ABSTRACT
By 1902 the land agitation led by the United Irish League had escalated and large parts of the country were proclaimed, giving the authorities wide power to deal with disorder. In an effort to find a resolution, Captain John Shawe-Taylor, the younger son of a Galway landlord, published a letter to the press inviting named leaders to a conference aimed at producing a land settlement acceptable to landlords and tenants. The Chief Secretary, George Wyndham, publicly welcomed the initiative and a committee was eventually set up, chaired by Lord Dunraven. It produced a recommendation on which the 1903 Land Act was based. William O’Brien was among those leaders representing the tenants’ side, and his account is reproduced on pp. 351-7. Both Davitt and John Dillon came out in opposition to both the recommendations and the Land Act, on the basis that the measures advocated were too generous to landlords.
