely disturbed by the Irish Parliamentary Party's involvement with "that sinister sectarian secret society", the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) also known as the Molly Maguires, or the Mollies – what he called "the most damnable fact in the history of this country", and was bitterly resentful and unsparing in his attacks upon it. AOH members represented Catholic-nationalism of a Ribbon tradition, their Ulster Protestant counterpart 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 and eventually saturating the entire island. Even in Dublin the AOH could draw large crowds and stage impressive demonstrations. In 1907, Devlin was able to assure John Redmond, the Irish Party leader, that a planned meeting of the UIL would be well attended because he would be able to get more than 400 AOH delegates to fill the hall.

As prelude to O'Brien's formation of the AFIL, Redmond called a National Convention at the Mansion House, Dublin, 9 February 1909, to win support for a House of Commons bill introducing compulsory land purchase while curtailing funding of tenant land purchase under the Birrell Land Act (1909). Over 3000 UIL 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 and assaulted in "probably the stormiest meeting ever held by constitutional nationalists".

When he attempted to speak O’Brien was howled down by various contingents of Belfast Hibernians and midland cattle-drivers, their presence pre-organised by Devlin's AOH organisation. Its stewards, armed with batons, attacked O’Brien’s follower who had gained entrance, their general order to "Let no one with a "Cork accent" get near the platform". From which the event earned the name Baton Convention. When Eugene Crean MP for Cork SE was attacked on the platform, it developed into a mêlée with Devlin and his lodgemen, after D. D. Sheehan and James Gilhooly, MP for north Cork, intervened against Crean's assailants, 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.

Regarding himself as having been driven from the party by Hibernian hooligans, O’Brien’s subsequent move was to officially constitute his new movement, the "All-for-Ireland League", its embryonic origins – the successful Land Conference of 1902, which he launched at a public rally in Kanturk in March 1909.

It was immediately openly denounced by Redmond, and at an Irish party meeting held on 23 March, the party voted fifty to one that membership in the League was incompatible with party membership. O'Brien suffered a health breakdown in April, and retired from politics to Italy to recuperate. Control of the fledgling AFIL passed to a Provisional Committee led by D. D. Sheehan (MP) as Honorary Secretary, its foremost task to promote the League's principles and to hold O'Brien's seat in Cork at the inevitable by-election until his return.

From Italy O'Brien looked to an alliance with Arthur Griffith's moderate Sinn Féin movement through emissaries James Brady (a Dublin solicitor), John Shawe-Taylor and Tim Healy. O'Brien offered funds for Sinn Féin candidates to run in Dublin and funds to run its paper Sinn Féin, in return for Sinn Féin support of his candidates in the south. A special Sinn Feín executive council meeting called 20 December 1909 seriously considered these overtures, many present in favour of co-operation. Sinn Féin's William Sears reported the end result: "Regret cannot cooperate because the Constitution will not allow us. Mr. Griffith was in favour of cooperation if possible". Nevertheless, in the following years O’Brien and his party continued to associate itself with Griffith's movement both in and out of Parliament. In June 1918, Griffith asked O’Brien to have the writ moved for his candidacy in the East Cavan by-election (moved by AFIL MP Eugene Crean) when Griffith was elected with a sizeable majority.

O’Brien returned from Italy for the January 1910 elections, which was marked by considerable turbulences in the county Cork constituencies. His electoral success must have exceeded his expectations. Eleven Nationalists independent of the official party returned, seven of them his League's followers who won all their contests. It rejuvenated his project of the All-for-Ireland League, as well as a new newspaper The Cork Accent, alluding to events at the Baton Convention.

He next framed the League’s programme containing several unique points:

1) extension of the conciliatory spirit of the Land Conference to the larger problem of Irish self-government;

2) distrust of the Irish Party’s alliance with the Liberals and specific opposition to Lloyd George's budget and Birrel's revision of the land settlement; and

3) hostility to the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

The League held its inaugural public meeting on 31 March 1910 in the City Hall in Cork Ireland. Its rules and constitution were formulated and endorsed at a public meeting on 12 April, where it announced its Home Rule manifesto and political policies to be:

• "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." 

The application of the AFIL's principles of "Conference, Conciliation and Consent" (the Three C s), were to win All-Ireland Home Rule – or constitutional nationalism rather than an ultimately doomed path of militant physical force.

Many of the leading Protestant gentry of Munster, and representatives of the wealthy Protestant business and professional community joined the League. Lord Dunraven, Lord Barrymore, Lord Mayo and Lord Castletown, Sir John Keane of Cappoquin, Villiers Stuart of Dromana, Moreton Frewen and Thomas Westropp Bennett (a first generation Roman Catholic from an old Co Limerick Protestant family) were a few of the more notable adherents who supplied political and financial support. Even amongst the Orangemen the spirit of patriotism was stirring – hands were stretched out from Ulster to the Catholics of the South. Lord Rossmore, once Grandmaster of the Orange Institution, joined the League, Sharman Crawford and others. Unionism was declared by them to be a "discredited creed". Nationalist and Unionists were called upon to recognise "the unwisdom of perpetuating a suicidal strife which sacrificed them to religious bigotry and the political exigencies of English partie".

League Chairperson was James Gilhooly (MP), Honorary Secretary D. D. Sheehan (MP). A Central London branch was founded by Dr J. G. Fitzgerald (MP) as chairman, suggesting some disenchantment with his former Parnellite colleagues including John Redmond. Canon Sheehan of Doneraile, a founder member, spoke and wrote enthusiastically in favour of the Leagues doctrines. The Cork Free Press, published by O'Brien, appeared for the first time on 11 June 1910 as the League's official organ and organiser. It was a newspaper in the fullest sense, superseding the Cork Accent and was one of the three great radical newspapers published in Ireland – the other two being The Nation, published in Dublin in the 1840s, and The Northern Star, published in Belfast in the 1790s.

Canon Sheehan wrote the League's manifesto for the first number of the Cork Free Press, and asked in a very long editorial:

"We are a generous people; and yet we are told we must keep up a sectarian bitterness to the end; and the Protestant Ascendancy has been broken down, only to build Catholic Ascendancy on its ruins. Are we in earnest about our country at all or are we seeking to perpetuate our wretchedness by refusing the honest aid of Irishmen? Why should we throw unto the arms of England those children of Ireland who would be our most faithful allies, if we did not seek to disinherit them? A weaker brother disinherited by a stranger will naturally be his enemy ...

England owes her world-wide power ... to her supreme talent of attracting and assimilating the most hostile elements of her subject races ... Ireland, alas, has had the talent of estranging and expelling her own children, and turning them ... into her deadliest enemies. It is time that all this should cease, if we still retain the ambition of creating a nation".

There could be no doubting the antagonism of the Cork Examiner to the establishment of the All-for-Ireland League' in 1910. It was the second effort, the Examiner told its readers, that William O'Brien had made to organise a meeting and, considering the composition of the promoters, it might be taken for 'a poor relation of the Primrose League'.

Notwithstanding such comments, there was a good crowd at the City Hall 111 years ago today when Mr McDonald, Chairman, County Council, was moved to the chair at the inaugural meeting of the All-for-Ireland League. The platform party included Members of Parliament, City and County Councillors, members of religious denominations and prominent members of the com-munity, including a good sprinkling of ladies.

William O'Brien proposed the motion to establish the League, 'whose primary object shall be the union and active co-operation in every depart-ment of our national life of all Irish men and women who believe in the principle of self-government for Ireland'. O'Brien questioned the pedi-gree of their opponents who, in the 'days of real sacrifice and danger', had failed to stand by his side. He reminded the attendance how he had led them in the past 'into the midst of the bayonet charges and the bullets and the jails and the eviction campaigns', while his opponents 'so far from endangering their own skins in the lists, the only penalty that they expect to overtake them is a fat Crown Prosecutorship, or a university professor-ship, or some unconsidered trifles of that kind from the Exchequer of the hated Saxon'.

William O'Brien established the All-for-Ireland League in Cork Ireland, 11 years ago today, on 31 March 1910.