The Land Conference was a successful conciliatory negotiation held in the Mansion House in Dublin, Ireland between 20 December 1902 and 4 January 1903. In a short period it produced a unanimously agreed report recommending an amiable solution to the long waged land war between tenant farmers and their landlords. Advocating a massive scheme of voluntary land purchase, it provided the basis for the most important land reform ever introduced by any Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the period of the Act of Union (1801–1922), the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903.[1]
Through it, the whole Irish land question underwent a revolutionary transformation[2] whereby the entire tenantry were encouraged to purchase their holdings with advances from the imperial exchequer,[3] provided for the express purpose of facilitating the transfer of the land from owner to occupier.[4]
- ^ Campbell, Fergus: Irish Popular Politics and the making of the Wyndham Land Act, 1901–1903 The Historical Journal , Cambridge University Press (2002).
Paper delivered at Herford College Oxford, in February 1997 - ^ Lyons, F. S. L.: John Dillon, Ch. 8: Estrangements, p. 227, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1968), SBN 7100 2887 3
- ^ Miller, David W.: Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921, p. 86, Gill & Macmillan (1973) ISBN 0-7171-0645-4
- ^ Russell, T. W. MP: Notes on the Irish Land Bill in The North American Review, Vol. 176., No. 559, pp. 868–880 (June 1903).