United Irish League dissolved and replaced by Irish Democratic League
Leeds, 19 May 1923 - The United Irish League is to be wound down in Britain, but in its place a new organisation, the Irish Democratic League, has been established. Both decisions were taken at a Convention attended by two hundred delegates in Leeds today.
Presiding over the meeting was the veteran Irish Nationalist TD for Liverpool, Mr. T.P. O’Connor who, while declaring the UIL’s dissolution as inevitable, maintained there was a need for a new organisation to advance the welfare of Irish people and to forward its methods by means of constitutional persuasion.
Mr. O’Connor insisted that the struggle for Irish liberty was not over and the Irish question would remain unresolved while a part of the island was severed from the rest.
With that in mind, the Convention delegates decided to establish a new organisation which will be known as the Irish Democratic League. According to T.P. O’Connor the new body would be non-sectarian, independent of any of the British political parties and would devote itself to defending the rights and liberties - social, political and religious - of Irish citizens in Great Britain.
Crucially, Mr. O’Connor said that the new League’s members would be loyal British citizens who would contribute to the political life of Britain, but they must keep at the forefront of all their political activities the reunion of all parts of Ireland, without which they could never say that Ireland the nation had become a lived reality.
British Pathé footage of T.P. O’Connor, filmed in 1923
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
